February 26, 1865---". . . Some of the best troops in the army . . ."

FEBRUARY 26, 1865:        

Although the attention of most Americans --- North and South --- is focused intently on developments in Virginia and the Carolinas, the Civil War continues to rage in forgotten corners of the continent. A skirmish erupts today in Pine Bluff, Arkansas between two squads of troops, Union and Confederate, of about sixty men each. After a half hour firefight that takes eight Confederate lives but no Union ones, the Rebels withdraw from Pine Bluff. 

Afar off, Union troops make an amphibious landing in force at Cedar Key, in Florida.  

In Austin, Governor Pendleton Murrah of Texas receives an answer to his request to have the Texas Brigade of the Army of Northern Virginia returned home. Robert E. Lee, (through Jefferson Davis) advises Murrah that, “small as the Texas Brigade is, it cannot be spared now. It contains some of the best troops in the army and its loss would be severely felt.” 

February 25, 1865---The Army of Tennessee restored

FEBRUARY 25, 1865:   

Despite writing, "My opinion of General Johnston's unfitness for command has ripened slowly and against my inclinations into a conviction so settled that it would be impossible for me again to feel confidence in him as the commander of an army in the field," Jefferson Davis, under immense pressure from his Congress, his Cabinet, and his General-in-Chief, appoints Joseph E. Johnston as General of all Confederate forces in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.

Robert E. Lee immediately dispatches Johnston to central North Carolina to take control of the largest single (but unnamed and long inactive) body of troops in the South (outside of the Richmond-Petersburg pocket).  

Johnston immediately issues orders for all his subordinate commanders --- among them Hardee and Beauregard and Hampton --- to bring their scattered forces to him.

As the tatters of the various Southern commands move north to gather in North Carolina, Johnston begins to put some starch into the spines of his men. Scraping the very bottoms of his Commissary and Quartermaster barrels white, he distributes fresh food and new clothes and munitions to his ragamuffin men wherever he can. He reorganizes his fighting units which have become little more than a leaderless mob. He places Braxton Bragg in charge of a brigade-sized Corps and lets him rot there to the joy of everyone but President Davis and Bragg himself. He issues a mass amnesty to all deserters.

Within days, the ranks begin to swell. By early March Johnston has 25,000 men in reasonably fit fighting trim, and declares his forces to be the Army of Tennessee restored.

February 24, 1865---"A state of despondency now prevails among our people."

FEBRUARY 24, 1865:                  

Panic spreads in North Carolina as rumors of Sherman’s impending approach circulate. Hundreds of North Carolinian men desert the Confederate ranks in order to return home to aid their families, or at least be with them. In the face of mass desertions, Robert E. Lee sends a letter to North Carolina’s Governor, Zebulon B. Vance:

HEADQUARTERS CONFEDERATE STATES ARMIES

Feb. 24, 1865.

HIS EXCELLENCY  Z. B. VANCE

GOVERNOR OF NORTH CAROLINA

RALEIGH

GOVERNOR: 

The state of despondency that now prevails among our people is producing a bad effect upon the troops. Desertions are becoming very frequent, and there is good reason to believe that they are occasioned to a considerable extent by letters written to the soldiers by their friends at home. In the last two weeks several hundred have deserted from Hill's corps, and as the divisions from which the greatest number of desertions have taken place are composed chiefly of troops from North Carolina, they furnish a corresponding proportion of deserters. I think some good can be accomplished by the efforts of influential citizens to change public sentiment and cheer the spirits of the people. It has been discovered that despondent persons represent to their friends in the army that our cause is hopeless, and that they had better provide for themselves. They state that the number of deserters is so large in the several counties that there is no danger to be apprehended from the home-guards. The deserters generally take their arms with them. The greater number are from regiments from the western part of the State. So far as the despondency of the people occasions this sad condition of affairs, I know of no other means of removing it than by the counsel and exhortation of prominent citizens. If they would explain to the people that the cause is not hopeless, that the situation of affairs, though critical, is so to the enemy as well as ourselves, that he has drawn his troops from every other quarter to accomplish his designs against Richmond, and that his defeat now would result in leaving nearly our whole territory open to us; that this great result can be accomplished if all will work diligently, and that his successes are far less valuable in fact than in appearance, - I think our sorely-tried people would be induced to make one more effort to bear their sufferings a little longer, and regain some of the spirit that marked the first two years of the war. If they will, I feel confident that with the blessing of God what seems to be our greatest danger will prove the means of deliverance and safety.

Trusting that you will do all in your power to help us in this great emergency.

