The History of the Confederate War, Its Causes and Its Conduct. Volume 2 of 2

Little by little Gillmore got his great guns into position for breaching his enemy's works. The moving of each gun into its place cost scores of lives and every attempt to fire it must cost other scores. But here was work that must be done, and here were men resolute enough to do it.

On the seventeenth of August the great guns opened against Fort Wagner and Fort Sumter. Night and day for a full week the terrible conflict continued. The walls of Fort Sumter were beaten into an amorphous mass of bricks and mortar, its guns were dismounted and its men dwelt ceaselessly under the fire of Gillmore's terrible instruments of death. Nevertheless, they stood firm, and held their position without faltering or failure. It is to be observed that the terror of this struggle was due to the fact that the men on the one side and on the other were of unconquerable spirit, and indomitable courage, and that to them the measure of danger served only to set a measure for endurance.

It should be stated here that in spite of the ruin of Fort Sumter's defenses, the Confederates continued to occupy that work, driving off several assaults that were afterwards made upon it. A little later Major, afterwards Brigadier General, Stephen Elliott, of South Carolina – a man almost womanly in his delicacy of demeanor, but lion-like in courage and activity – was sent to take command of the little infantry force which still held the ruins of the fort. With an enterprise that suggests a creative imagination on his part, he ordered cargoes of sand bags to be brought thither by night, and little by little with these, he reconstructed the frowning walls, and mounted upon them again the great guns that such a fort is supposed to carry.

His work was first revealed to the enemy in a dramatic and poetic way. When the time came for the Christmas salute in which the foes, as it were, lifted their caps to each other, the saluting was begun by the ships of the Federal fleet. One after another, as they lay in line, they fired the conventional number of guns. Then the Confederate batteries took up the courteous work, each firing its quota. When the last one on the left of Sumter had fired it was supposed that the saluting would be continued by the next battery on the right of that ruined work. It was not dreamed on either side that Sumter had a single gun in position. But Elliott's work of reconstruction had been done. His guns were ready again for the fray. And in his turn he fired the Christmas salute, to the astonishment and admiration of all.

Then came one of the graceful courtesies of war. Under signal orders from the commandant of the Federal fleet every ship in the squadron dipped its flag in deference to Fort Sumter.

Here were brave men saluting brave men, and rejoicing in their courage and their enterprise although these were antagonistically employed. Perhaps no incident in all the war better illustrates than this one does the sympathy that brave men feel for brave men, irrespective of the lines of conflict drawn between them.

As he approached Fort Wagner General Gillmore was forced to work upon ground so low that the spring tides freely washed over it, and drenched his working details to their waists. Nevertheless, he pushed them forward, determined that the work he had undertaken should be fully done. As his parallels drew nearer and nearer to the work they were intending to reduce they came at last upon ground which had been mined, and planted with destructive torpedoes. Nevertheless, Gillmore pushed forward his working parties and multiplied the fire of his mortars which dropped shells incessantly into the fort, letting them fall vertically so that no earthwork might afford protection against their destructiveness. Under the glare of powerful calcium lights the work went on by night as well as by day. During every minute of every hour in the twenty-four the contest was continued ceaselessly. The destructive fire upon the Confederate fort was added to by bringing a great ironclad warship the New Ironsides close in shore, and setting her guns at work.

After two days of this fearful conflict Gillmore was ready with his infantry columns to make that final rush upon the works by which he hoped to conquer them. But suddenly, in anticipation of a charge which they were too weakened to resist with any hope of success, the Confederates abandoned Fort Wagner, and withdrew also from Battery Gregg to the north of it.

This gave Gillmore complete control of Morris Island clear to Cummings's Point, and as he believed, made him master of Charleston harbor. In that belief he sent a fleet of whaleboats packed with infantrymen to take possession of Fort Sumter. But the Confederates there resisted with a vigor which destroyed most of the boats, disabling their crews, and resulted in the killing or capturing of the infantrymen who constituted their ship's companies.

It had been the hope of General Gillmore that when he should thus secure command of the entrance to Charleston harbor the fleet lying outside would press in and complete his work by capturing the city. But in this hope he was disappointed. Admiral Dahlgren, who commanded the fleet, knew far better than Gillmore did the reserve resisting power of the Confederate batteries within the harbor, and he wisely declined to push his vessels into a bay which, if he had resolutely invaded it, would have become quickly a naval graveyard.

