November 9, 1864---Special Field Orders Number 120: Sherman's March To The Sea

NOVEMBER 9, 1864:       

With President Lincoln’s re-election an accomplished fact and the status of Atlanta rendered unimportant to his war aims, General William Tecumseh Sherman U.S.A issues Special Field Orders Number 120, giving an outline for the military organization of what will become known as “Sherman’s March To The Sea”:

Headquarters Military Division of the Mississippi, In the Field, Kingston, Georgia, November 9, 1864

I. For the purpose of military operations, this army is divided into two wings viz.: The right wing, Major-General O. O. Howard commanding, composed of the Fifteenth and Seventeenth Corps; the left wing, Major-General H. W. Slocum commanding, composed of the Fourteenth and Twentieth Corps.

II. The habitual order of march will be, wherever practicable, by four roads, as nearly parallel as possible, and converging at points hereafter to be indicated in orders. The cavalry, Brigadier - General Kilpatrick commanding, will receive special orders from the commander-in-chief.

III. There will be no general train of supplies, but each corps will have its ammunition-train and provision-train, distributed habitually as follows: Behind each regiment should follow one wagon and one ambulance; behind each brigade should follow a due proportion of ammunition - wagons, provision-wagons, and ambulances. In case of danger, each corps commander should change this order of march, by having his advance and rear brigades unencumbered by wheels. The separate columns will start habitually at 7 a.m., and make about fifteen miles per day, unless otherwise fixed in orders.

IV. The army will forage liberally on the country during the march. To this end, each brigade commander will organize a good and sufficient foraging party, under the command of one or more discreet officers, who will gather, near the route traveled, corn or forage of any kind, meat of any kind, vegetables, corn-meal, or whatever is needed by the command, aiming at all times to keep in the wagons at least ten day's provisions for the command and three days' forage. Soldiers must not enter the dwellings of the inhabitants, or commit any trespass, but during a halt or a camp they may be permitted to gather turnips, potatoes, and other vegetables, and to drive in stock of their camp. To regular foraging parties must be instructed the gathering of provisions and forage at any distance from the road traveled.

V. To army corps commanders alone is intrusted the power to destroy mills, houses, cotton-gins, &c., and for them this general principle is laid down: In districts and neighborhoods where the army is unmolested no destruction of such property should be permitted; but should guerrillas or bushwhackers molest our march, or should the inhabitants burn bridges, obstruct roads, or otherwise manifest local hostility, then army commanders should order and enforce a devastation more or less relentless according to the measure of such hostility.

VI. As for horses, mules, wagons, &c., belonging to the inhabitants, the cavalry and artillery may appropriate freely and without limit, discriminating, however, between the rich, who are usually hostile, and the poor or industrious, usually neutral or friendly. Foraging parties may also take mules or horses to replace the jaded animals of their trains, or to serve as pack-mules for the regiments or bridges. In all foraging, of whatever kind, the parties engaged will refrain from abusive or threatening language, and may, where the officer in command thinks proper, give written certificates of the facts, but no receipts, and they will endeavor to leave with each family a reasonable portion for their maintenance.

VII. Negroes who are able-bodied and can be of service to the several columns may be taken along, but each army commander will bear in mind that the question of supplies is a very important one and that his first duty is to see to them who bear arms.

 — William T. Sherman, Military Division of the Mississippi Special Field Order 120, November 9, 1864

November 8, 1864--- Abraham Lincoln Wins A Second Term

NOVEMBER 8, 1864:       

Abraham Lincoln is re-elected President of the United States. The North, the South, and Europe watch anxiously as United States citizens go to the polls this day to choose a Chief Executive. Everyone concerned knows that the election of 1864 is a plebiscite on the conduct of the war. It is also unique in that no republic has ever held an election in the midst of a civil war. The Confederate States of course, cast no popular votes and their 80 electoral votes are a nullity. Nobody really knows how the election will turn out.

 

Lincoln himself is unsure. Although most of his advisors are blithely confident that the President will be re-elected, Lincoln himself is the canniest of politicians who is aware of just how fickle the American electorate can be. He knows that the recent string of Union victories --- Mobile Bay, Atlanta, Opequon (Winchester), Fisher’s Hill, Athens (Alabama), Marianna, Allatoona, Glasgow, Cedar Creek, Westport, and other smaller contests --- have bolstered Union morale magnificently. 

But he also knows that just about two months ago his chances for re-election were so nonexistent that he formed a Transition Committee to aid the new President in prosecuting the war. And he has not forgotten that the Richmond-Petersburg Line has not broken, that John Bell Hood is moving toward Tennessee, and that Nathan Bedford Forrest is wringing victories out of the very stones of the South. The Confederacy may be on her knees indeed, but she has risen before to grasp the Union by the throat to be knocked into the dirt. The Summer of ’64 has left a bitter metallic taste --- the taste of spilled blood --- in Lincoln’s mouth.

