DECEMBER 24, 1864:
On this last Christmas Eve of the war, the Union
begins a massive bombardment of Fort Fisher, outside Wilmington. The 60 vessel
Union flotilla fires 10,000 shells at the fort. The Union gunners, using the
Confederate flagstaff as a target point, aim too high, and more than 3,000 of
the projectiles drop harmlessly if dramatically into the Cape Fear River behind
the fort.
Fashioned
after the Crimean War’s Malakoff Tower of Sebastopol, the fort itself is
earthen, which makes it singularly effective at absorbing punishment without
major damage, and today little damage is in fact done.
The
big guns of the fort bark defiance. This massive pile of dirt --- the largest
fort the Confederacy has ever built --- is armed with 22 large seaward-facing
cannon, 25 landward facing cannon, and scores of smaller cannons and rifled
guns. About 2,000 men are holding the fort, including its designer, Colonel
William Lamb.
At
one point in the bombardment, Fort Fisher’s guns fall silent. Assuming
(incorrectly) that the fort is out of shells, General Benjamin “Beast” Butler
lands 1,000 Marines on the beach. Tasked to maneuver to the thus far silent
landward side of the fort, they are to launch a surprise raid on the defenders
inside. When the sea guns begin firing again, Butler calls back his
already-positioned Marines. Ulysses S. Grant hears of this, and relieves the
much-hated and marginally-competent Butler from command. Butler, using his
political contacts, manages to get a hearing on the matter in January. As he is
testifying before Congress, the second assault on Fort Fisher succeeds and the
fort falls. When he insists the fort is impregnable nonetheless, “Beast”
Butler’s checkered military career ends ignominiously.
In
truth, Lincoln and Grant had been seeking for months (Grant) and years (Lincoln)
to rid themselves of Butler, a political general, a tyrannical commander, a
kleptomaniac (he was known as “Spoons” Butler for the many silver ones he
stole), a Judeophobe, and a Notusophobe (Southerners had chamber pots made with
his face imprinted on the inside). His positive points (and they were few) were
that he was a dedicated abolitionist, a good organizer, and a War Democrat. But
with the Democrats reduced to a minority in the 1864 election, Butler was
dispensable; and so he was dispensed with.
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| Edwin M. Stanton |
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| Lincoln, Grant and Stanton |
At
the War Department in Washington, Edwin M. Stanton, the gimlet-eyed, dour, and
indefatiguable Secretary of War, is in a frenzy. He is charging back and forth
from his office to the telegraph office, demanding constant updates on Fort
Fisher; the fact that the fort is not striking its colors is driving him mad
(Stanton’s mania over Fort Fisher will last as long as the fort does).
Stanton
is also beside himself that his General Orders 301, issued on the 19th, to
put every able man into the field, is being regarded in the breach. Civilian
employees of the War Department are shuttering their offices early since it is
Christmas Eve; various Generals, Colonels, and subordinate officers decide that
Stanton’s order doesn’t apply to them; men already A.W.O.L. decide to stay
where they are for Christmas; numerous men on garrison duty in Washington and
other places sneak off for Christmas with their families; bored men in the
trenches around Richmond and Petersburg walk off the line. Stanton crosses
paths with the President several times, muttering darkly about courts-martial
and summary executions. Lincoln calms him down, but surreptitiously orders that
all of Stanton’s paperwork pass his desk for review for the next few days.
Christmas
Eve 1864 in the North is memorable for its joyousness, so unlike recent past
Christmas Eves. There is still much to mourn, but hope is the intangible gift
this year’s-end brings. Washington, D.C. in particular is in a celebratory
mood. Brilliantly uniformed officers squire lavishly dressed women to suppers
and balls until dawn. The news of the fall of Savannah is on everyone’s lips,
as is the victory at Nashville.
In
Savannah, General Sherman hosts a Christmas Eve soiree for the City Fathers and
other leading citizens.
Julia
Dent Grant, the General’s wife, is visiting hospitals and orphanages this
day, bringing gifts to the orphaned and
the wounded.
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| Julia Dent Grant |
Mary
Lincoln holds an “At Home” with tea, cakes, and gifts for every guest. Tad
Lincoln manages to sneak some street urchins into the White House. When he asks
the cook to fix them plates of food, the cook refuses, but Tad, undeterred,
goes to his father, who, though he is hobnobbing with ambassadors, generals and
cabinet secretaries, says, “Of course they can all come in,” and orders the
cook that the hungry boys each get a full turkey dinner. People present at that
moment remember the President’s radiant smile: “Tad truly knows how to keep
Christmas!” he beams. Tad had previously
begged his father to spare the Christmas turkey for 1863. The President had
done so in what was the original, if unofficial, turkey pardoning, and this year “Jack” strutted among Tad’s other pets.
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| Abraham and Mary Lincoln |
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| Abraham and Tad Lincoln with Jack |
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| Mary Todd Lincoln |
As
evening falls and Washington blazes with light and music as it hasn’t done in
years, Stanton is still muttering about Fort Fisher, but for the moment, he is
ignored. Stanton is anxious that the Confederates might launch a surprise
attack somewhere on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day; he need not worry. When
Robert E. Lee wakes up on Christmas Eve, he gets told that there are huge gaps
in the line around Richmond-Petersburg. Lee is philosophical, telling his staff
that his “boys” will be back. In the meantime, he spreads thinner his already
spread-thin men. In more secure areas, as few as 1-2 Confederates are holding a
mile of the line. In other regions of the Confederacy, the men, too, walk off
the line. Many do not come back.
