December 25, 1864---Christmas Day; The First Battle of Fort Fisher (Day Three); The Battle of Devil's Gap; A Purloined Leg of Lamb; No Dinner For The Troops

DECEMBER 25, 1864:      

It is the fourth Christmas of the war. People are praying for peace on Earth and goodwill toward men, but for most, particularly in the ravaged South, peace with the Yankees and goodwill toward them both seem afar off.  Thomas Nast publishes this drawing of President Lincoln greeting wandering Confederate soldiers into the White House for Christmas, using Harper’s Weekly to promote reconciliation between the two halves of America. 

Mary Lincoln spends much of the day with her friend, Elizabeth Keckley. It is a difficult Christmas for most Americans. In the North there are far too many empty chairs. In the South, the empty chairs have long since been burned to keep warm.

While Washingtonians, Philadelphians, New Yorkers, and Chicagoans sit down to sumptuous Christmas dinners and speak excitedly about the prospects of a fast end to the war, outside the war goes on. In Georgia, former Atlantans are moving back into their deserted homes for shelter. They spend their days in the ruined downtown searching for food and firewood, and wondering what will come next. A few churches hold Christmas services.

There is little (but some fierce) fighting this day. Overall, this Christmas, which turns out to be the last Christmas of the war, is cold, miserable, and snowy. Virtually everyone spends it hunkered down. People are simply trying to keep warm, particularly the bone-thin Confederates. 

In places on the Richmond-Petersburg line, men in blue begin hollering “Truce! Truce!” and carry food and drink (and even a little purloined liquor) over to their Confederate counterparts:

“Merry Christmas, Johnny Reb!”

“Merry Christmas, Billy Yank!”

“See you in hell, then --- tomorrow.”

“Sure thing --- tomorrow.” 

Someone begins to sing Battle Cry of Freedom and both sides join in with their own words, followed by Silent Night. 

Confederate soldiers for the most part go hungry this Christmas. The Federals by and large, eat well. But there is no cheer this year for the ordinary man in uniform; for most soldiers, Blue and Gray, the day passes drearily. They dream of Christmases gone by. Many men have not been home for Christmas since the tense, secession-haunted winter of 1860. Large numbers of Southerners know they have no homes to return to.

Joseph Cockerham, a Confederate soldier writes to his niece:

Dear Martha,

Your letter came to hand a few days since . . . I have but little news times is very dull out here . . . The soldiers all look sad and lonely.  We have nothing spiritual or refreshing in camp . . . All is calm on the lines in front of Petersburg and Richmond . . .  Rations are rather scanty...

Yours affectionatly, 

Jasper

A Union Private, Levi McCormick, writes home to his wife:

Dear wife  

I will send you a few lines stating how we are  I have bin down with the diarier for about a weak  it has bin the most sevear that I hav ever ha but I feel better to day & I hav washed all of my cloaths & I borrowed some cloathes while mine are drying  I cant write you mutch this time but if I keep wel I will try and write you a interesting leter some of those days  we hav got houses built up wonce more but Christmas was a very dul day hear  we have not had it yet but the war news is good  we have had a despatch from G Shairman  he has done more than we could of asked of him  I hope this will find you all wel  Samey is not very wel  he had a cold  we hav bin very mutch exposed but I dont want to write about   You can sea the reason why I hav not wrote 

I send my love to all from you ever true and loving 

Husband

General John Brown Gordon C.S.A., serving near Petersburg, wrote: 

The one worn-out railroad running to the far South could not bring us half enough necessary supplies: and even if it could have transported Christmas boxes of good things, the people at home were too depleted to send them.

General Josiah Gorgas C.S.A., knowing that the Officer Corps is enjoying hot Christmas dinners while fighting men go hungry and their families starve this winter, wrote bitterly:

A despondent Christmas has just passed, yet people contrived to eat hearty and good Christmas dinners.  The soldiers unfortunately have not even meat, and have had none for several days.  The Commissary General has singly failed in his duties; while there is plenty of food in Georgia there is none here.  There is no sufficient excuse for this.  The food must be brought here, and the means to so provided and organized.

