Tuesday, March 10, 2015

March 12, 1865---"Keep everybody busy . . ."

MARCH 12, 1865:      

General William Tecumseh Sherman writes to his boss, Ulysses S. Grant, to discuss the wind-up of the Carolinas Campaign. The letter appears below (in part).  Sherman is in fine fettle as he writes:


DEAR GENERAL: 


We reached this place yesterday at noon; [C.S. General] Hardee, as usual, [is] retreating across the Cape Fear, burning his bridges; but our pontoons will be up to-day, and, with as little delay as possible, I will be after him toward Goldsboro. A tug has just come up from Wilmington, and before I get off from here, I hope to get from Wilmington some shoes and stockings, sugar, coffee, and flour. We are abundantly supplied with all else . . . The army is in splendid health, condition, and spirits, though we have had foul weather, and roads that would have stopped travel to almost any other body of men I ever heard of.


Our march was substantially what I designed --- straight on Columbia. We destroyed . . . the railroad[s] . . . to Aiken . . .  [to] Orangeburg . . .  to Kingsville and [to] Charlotte . . . At Columbia we destroyed immense arsenals [,] railroad establishments, [and] forty-three cannon. At Cheraw we found also machinery and material of war . . . twenty-five guns and thirty-six hundred barrels of powder; and here [in Fayetteville] we find about twenty guns and a magnificent United States' arsenal.


We cannot afford to leave detachments, and I shall therefore destroy this valuable arsenal, so the enemy shall not have its use; and the United States should never again confide such valuable property to a people who have betrayed a trust.


I could leave here to-morrow, but [a] vast crowd of refugees and negroes encumber[s] us . . . I will send [them] down to Wilmington . . .  


I hope you have not been uneasy about us . . . this march . . . had to be made . . . to destroy the valuable depots by the way, [for] the necessary fall of Charleston, [and] Georgetown, and Wilmington. If I can now add Goldsboro without too much cost, I will be in a position to aid you materially in the spring campaign. Jos. Johnston may try to . . . concentrate his scattered armies at Raleigh, and I will go straight at him . . . 
 

 . . . Keep everybody busy . . . 




At the same time that Grant and Sherman are keeping everybody busy, so are Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. Lee has been keeping a close eye on developments since the beginning of the month. Everywhere he looks, the Confederacy is contracting its borders, its towns and cities falling like dominoes. Having settled on a plan for his Spring Offensive, during the last two weeks he has been meeting regularly with his President to discuss the evacuation of Richmond. Lee knows that he cannot both hold the city and mount an effective, mobile, offensive. 


Conditions in the city are beyond dire: When available, flour is selling for $1,500.00 a barrel in the now nearly worthless Confederate currency, low quality beef for $12.00-$15.00 a pound, butter for $20 a pound, and boots for $500 a pair. “[These are] close times in this beleaguered city,”  writes one Confederate lady. “You can carry your money in your market basket and bring home your provisions in your purse.”


And that is when foodstuffs are available. People are subsisting mainly on cornbread soaked in bacon drippings, dried beans, and hot water with salt or brown sugar sprinkled on it, a barely palatable fare known as 'Benjamin hardtack' in honor of former Secretary of War Judah P. Benjamin. Cats, dogs, mice and rats and squirrels are also on the menu. 


A businessman from outside Richmond visited the city in this March, and wrote, “Everyone wore a haggard, scared look as if in apprehension of some great impending calamity.  I dared not ask a question, nor had I need to do so, as I felt too surely that the end was near. My first visit was to my banker . . .  As soon as he could give me a private moment he said in a sad, low tone: 'If you have any paper money put it into specie at once.’" 


The exact date is not known, but sometime around the middle of March, Lee and Davis decide that Richmond must be given up as soon as is possible. Plans are made to move the Confederate government to the small Virginia town of Danville, which lies on the northern border of North Carolina, securely between Lee’s lines and Johnston’s. General Orders are drafted that all Confederate offices are to archive their files and burn whatever is unneeded. Secret orders are drafted, specifying that a special train is to be outfitted to carry the Confederate Archives, the Cabinet, the President, and willing members of Congress away to safety. Davis in his Spartan manner demurs from having a personal railcar --- he and his family can sit on benches like any regular passengers --- but a car is outfitted as his office.


“Why not go immediately?”  Davis wants to know.


Lee explains that the weather is still too rotten and that the roads are too muddy for either the evacuation or for the onset of his Offensive. He adds, in a low tone, that his horses are too weak to pull the caissons through mud. Davis does not ask about the troops. He does not have to. But Lee assures him that their fighting spirit burns as brightly as ever, and this is what he is counting on. And there is one option that may save the capital city, Lee opines.


The gaunt Confederate President gives his General-in-Chief his full attention. Lee explains that at the extreme southern end of the Confederate entrenchments the Union and Confederate lines are within only a few hundred feet of each other. Since Christmas, when the Billy Yanks brought holiday cheer across the lines to the Johnny Rebs, the men in that area have become friendly. He feels that the Union boys are off their guard. 


Lee is heavy-hearted at the thought of more killing. Throughout the war he has avoided calling the men in blue The Enemy, opting instead for Those People, as opposed to These People, his own Confederates. And he is about to take advantage of the good-hearted weakness of Those People.  But there is nothing for it but to punch through the line there and send troops down the Appomattox River forcing open a corridor to Johnston’s army; the combined forces of Lee and Johnston can then fall on Grant from two directions. 


Davis assents, with the proviso that Lee must immediately inform him, no matter the time of day, if and when the holding of the Confederate capital becomes untenable. Lee agrees, setting the onset of his Offensive for the end of the month.  The men shake hands and take their leave of one another. Lee returns to his Petersburg headquarters at Edge Hill. During the long ride from Richmond, Lee has time to reflect.  Perhaps it is then that the inevitability of defeat strikes Robert E. Lee.


Upon reaching his HQ he eats a quick meal, and then discusses events with his Military Aide, his son Custis:


“Well, Mr. Custis, I have been up to see The Congress and they do not seem to be able to do anything except to eat peanuts and chew tobacco, while my army is starving. I told them the condition the men were in, and that something must be done at once, but I can't get them to do anything, or they are unable to do anything . . . Mister Custis, when this war began, I was opposed to it, bitterly opposed to it, and I told these people that, unless every man should do his whole duty, they would repent it; and now --- they will repent.”




 




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