General George B. McClellan resigns his commission in the morning so that he can take the Presidential Oath of Office as a civilian.  No one knows whether the “Soldier Vote” will go to Lincoln or to the still-admired and respected and beloved “Young Napoleon.”

 

If Lincoln has one trump card, it is his sour Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton. Although Stanton once referred to Lincoln as “that long-armed creature,” he has come to love the President, who he sees not only as a great military and political leader but as a moral force and an avatar sent from elsewhere to guide the nation through its darkest peril. 

Stanton (with and without Lincoln’s permission) has taken steps to ensure the President’s re-election:

 

Stanton has furloughed nearly 100,000 men from the Armed Forces and has given them free transportation home so they can vote. Men in remote and forgotten frontier outposts whose only duty in the war has been to scan the horizons for Indian attacks that never come, suddenly find themselves being greeted by the Mayors of their hometowns, feted as heroes, and being led by the hand to the voting booth. Men in a thousand garrisoned towns are given leave, their places temporarily taken by U.S.C.T. (who cannot vote) and by avowed Democrats (whom Stanton does not want to vote). They are met by mothers and fathers and siblings and wives and sweethearts and children at the nation’s railroad stations who rejoice that the kind government of good President Lincoln could spare them to come home. For men in critical positions --- and in combat --- who cannot be furloughed, Stanton has convinced at least the Republican Governors of the States to experiment with a revolutionary new way of voting --- the absentee ballot --- and has made sure that the ballots can reach local Supervisors of Elections in time to be counted by designating them as military dispatches.

Stanton has also ensured a smooth and undisturbed electoral process by placing thousands of Federal troops on alert in Chicago and New York (both suspected of being terror targets on Election Day). He has likewise made sure that the election proceeds undisturbed in the restored southern states of Louisiana and Tennessee by stationing armed soldiers in every polling place. He has further made certain that there will be no hanky-panky in counting the votes by assigning handpicked, that is staunchly Republican, poll watchers and Elections Supervisors in the restored southern States and the Border States.

Exactly how many McClellanites, Copperheads, and pro-Confederates are kept away, scared away, or chased away from the voting booths on Election Day will never be known. Probably less than can be imagined, more than are estimated. A little voter fraud is encouraged, too: In Indiana, a garrison of Massachusetts volunteers is permitted to vote as native Hoosiers. Undoubtedly Indiana is not the only place this happens.

Still, the election is not an open-and-shut matter. Lincoln needs 117 Electoral Votes to win. No one really knows (until the results come in) whether voting will go easily in the south. New York, with its massive 33 electoral votes, is always a Democratic stronghold. Tennessee is in the midst of battles. Arkansas, though it has a Unionist government, is in too chaotic a condition to conduct an election. The Pacific coast States are too far away to influence. Nevada’s jackrabbit admission to the Union just a week ago is seen as a help to Lincoln, but the butternut counties of Illinois, Ohio and Indiana are Peace Democrat territory as is much of southern Pennsylvania. How Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and particularly bloody Missouri will go is a huge question mark.  

In the event, there are some irregularities. One of Nevada’s three Electors is absent and never casts a vote. After the election the United States Congress refuses to accept Tennessee’s ten electoral votes and Louisiana’s seven as a smack at Lincoln’s Reconstruction policy.  Thus, only 25 Union States participate in the election.

Still, as it transpires, the election is a massive victory for Lincoln. Lincoln wins a whopping 212 (counted) electoral votes to McClellan’s 21, 78% to 22%.    

The incumbent President receives 2,220,846 popular votes to McClellan’s 1,809,445, 55% to 45%, a plurality of 411,401 votes. 

Lincoln garners 70% of the Soldier Vote --- having rejected the “Peace Plank” of his party’s platform and having vowed to continue the war, McClellan has essentially erased any difference between them on the issue --- and a Midwestern soldier’s comment in an exit poll of sorts becomes a household expression: “Why then should we change horses in midstream?”

McClellan wins just three States --- his home State of New Jersey (7 electoral votes), Delaware (3 electoral votes) and Lincoln’s birthplace of Kentucky (11 electoral votes, where he dominates in the Soldier Vote). 

Lincoln does carry New York’s 33 electoral votes by a razor thin margin (less than 1%), Pennsylvania’s 26 by 3.5%, and Connecticut’s 6 by 2.75%. For McClellan’s part, he win’s Delaware’s by 3.6%. 

One has to wonder if Louisiana and Tennessee’s votes would have been counted in a closer election?

The extent of Lincoln’s electoral victory is clear when one considers that even if Lincoln had lost New York, Pennsylvania and Connecticut he still would have received 211 electoral votes, 94 more than he needed to win re-election.  

