The Fateful Lightning (74 page)

I
n late April 1865, as Sherman prepares to leave his command, intending first to visit Charleston and his army’s base in Savannah, he receives a copy of the April 24 edition of
The New York Times
. The column, attributed to Secretary Stanton, relates the entire complaint against Sherman’s negotiations with General Johnston, as well as a not-so-subtle suggestion that Sherman’s command is susceptible to a bribe from Jefferson Davis, which might allow Davis to escape the country. As a conclusion, Stanton writes that Ulysses Grant was sent to Raleigh to direct operations against Johnston’s army, the wording identical to the order Stanton had given Grant. Sherman is outraged by the breach of military protocol, and writes a lengthy letter of response to Grant, protesting the slam against his character and reputation, including the insinuation that he has been grossly insubordinate. Sherman writes,

I, who for four years, have labored day and night, winter and summer, who have brought an army of seventy thousand men in magnificent condition across a country hitherto deemed impassible, and placed it just where it was wanted, on the day appointed, have brought discredit to our Government! I do not wish to boast of this, but do say that it entitled me to the courtesy of being consulted to higher
authority to adjudication, and then accompanied by statements which invited the dogs of the press to be let loose upon me. It is true that non-combatants, men who sleep in comfort and security while we watch on the distant lines, are better able to judge than we poor soldiers, who rarely see a newspaper, hardly hear from our families, or stop long enough to draw our pay….

Sherman demands that his letter be made as public as Stanton’s, and a war of words breaks out in the various newspapers of the day, Sherman’s longtime enemies in the press delighting in the controversy.

In his memoirs, Sherman writes,

To say that I was merely angry at the tone and substance of these published bulletins of the War Department, would hardly express the state of my feelings. I was outraged beyond measure….

Clearly Grant recognizes the injustice done to Sherman, and by comparing the two men in his memoirs, Grant writes,

Mr. Stanton never questioned his own authority to command…he cared nothing for the feelings of others….The enemy would not have been in danger if Mr. Stanton had been in the field
.

Though several newspapers take up the call for Sherman’s removal, some even labeling him treasonous, he has his defenders, including Horace Greeley of the
New-York Tribune
, who describes Stanton’s insinuation that Sherman had aided Jefferson Davis’s efforts to escape as no more than
flapdaddle
.

Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles writes,

We were all imposed upon by Stanton for a purpose. He and the radicals were opposed to the mild policy of President
Lincoln on which Sherman acted, and which Stanton opposed and was determined to defeat
.

Thus is laid bare the enormous and unanswerable
what-if
of Lincoln’s assassination, and just how differently the next generation of politicians might have worked successfully to heal the gaping wounds suffered by the South, instead of the policies of Reconstruction, which have dug painfully into those scars even to this day.

As for Sherman’s contribution to the unhealed wounds, historians have argued over the merits or sins of Sherman’s campaigns into the twenty-first century. Historian John G. Barrett writes, “Sherman inflicted wounds which would remain open for generations to come. The hatred for the North instilled in the hearts of many Southerners by Sherman’s operations lengthened the South’s road to reunion…” But Barrett also writes, “Though pitiless in campaign and intemperate in language, Sherman was not a cruel individual with the instincts of a barbarian.”

The briefest of summaries can be made by historian Ellis M. Coulter: “To him, war must be fought effectively, or not at all.”

O
rdered by Grant to march the substance of his army northward to Washington City, Sherman embarks himself by boat, and on May 11 he makes a rendezvous with his troops at Richmond. He marches his army through northern Virginia, passing through nearly all of the major battlefields in that part of the East, fields that Sherman has never seen. On May 19, Sherman orders his army into camps around Alexandria, Virginia, awaiting further orders from Grant. Immediately across the Potomac River are the camps of the Army of the Potomac, the men commanded by George Gordon Meade.

