United States (1783-1898). page 3

It is impossible here to give more than a brief outline of the greatest civil war of modern days, remarkable for the vast scale of its operations, the destruction of human life, and the great use made of intrenchments as a defence against rifle-fire. The chief commanders of the Northern (Federal) armies were McClellan, Burnside, Hooker, Meade, Rosencrantz, Banks, Sheridan, Sherman, and Grant; on the Southern (Confederate) side, the most conspicuous leaders were Beauregard, the two Johnstons, "Stonewall" Jackson, Stuart, Longstreet, Buckner, Hill, Pemberton, Hood, and the very able strategist and tactician Robert Lee. The first blow was struck on April 12th, 1861, when the "rebels," as they were styled in the North, fired on the Federal garrison at Fort Sumter, on an island in Charleston harbour; the last was delivered in April, 1865, in North Carolina, compelling Joseph Johnston to make his surrender to Sherman. The chief events, in 1861, were the defeat of the Federal troops at Bull Run or Manassas, in North Virginia, near Washington, a rout which showed the Northern government how serious a task lay before them, and caused the voting by Congress of $500,000,000 (100,000,000 pounds sterling) and 500,000 men. Confederate cruisers began to assail Federal commerce, and the Southern ports were blockaded by Northern vessels, causing European traders to engage adventurous mariners for the long profitable game of "running the blockade" in swift steamers freighted with supplies, for which the Southerners paid high prices, loading the ships in return with cotton-bales to be sold, at advanced rates, in Liverpool and Le Havre. In 1862 the Federals strove to capture Richmond, in Virginia, the enemy's capital, but McClellan, through the brilliant work of Joseph Johnston, Jackson, and General Lee, now appointed to the chief command of the Confederates, and of Stuart, the dashing leader of the Southern horse, was defeated in almost every battle, and forced to retire from the peninsula. The same year brought great success to the Federals in other quarters. In February, Forts Henry and Donelson, on the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, were taken by the combined action of troops under General Grant and of gunboats under Commodore Foote. In April, at the second battle of Shiloh, on the Tennessee, Beauregard was defeated and Sidney Johnston was killed. In striving to open the Mississippi the Federals captured Island No. 10 (numbered in order from the mouth of the Ohio to New Orleans), and then Forts Pillow and Memphis, lower down the great river, were taken. In April, Captain (afterwards Admiral) Farragut, the "Nelson" of the North, a man remarkable for combined skill and daring, moving up the Mississippi, defied the Confederate batteries with success, destroyed the flotilla, and captured New Orleans, where vast quantities of cotton were burned as soon as the Federal vessels hove in sight. Forts and harbours on the coast were occupied, and the end of 1862 saw every place of importance on the Atlantic seaboard, except Charleston, Wilmington, and Savannah, held by Northern troops.

It was in 1862, also, that the conditions of naval warfare were completely changed in the demonstrated utility of ironclad vessels. On March 8th, in Hampton Roads, Virginia, a strong Federal fleet of wooden vessels was assailed by a single Confederate ship - the Merrimac, a frigate cut down, and having her deck roofed in with heavy timber covered with railway-iron. She thus resembled the roof of a barn with a huge chimney and with heavy guns protruding from holes in the roof-side. The strange-looking craft steamed coolly into the midst of the enemy. Their heavy shot rolled like peas off her sides. Her shells made a mere slaughter-house of the Federal frigate Congress, setting her on fire and driving her ashore where the crew were glad to surrender. The Merrimac, fitted with a strong steel bow, then "rammed" the Cumberland sloop-of-war, causing her to sink in a few minutes, with her guns still firing, the flag still flying, and all her crew on board. Three other Federal ships ran aground, and the vessel which had wrought this havoc then steamed off with the tide to her moorings near Norfolk. Such was the fight between the last ships of the old wooden navy and the first ironclad. This event, causing vast delight to the Confederates, was surprising enough, but there was more to come. On the next day there appeared in Hampton Roads, just arrived from a Northern shipyard, a little ship called the Monitor, destined to give her name to all her class. She was only 900 tons, and looked like "a cheese-box on a raft," being a hull with a deck only a few inches above the water, bearing a circular tower in the centre, capable of being moved round by steam, and so of directing to any point the fire of two heavy guns. The part of the hull exposed to shot was formed of massive oaken beams covered with six-inch iron plates on the sides, and with two inches on the deck. Her inventor was Captain Ericsson, a Swedish engineer. Thus equipped, the Monitor, on March 9th, encountered the huge Merrimac, of 5,000 tons, and after a fight of two hours, in which she herself suffered no injury, drove her off with severe loss to the crew from a shell entering a port-hole. This success was, in fact, decisive of the issue of the war. The Federals, at once constructing many copies of the Monitor, had the command of the sea, and effectually blockaded the Southern ports, reducing the Confederates to great straits. The new ironclads, however, did far more than this. They brought success to the Federal arms on the Mississippi in operations conducted hundreds of miles from the sea-coast, giving the Northerners command of the river as a movable base of operations; depriving the Confederates of supplies of men and provisions from the western States; raising food in the South to famine-prices; and causing a general demoralisation which was as valuable to the North as a series of victories in the field. It was the fleet of Farragut that enabled Grant to cross the Mississippi with safety, get into the rear of Vicksburg, and ensure the downfall of that great stronghold. At the close of 1862 there was more fierce fighting near Richmond, with general success to the Confederates under Lee and his able colleagues.