The Republicans also gained solid majorities in both Houses of Congress in this election cycle.

If nothing else, and there is much else, the Election of 1864 is proof positive of the strength of the democratic process and the republican form of government. 

We cannot have free government without elections. If the rebellion could force us to forgo, or postpone a national election it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us.” --- Abraham Lincoln

November 7, 1864---“If the negro would make a good soldier then . . . it is the end of the revolution.”

NOVEMBER 7, 1864:       

President Jefferson Davis addresses the Confederate Congress. In his speech, reproduced in part below, Davis does ask for slaves to be placed into the Confederate Army --- but he pulls his punch, asking for only 40,000 to be purchased by the Confederacy as service staff such as cooks, teamsters, quartermasters, and the like. This is a far cry from the plan he discussed with General Lee, to arm and emancipate 300,000 black men. Still, Davis’ speech is revolutionary if for nothing more than his assertion of the slave’s relationship as a person to the Confederate nation. And there is more:

  

Viewed merely as property, and therefore as the subject of impressment, the service or labor of the slave has been frequently claimed for short periods in the construction of defensive works. The slave, however, bears another relation to the state --- that of a person . . .  

 . . . [F]or the purposes  . . .  of camping, marching, and packing trains . . .  length of service adds greatly to the value of the negro's labor. Hazard is also encountered in all . . .  the duties required of them [and these] demand loyalty and zeal.

. . . Whenever the entire property in the service of a slave is . . .  acquired by the Government, the question is presented by what tenure he should be held. Should he be retained in servitude, or should his emancipation be held out to him as a reward for faithful service, or should it be granted at once on the promise of such service; and if emancipated what action should be taken to secure for the freed man the permission of the State from which he was drawn to reside within its limits after the close of his public service? The permission would doubtless be more readily accorded as a reward for past faithful service, and a double motive for zealous discharge of duty would thus be offered to those employed by the Government  . . . If this policy should commend itself to the judgment of Congress, it is suggested that, in addition to the duties heretofore performed by the slave, he might be advantageously employed as a pioneer and engineer laborer, and, in that event, that the number should be augmented to forty thousand.

[T]he use of slaves as soldiers . . . is justifiable,  if necessary . . . The subject is to be viewed by us, therefore, solely in the light of policy and our social economy. When so regarded, I must dissent from those who advise a general levy and arming of the slaves for the duty of soldiers [u]ntil our white population shall prove insufficient for the armies we require and can afford to keep in the field . . . But should the alternative ever be presented of subjugation, or of the employment of the slave as a soldier, there seems no reason to doubt what should then be our decision . . .  If the subject involved no other consideration than the mere right of property, the sacrifices heretofore made by our people have been such as to permit no doubt of their readiness to surrender every possession in order to secure independence . . . [Part of this is t]he fulfillment of the task which has been so happily begun --- that of Christianizing and improving the condition of the Africans who have by the will of Providence been placed in our charge . . . [T]he people of the several States of the Confederacy have abundant reason to be satisfied  . . . These considerations, however, are rather applicable to the improbable contingency of our need of resorting to this element of assistance . . . 

It is so much doubletalk, and the Confederate Congress hears it as such. Despite Davis’ assertion that he “must dissent” from conscripting slaves, the entire speech addresses nothing much but the very issue expressed in one tortured sentence: 

“[T]he use of slaves as soldiers . . . is justifiable,  if . . . our white population shall prove insufficient for the armies we require.”

Everyone knows this is the present reality, not simply an if.  The result is explosive. The Confederate Congress immediately adjourns into closed-door sessions to acrimoniously debate the issue.   

Judah P. Benjamin, Davis’ Secretary of War, asserts, “We want means!”  but a Mississippi Congressman retorts, “Victory itself will be robbed of its glory if shared with slaves.”  

The fire-eating Georgia Congressman, Robert Toombs agrees with his Mississippi colleague that “The worst calamity that could befall us would be to gain our independence by the valor of our slaves.”  

 

General Howell Cobb adds, “If the negro would make a good soldier then our whole theory of slavery is wrong. It is the beginning of the end of the revolution.” Several members of Congress call for the end of the war and reunification with the United States in lieu of slave emancipation. 

The debate soon reaches beyond the closed doors of Congress. The Richmond Post-Dispatch goes so far as to question General Lee’s nationalism, calling him “a Unionist . . . a hereditary Federalist . . . and an emancipationist”  but then ends its diatribe lamely, “There is no doubt that the country will give General Lee what he asks --- whatever he asks.”   

 The Charleston Mercury, the most fire-eating of all Confederate newspapers, thunders: “We want no Confederate government without our institutions --- and we will have none!”  