With his army resting and rejuvenating, Sherman visits Washington, sees Grant and the new president, Andrew Johnson, who offers Sherman assurances that neither he nor the rest of his cabinet officials were aware that Stanton intended to make public the insult to Sherman’s reputation. Though Grant attempts to bridge the gulf between
Sherman and Stanton with a social meeting, Sherman declines, claiming without hesitation that he will hold this grudge for a very long time.

On May 23, as ordered by Grant, a grand review is held through the streets of the capital. Meade’s army precedes Sherman’s. The Army of the Potomac is fitted out in new uniforms, with polished brass, shined boots, freshly adorned horses, the perfect spit and polish that official Washington expects. The following day, Sherman’s army begins its parade. The men are unshaven, most in their field uniforms, and are accompanied by an enormous number of the freed slaves that still follow the army. It is no accident that Sherman offers the American public a demonstration of what a true army looks like, having just marched from the last great battlefields of the war.

Sherman leads the procession, the one notable exception in a crisp new uniform. According to protocol, once he passes the enormous reviewing stand, he leaves his army to complete their parade and climbs into the stands, joining the vast throng of dignitaries. He happily greets and accepts the appropriate accolades offered him by Grant, the president, and the attending cabinet. Then, confronted by a smiling Edwin Stanton, who extends his hand, Sherman turns away, a scene that is “universally noticed.” For the following six hours, the remainder of Sherman’s army, the Fifteenth, Seventeenth, Twentieth, and Fourteenth corps, passes by. Sherman writes,

It was, in my judgment, the most magnificent army in existence—sixty five thousand men, in splendid physique, who had just completed a march of nearly two thousand miles in a hostile country, in good drill, and who realized they were being closely scrutinized by thousands of their fellow countrymen and foreigners….Many people, up to that time, had looked upon our Western army as a sort of mob; but then the world saw, and recognized the fact that it was an army in the proper sense…and there was no wonder that it had swept through the South like a tornado
.

One soldier, of the 7th Iowa Regiment, writes,

The difference in the two armies is this: they have remained in camp and lived well; we have marched and fought and gone hungry and ended the war
.

Though there are still official hostilities west of the Mississippi River, those Confederate commanders, notably Richard Taylor and Kirby Smith, recognize that continuing their own campaigns has no purpose. On May 4, Taylor surrenders the Trans-Mississippi armies to Federal commander Edward Canby, thus the final end to the war in every part of the South.

WILLIAM J. HARDEE

By the spring of 1865, the man whom friends describe as boisterous, debonair, and full of cheer leaves his service to the Confederate cause a shattered and disillusioned man. Though Hardee is viewed by all who serve him as the consummate professional tactician, Sherman’s overwhelming dominance of Hardee’s efforts destroys any hopes Hardee has of resuming some kind of influential role in any military circle, especially his beloved West Point.

Historian Nathaniel Hughes writes,

The Army of the Tennessee was vital to the Confederate War effort, and Hardee should be remembered as an integral and able part of it. Albert Sidney Johnston, Bragg, Joe Johnston and even Hood placed great reliance on him as a battle commander, and consulted him in strategic matters. [But] limited by his reluctance to abandon outmoded military techniques in which he was expert, Hardee never rose to first rank
.

He surrenders with Joe Johnston at Durham’s Station and settles at his young wife’s family plantation near Demopolis, Alabama, then moves to Selma. Hardee never seems to find comfort in civilian life,
tries his hand at various enterprises, including cotton farming and railroading, which he attacks with a military zeal. But zeal alone cannot overcome the poor health of the economy, and in 1868 he leaves that profession.

He appeals for a pardon from the United States government, including a personal appeal to William T. Sherman. He even professes publicly that he would serve the United States Army again, should any need arise, believing that the issues so destructive to the nation from 1861 through 1865 have been settled. But the Congress is not so flexible, and his petition drags through the capital for two years before Hardee is finally pardoned.

He and Mary travel a great deal, mostly throughout the South, and make frequent visits to White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. While at the springs in the summer of 1873, Hardee is taken ill, is diagnosed with stomach cancer. Attempting to return home by rail, Hardee dies at Wytheville, Virginia. He is fifty-eight. His young wife, Mary, survives but two more years, dies at age thirty-five, from tuberculosis.

