Northern prisoners in the South. the exhaustion of the fighting population of the South, refused to permit any more exchanges of prisoners, declaring that a Northern man who died in the horrible prison pens of the South laid down his life for the nation's cause equally with the man who was killed on the field of battle. Southern writers have tried to excuse the cruelty of the Southern government toward Union prisoners on the ground that it LIBBY PRISON DURING THE WAR. Sheridan in the Valley, 1864. Libby Prison was inevitable in the exhausted condition of the South. Surely if the Southerners could no longer maintain the organization of a civilized people, they should have acknowledged that the cause for which they fought was hopeless, and have laid down their arms. 369. Sheridan's Valley Campaign, 1864. Grant now besieged Lee in his lines at Petersburg. Gradually the everincreasing pressure became unbearable, and Lee sought to 1864] Sheridan's Valley Campaign 527 IV, 500; 263-278. divert Grant from his purpose by an attack on the Union Battles and capital. Detaching one of his ablest subordinates, Jubal Leaders, Early, he directed him to penetrate the Shenandoah val- Dodge's ley and seize Washington. Early reached the defenses View, of Washington, but delaying the attack, was detained long 252-254, enough by a hastily levied force to enable two army corps to reach Washington from the James. The Confederates then retired into the valley. To combat Early, Grant gave Sheridan forty thousand men with orders to devastate the valley so that no Confederate force could march through it. The campaign which followed saw each army successful in turn. Finally, Sheridan obtained the upper hand, drove the Confederates back, and destroyed everything eatable that could be found. He then rejoined Grant at Petersburg (November, 1864). cruisers. Maclay's 370. Great Britain and the Confederate Cruisers. — In the The earlier years of the war, a few Southern vessels ran the Confederate blockade and began the destruction of Northern commerce on the ocean. The most important of these were the Navy, II, Sumter and the Florida, the latter a British-built vessel 553-561. which was converted into a man-of-war at Mobile. The most famous of the Confederate cruisers, however, never entered a Southern port. This was the Alabama, built in England, on the Mersey, and permitted to go to sea by the British government, notwithstanding the protests of the American minister at London, Charles Francis Adams. After a most destructive career, the Alabama was finally sunk off Kearsarge Cherbourg, by the United States ship Kearsarge, commanded and by Captain Winslow (June 19, 1864). The two vessels were Maclay's of about the same size and armament; but the guns of the Kearsarge were better aimed than those of her opponent, and the powder of the Alabama was so defective that such of her shot as reached the Kearsarge did little damage. Alabama. Navy, II, 562-573. The Confederates also contracted for the construction The of two powerful ironclad rams in England. The British Confederate government showed no desire to seize them before completion, and informed Adams that it could not interfere. The rams. The American minister thereupon wrote to Earl Russell, the British foreign minister: "It would be superfluous for me to point out that this is war." But the English government had already awakened to the danger of its position and had seized the vessels. The last of the Confederate cruisers to keep the seas was the Shenandoah. Coaling at Melbourne, she sailed for the Shenandoah. northern Pacific and there destroyed the American whaling fleet after the surrender of Lee and Johnston. The inaction of the British government on all these occasions aroused intense resentment in the United States, and became the subject of negotiation and arbitration (p. 547). Election of 1864. Stanwood's Elections, 236-252. 371. Lincoln's Re-election, 1864. — In the Northern states were to be found many persons who were actively opposed to the further prosecution of the war. These were mostly Democrats, and they nominated General McClellan for the presidency. The extremists among the Republicans, who thought the administration was not sufficiently vigorous in its policy, especially as to slavery, nominated John C. Frémont. Lincoln was nominated by a convention composed of Republicans and of those Northern Democrats who were heartily in favor of the maintenance of the Union. The convention placed a Democrat, Andrew Johnson, a Union man from Tennessee, on the ticket with Lincoln, as candidate for the vice-presidency. This convention favored the vigorous prosecution of the war and a continuance of a national policy as to public improvements. Frémont withdrew; the Democrats carried three states, — New Jersey, Delaware, and Kentucky; Lincoln and Johnson were elected by two hundred and twelve electoral votes out of a total of two hundred and thirty-three, their majority in the popular vote being more than four hundred thousand. The people of the North had decided by an overwhelming vote that the war should be fought to the end. Preparations were at once made for its prosecution on a larger scale than ever before. The Union army steadily increased in size until May, 1865, when over a million men were on its muster rolls. 