R.M.T Hunter, the President pro tempore of the Confederate Senate asks rhetorically, “If not for our property rights . . . then what are we fighting for?”

By asking the question, Hunter has come, unconsciously, to the crux of the matter. Is the Confederacy fighting for the perpetuation of slavery or for its independence?  Tellingly, the Confederate Congress reaches no decisions at this critical juncture. It just continues to debate. 

And perhaps most ironically of all, the United States House of Representatives will be engaged in its own vociferous debate this session, regarding the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment and the end of slavery.

November 6, 1864--- Overthrowing The Union: The Camp Douglas Conspiracy

NOVEMBER 6, 1864:       

The Camp Douglas Conspiracy:     

One of the grand ironies of the Civil War was each side’s well-nigh unshakeable commitment to the idea that the other side also believed in its cause. President Lincoln fervently felt that most Southerners would ultimately reassert their allegiance to the United States (and although he was bitterly disappointed in this during the war time and again, events did prove him correct).  

A far more unlikely belief was the Confederacy’s, that large masses of Northerners supported their cause. While it is true that most Northerners were not abolitionists and while it was true that (at least in the war’s earliest days) many in the North were equivocal about secession, the government in Richmond, time and again, badly misread the Unionist mindset.  Throughout the war, Richmond tried to cajole and compel the Border States into joining the Confederacy. Even as late as November 1864, it remained an idee fixe of Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet that a massive Northern fifth column existed. In truth, most pro-Confederate Northerners had long since moved South, and those that remained were either (1) people who wanted reunification of the country as the United States on any terms or, (2) put simply, crackpots.  

Jacob Thomas was the Confederate Commissioner in Toronto, Canada, ostensibly a consul of sorts, but in actuality he had been acting as Richmond’s Director of Terror Operations.  Among the targets were New York, Chicago, and other major Northern cities. 

One of Thomas’ agents, Captain Thomas Hines, came to Thomas with an audacious idea: 

Hines believed he could raise a force of about 5,000 Confederate sympathizers from the Sons of Liberty and Knights of The Golden Circle chapters in and around Chicago.  Hines planned to use this force to free the several thousand Confederate prisoners being held at Camp Douglas. 

Hines then intended to arm the Camp Douglas inmates. With this anticipated force of approximately 10,000 fighters, Hines intended to seize the city of Chicago, raise the Rebel Flag, and declare the establishment of a “Northwestern Confederacy” which would then declare war on the United States in tandem with the Southern Confederacy.  

  

All this was planned for Federal Election Day. The idea was to disrupt the Federal election in Lincoln’s home State, demonstrate the weakness of the Federal Union, and create a groundswell of secessionism in the North. Hines’, Thomas’ and ultimately Davis’ hopes were that the Union would fracture into a number of localized nations, and that the Confederacy could then dictate peace terms to (and, not incidentally, economically dominate) the several new nations. 

There were serious problems with Hines’ plan: 

First, Chicago was a major center of Unionism and was not likely to become the epicenter of the anticipated “Northwestern Confederacy” just by being even impolitely asked. The city was also a major staging area of the war, with tens of thousands of Federal troops and tons of war material being moved in and out of the city on a daily basis. Hines ignored this pointed fact in his presentation to Thomas. 

Second, the men at Camp Douglas were hardly in fighting trim. Like most Civil War prisoners of war, many were badly malnourished and many more were ill. At best, perhaps only a thousand men, if that, would be able to join Hines’ Confederate coup. Hines either ignored this fact or did not take it into account when planning the uprising with Thomas.

Third, Hines had more than a little trouble recruiting his 5,000 Sons of Liberty and K.G.C. fighters. As of August, he had exactly 25 untrained, ill-disciplined men --- mostly thieves, cutthroats and pickpockets from Chicago’s evil slums --- to stage his revolution. 

After the Democratic National Convention in August, Hines apparently cancelled his planned putsch, but his would-be recruits continued to talk about it. Word of the planned coup finally reached the ears of Union military officers. 

On this day, a Union detail raided the home of Charles Walsh, leader of the Sons of Liberty. They discovered a small cache of guns and ammunition, which Walsh claimed were his private property. 

Nonetheless, Walsh was arrested and interrogated. Under pressure (and probably tortured) he gave up the names of several other Sons of Liberty  including Illinois Circuit Court Judge Buckner Stith Morris, treasurer of the group. 106 men were ultimately arrested, including a half-dozen or so P.O.W.s from Camp Douglas. A few more arms caches were found. Chicago was placed under Martial Law for the duration of the Election Day process, and polling places were patrolled by armed Union soldiers (this may have been done to intimidate many Copperheads into not voting). The few score men actually charged with anything were confined to Camp Douglas for the remainder of the war. None of the “revolutionaries” ever came to trial.