In 1871, Hardee’s daughter Sallie marries his adjutant and chief of staff, Thomas Roy.

As the war concludes, Hardee demonstrates the respect he holds for his most notable adversary, expressing to Joe Johnston that when he “learned that Sherman’s army was marching through the Salkehatchie swamps, making his own corduroy roads at the rate of a dozen miles a day or more, and bringing its artillery and wagons with it, I made up my mind that there had been no such army in existence since the days of Julius Caesar.”

JOSEPH E. JOHNSTON

With the surrender of his army, Johnston witnesses an act of generosity from Sherman he never expects, as Sherman issues ten days’ rations to Johnston’s hungry troops and orders the Federal commissary to provide sacks of seed for the former soldiers, assisting them to return to life on their farms. As a result, Johnston will never speak out against Sherman personally, or offer any condemnation of Sherman’s military operations. It is not always a popular position for Johnston to take.

He tries his hand at the railroad business, but it holds no appeal,
and Johnston is very much a career soldier without a career to fulfill him.

He writes his memoirs in 1874, in which he soundly criticizes Jefferson Davis, an extension of their disagreeable relationship, which goes back to 1861. As well, Johnston assails Braxton Bragg and John Bell Hood, content to leave his own mark at the expense of their reputations. Though supported in his tactical and strategic views by Sherman and Grant, the vitriolic nature of his feuds with the former Confederates diminishes his reputation. In 1870, Wade Hampton writes him, “I feel sure no good would come in any way by any publication by you raising an issue on the point [of Davis].” It is advice Johnston ignores. But after two years of brutal imprisonment, Jefferson Davis is more a martyr than villain, and Johnston’s attacks on him are not well received. The memoir fails to sell.

Their feud only increases when Johnston tells a newspaper reporter of his suspicions that Davis absconded with nearly two million dollars of the gold from the Confederate treasury, an accusation that infuriates Davis and most of the South.

Johnston moves from Savannah to Richmond in 1876, and considers a run for politics. To his own surprise, he is elected to Congress, but serves only a single term, finds political life as boring as he found the railroad.

His wife, Lydia, dies in 1887, after forty-one years of marriage. Johnston is devastated by her death, and for the remainder of his life, he will not speak her name.

He serves, ironically, as pallbearer at the funerals of Ulysses Grant and George McClellan, and, in 1891, he serves as honorary pallbearer for William T. Sherman. But the brutal February weather causes Johnston to be taken ill, and he dies the following month. He is eighty-four. He is buried beside his wife at Green Mount Cemetery, in Baltimore, Maryland.

It is another of the “what-ifs” of the Civil War that Robert E. Lee ascended to command of the Army of Northern Virginia as a direct result of Johnston’s being wounded at the Battle of Seven Pines, on the Virginia peninsula, in the summer of 1862. The death of Albert Sydney Johnston (no relation) two months prior at Shiloh thus took from the reins of the Confederate army two of their highest-ranking
and most respected generals. Though Lee certainly excelled in the role, the question will always remain, had Joe Johnston not been wounded, would Lee have ever been given high command? And, of course, given his bitter relationship with his president, what would Johnston have done with it?

JOSEPH WHEELER

In April 1865, “Fighting Joe” attempts to evade capture, and, riding with only fourteen men, he embarks on a journey westward, where he hopes to join with Kirby Smith in continuing the war. But he is captured at Conyers Station, Georgia, near Atlanta.

Imprisoned at Fort Delaware, Wheeler suffers horribly, along with so many other Southern soldiers, until his release in July 1865. He returns to his home in Augusta, Georgia, where he marries Daniella Jones Sherrod. In 1866 they move to New Orleans, where Wheeler is employed as a merchant. He moves to Lawrence County, Alabama, in 1870, attempts to practice law, and settles as well into life as a gentleman farmer. He invests in what had been the Memphis & Charleston Railroad, long destroyed by Federal troops. But the railroad sees new life, and by 1880, Wheeler’s investments bring him prosperity.