In 1863 the Federals began operations with 700,000 men in the field, and the year opened with President Lincoln's proclamation of freedom to all slaves in all States or parts of States in rebellion, a measure followed by the enrolment, training, and arming of over 50,000 black troops against the Confederates before the close of the year. In May the Southern cause suffered a great loss in the death of the famous "Stonewall" Jackson, one of the finest seconds-in-command ever seen. He was accidentally shot by some of his own men at the close of the battle of Chancellorsville, west of Fredericks-burg, where Lee, on May 3rd, utterly defeated the Federals under Hooker, a success largely due to Jackson's brilliant stroke in marching to the enemy's rear and routing their right wing. On July 4th Vicksburg fell; in the autumn the Federal victory of Chattanooga, won by Grant over Bragg, cleared Tennessee, and opened the way to the heart of the Confederacy. In July, General Lee, at the head of the finest army yet sent into the field by the South, having invaded Pennsylvania, was defeated by Meade, after two days of hard righting, in the decisive battle of Gettysburg, a turning-point in the struggle, securing the Federal territory from all future attack, and reducing the Confederates, after severe loss, to a defensive position.

In 1864 Grant took the field as commander-in-chief of all the Federal armies, and a settled plan of operations began. In May and June, in battles involving terrible loss, continued for days, in the "Wilderness," a region of thick forest, and at Spottsylvania and other points, Grant vainly assailed Lee, and was at last compelled to retire. In August, however, he was able to inflict a most serious blow by seizing the Weldon Railroad, running southwards from Richmond to the Carolinas, thus cutting off the capital from direct access to resources in the south. Lee's desperate efforts could not recover this vital line of communication. In the same year the able Sherman won victories in Georgia over the Confederate leaders Joseph Johnston and Hood, and his capture of Atlanta deprived the enemy of a town which was at once a granary, a workshop, a storehouse, and an arsenal. There and at neighbouring places, factories, mills, and foundries were lost, the sources which supplied waggons, harness, clothing, cannon, powder, and shot for all the Confederate forces. It was clear that the end of the long and terrible struggle was drawing near. On the seaboard, Farragut, in August, took Mobile, in Alabama, closing another harbour to the "blockade-runners"; and in the following winter his capture of Fort Fisher, in North Carolina, sealed up Wilmington, the only port of entry for supplies left to the Confederates. They were by this time reduced to paying 10 pounds per pound for coffee; to a condition in which sugar, butter, and white bread were beyond the reach of all except the wealthy. At the close of the year the helpless position of the Southern cause was demonstrated in Sherman's famous "March to the Sea." Starting from Atlanta on November 16th, 1864, that able general, heading 60,000 men, made his way to the coast at Savannah by a march of 300 miles, occupying five weeks, during which the railways had been broken up, the country laid waste, and the whole region proved to be destitute of all human beings save women, children, and old or disabled men.

At the opening of 1865, Sheridan, commanding 10,000 splendid cavalry, joined Grant before Petersburg. Lee's retreat from Virginia was cut off in all directions, and Sherman, moving up from the south, captured Charleston, Columbia, and Raleigh, in the Carolinas. On April 2nd and 3rd Grant and Sheridan made a general attack along the whole line of Lee's front, breaking through the intrenchments, taking thousands of prisoners, and finally capturing Petersburg and Richmond. After four years of civil war the enemy's capital was won, with a loss to the conquerors, in the Potomac campaigns alone, of probably 200,000 men. From first to last, in various "Armies of the Potomac," about 750,000 men had been employed on the Virginian campaigns by the Federals. The whole history of war has no such record. On April 9th, 1865, the gallant Lee, hurrying westwards with a few thousand men, the sole remains of his splendid force, was hemmed in and compelled to surrender, at Appomattox Court-house, south of the James river, near Lynchburg. Grant accorded the most generous treatment to the conquered, and it may be stated, in general, that no civil war ever ended in a way so honourable to the victors for the clemency shown to the vanquished. The Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, was captured in Georgia, imprisoned for a time, and then released. The colossal contest had caused the death, in battle, or by disease, or as the effect of wounds, or the crippling for life, of about 1,000,000 able-bodied men on both sides. The Union debt had risen to the enormous sum of nearly $3,000,000,000, or nearly 600,000,000 pounds sterling.

