Ulysses S. Grant - Michael Korda [41]
In July he made two attempts to move things forward. One was to send Sheridan on a long ride behind the enemy lines, which proved how little there was in the way of armed forces behind Lee, and in which he ravaged the Shenandoah Valley on the way home; the other was to employ former mining engineers to tunnel under the Confederate lines and explode a tremendous mine—the biggest in the history of warfare to that date. It went off with an enormous explosion on July 30, killing two hundred Confederate soldiers and creating a huge crater, but the Union troops who rushed into it, disorganized and poorly led, soon found themselves trapped in the crater, with the Confederates shooting down into it, like “shooting fish in a barrel,” as one survivor said. By the time it was over, Grant had lost almost four thousand men for no gain—just the kind of thing that would happen again and again on the western front in World War I, proving, perhaps, that instructors in staff colleges the world over are usually several wars behind. In retaliation for Sheridan’s raid, Confederate general Jubal A. Early raided deep into Maryland, nearly took Washington, D.C., by surprise, then retreated home again, burning down the city of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, on the way. Grant and Lincoln had plenty to be glum about.
The summer limped on into autumn, then winter, while day after day men died in the lines around Petersburg; then, quite suddenly, at the beginning of April 1865, Lee’s forces were finally obliged to retreat—they no longer had the strength to hold Richmond. On April 2 Jefferson Davis abandoned the capital of the Confederacy, while Lee and what remained of the Army of Northern Virginia retreated toward Lynchburg, Virginia. Lee still cherished a notion to retreat south, join forces with Gen. Joseph E. Johnston’s army in North Carolina, defeat Sherman, then march back north to attack Grant, but events rapidly made any such plan impossible, as Grant’s armies took one by one the roads and railways that would have made the move feasible.
Grant had kept “a bulldog” grip on Lee for nearly eight months, while Sherman’s army, and others, destroyed or burned railways, bridges, whole cities like Atlanta, crops, barns, and proud homes all over the Confederacy, and “freed” the slaves as well, in the sense at least of turning them loose on the roads and depriving their former owners of the capital that a slave represented. Confederate money was worthless paper, the Confederate capital was looted and burnt to the ground, Confederate illusions were shattered, the Confederacy itself was effectively reduced to Lee and his army—weakened, starving, but still dangerous, retreating by muddy back roads into the Virginia countryside, perhaps to make a last stand.
It is with that in mind, that one must read Grant’s letter to Lee, surely one of the most dignified in the history of war. He and Meade had harried and surrounded Lee’s army, while the bumptious Custer had destroyed much of Lee’s supply train, but the one thing Grant did not want was a heroic finale to the war.
Headquarters Armies of the U. S.
5 P. M., April 7, 1865
General R. E. Lee
Commanding C. S. A.
The results of the last week must convince you of the hopelessness of further resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia in this struggle. I feel that it is so, and regard it as my duty to shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of blood, by asking of you the surrender of that portion of the Confederate States army known as the Army of Northern Virginia.
U. S. Grant
Lieut.-General.
Lee replied the same evening with a short but equally gracious reply. While “not entertaining the opinion you express on the hopelessness of further resistance,” Lee reciprocated Grant’s “desire to avoid a useless effusion