Drawn to politics, he runs for the House of Representatives in 1880 on a platform alien to many Southerners, that of moving past the war, with an eye only on the future, and fruitful business relationships with the North. Wheeler is elected over a man whose views are radically opposite, a sign of the times. Wheeler serves seven terms, but, even as he ages, he becomes a vocal advocate of military action against Spain, advocating a free Cuba. In 1898, the controversy erupts into the Spanish-American War. Despite opposition from his own family, Wheeler volunteers to fight, saying “if a fish had been out of water for thirty-three years, and suddenly came in sight of a great pond, he’d wiggle a little, at any rate.” Because of his friendly relationship with President William McKinley, who seems uninterested in Wheeler’s loyalties during the Civil War, Wheeler is named Major General of Volunteers, and his command includes a group of cavalrymen later known as Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders.

A year later, while in failing health, Wheeler sails to the Philippines and joins in the fighting there, but his capacity for strong-backed service
is at an end. He returns home in 1900, anticipating a return to Congress. President McKinley instead appoints him to command of the Military Department of the Lakes, with his post in Chicago. But Wheeler retires within a year and settles in Brooklyn, New York. He dies in January 1906, at age sixty-nine, and is one of the very few Confederate officers buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

JAMES SEELEY

Seeley surrenders alongside General Wade Hampton at Durham’s Station, North Carolina. Angered by the efforts of his nominal commander, Joe Wheeler, to continue the war any way possible, Seeley ignores Wheeler’s hopes of recruiting cavalry fighters, and instead begins the arduous return journey to his home and young wife, Katie, in Memphis. He arrives in July 1865. His father, a prosperous banker, has somehow survived the war with his prosperity intact, which Seeley believes is only from collusion with the Federal powers occupying Memphis. But reality settles in and Seeley accepts the end of the war for what it is.

He goes to work with his father, becomes manager and eventually president of the Memphis Farmers Bank. He and Katie have four children.

He again befriends his first commander, Nathan Bedford Forrest, but with the latter one of Memphis’s more notable slave traders, Forrest’s fortunes pale in comparison, and their friendship does not move past the occasional recounting of their military adventures. When Forrest attempts to counter the policies of Reconstruction by participating in the formation of an organization to empower the South’s disenfranchised white men, what becomes known as the Ku Klux Klan, Seeley takes no part, understanding that the future lies with positive banking and commercial relationships with the North. Thus Seeley willingly pledges a loyalty oath to the United States, which paves the way for the increasing financial strength of his bank, and his own fortune.

Rarely active in Confederate reunions, Seeley seems quick to accept the South’s defeat as the only possible outcome, and rarely will discuss his own experiences as a cavalryman.

He dies in 1909, at age sixty-seven. Katie survives until 1928.

WADE HAMPTON

Hampton surrenders alongside Joe Johnston at Durham’s Station, North Carolina. As the staffs and other officers mingle outside the Bennett house in April 1865, Hampton makes a reputation for himself by a distinctly unfriendly stance, as though unwilling to associate himself with any Federal officer. Yet, with the war decided, Hampton becomes one of the more active figures in the South in promoting a reconciliation with the Federal government. But Reconstruction sours his point of view, and Hampton reacts to the abuses of Northern opportunists by angrily denouncing Northern policies. Alongside former Confederate general Jubal Early, Hampton embraces and promotes the more mythical status of Confederate commanders, particularly Robert E. Lee. Thus does Hampton become one of the principal voices of the “Lost Cause” mythology, as an apologist for Confederate wrongs, justifying the Southern way of life.

Always active in politics, he runs for and is elected governor of South Carolina in 1877, and is elected to the United States Senate two years later, serving two terms. In 1893 he is named United States Commissioner of Railroads, a post he holds for five years. He retires from public life in 1897, and dies in 1902, at the age of eighty-four.