PROPOSITION TO ARM SLAVES.

529

on that occasion was calculated to prevent the feeling of confidence which Davis and his friends tried to inspire. It produced indignation and alarm, and the press did not report it literally as it was spoken. He declared that the white fighting men of the Confederacy were exhausted, and that black men must recruit the army. He told the slaveholders, that they must either fight themselves, or let their slaves fight; and that Lee had told him that negroes would answer," and that he must abandon Richmond if not soon re-enforced. "Let the negroes volunteer and be emancipated," said Benjamin, "it is the only way to save the slave-women and children." 1 These words,

from a member of the "cabinet," produced great commotion. There was a general aversion to putting the slaves into the army, and it was not done. A bill was introduced in the Confederate "Congress," authorizing the enlistment of two hundred thousand slaves, with the consent of their owners, It passed the lower House, but was lost in the Senate, notwithstanding General Lee wrote a public letter, advocating the measure, in which he admitted that the white people could not well meet the de- 1865. mands of the army for more men. It was afterward passed.

• Feb. 18,

The Peace conference in Hampton Roads did not affect the armies in the field. The National forces were quite sufficient for all practical purposes,' and Mr. Lincoln entered' upon the second term of his Presidency of the Republic with the most abundant hopes of a speedy return

' March 4.

of peace. His address on the occasion of his second inauguration, commanded the most profound attention among thinking men, loyal and disloyal, throughout the entire Union. It was marked by the greatest solemnity and tenderness, and was imbued with the deepest religious spirit. Its chief burden was the emancipation of the slaves, and the triumph of justice and mercy; and it closed with the following remarkable sentence: "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in, to

1 See A Rebel War Clerk's Diary, ii., 415. Speaking of Benjamin, the Diarist says:-"No doubt he is for a desperate stroke for independence, being out of the pale of mercy; but his moral integrity is impugned by the representatives from Louisiana, who believe he has taken bribes for passports, &c., to the injury of the cause."

2 In July, as we have observed, the President called for 500,000 men. This produced a goodly number of recruits, and none of the armies suffered for lack of re-enforcements, yet the requisition was largely filled by credits given for men already in the army or navy. In view of this, and with a determination to crush the rebellion in the spring campaign, if possible, the President issued another call, on the 19th of December, for 200,000 more.

3 After speaking of slavery as the cause of the war, Mr. Lincoln remarked: "To strengthen, perpetuate and extend this interest, was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude nor the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God, and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces. But let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayer of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to them by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a loving God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'"

VOL. III.-112

530

POSITION OF THE BELLIGERENT FORCES.

bind up the Nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."1

Let us now return to a consideration of the operations of the armies of Grant and Lee, on the borders of the James and Appomattox rivers. We have seen nearly all of the other armies of the Conspirators discomfited, and these, with those of Sherman and Johnston not far off, now demand our exclusive attention, for they, at the period we are considering, were about to decide the great question whether the Republic should live or die. Let us see in what manner that question was decided.

We left the armies of the Potomac and the James in winter quarters in front of Lee's army of Northern Virginia, with which he was defending the Confederate capital. The left of the Army of the Potomac was maintaining its firm grasp on the Weldon road; and the Army of the James on the north side of that river, and forming the right of the besiegers, had its pickets within a few miles of Richmond.' Sheridan was in good quarters at Kernstown, near Winchester, full master of the Shenandoah Valley, from Harper's Ferry to Staunton, and bearing the honors of a major-general in the regular army."

Grant held the besieging forces in comparative quiet during the winter of 1864-'65, their chief business being to keep Lee from moving, while Sher

Thomas, and Canby were making their important conquests in accordance with the comprehensive plan of campaign of the General-in-chief. To this business those forces were specially directed, when the operations against Wilmington, and Sherman's approach to the coast and his march through the Carolinas, were going on, for it was well known that the Conspirators were contemplating a transfer of both the Confederate "Government" and Lee's army to the Cotton States, where that of Johnston and all the other forces might be concentrated. No doubt this would have been ordered by Davis before it was evidently too late, had not the politicians of Virginia clamored loudly against the abandonment of that State, and the almost certainty that the Army of Northern Virginia would not have been permitted to go.3

• 1865.

It was at about the close of March" before Grant was ready for a general movement against Lee. Meanwhile, there had been some events that broke the monotony of his army in winter quarters; and Sheridan had been performing gallant and useful services north and west of Richmond. To prevent Lee from receiving any supplies by the Weldon road, Meade sent Warren, early in December, with his own (Fifth) corps, Mott's division of the Third Corps, and Gregg's mounted men, to destroy that

1 On entering upon his second term, Mr. Lincoln retained the members of his cabinet then in office. There had been some changes. For the public good he had requested Montgomery Blair to resign the office of Postmaster-General. He did so, and William Dennison, of Ohio, was put in his place. On the death of Chief-Justice Taney, a few months before, he had appointed Salmon P. Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury, to that exalted station, and Hugh McCulloch was placed at the head of the Treasury Department.

3 See page 362.

2 See page 361. 4 See page 372. Alluding to this contemplated abandonment of Richmond, Mr. Jones, in his Diary, says, after mentioning the gayety with which Davis and his aids had ridden past his house: "No one who beheld them would have seen any thing to suppose that the capital itself was in almost immediate danger of falling into the hands of the enemy; much less that the President himself meditated its abandonment at an early day, and the concentration of all the armies in the Cotton States."

CONFEDERATE NAVAL RAID.

531 railway farther south than had yet been done. This service was promptly performed. Warren moved with his whole command along the road, without much opposition, and destroyed it all the way to Meherrin River, driving the few Confederates in his path across that stream to a fortified position at Hicksford.

• Dec. 7,

1864.

A few weeks later, while a greater portion of the naval force on the James River was engaged in a second expedition against Fort Fisher,' the Confederates sent down from under the shelter of strong Fort Darling,' on

Drewry's Bluff, a squadron of vessels, for the purpose of breaking the obstructions at the lower end of Dutch Gap Canal, and destroying the pontoon bridges below, thereby separating the National troops on both sides of the river, precedent to an attack in overwhelming force on the wing on the north bank of the James. The squadron moved silently, under cover of darkness, but was observed and fired upon when passing Fort Brady. To this attack the vessels responded, and in so doing they dismounted a 100-pounder Par

2 This fort, which has been frequently mentioned in this work, was one of the most substantially and skillfully built fortifications constructed by the Confederates, and with the obstructions in the river just below it and covered by it, it defied the entire naval force of the Nationals, on the James River, during the war. See page 402, volume II. It was situated, as we have observed, on a bluff rising nearly two hundred feet above the level of the river, at a curve, and commanded the stream to Chapin's Bluff, below. On the lower side of the bluff was a deep ravine, with almost inaccessible sides, which formed an admirable flank to the fort. The picture above given, is from a sketch made by the author in June, 1866, from the side of the ravine opposite the fort, in which is shown some of the river in the direction of Richmond. The fort was inclosed by a dry ditch, swept by rifle batteries, one of which is delineated in the engraving on the next page. Within the outworks

of the fort was a neat chapel, a burial-ground, and quite a little village of cabins.

The squadron consisted of the Virginia (the Flag-ship), Fredericksburg, and Richmond, all armored and. carrying four guns each; the wooden steamers Drewry, Nansemond and Hampton, two guns each; the Buford one gun; and the steamer Torpedo, with three torpedo boats.