March 28, 1865---“. . . lead to a negotiated peace with the Confederacy.”

MARCH 28, 1865:     

Having received approval from President Lincoln for his Spring Offensive, General Ulysses S. Grant issues orders to his various subcommanders.

Grant’s plan is relatively straightforward. He plans to use unbearable pressure to push The Army of Northern Virginia out of the Richmond-Petersburg pocket. At the same time, he intends to cut the Boydton Plank Road and the Southside Railroad, the two last supply lines into the pocket. If this maneuver is successful Petersburg, then Richmond, will fall. Grant is counting on the fact that Robert E. Lee will fight to keep his supply lines open. If Lee can be severely mauled in that fight he may have no choice but to surrender. The war could be over by April first.

Maybe . . . 

Grant knows that Lee will not go down without a fight, and a bitter one. So Grant has appointed Philip Sheridan to lead the assault against Lee’s supply lines. He is confident that Sheridan will triumph. By the Union clock it is two minutes to midnight for the Confederacy, and Grant wants that bell to toll at the precisely correct moment.

Grant knows, however, that there are alternate scenarios, all of which could ---

“. . . lead to a negotiated peace with the Confederacy.”: 

First, Lee could refuse to leave the pocket. Grant is privately a little surprised that Lee has tried only once, at Fort Stedman. This tells him that the Army of Northern Virginia might be more debilitated than Grant realizes. It may also indicate a total unwillingness to abandon Richmond. Grant knows that this could mean that The Army of The Potomac might have to go into the pocket to clean it out. It is not an alternative Grant relishes. The Confederates know their maze of entrenchments as well as the rats who share them, and Grant’s men, no matter how numerically superior, will be at a complete disadvantage in that enemy warren. Union casualties could be --- no, will be --- frightful, win or lose. Grant does not want to fight Lee in a static position again. The name “Cold Harbor” rings like a tocsin in Grant’s brain. Union morale would collapse, and . . .  

Second, Lee could avoid battle and slip out of the pocket altogether via one or either of his supply lines or some other route. Were he to do so, it would appear that he had outfoxed Grant, and this could mean a prolongation of the war. Grant fears just this: “I was afraid every morning that I would wake from my sleep to hear that Lee had gone, and that nothing was left but his picket line,” and . . .   

Third, Lee could defeat Sheridan in a close contest, and escape the pocket. This could mean a prolongation of the war, and . . . 

In any of these scenarios, a victorious Lee would have two options ---

The first option would be that Lee would move southward and link up with General Joseph E. Johnston C.S.A.’s Army of Tennessee in North Carolina. Their combined force would have at least 50,000 men (plus newly-armed slaves and those enheartened Confederate recruits who would doubtless flock to their banners). While Lee’s enlarged army would still be vastly outnumbered by Grant and Sherman (who combined have nearly 250,000 men), it would still be large enough to force a prolongation of the war, and . . .

The second option would be for Lee to move his smaller, more compact, and always speedy army directly east to the Blue Ridge Mountains. Once there, Lee could divide his men into partisan units and harry the Union indefinitely. This could mean a prolongation of the war, and . . .

Grant puts his faith in Phil Sheridan.

March 27, 1865---The Peacemakers

MARCH 27, 1865:
  

President Lincoln, General Grant, General Sherman (who has ridden up from Goldsboro on a separate matter) and Admiral David Dixon Porter hold an impromptu meeting in the main salon of the River Queen. They discuss the coming end of the Civil War, but just as importantly, they discuss the architecture of a Civil Peace. 

Their meeting, like the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and the Yalta Conference of 1945, is one of world-altering significance. 

Admiral Porter later says:

I shall never forget that council which met on board the River Queen. On the determinations adopted there depended peace, or a continuation of the war with its attendant horrors. That council . . . really was an occasion upon which depended whether or not the war would be continued a year longer. A single false step might have prolonged it indefinitely.  

