426 SHERMAN'S ARMY [1865 reported.1 In some cases punishment was inflicted. Howard directed that a soldier who had violently taken a watch from a citizen should have his head shaved and be drummed out of the service. Cox, who commanded the Twentythird Corps in Schofield's army,2 executed the death sentence pronounced by court-martial for a rape; the culprit, according to his recollection, was a bounty-jumper. A military commission, having found a private soldier guilty of the murder of a North Carolina citizen, sentenced him to be "shot to death with musketry"; two days later the sentence was executed. Sherman asserted generally that whenever individuals were detected in theft they were punished; but, in going over the evidence, one cannot fail to note many offences and few penalties. Yet despite the general lawlessness, of which we obtain glimpses from time to time, outrages on the persons of women were rare. Sherman testified under oath that in the whole of the march he heard of but two cases of rape. The tendency of Federal officers, apart from the contemporary documents, has been to minimize the depredations, and the tendency of many Northern writers has been to gloss them over, so that even if every instance brought to light by Northern testimony be mentioned, the Union armies will suffer no injustice by the seeming redundancy of facts. So much of the Southern evidence is not specific and all of it is so pervaded with intense feeling that I have preferred to develop this subject from Northern sources, leaving the natural inference to be drawn that, if all had been told, the evidence against Sherman's army would have been somewhat greater. The men who followed Sherman were 10. R., XLVII, Pt. 3, 79. 2 Schofield had come to North Carolina. 3 O. R., XLVII, Pt. 3, 470. 4 See Whitelaw Reid, Ohio in the War, I. CH. XIV] SHERMAN'S ARMY 427 probably more humane generally than those in almost any European army that had marched and fought before our Civil War, but any invading host in the country of the enemy is a terrible scourge. Sherman reached Fayetteville (N. C.) on March 11 and, by means of a steam tug, which had come up the Cape Fear river from Wilmington, was placed in communication with Schofield1 and therefore with Grant and Stanton. Up to February 22 Grant, through the Richmond newspapers, had kept pretty well informed of Sherman's progress, but on that day the newspapers were requested by the authorities not to publish any news connected with the pending military movements in the Carolinas, so that afterwards he could cull from them only meagre and unsatisfactory information. In his letter to Grant, Sherman said, "The army is in splendid health, condition and spirit although we have had foul weather and roads that would have stopped travel to almost any other body of men I ever read of." 2 On March 21 Schofield reached Goldsborough (N. C.) where, two days later, Sherman's army made with him the desired junction. "Were I to express my measure of the relative importance of the march to the sea and of that from Savannah northward," wrote Sherman, "I would place the former at one and the latter at ten or the maximum." 3 He might have continued in Napoleon's words written during his Austrian campaign, "I have destroyed the enemy merely by marches.” 4 Sherman himself went to City Point to have a consultation with Grant and there met President Lincoln. The three 1 Schofield had come from Thomas's army in Tennessee by river and rail to Washington, thence by sea to the vicinity of Wilmington, N. C. 2 O. R., XLVII, Pt. 2, 794. 3 W. Sherman, II, 221. 4 Sloane, II, 235. Authorities: O. R., XLVII; V; W. Sherman; Cox's Reminiscences. 428 LINCOLN GRANT- SHERMAN [1865 had two interviews, one on the afternoon of March 27 and the other next day when they discussed the past operations, the harbinger of their success, and the approaching end of the war. Lincoln and Sherman did most of the talking while Grant listened and ruminated. According to Sherman's recollection of the interviews the two generals were agreed in their opinion that one or the other of them "would have to fight one more bloody battle and that it would be the last." Lincoln said more than once that enough of blood had been shed and asked "if another battle could not be avoided," to which Sherman made answer that they "could not control that event"; it rested with Jefferson Davis and General Lee whether or not the two armies should meet again in a "desperate and bloody battle.” 1 In truth these masters of State and war the three men to whom above all others we owe the successful termination of the conflict could not without gladness review the military operations of the last year and look forward to the promise of the future; but they appreciated too well the magnitude of the business in hand to give way to undue [elation. As in May, 1864, Grant was confronted by Lee and Sherman by Johnston; 2 but Grant had fought his way from the Rapidan to the James and the Appomattox, while Sherman, after a contested progress from Dalton to Atlanta, had made a holiday march to the sea followed by a march northward with the elements for his bitterest foes. He had achieved his purpose and was now at Goldsborough (N. C.) with 80,000 men preparing to advance against Johnston, who lay between him and Raleigh with an army of about 33,000. In other parts of the theatre of war, there were large and well-appointed Union forces bent on aggres 1 W. Sherman, II, 326; Horace Porter, Sept., 1897, 739. CH. XIV] LINCOLN 429 sive operations, working under Grant's efficient direction with the common purpose of dealing the enemy a final blow. But it was confidently believed that if Lee and Johnston could be forced to surrender, the rest of the military resistance would collapse. In this final encounter, the generals were well matched in intellectual ability but the material resources on the Union side were vastly greater. Yet the latent power of resistance in soldiers, skilfully and honestly led, who believe that they are fighting against the subjugation of their people, must be rated high, as so many instances in history attest. The more profound the study of the last days of the Confederacy, the firmer will be the conviction that the best of management was required of the North to assure the end of the war in the spring of 1865. In one respect fortune had signally favored the Union. Although distributing, in the last two years of the war, the favors of military skill with an equal hand, she had at the same time given to the United States a great ruler. Manifestly superior as had been Davis's advantages in family, breeding, training and experience, he fell far below Lincoln as a compeller of men. We have seen Lincoln in times of adversity and gloom and have marvelled at his self-effacement and we have seen him listening to words of advice, warning and even reproof such as are rarely spoken to men wielding immense power; and throughout he has preserved his native dignity and emerged from nearly every trial a stronger and more admirable man. Grant appears at his best in the final operations of his army. He is the Grant of Donelson, Vicksburg and Chattanooga with a judgment developed through larger experience and the discipline of adversity. The full reports and detailed despatches admit us to the actual operations of his 430 GRANT [1865 mind as he surveyed the vast field over which his armies, always in touch with him, moved to their several tasks in his grand scheme of strategy. He combined self-confidence with caution. He did not underestimate his enemy; he did not, as he perceived the successful operation of his plans, give way to elation, thinking the work already done which was only half done. But he was not too cautious to move forward boldly and without fear of the result. In Sherman and Sheridan he had helpers on whom he could rely as if each were another self. Seeing things alike they were in complete sympathy with him; they comprehended his orders and carried them out in letter and spirit as did no other of his subordinates. Sherman's marching and fighting were now over but Sheridan was to be to Grant a prop and a weapon such as Stonewall Jackson had been to Lee in his earlier campaigns. With the force immediately under him, Grant had, besides Sheridan, an efficient coadjutor in Meade, and good corps commanders in Warren, Humphreys, Ord, Wright and Parke. At the commencement of the Appomattox campaign, he had in this army 116,000 effectives while Lee mustered 52,000.1 Since the summer of 1864 Grant had besieged Richmond and Petersburg. The progress of the siege had been slow but persistent until, soon after the middle of February, Lee began to consider the eventuality of abandoning both cities. While in the freedom of private conversation he may have expressed himself in a despairing tone, his despatches indicated a belief. that there was still a chance of success in fighting on; moreover, he made it clear that he would resist the foe as long as resistance was possible unless he were advised to yield by the superior civil authority. He infused an energy into his sortie of March 25, which, though the 1 T. L. Livermore, Milt. Hist. Soc., VI, 451. |