The exultant joy of the Federals was turned into mourning by the assassination, on April 15th, 1865, of the excellent President Lincoln, recently elected for a second term. This abominable crime was due to a fanatic named John Wilkes Booth, who shot his victim as he sat in his box, with his wife and friends, at a theatre in Washington. The Secretary of State, Mr. Seward, lying ill at home, was attacked at the same time, but not fatally wounded. Booth was pursued and killed by the troops, and certain accomplices were hanged or imprisoned. Evidence showed a plot against all the leading members of the government; there was no trace whatever of any connivance on the part of the late Confederate leaders. The dead statesman left behind him the stainless memory of a true patriot, ranking second only to Washington in the history of the Union. He had risen, like some other Presidents, from a lowly position as a manual labourer to the highest post in his country's service, and will live for ever in the remembrance and high regard of his countrymen. We note that, by an amendment to the constitution, slavery within the United States had been prohibited in the previous December. The burden of power was taken up by the Vice-President, Andrew Johnson, until 1869, and the great work of reconstructing the Union began. In May an amnesty was granted, with certain exceptions, to former "secessionists" who now took the oath of allegiance to the United States. In June another "amendment" gave the freedmen, the former slaves, the right of citizenship. West Virginia (the loyal portion of that State) had become the 35th State of the Union in 1863, and Nevada, in the following year, was admitted as the 36th.

In July, 1866, the first serviceable Atlantic cable, laid by the Great Eastern, established telegraphic connection with Europe, a fact of immense importance mainly due to the skill and energy of Mr. Cyrus W. Field, a man of Massachusetts who had for years devoted himself to the work of "mooring the New World alongside the Old." Congress well awarded him, on complete and final success after a failure in 1858, a gold medal and the thanks of the nation, an honour followed by his receipt of the " Grand Medal" at the Paris Exhibition of 1867. In that year Nebraska entered the Union as the 37th State, and the territory was largely augmented by the purchase of Alaska, in the north-west of the continent, from Russia, for the sum of over $7,000,000, or nearly 1,500,000 pounds sterling, the area of the region being nearly 600,000 square miles. The seceded States were, by degrees, readmitted to the Union under a "Reconstruction Act" of 1867, on condition that delegates of "the male citizens... of whatever race, colour, or previous condition," should frame a constitution, to be ratified by the people and approved by Congress. In 1869 the late victorious general, Ulysses Grant, a Republican, became President (being re-elected for a second term) until 1877. In his first year of office another "amendment" settled that "the right to vote shall not be denied or abridged on account of race, colour, or previous condition of servitude," or of any difference of education or religion. This enactment was afterwards the cause of much trouble at elections in the Southern States, where the whites were naturally jealous of negro equality in political affairs. In 1869 also the two oceans were joined, and San Francisco was brought within a week's journey of New York, by the opening of the Pacific Railway. In 1870 the population of the Union was found to exceed 38,500,000. The Southern States were rapidly recovering from the disasters and devastation of the civil war. In 1871, as we have seen, the Treaty of Washington peacefully ended, through arbitration, the great dispute with Great Britain concerning the "Alabama claims," and in the same year the greatest fire of modern times destroyed a large portion of the great city of Chicago, clearing 3,000 acres of ground, and rendering 100,000 persons homeless. In 1876 the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia commemorated the signing of the Declaration of Independence at that great city, the celebration taking place in the friendly presence, and with the hearty greetings, of British commissioners. The President from 1877 to 1881 was Mr. Rutherford Hayes; the census of 1880 gave an astonishing proof of progress in a population found to exceed 50,000,000. The President who came into office in March, 1881, was Mr. James Garfield, a man descended from one of the Puritans who emigrated to Massachusetts in early Stuart days, and son of the daughter of a Huguenot family which settled in New England in 1685. Like Lincoln, this man of truly noble ancestry passed by sheer merit from a lonely log-cabin to the White House at Washington, a grand proof of what is open to energy, ability, and high character in the world's greatest republic. Toiler with his hands; tutor; preacher; lawyer; commander of a regiment of Ohio volunteers on the outbreak of the civil war; brigadier-general for success in driving the Confederates out of Kentucky; major-general for gallantry at the great battle of Chickamauga in September, 1863; member of Congress, where he won distinction on military and financial questions; leader of the Republican party in the House; Senator of the United States: these were the successive steps in the instructive and interesting career which was ended in September, 1881, from the effects of a revolver-shot fired in the previous July by a disappointed office-seeker. The dying President, during his many weeks of lingering, was regarded with the deepest anxiety and sympathy throughout the civilised world. The Vice-President, Mr. Arthur, held office as President for the remainder of the term. Garfield had, on assuming office, taken up the important cause of civil service reform, thereby alienating a powerful section of his own party. Under President Arthur, in 1883, the Civil Service Act introduced the principle of compulsory competitive examination.