I remain, very respectfully, your obt. servt.,

R. E. LEE

General.   

 

February 23, 1865---"Yankees . . . that word is a synonym for all that is mean, despicable and abhorrent . . ."

FEBRUARY 23, 1865:        

The Union army under the command of William Tecumseh Sherman marches out of Columbia, South Carolina. As a parting gift to the residents Sherman burns the last public buildings in Columbia to the ground, sparing only the University (perhaps because of his tenure as Dean of L.S.U. before the war; Sherman is oddly sentimental at times).

 

This Parthian Shot enrages those Columbians who still have it in them to be enraged.  Emma LeConte, a seventeen year old South Carolinian belle, watches the Yankees march out, noting in her diary:

If only our people will be steadfast. The more we suffer, the more we should be willing to undergo rather than submit. Somehow, I cannot feel we can be conquered. We have lost everything, but if all this --- negroes, property --- all could be given back a hundredfold, I would not be willing to go back to them. I would rather endure any poverty than live under Yankee rule. I would rather far have France or any other country for a mistress --- anything but live as one nation with Yankees --- that word in my mind is a synonym for all that is mean, despicable and abhorrent.

Sherman surprises the South Carolinians by turning almost immediately eastward toward the sea. Many are cheered, thinking that the flame-haired general does not have the guts to fight it out with the Confederate forces lying due north of Columbia. The direction may be a surprise, but Sherman’s behavior is not --- his forces begin scorching the earth once again in a swath nearly eighty miles wide.

While Sherman’s Yankees are burning South Carolina, Major General John M. Schofield’s Yankees are trying to douse the fires in Wilmington, North Carolina. Having marched into the city within scant minutes of the last Confederate troops to leave, they find the city’s factories afire, the riverside quays in flame, the food stocks and medical supplies burning, and the tobacco and cotton warehouses alight. (The burning of the tobacco and cotton supplies in Charleston and Wilmington and later in Richmond is an indicator of how important these commodities were to the Southern economy, but the loss of even tens of thousands of tons of warehoused cotton and tobacco did not even faze the Union brokers in the trades).

Schofield wants to save the city, and his men manage, fairly quickly, to put out the scattered fires with only moderate damage. Schofield immediately begins rebuilding the quays and wharfside buildings. Wilmington is to become the main supply point for Sherman’s assault on the Confederate troops in inland North Carolina.

Faced with a city full of starving rebel civilians, Schofield wisely orders Union supplies distributed to the populace. Sending word to Sherman of this plan, Sherman assents, and simply requisitions more of everything for his army. Within days, even as Schofield is rebuilding the port facilities, Wilmington becomes, if only briefly, the busiest port in the United States.

In another part of the world, the British Parliament begins debating the political status of British North America. The Richmond Post-Dispatch characterizes this as the British “abandonment of Canada” and speculates that the Union will likely invade and annex its neighbor to the north:

We are, therefore, disposed to question the report that England intends to give up Canada, and are inclined to believe the report that she is fortifying it; and moreover, will be easily able to hold, it in the event of a war with the United States; and not only to hold it, but to make it, besides, a base of aggressive durations against that country.  

February 22, 1865---The Fall of Wilmington, North Carolina

FEBRUARY 22, 1865:       

The Fall of Wilmington, North Carolina:

         

It is Washington’s Birthday, the official fourth Independence Day of the Confederate States of America.

The end of the Civil War appears on the horizon as the city of Wilmington falls to Union forces. 

Throughout the war, Wilmington has been an important port on the eastern seaboard of the Confederacy.  Protected by the massive guns of Fort Fisher thirty miles seaward on the Cape Fear River, the inland port has been the only Confederate port where the Union blockade was almost completely ineffective. 

As the war lengthened, and more and more ports fell to landward assaults, Wilmington’s importance as the Confederacy’s link to Europe and the Caribbean has only grown.  Millions of tons of supplies reach the South through Wilmington, even as it becomes the only port that remains open to the blockade runners.

With the fall of Fort Fisher in January, the port is shut off, ensuring that the Confederacy’s days are surely numbered. But the city itself remains a critical supply dump, collection point and rail hub, keeping supplies flowing to the Army of Northern Virginia and to Richmond and Petersburg.

Although small, the factories of Wilmington become more and more critical in late 1864, turning raw materials into blankets, boots, shoes, bullets, guns, first aid kits, and foodstuffs for the Richmond-Petersburg front. The South’s war machine, though faltering, rumbles on at Wilmington.