Mary Chesnut confides to her diary:

Oh, why did we go to Camden? The very dismalest Christmas overtook us there. Miss Rhett went with us - a brilliant woman and very agreeable. "The world, you know, is composed," said she, "of men, women, and Rhetts" (see Lady Montagu). Now, we feel that if we are to lose our negroes, we would as soon see Sherman free them as the Confederate Government; freeing negroes is the last Confederate Government craze. We are a little too slow about it; that is all.

Robert E. Lee and John Singleton Mosby confer together over a leg of lamb which Lee admits ruefully, “must have been purloined somewhere.”  He promotes Mosby to a full Colonelcy.

Union soldier Elisha Hunt Rhodes wrote in his diary:

It does not seem much like Sunday or Christmas, for the men are hauling logs to build huts. This is a work of necessity, for the quarters we have been using are not warm enough. This is my fourth Christmas in the Army. I wonder if it will be my last.

Merry Christmas to you all and thank you to all of our troops past and present who sacrifice the holidays and more for our safety!

At Fort Fisher, the Union continues to bombard the fort all day until late afternoon. Making no headway, finally the assault is called off. Edwin Stanton fumes at the War Department in Washington.  

The Battle of Devil’s Gap: 
      

General Nathan Bedford Forrest C.S.A., covering the slow retreat of John Bell Hood’s men, fights off a pursuing Union column near Pulaski , Tennessee. Forrest, who loses only two fights in the war, is undeterred by the recent reversals in Dixie’s fortunes. A singularly resourceful man, Forrest’s cavalry is warmly dressed, well fed, and well-armed on this day. Forrest habitually ignores the informal cease-fire that usually settles over the Civil War at Christmastime. Forrest was, in fact, a conservative iconoclast. 

Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821-1877) was the son of an upcountry Tennessee dirt farmer who died when he was 17. In 1845, he murdered several men in an honor killing to avenge an uncle who had taken him in when his father died. Although Forrest was no Virginia gentleman (he said “ain’t”, “gittin’ along” and “vittles” in polite conversation) and not formally educated, he was intrinsically brilliant. For a while he was a riverboat gambler; after a time he managed to buy the boat and used the profits to speculate in cotton and plantation land. He was also a slave trader. Eventually, he became a millionaire. These successes presaged his military career. 

General Nathan Bedford Forrest

Using his own money, he enlisted as a private in the Confederate army bringing along with him a fully-equipped squadron of cavalrymen. Immediately promoted to officer’s rank, he showed an innate understanding of military tactics, a compulsion for mobile action, and a propensity to gamble, that was second to none. Several times he bluffed his way into bloodless victories, even capturing Union naval vessels. Northerners called him “That Devil Forrest” but Southerners called him “The Wizard,” and he was both. He had little time for officers and gentlemen unless they fought like demons, and was merciless toward Yankees. It is estimated that he killed at least 37 men in combat, and fought several honor duels with fellow Southerners during the war. When asked how he won so many of his battles, he answered, “I gits there fustest with the mostest.”  

For all his military ability, the man had terrible flaws of character. He was bloodthirsty to a fault, generally incapable of compromise, and reflexively belligerent no matter the circumstances. An inveterate racist, he led his men at the Fort Pillow Massacre, and after the war he became the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. He quit this office when the Klan became too violent (he was too conspicuous a leader for what was becoming an increasingly secret society). Interestingly, he later spoke out for reconciliation between the races. In the early 1870s he volunteered for the Union army when a war with Spain threatened. General-in-Chief William Tecumseh Sherman, his old nemesis, agreed to commission Forrest, but the diplomatic crisis of the moment passed off, and the Spanish-American War did not occur until 1898. But for a twist of history, “Forrest’s Rough Riders” might have gone up San Juan Hill.    


Forrest died in 1877 of diabetes. 

But that lies in the future. On this sad day of rejoicing, Forrest stains the Tennessee snow with fresh blood.