1865] The Surrender of Appomattox 529 For the South, any such display of vigor was out of the question. The Confederacy was a shell: there were no more white men to be forced into the ranks; there were no more arms or military equipments; there was hardly food enough at the front for the soldiers already in the field. The Congress at Richmond passed a bill for the employment of slaves as soldiers; it was proposed to arm at least one regiment with pikes. Battles and View, 310-319. 372. The Surrender at Appomattox, 1865. — As soon as it Appomattox, was possible to move, the Northern soldiers began the final April, 1865. campaign of the war. Grant had now one hundred and Leaders, twenty-five thousand men to Lee's sixty thousand. On the first IV, 708; day of April, 1865, Sheridan, with a strong force of cavalry Dodge's and infantry, gained a position at Five Forks which commanded the roads to the rear of Richmond and Petersburg, and Lee could not drive him back. Lee therefore withdrew his army from his works and endeavored to escape by the valley of the Appomattox to the mountains, in the hope, perhaps, of combining his troops with the force under Johnston's command. At last, the Northern soldiers were too quick for him. Sheridan, with the cavalry and the Fifth Corps, outmarched the Confederates; the remainder of the Army of the Potomac pressed on their flank and rear. On April 7, 1865, the van of the starving army of northern Virginia reached the vicinity of Appomattox Court House. A body of dismounted Union cavalry barred the way. The Confederates deployed to brush aside this obstacle, when the cavalrymen, withdrawing to one side, disclosed an infantry line of battle. Farther progress was impossible, and Lee surrendered (April 9, 1865). The terms given to the Southerners were singularly liberal: the Confederates were to lay down their arms and cease from acts of hostility. Later on an attempt was made to punish the politicians who had led the South to secession and ruin, but that was abandoned. 373. Assassination of Lincoln, April 14, 1865. — On April 14, the people of the North were aglow with enthusiasm over the fall of Richmond and the surrender of Lee's army; Assassination of Lincoln. Cost of the war. Dodge's on the morning of the 15th, they were plunged into a depth of gloom such as had never been known in the history of the United States. On the evening of the 14th, Lincoln was shot by a crazed sympathizer with the cause of secession and slavery, and an attempt was also made on Seward's life. With Lincoln perished the one man able and willing to restrain the Northern extremists. Andrew Johnson became President, and the policy of the government soon underwent a great change (p. 537). 374. Cost of the War. - The War for the Union cost the nation, North and South, the lives of nearly a million men : about ninety-five thousand Northern soldiers were killed on the field of battle, or were fatally wounded and died in hospitals; one hundred and eighty thousand more succumbed to disease while on the army rolls. To these figures must be added those who died from accident, disappeared permanently, or died in Southern prisons or in consequence of disease or wounds contracted while in the service; the total of those who perished from all these causes is not far from one half a million; about as many more Southerners perished from similar causes. Hundreds of thousands more contracted disorders or received wounds while in the service, which did not lead directly to death but which shortened life or made it wretched. The total money cost of the war to the Union government was about three and one half thousand million dollars-excluding expenses incurred by states and municipalities, which amounted, in all probability, at least to three hundred millions more. Adding to this the amount paid and to be paid in pensions to those who risked their lives and the well-being of their families for the Union cause, and the amount of private property destroyed during the conflict, the war for the Union cost not less than ten thousand million dollars. |