President Lincoln is in a brown study, still mulling the sights, sounds and smells of his tour of the Petersburg front. He is perhaps thinking of his failed negotiations with Messrs. Stephens, Campbell and Hunter just three weeks before in this selfsame room. And perhaps he is contemplating his offhand rejection of Robert E. Lee’s offer of negotiations some weeks before that. Grant shares his plans for the Union Spring Offensive with the President. When General Grant assures the President that the war is nearing its end, but that it will take, “one more desperate and bloody battle” to ensure Union victory, Lincoln wrings his hands. “Must more blood be shed? Cannot this bloody battle be avoided?” he asks. 

Grant and Sherman share a glance that no doubt includes Porter. Grant does not say, as he had boasted just a year ago at Spotsylvania Courthouse, that “Lee’s army is really whipped.” He has learned better than that. He recognizes in Lee that singular quality of a truly great man, that being that Lee can spur ordinary men to do extraordinary deeds. Grant knows he himself is not such a man. But he serves one, one who motivates him to do great things, one who has just asked him for a hard truth, and he cannot put his President off with an evasion. The answer is a simple, “No.” 

Lee’s army is crumbling; indeed the whole edifice of the Confederacy is coming down, but Grant knows that it has not reached the point of complete collapse, not quite yet. More punishment must be meted out. More pain must be inflicted. More weariness must soak into the Confederate soul.  

“My God, my God! Can’t you spare more effusions of blood? We have had so much of it!”  Lincoln exclaims. He is anything but squeamish, but he is heartbroken. He has always been gentler toward the Confederacy than most Northern men prefer, but he has still wanted them soundly defeated. But now, with the sights on the road to Petersburg seared into his mind, a deeper compassion has been awakened in him. He will not unsee what he has seen. 

Admiral Porter believes that Lincoln “wanted peace on almost any terms.” This is not quite true. Reunification of the Union remains his primary goal. And he will not trade the emancipation of the slaves for a quicker end to the war. If battle is needed to secure a Union victory, then so be it. 

But, Lincoln tells his assembled commanders, he wants a peace without retribution, without ridicule, without shaming, without hangings and firing squads; he wants an honorable peace:

“[D]efeat the opposing armies, and . . . get the men composing the Confederate armies back to their homes, at work on their farms and in their shops. Let them have their horses to plow with, and, if you like, their guns to shoot crows with. I want no one punished; treat them liberally all round. We want those people to return to their allegiance to the Union and submit to the laws. . . “{These] deluded men of the rebel armies” allowed to surrender without consequence, Lincoln says, “won’t take up arms again.”

 

As to the fate of the Confederate leaders, Lincoln is clear: He wants no arrests, no molestations, and no harassment. If they can leave the United States “unbeknownst” to him he will be more than pleased with that resolution. In sum, he says of the South, “Let ‘em up easy . . .”

 

The mood becomes grim when Lincoln broaches the subject of increasing acts of sabotage and the possibility that the Confederate armies may devolve into guerrilla bands. Grant admits that he has no contingency plan to deal with an insurgency, and adds glumly that he does not believe one can be devised. Sherman says that the only way to deal with guerrillas is to deny them resources, and in short, to adopt a scorched earth policy much like his March through Georgia and the Carolinas. But, he says gloomily, that destroying an insurgent movement will take far more troops than he presently has, and that it would require destruction of the American countryside on a scale so vast that no one has seen its’ like as yet in the Civil War. Someone, perhaps Porter, mentions Missouri, which, though it is not always in the headlines, experiences “some new outrage daily” as a Show Me State Unionist has written to the New York Times. The violence in Missouri --- including beheadings, sexual mutilations, necrophilic rapes, vivisepulture, and immolations --- is like nothing anyone has ever seen, at least not since the days of Genghis Khan, and in an atmosphere of collective sociopathy, it is occurring on both sides of the war. Whether the Union will be able to subdue the men committing these atrocities is still an open question. The idea of the entire heart of North America degenerating into such a killing field is, sadly, becoming too conceivable. It is with this shuddering thought that the only real option is raised, that being the fast and thorough undoing of Lee and Johnston and the Confederacy.   