During all this time it had been Gillmore's ambition to bombard the city of Charleston itself. To that end in August he had brought up to Morris Island an eight-inch rifle gun of exceedingly long range and ordered it planted at a point selected by himself. The point was one so marshy that for a time no platform could be constructed that would support the gun. It is humorously related that the officer constructing it, having been told to make requisitions for whatever materials he might need, formally sent in a requisition for "a hundred men eighteen feet high." At last, however, by driving piles a platform was made and the gun, which the men named the Swamp Angel, was got into position. It threw thirty-six shells into the city of Charleston five miles away, and then burst. In order to reach so great a distance it had been elevated to about 23 degrees. No gun that was ever constructed other than a mortar, can long endure firing at so great an elevation.

After his capture of Fort Wagner and Battery Gregg Gillmore resumed his bombardment of the city from the latter point, which lies a mile or two nearer than did the position of the Swamp Angel.

Gillmore had succeeded in capturing what had been supposed to be the main defenses to the harbor and the city. He had utterly failed to capture the city itself, or in any way to break the resistance which, to the end, continued to hold the harbor secure against Federal attack.

During all this time the Federals had been holding Port Royal and the islands along the coast between Charleston and Savannah. With strong forces they had made many advances inland, hoping to break the railroad line between the two cities and to push through the open country into the rear of one or the other.

All of these efforts had failed. Chief among them was the attempt upon Pocotaligo and Coosawhatchie, which was made with a force of five thousand men on the twenty-second of October, 1862. This attempt was defeated by a meager force of 350 men reinforced to 700, who stood all day against eight times their number in defense of a causeway 225 yards long, which ended in a bridge on the Confederate side. The bridge was torn up by the Confederates and hour after hour during the long day they stood to their guns and swept away every column that was formed to advance along the causeway and rebuild the crossing.

CHAPTER XLII
The Campaigns of Chickamauga and Chattanooga

While Lee was fighting his tremendous campaigns in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, and while Grant was battling for Vicksburg, two other armies confronted each other near the southern border line of Tennessee. Rosecrans had command of the Federal forces near Murfreesboro, and Braxton Bragg was in charge of the Confederates at Chattanooga. The position of each of these armies was a serious threat to the other side. If Bragg should be left unoccupied by his enemy it was easily within his power to make a dangerous dash towards Cincinnati or Louisville, while if he should withdraw from Rosecrans's front there was nothing to prevent that general from "marching through Georgia," to Mobile or Savannah or Charleston.

Grant, besieging Vicksburg, asked for reinforcements from Rosecrans by way of warding off that blow in the rear which he feared that Johnston might deliver and at the same time Johnston begged for reinforcements from Bragg in order that he might deliver such a blow. Each of the commanders at Murfreesboro and Chattanooga realized the necessity of remaining where he was so long at least as his adversary should remain. The result was that neither sent the reinforcements for which his brother in the field was so clamorously calling.

These two armies for a long time stood watching each other, each waiting for the other to make some movement that would give it opportunity. In the meanwhile the cavalry on either side was engaged in making some of the most picturesque raids that were at any time made during the struggle. On both sides the cavalry had by this time learned its business, and realized its possibilities of independent action in the enemy's country. The Federal cavalier, Grierson, swept through Mississippi carrying desolation wherever he went. The Confederates, Wheeler and Forrest, rushed hurricanelike through the country north, battling here and there with such forces as they met. Gordon Granger and Colonel Streight on the Federal side were swinging swords almost continually.

The operations of this kind were too many, and strategically of too little importance to call for detailed description in a general history of the war. But two of them were so dramatic in their conduct and ending that they must be mentioned here. One of these was the attempt of Colonel Streight with about 2,000 men to march around Bragg's army, and cut off his communications. This raid was made early in April, and Forrest followed it with all the vigor that usually characterized that general's operations. The two forces were in constant battle as the one swept onward and the other followed. Streight meanwhile was working havoc with Confederate depots of supplies, with railroad property, and other possessions of his enemy. Finally on the third of May, Forrest succeeded in placing himself in a position where he was justified in demanding the surrender of Streight's force. He made the demand boldly and threateningly and Streight surrendered only to learn after the capitulation was made that the men under his command really outnumbered those of Forrest. It was Forrest's boast afterward that in this case he had "won by a pure bluff."

The other raid which rises into historical importance was that of John Morgan north of the Ohio. Starting in July with a force of 3,00 °Confederate cavalrymen and ten guns Morgan crossed the Ohio river into Indiana, capturing two steamers and using them as ferryboats. He then swept through Indiana towards Cincinnati, burning mills and bridges, tearing up railroads, and spreading terror in his pathway. But resolution accompanied the terror. Every man in all that region who could bear a gun turned out to fight the raiders and to destroy them before they should succeed in recrossing the river. This was accomplished at last with the aid of gunboats and steamboats. Morgan was compelled to surrender a small remnant of his force, and was sent for safe-keeping to the Ohio state prison, from which he later escaped by digging.

All these operations, of course, were subsidiary to the general purposes of the campaign.