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| Varina Davis |
Varina
Davis, the First Lady of the Confederacy, speaks of this year’s rather solemn Christmas.
The simple gifts in evidence at the Confederate White House and her reflections
about “orphans” and “starvation parties” speak of privation and sorrow elsewhere
throughout the South:
Rice, flour, molasses
and tiny pieces of meat, most of them sent to the President’s wife anonymously
to be distributed to the poor, had all been weighed and issued . . . the
orphans at the Episcopalian home had been promised a Christmas tree and the
toys, candy and cakes must be provided, as well as one pretty prize for the
most orderly girl among the orphans.
The ladies dispersed in
anxious squads of toy-hunters, and each one turned over the store of her
children’s treasures for a contribution to the orphans’ tree . . . But the tug
of war was how to get something with which to decorate the orphans’ tree . .
.
[On] Christmas Eve a
number of young people were invited to come and string apples and popcorn for
the trees . . .our old confectioner friend, Mr. Piazzi, consented, with a broad
smile, to give ‘all the love verses the young people wanted to roll with the
candy . . . About twenty young men and girls gathered around small tables in
one of the drawing rooms of the mansion and the cornucopias were begun . . .
Then the coveted eggnog was passed around in tiny glass cups and pronounced
good. Crisp home-made ginger snaps and snowy lady cake completed the
refreshments of Christmas Eve. The children allowed to sit up and be noisy in
their way as an indulgence took a sip of eggnog out of my cup, and the eldest
boy confided to his father: “Now I just
know this is Christmas.” In most of the houses in Richmond these same scenes
were enacted . . . A bowl of eggnog was
sent to the servants, and a part of everything they coveted of the dainties . .
.
For the President there
were a pair of chamois-skin riding gauntlets . . . There was a hemstitched linen
handkerchief . . .
On Christmas morning the
children awoke early and came in to see their toys. They were followed by the
negro women, who one after another ‘caught’ us by wishing us a merry Christmas
before we could say it to them, which gave them a right to a gift. Of course,
there was a present for every one, small though it might be, and one who had
been born and brought up at our plantation was vocal in her admiration of a gay
handkerchief. As she left the room she ejaculated: ‘Lord knows mistress knows
our insides; she jest got the very thing I wanted.’”
For me there were six
cakes of delicious soap, made from the grease of ham . . . a pincushion of some
plain brown cotton material . . . and a
little baby hat plaited by the orphans . . . Another present was a fine, delicate
little baby frock . . . There were also
. . . Swinburne’s best songs . . . a chamois needlebook . . .
After breakfast, at
which all the family, great and small, were present, came the walk to St.
Paul’s Church. We did not use our carriage on Christmas or, if possible to
avoid it, on Sunday. The saintly Dr. Minnegerode preached a sermon on Christian
love . . .
Our chef did wonders
with the turkey and roast beef, and drove the children quite out of their
propriety by a spun sugar hen, life-size, on a nest full of blanc mange eggs.
The mince pie and plum pudding made them feel, as one of the gentlemen
laughingly remarked, ‘like their jackets were buttoned,’ a strong description
of repletion which I have never forgotten . . .
. . . The night closed
with a ‘starvation’ party,’ where there were no refreshments, at a neighboring
house . . .
. . . These young people
are gray-haired now, but the lessons of self-denial, industry and frugality in
which they became past mistresses then, have made of them the most dignified,
self-reliant and tender women I have ever known — all honor to them.
The
“starvation party” she wrote of was a Richmond innovation, a social gathering,
often a ball, where no food was served. Donations were taken to support the war
effort and to aid the men in the lines. Food of any kind was desperately short,
both in Richmond and in Petersburg. So was coal and wood.
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| The Confederate White House |
Varina
Davis is a lukewarm Confederate at best. With relatives in the South and in the
North, her feelings about the war are equivocal, as are her feelings about
slavery. The Confederate Press often
questioned her loyalties just as the Union Press questioned Mary Lincoln’s. In
fact, the two women had much in common, both being from politically active
slaveholding families, both being exceptionally well-educated and literate
women for their time and place. After the war, in her widowhood, she becomes
friends with, of all people, the widowed Julia Dent Grant. “It would have been
a tragedy if the South had won,” the former First Lady of the Confederacy tells
her new friend, the former First Lady of the United States.
Mary
Lincoln and Varina Davis shared a seamstress. Elizabeth Keckley had worked for
Varina while her husband was a U.S. Senator in Washington. When Jefferson Davis
was made President of the Confederacy, Varina asked Keckley (slave-born but now
free by her own efforts) whether she would consider relocating to Montgomery,
the first capital of the Confederacy. Keckley refused to move, and sought a new
job. Using her reference from Varina Davis she was hired by Mary Lincoln when
the Lincolns came to the White House. She
became Mary Lincoln’s lifelong friend.
Christmas
Eve cannot but transparently paper over the suffering in the South this year. As
one Richmonder joked in this icy cold, hungry and miserable month, “As long as we can
hear a dog bark or a cat meow, we know we’re going to win the war.” Confederate
civilians became, like their fighting men, like later Londoners during the
blitz, singularly adept at keeping their spirits up. Still, there is no denying
that hunger, the Captain of the Men of Death, is stalking all Confederates this
season.
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| Richmond, late 1864, city and camp life |