So, by any measure, the fall of Wilmington is an unmitigated disaster for the Confederacy. Even those most hard-bitten Confederates who’ve insisted that the loss of heroic Charleston “was in and of itself of not very great importance” are stunned into silence by the collapse of Wilmington. “Scott’s Anaconda” has tightened its last coil. The Confederacy is dying.

A hue and cry goes up when word reaches Richmond that General Braxton Bragg has given up the city virtually without a fight, especially when Hoke’s spirited defense at Forks Road becomes known.

For his part, Bragg excuses himself by saying that he only followed orders --- that Robert E. Lee ordered him to abandon Wilmington. Lee’s retort, that Bragg’s pessimistic reports about conditions at Wilmington actively influenced this decision, goes unanswered.

Enraged members of the Confederate Congress call for Bragg’s head on a pike. Accusations fly that Bragg is a Union agent provocateur.  

No evidence exists that Bragg is a Union agent. But there is plenty of evidence that Bragg is some things worse --- incompetent at command, inflexible, difficult, unimaginative, rude to his fellows, and, most of all, a man defeated psychologically if not militarily --- and his blockheaded refusal to aid in the defense of Fort Fisher stands out as a glaring example of his unfitness for command.

His ready abandonment of Wilmington has compounded the Confederacy’s woes a thousandfold. Without Wilmington, the Confederacy has no manufacturing base left save the overstressed Tredegar Ironworks in Richmond and a few small sweatshop-type factories in Petersburg.

Without the railheads at Wilmington, there is no longer any countryside from which to draw raw materials for war or survival. On a map the Confederacy still looks vast. In reality, the Trans-Mississippi is long isolated, the Florida peninsula is cut off, and Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi and Alabama are in flames, being ground up in the maw of the relentlessly advancing Union armies even as Wilmington falls.

Only a few pockets of resistance --- an elongated ovoid stretching from Weldon in the south to Richmond in the north, and an ill-defined area along the Virginia-North Carolina border --- are still unquestionably in Confederate hands.

In most circumstances, Bragg likely would have been dismissed after the debacle at Fort Fisher. If not Fort Fisher, the fall of Wilmington should have ended his career. But again, his long friendship with Jefferson Davis saves him.  

Jefferson Davis, for his part, is losing touch with reality. Like Adolf Hitler during a Spring yet to be eighty years in the future, Davis has adopted a bunker mentality. While he does not scream and rave at his generals nor shoot or cashier them, his reaction to criticism is an imperious disdain. He issues orders to commands unable to respond, and plans offensives with troops no longer available. 

With the fall of Wilmington, Robert E. Lee, the newly-named General-in-Chief insists that Bragg be consequenced. Davis briefly considers sending Bragg to the Trans-Mississippi, but then relents. He does not wish to wound his old friend.

Lee himself, as General-in-Chief, could dismiss Bragg, but he defers to his President. Lee also remains courteous to Bragg, when most Confederate leaders begin to abuse him.

Lee has war plans. Lee knows that he has almost no resources with which to fight Grant and Sherman. Still, he does have some manpower and enough cannon, powder, shot, shell, cap and ball to inflict damage on the Union if he can reorganize his forces effectively.

Lee is gambling that a forceful enough blow against the Union will cause the worm to turn, that the Copperheads and Peace Democrats will be revivified, and that Lincoln will be discredited in the eyes of a shocked Union public. If this happens he may be able to midwife an independent Confederacy if not on the battlefield then through negotiations.   

For weeks Lee has been insisting that he needs a subordinate --- Joseph E. Johnston --- who is familiar with managing large bodies of troops and who understands large-scale battle strategy. Davis, who hates Johnston, has been refusing to reappoint Johnston to command.

Even Lee admits that Johnston may be overcautious, but Davis’ oft-suggested alternative --- Bragg --- has proven himself a defeatist.

Lee and Davis meet, as they do most days, but this day their meeting degenerates into a shouting match. Word of the altercation in the Confederate White House spreads quickly.

Within a few hours an angry delegation of Confederate Representatives and Senators descends on Davis, castigating him for arguing with Lee, and insisting that Johnston be reappointed to command.  Words such as resignation and impeachment and coup d’etat are uttered. The idea of a bill to replace Davis with Lee and to name Lee as Dictator is broached.  When Lee hears of this idea he quickly quashes it as unacceptable, both to him personally and under law.

Davis, isolated, with no political allies, and with no options, at last promises the Congressional Delegation that he will “consider” their demand to name Johnston to a new command.  And then, for a few days, he does nothing.