The fate of the former slaves is discussed briefly. Lincoln knows that this is his tenderest subject. The South’s response to the fate of the emancipated blacks will be a critical element in Reconstruction. Lincoln has not given the question the thought it deserves, not yet, but he knows that even the men in the room, himself included, have ingrained 19^th Century cultural and personal prejudices against people of color. The handling of the issue must be deft. For the moment, he speculates that some form of “limited equality” is a necessary first step in addressing the issue of the Freedmen. 

The conference on the River Queen ends soon afterward. Lincoln is staying at Grant’s headquarters, but Sherman and Porter must return to their units. Lincoln is pensive as he walks with them. His leavetaking of the General and the Admiral is poignant. He bids them both a farewell, and then, his voice cracking with intense and sudden emotion, says, “Good-by gentlemen, God bless you all!” Those are the last words he ever speaks to Sherman and Porter. They will never see him alive again. 

Throughout the Confederacy, Southerners observe a “Day of Prayer, Fasting, and Humiliation” decreed by Jefferson Davis. 

March 26, 1865---The Battle of Spanish Fort, Alabama

MARCH 26, 1865:     

The Battle of Spanish Fort, Alabama:      

In a protracted but relatively unknown battle that lasted from March 27^th to April 9^th, United States forces assaulted the ring of landward forts surrounding Mobile, Alabama. In succession, Fort Huger, Battery Tracey, Battery McDermott, Fort Alexis, the Red Fort, Fort Blakeley, and Old Spanish Fort, all part of the Mobile defenses, fell to the Union. For all its length, the Battle of Spanish Fort was comparatively bloodless: Union forces, which numbered over 45,000 men, lost only 700 men killed, wounded, or missing.  The Confederates, numbering only 3,000, likewise lost about that number of men killed, wounded and missing. The Confederates’ ability to hold out for 12 days in the face of a force 15 times their size is a testament to their fighting spirit, a spirit which hadn’t flagged despite the isolation of the forts (Mobile had been taken by the Union in early August). The Battle of Spanish Fort is sometimes referred to (erroneously) as “the last battle of the Civil War” because it ended the same day as General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.   

Three mixed companies of armed free blacks and slaves begin drilling in Richmond. “I hope it will work well,” writes Sergeant Marion Fitzpatrick C.S.A., a Georgian. Native Richmonders are less supportive. “The darkies are very jubilant and think it great fun. The music attracts them like flies around a molasses barrel,” says William Owen, a local-born artillerist.

March 25, 1865---The First "last battle" of the Civil War: The Battle of Fort Stedman

MARCH 25, 1865

The Battle of Fort Stedman: 

The Battle of Fort Stedman was the earliest of a surprising number of battles described (erroneously) as “the last battle of the Civil War.”  That it certainly was not. But the Battle of Fort Stedman represented the beginning, and the end, of Robert E. Lee’s 1865 Spring Offensive designed to turn the course of the war. 

Mighty Fort Stedman, the Union hinge of the Confederate defensive line

Lee knew that he could not remain in the Richmond-Petersburg pocket. His men were starving and sick, ill-supplied and losing morale. Confederate troop desertions had reached a peak in January and February of the year, leaving Lee with simply not enough men to successfully defend the 40 mile long entrenchments they occupied, which now stretched from north of Richmond to south of Petersburg, below the Appomattox River. 

The lines around Petersburg, Spring 1865

Grant had not engaged Lee in very many open battles during the frozen winter, but he had continuously stretched his lines southward, forcing Lee to do the same. The anchor of Grant’s southern extremity was an emplacement called Fort Stedman. Lee knew that the Yankee and Rebel troops around this far end of the line had been quietly fraternizing since Christmas, and he knew that if he could exploit their trust and concentrate a large enough force to punch through the Union lines there he could move down the Appomattox River and link up with Joseph E. Johnston in North Carolina. 