Rosecrans was an exceedingly capable strategist and upon this occasion, more conspicuously than on any other during his career, his capacity in that way was demonstrated.

Bragg occupied Chattanooga, the strategic importance of which has been explained in an earlier chapter. The position was practically impregnable by any form of direct assault; for Rosecrans to have hurled his army against it would have been an act of well-nigh suicidal folly. In such an assault he must have lost ten men for every one of his enemy's men whom he could hope to put hors de combat. Yet it was necessary for Rosecrans to get Bragg out of Chattanooga. In order to do so he pushed a part of his army southward, threatening an invasion of Georgia. That state was defenseless except in so far as Bragg's army defended it. Rosecrans's movement, therefore, quickly compelled Bragg to withdraw from his strong and threatening position in order to head off what he supposed to be that southward movement that Sherman afterward made, and that is known in history as "the march to the sea." As soon as he quitted Chattanooga, Rosecrans occupied that place about the middle of September.

It was apparently good policy for Rosecrans instantly and aggressively to follow his foe, and he did so in spite of the fact that his three corps were dangerously separated at a time of heavy rains, when the roads were bad, streams out of their banks, marching difficult, and promptitude of movement impossible. In the meantime Bragg had been heavily reinforced by Longstreet's corps sent out by Lee to save this situation. Thus strengthened Bragg turned about with intent to assail his adversary, and perhaps to destroy him. On the nineteenth of September the two armies met on the banks of Chickamauga creek. There for two days raged one of the great battles of the war.

Rosecrans brought into the action about 55,000 men and Bragg had perhaps 10,000 more. It was Bragg who made the attack. As the lines lay, the Confederate right and the Federal left extended toward Chattanooga.

Bragg's plan of battle was to fall upon the Federal left, crush it, bend back the line, and place himself between the Federal army and its base. There could have been no better plan of battle formed, but it was not executed in the best fashion possible. Had Bragg fully realized the superiority of Longstreet to his other corps commanders, and still more the superiority of Longstreet's men who had fought at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Antietam and Gettysburg, he would have placed Longstreet upon his right, in order that the blow might be delivered with all that was possible of crushing force. Instead of that he assigned the force of General Leonidas Polk to that position. Polk was a West Point graduate, but soon after graduation he had become a clergyman of the Episcopal church, and for many years past had been a bishop in that church. A fact that had more importance perhaps, was that Polk's men had not been trained by the experience of Lee's tremendous onslaughts to the best work of the soldier, and unfortunately for Bragg, but fortunately for Rosecrans, that left wing of the Federal army upon which the main assault was made, was under command of General George H. Thomas, one of the most determined fighters on either side during the war.

Under Polk the assault was made loosely, and without that perfect concert of action which Longstreet, had he been in command, would have brought to bear. Thomas met it with obstinate resistance, and when opportunity offered, with counter attacks that greatly interfered with Bragg's plans. Nevertheless, the fighting was obstinate and destructive to both sides. In the end Polk succeeded in forcing Thomas's line backwards for a time, but before nightfall the Federal general had recovered the greater part of his ground, and when the first day's fighting ended the position of the two armies was practically the same that had existed in the morning.

About eleven o'clock on the next morning the battle was resumed with fury. Polk again assailed Thomas, and Thomas urgently asked for reinforcements with which to repel the assault. On that part of the line the struggle continued for hours with varying and not unequal success, the advantage lying on the whole with the Confederates. But later in the day Longstreet, who commanded the right center of Bragg's line, made a tremendous assault of that kind which had been rendered familiar to the fighters in Virginia by repeated experience. He swept everything before him. He made a gap in Rosecrans's line crushing its center, separating its wings from each other and driving it into confused retreat. Thomas alone held his force together, and fought the matter out to a finish. In spite of the fact clearly apparent to him that Rosecrans was defeated, and three fifths of his army destroyed, Thomas continued the bloody contest with a fury that knew no flinching, and hesitated at nothing of human sacrifice in the achievement of its purposes. But for Thomas's obstinacy, skill and courage the Federal defeat at Chickamauga would have been a repetition of the disaster at Chancellorsville.

During the night Thomas succeeded in withdrawing his command, and the Federal army fell back to Chattanooga, taking refuge behind the fortifications there. Each army had lost in this struggle from 15,000 to 20,000 men. The exact figures are nowhere procurable.

Bragg had won a great victory, but he had not succeeded in regaining possession of Chattanooga. His enemy held that strong, strategic position. It was therefore his next task to besiege the foe there, and either by fighting or by maneuvering to drive him out of the place.

