DECEMBER 11, 1864:
Thomas Jefferson Moses is besieging Savannah,
and finds time to write in his diary:
To-day we lay under
fire. We are close to the rebles. There is a large swamp between us so that we
can do nothing more then skirmish with them. Last night the left wing went out
skirmishing and to day the right wing goes out. We had one man wounded . . .
At
this point in the Civil War, nobody really knows what is happening, or perhaps
it makes better sense to say that too many things are happening at once. The inexorable
advance of the Union is clear in hindsight but as 1864, the year when blood
flowed as if in rivers, came to a close nothing was clear to those who lived
through it.
To
most people in the North, the war seemed to be drawing toward its close --- but
how many more months or years would it take until victory was achieved? And
could the South tap its seemingly inexhaustible reserve of morale to turn the
tables on the North yet again?
Yes,
Atlanta was in ruins, Georgia had been laid waste, and Sherman was at the gates
of Savannah, but Grant had been standing at the gates of Petersburg and
Richmond for months, Nathan Bedford Forrest was still wrecking trains and
sinking gunboats in Union-held territory, and marauders had done devilish work
in New York, Chicago, Missouri, and even Vermont with only slight interference.
Most
Unionists are hopeful, but none are certain of success.
To
most people in the South, the war had reached a crisis point --- but the
Confederacy had weathered other crises, and had come back from the brink of
defeat several times. Morale was low and men had deserted --- just like in the
Summer of ’63. But some of those same men were at the gates of Washington in
the Summer of ’64. Food was scarce, the weather was freezing, and the ranks were
thinned, but victory has always had a way of inspiring men, and more and more
there was talk of outfitting a vast army of slaves.
Most
Confederates have been beaten down, but none have surrendered.
Even
as the twin debates about Emancipation went on both North and South in the twin
Congresses, a new population of Southerners was beginning to emerge --- they were
not the same tired self-righteous fire-eaters who had brought the South precipitately
into the war by ranting about the “right” of secession until all other voices
were stilled. Rather, they were people --- officers, gentlemen, ladies,
workingmen and poor farmers --- who believed that the Confederacy was, simply
put, invincible. Terrible news, such as
the burning of Atlanta, was dismissed by such folk as “a trifling loss”. Reported
defeats were put down as the disloyalty or lack of faith on the part of
newspaper editors, or perhaps as Union propaganda, or most often simply ignored
or just disbelieved. For every Westport, Missouri they had their Athens,
Georgia; for Sheridan who burned Virginia they had Forrest who burned Tennessee;
for Sherman who besieged Savannah they have Hood who besieged Nashville. And
they had Lee and Davis to the Union’s Grant and Lincoln. How could they lose?