The obstacles were formidable. The Union armies had reached gargantuan proportions in March of 1865.  Men had been culled from western frontier posts and from less-active units in the Western Theatre to swell Grant’s ranks. Sherman had detached some units from his force in North Carolina to join Grant. There had been a surge in new recruits. Most Union men realized that the war was nearing its end. Wanting to qualify for a veterans’ pension, and just wanting to be on hand for the expected celebrations, many men who had previously dropped out of the war dropped back in --- there were some 200,000 Union desertions recorded during the war. Many of these men had enlisted and deserted more than once, whether because they wanted multiple signing bonuses or because they disliked their original units, or for a myriad of other reasons --- most of them were back in the ranks by late March 1865. And there were overlooked men from the Pacific Coast States and the Territories who enlisted late in the war for similar reasons. Grant had nearly 150,000 men facing Lee’s 25,000. 

This behemoth of an army was well-dressed, well-armed, well-shod and well-fed --- all the things Lee’s army was not. Only in fighting skill could a Johnny Reb of 1865 match a Billy Yank of the same time. And only in sheer grit could a Johnny Reb outmatch a Billy Yank. 

The Lincolns, staying at City Point, were jolted awake before dawn by the booming of cannons and a rush of activity at Headquarters. Mary Lincoln, who had been decidedly fluttery, was horrified to discover that she had brought her husband to the middle of a battlefield (even though the battle was ten miles away). Cannon flashes lit the dawn sky, and the crack of musket fire set the nervous First Lady on edge. She was suffering from a punishing migraine, a condition she developed after she struck her head on a rock during her suspicious carriage “accident” in July 1863. But Mary knew that “Father” was ill and had little enough energy to listen to her complaints, so she kept silent.

Ten miles away, just outside Petersburg, the Yankees were also jolted awake by Rebs screaming like banshees. The Confederates came pouring out of their trenches in the thousands. Catching their Union ‘friends” asleep in their trenches, they blasted and bayoneted their way through the first (outer) ring of Union earthworks, and captured Fort Stedman quickly. Turning the cannons of the fort against the Union trenches, the Confederates managed to blow a large gap in the Union lines. They came through, ten thousand of them. The Confederacy’s first short-term objective was achieved. 72 Federals died in the attack, 450 were wounded, and 522 were captured or missing at the end of the battle.

Once beyond the outer ring, Lee’s plan was to seize a fortress complex overlooking the inner ring and to likewise force an opening there. Beyond the inner ring, Joe Johnston’s army was only a hard gallop away.

The Confederate plan was a sound one --- except that, once through the outer ring, the men discovered that their second short-term objective, the “fortress complex,” was nothing more than a ruin of an old, long-abandoned and now useless Confederate defensive works. The Southern attack lost momentum for a few crucial minutes as confusion seeped down into the ranks from the Officer Corps. 

The delay caused by this confusion was fatal to the Confederate forces --- the Union had just enough time to call up additional troops and artillery in both the inner and outer rings, and they began firing furiously at the men trapped between the lines. 

“A metallic storm,” one Confederate called it afterward, shells “screeching and screaming like fiends,” as another described it. 

Caught in the Union crossfire, most of the Confederates who attempted the breakthrough died in that nightmarish No-Man’s Land.  

“The victims had ceased fighting, and were now struggling between imprisonment on the one hand, and death or home on the other,” said a Confederate commander who managed to survive unhurt and make it back to his own lines. Only a bare handful do. 

As the firing ended, Union troops swept onto the battlefield. “The whole field was blue with them,” recalled another soldier in gray. “I think the columns must have been twenty deep.”   