Two mountain heights, the one known as Lookout mountain and the other as Missionary Ridge, overlook the town, and command many of its approaches. When the battle was over Bragg promptly advanced and seized upon these heights. By doing so he succeeded in placing Chattanooga in a state of siege, stopping the navigation of the river, and cutting off all of Rosecrans's communications, with the exception of one highly inadequate mud road.

It is a maxim of military science that the army which can besiege a position can always capture it in the end unless the beleaguered place is relieved from the outside. Chattanooga was relieved from the outside in an exceedingly quiet, but exceedingly effective way. Ulysses S. Grant – at last a major general in the regular army and in full command of the western department – went thither to supersede Rosecrans in command. The coming of this one silent and unostentatious man meant more to the Federal forces in that quarter than the arrival of half a dozen army corps would have signified. Grant got to Chattanooga on the twenty-third of October, 1863, and set to work at once with his practical common sense to meet and solve the problems of the situation.

He found the army half starved for lack of routes of communication with its bases of supply. He instantly set his men at work to open a new road which the facetious soldiers named the "cracker line," and which connected Chattanooga with a point on the river to which steamboats could come with abundant supplies. This relieved the Federal army in Chattanooga of its condition as an army in a state of siege. It made of it instead an army in the field, well fed, properly supplied, and ready for march or battle, as its commander might direct.

Having thus relieved the distresses of the army he had been sent to command, Grant's next thought was to employ that army in some profitable way. The Confederates, strongly fortified, held Lookout mountain and Missionary Ridge, and stretched their line for twelve miles across the Chattanooga valley. Grant decided to dislodge them. He could not do so with the forces assembled at Chattanooga, but at last the authorities at Washington had recognized him as a man worthy to command, and had placed the entire department under his control, and all its armies were at his disposal. Grant believed in Sherman, and mightily trusted him. At every point in his career where Sherman could be called to his aid Grant summoned that commander, and employed his genius as the most effective instrument for the accomplishment of his own purposes. It is not too much to say that Sherman was to Grant quite all that Stonewall Jackson was to Lee – a lieutenant to whom he might assign the most difficult enterprises with full assurance that they would be executed with all the skill, determination, valor and sagacity that it was possible to bring to bear upon them as military operations.

So when Grant determined to dislodge the Confederates from Lookout mountain and Missionary Ridge his first step was to summon Sherman to join him with the corps then under Sherman's command.

Certain military necessities delayed Sherman's march, and he did not reach the position at Chattanooga until the fifteenth of November. His arrival swelled Grant's force to about 80,000 men, while Bragg's army was weakened by the detachment of Longstreet with 20,000 men to operate against Burnside, who was commanding at Knoxville, Tennessee. The Confederate force in possession of Lookout mountain and Missionary Ridge was thus considerably inferior to the army with which Grant prepared to assail it. But the Confederates were strongly posted and on a part of their line, at least, they were well entrenched.

Grant's plan of battle was simple, as his plans of battle usually were. He ordered Sherman to carry Missionary Ridge, which constituted the extreme right of the Confederate position, while Thomas and Hooker should so far engage the remainder of the line as to prevent the reinforcement of that point upon which his chief assault was to be made. If he could accomplish this Bragg must either retreat, abandoning his threat against Chattanooga, or he must seek some point at which to give battle again with a force so far weakened by detachment as to render battle a dangerous alternative for him.

Sherman advanced on the twenty-fourth of November. His assault was repulsed and for the time unsuccessful. Hooker, in the meanwhile, exceeded his orders, and did a good deal more fighting than Grant had intended him to do. It was his assigned duty merely to engage that part of the Confederate lines which lay in front of him, sufficiently to prevent the sending of any force from it to reinforce the Confederate right. But Hooker was by instinct a fighter at all times. And on this occasion he pushed his men boldly into a fight that his commanding officer had not intended. His force climbed to the extreme summit of the mountain, passing a zone of mist and fog as they went. Having reached the summit they routed the Confederates there and made themselves masters of the heights. The fact that they passed through this fog zone on their way up led to the poetic nicknaming of this action as the "Battle above the Clouds." It was not, properly speaking, a battle at all, and it was not above the clouds in the sense in which that phrase impresses the ordinary mind.

On the twenty-fifth Grant pushed Thomas again into the fight, and assailed the position on Missionary Ridge. A very gallant and very vigorous action followed. It resulted in the Federals carrying the Ridge, sweeping everything before them, and driving Bragg's army into full retreat. He retired with what remained of his force to Dalton, Georgia, and almost immediately afterward Gen. Joseph E. Johnston was ordered to take command in that quarter in his stead.

The campaign had been dramatic in many of its features, and peculiarly picturesque in some of them. It had cost the lives of from six to ten thousand men on either side. It left the Federals masters of Chattanooga, placing the Confederates in an uncertain defensive position against which future operations were comparatively easy.