1861-5.]

VOLUNTEER NURSES.

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There were also many women in the service of the Government as volunteer nurses. The first of these was Miss Dorothea L. Dix, who offered her services eight days after the call for troops in April, 1861, and was accepted by the SurgeonGeneral, who requested that all women wishing to act as nurses report to her. Miss Dix served through the war. Miss Amy Bradley, besides having charge of a large camp for convalescents near Alexandria, Va., assisted twenty-two hundred men in collecting arrears of pay due them, amounting to over two hundred thousand dollars. Arabella Griffith Barlow, wife of the gallant General Francis C. Barlow, spent three years in hospitals at the front, and died in the service. Miss Clara Barton entered upon hospital work at the beginning of the war, had charge of the hospitals of the Army of the James during its last year, and after the war undertook the search for the missing men of the National armies. Many other women, less noted, performed long and arduous service, which in some cases cost them their lives, for which they live in the grateful remembrance of those who came under their care.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE OVERLAND CAMPAIGN.

AT the close of the third year of the war-the winter of 1863-4-it was evident to all thoughtful citizens that something was lacking in its conduct. To those who understood military operations on a large scale, this had been apparent long before. It was true that there had been great successes, as well as great failures. Both of Lee's attempts at invasion of the North had resulted disastrously to him-the one at the Antietam, the other at Gettysburg; and when he recrossed the Potomac the second time with half of his army disabled, it was morally certain that he would invade no more. Grant, first coming into notice as the captor of an army in February, 1862, had captured another, more than twice as large, in the summer of 1863, thus securing the stronghold of Vicksburg, and enabling the Mississippi, as Lincoln expressed it, to flow unvexed to the sea. Later in the same year he had won a brilliant victory over Bragg at Chattanooga, securing that important point and relieving east Tennessee. New Orleans, by far the largest city in the South, had been firmly held by the National forces ever since Farragut captured it, in April, 1862. There were also numerous points on the coast of the Carolinas, Georgia, and

1864.]

THE OUTLOOK IN THE LAST YEAR. 363 Florida where the stars and stripes floated every day in assertion of the nation's claim to supreme authority. Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, West Virginia, and Tennessee -all confidently counted upon by the Confederates at the outset - were now hopelessly lost to them. Though it had seemed, from the reports of the great battles, and the manner in which they were discussed, that the Confederates must be making headway, yet a glance at the map showed that the territory covered by Confederate authority had been steadily diminishing. Only one recapture of any consequence had taken place, and that was in Texas. Faulty though it was, if the military process thus far pursued by the Administration had been kept up, it must ultimately have destroyed the Confederacy. And there was no military reason (using the word in its narrow sense) why it could not be kept up; for the resources of the North, in men and material, were not seriously impaired. All the farms were tilled, all the workshops were busy, the colleges had almost or quite their usual number of students; and there were not nearly so many young women keeping books or standing behind counters as now. Moreover, the ports of the North were all open, and the markets of the world accessible. It is true that the currency and the national securities were at a discount, and it was certain that their value would be diminished still further by the prolongation of the war; but this was not fatal so long as our own country produced everything essential, and it was equally certain that with a

364

NEED OF CONCERTED ACTION.

[1864.

restored Union the national credit would be so high that we could take our own time about paying the debt, distributing the burden over as many generations as we chose.

The necessity for a swifter process was more political than military. There was a half-informed populace to be satisfied, and a half-loyal party to be silenced. The subtlest foe was in our own household; and the approach of the Presidential and Congressional elections, unless great National victories should intervene, might bring its opportunity and seal the fate of the Republic.

The one thing required was a single supreme military head for all the armies in the field. The faulty disposition by which, in many of the great battles, the several parts of an army had struck the enemy successively, instead of all at once, existed also on the grander scale. There was no concert of action between the armies of the East, the West, and the Southwest; so that large detachments of the Confederate forces were sent back and forth on their shorter interior lines, to fight wherever they were most needed. Thus Longstreet's powerful corps was at one time engaged in Pennsylvania, a little later besieging Burnside in Tennessee, and again with Lee in Virginia. Not only was the need for a supreme commander apparent, but it was now no longer possible to doubt who was the man. We had one general that from the first had gone directly for the most important objects in his department, and thus far had secured everything he went for. Accordingly

1864.]

GRANT MADE LIEUTENANT-GENERAL.

365

Congress passed a bill reviving the grade of lieutenant-general in February, 1864, and President Lincoln promptly conferred that rank upon General Ulysses S. Grant. Only Washington and Scott had previously borne this commission in the United States service, and through three years of the war we had nothing higher than a major-general in the field. Rank was cheaper in the Confederacy, where there were not only lieutenantgenerals but several full generals. Some of the corps commanders in Lee's army, at the head of ten thousand or fifteen thousand men, had nominally the same rank (lieutenant-general) as Grant when he assumed command of all the National forces in the field. When Lincoln handed Grant his commission, they met for the first time. A year and a month later, the war was ended, Grant was the foremost soldier in the world, and Lincoln was in his grave. When the question of headquarters arose, General Sherman, who was one of the warmest of Grant's personal friends as well as his ablest lieutenant, besought him to remain in the West, for he feared the Washington influences that had always been most heavily felt in the army covering the capital. General Sherman, never afraid of anything else, was always in mortal terror of politicians. Grant appears not to have feared even the politicians; for he promptly fixed his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac; thus placing himself where, on the one hand, he could withstand interference that might thwart the operations of a subordinate, and where on the other he