The 100^th Pennsylvania retook Fort Stedman and replaced the Confederate colors with their own. A cheer went up from the boys in blue. Almost 1,000 Confederates never heard it. They lay dead on the ground. Another thousand were taken prisoner, and nearly 3,000 were wounded and rendered hors de combat. Most of the survivors were those who never reached as far as Fort Stedman in the first place.  Of the 10,000 men who made the attack 50% were killed, wounded or captured.  

By 8:00 A.M. it was all over. Robert E. Lee lost a full quarter of The Army of Northern Virginia at Fort Stedman. The Confederate Spring Offensive was over. It lasted just under three hours. 

Lincoln described the attack as “a little rumpus up the line” in an ordinary telegram to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, and added that he had “no war news.” Indeed, not long after the attack, Lincoln was out and about reviewing the troops and shaking hands. 

A Confederate prisoner who saw the President described Lincoln as, “not the least concerned, as if nothing had happened." The President’s sang-froid snapped the Rebel’s resolve, and that of his fellow prisoners:"[W]ith one accord [we] agreed that our cause was lost."            

Later that afternoon, after a formal parade, the President asked if he could visit the Petersburg front in the vicinity of Fort Stedman. General Grant was uneasy exposing the President to danger, but he acceded to his Commander-in-Chief’s request. Lincoln rode to Fort Stedman on horseback. Mary, who insisted on going along, traveled by carriage. When the slower moving conveyance lost sight of the President on the muddy roads, Mary panicked, and ordered the carriage driver to make better time. As the carriage bounced along over the muddy ruts, a particularly bad jolt lifted Mary out of her seat. She struck her still aching head on the carriage top.

As for the President, he was appalled at the destruction he saw. Blood stained banners --- his enemy’s and his own --- lay torn and trampled in the mud. Not a green living thing could be seen anywhere. The few remaining structures still standing along his route were smoldering. Bodies lay everywhere. Confederate and Union men lay side by side in the peace that death brings, having been torn to pieces in the war that troubled their lives.  The corpses of horses, their guts spilling from torn bellies, their ribs stark but bloodstained in the dirt, littered the ground. Lincoln undoubtedly gagged at the overwhelming stench of death. He occasionally lifted his hand to his eyes to shade them, and perhaps he quietly wiped away the tears that kept stinging --- Is it the gun smoke? he must have wondered.  He did not turn back, but rode the full circuit in the company of his officers and men, seeing it all. He surely regretted his earlier cavalier description of the “little rumpus up the line.” This was no rumpus. This was total war in all its horror.

When Lincoln arrived back at Headquarters he was badly shaken, but put a brave face on it. Introduced to the charming and witty wife of General Edward Ord, also named Mary, he gallantly took her arm and began walking with her --- and with Ord, U.S. Grant, and Julia Grant --- to lunch.

General and Mrs. Ord, with one of their daughters, sometime after the war

It was at this point that Mary Lincoln’s carriage pulled up with the pained, sore and no doubt distraught First Lady more than ready to get out. Seeing another woman on her husband’s arm she flew into an unaccountable rage, accused Mrs. Ord of having designs on her husband, called her “all kinds of vile names” (most of which can be easily enough imagined), and then verbally abused the President, who bore it all with resigned patience. She angrily shook off Julia Grant’s hand, and raged until Mary Ord dissolved in tears. Finally, the storm spent, she piteously complained of “a headache,” and swooned, though whether this was intentional or not, no one can say. (It was considered form for a badly-behaving Nineteenth Century woman to “get the vapors” as a convenient excuse.)

“Mrs. Lincoln is quite ill,” the President explained apologetically, and helped his wife back to their stateroom on board the U.S.S. BAT. Mary, sick and humiliated, did not emerge for several days.

What no one could possibly imagine was that Mary Lincoln’s tirade would have consequences that would affect each one of the people present, herself not least of all, consequences which still echo down the storied halls of history today.

The Presidential Box, Ford's Theatre