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In this election year, I thought it might be interesting if my "History Briefs" for summer and fall were taken from the election year of 1864 - a year that many historians consider to be the most important in our history.

Would Lee ever falter? Was Grant a butcher? Could Sherman take Atlanta? Would the North lose its patience with the war? Could Lincoln be reelected?

The reelection of Lincoln, as we know, was anything but certain and, although in Grant he had the leader he always needed, Lee still held the winning hand that spring and early summer causing unprecedented Union casualties in the Wilderness and at Cold Harbor. The war was not yet going well and as it went so would Lincoln go.

By late August, Lincoln believed he would not be reelected and even had his cabinet sign an unseen memo he wrote to that effect, pledging that they would have to do all they could to win the war before the opposing party, led by George McClellan as their presidential candidate, took office. Lincoln believed the Democrats would negotiate an end to the war (as they said they would in their platform), leaving the nation divided.

In researching those times I came to believe that it would be a good idea to let the people involved tell the story of those deciding days for themselves - through their letters, memos and diary entries. I hope you agree.

Their words represent snippets of what was happening, and the feelings about these events as they took place - they take us back there to see through their writers' eyes and words, the hope, despair, joy and sorrow of that election year.

Although it's always tempting to find parallels between those times and these, none was intended in selecting the words used in the briefs - I'll leave any comparisons to the reader.

My source for the briefs is an excellent book - Eyewitness History of the Civil War edited by Joe Kirchberger.

August…

“Except for what Farragut had already accomplished on the Mississippi, it would have been considered a foolhardy experiment for wooden vessels to attempt to pass so close to one of the strongest forts (Morgan) on the coast, but when the forts were added the knowledge of the strength of the (enemy’s) ram and the supposedly dead character of the torpedoes, it may be imagined that the coming event impressed the person taking his first glimpse of naval warfare as decidedly hazardous and unpleasant.”

- Union Lieutenant John C. Kinney
assistant to Admiral David G. Farragut before
the attack at Mobile Bay, Alabama, August 4, 1864

“The (Federal) Monongahela, going at full speed, struck the Tennessee (the Confederate Flagship) amidships, a blow that would have sunk almost any vessel of the Union Navy, but which inflicted not the slightest damage on the solid iron hull of the ram… The two flagships (then) approached each other bow to bow, iron against the oak (Hartford)... The other vessels of the fleets were unable to do anything for the defense of the Admiral. It was a thrilling moment for the fleet, for it was evident that if the ram struck the Hartford, the latter must sink. But for the two vessels to strike fairly, bows on, would probably have involved the destruction of both. The Tennessee slightly changed her course; the port bow of the Hartford met the port bow of the ram and the ships grated against each other. The Hartford poured her whole port broadside against the ram, but the solid shot merely dented the side and bounded into the air.”

- Union Lieutenant John C. Kinney
assistant to Admiral David G. Farragut
on the Battle of Mobile Bay, August 5, 1864
as quoted in Wheeler's “Voices of the Civil War

“Realizing the impossibility of directing the firing of the guns without the use of the rudder, and that the ship (Confederate Tennessee) had been rendered utterly helpless, I went to the lower deck and informed the wounded admiral (Buchanan) of her condition, and that I had not been able to bring a gun to bear upon any of our antagonists for nearly half an hour, to which he replied. “Well, Johnson, if you cannot do them any further damage. You had better surrender.”

- Confederate Captain James T. Johnson
second-in-command of the CSS Tennessee
during the Battle of Mobile Bay, August 5, 1864
as quoted in Wheeler's “Voice of the Civil War”
 

“This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be reelected. Then it will be my duty to so cooperate with the President elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration as he will have secured his selection on such grounds that he cannot possibly save it afterwards.”

- Abraham Lincoln
in a memo presented to his Cabinet that he asked
members to sign without reading, August 23, 1864

July…

“Here is the Potomac Army at a seemingly dead stand. No more flank movements practicable. Richmond is not yet captured, nor soon likely to be. General Grant finds it a far different matter, pushing aside Western armies and capturing Vicksburg to conquering Lee and entering Richmond.”

- Union Chaplin A. M. Stewart
July 1, 1864
from “Camp, March and Battlefield”

“Forming the brigade on Pennsylvania Avenue, we marched through Georgetown with bands playing and colors flying. The streets being thronged with people to see us off. Reaching Fort Reno, soon after orders were given to keep awake and have an eye on the supposed rebels in front Had the rebels made an attempt on Washington that night, nothing could have saved it as there were no troops around the city, but our brigade, and we were supposed to be unfit for active service. The morning of the 11th, guns were heard in our front and long lines of dust could be seen rising above the tree tops showing that large bodies of troops were on the march. Reinforcements now commenced to arrive, both white and black. Several large houses that stood in our front, and would have afforded protection to rebel sharpshooters, were burnt down.”

- Union soldier Alford Bellard
on defending Washington against Jubal Early’s approaching army, July, 1864
from “Gone for a Soldier”

“General Halleck will not give orders, except as he receives them; the President will give none, and until you positively and explicitly direct what is to be done, everything will go on in the deplorable and fatal way in which it has gone on in the past week.”

- Charles Anderson Dana
assistant Secretary of War to U.S. Grant
following Jubal Early’s retreat from Washington, July 12, 1864

“It was the saddest affair I have ever witnessed in the war. Such opportunity for carrying fortifications I have never seen and do not expect again to have.

- General Ulysses S. Grant
on the great mine explosion east of Petersburg, July 30, 1864

June…

“Your order for an attack is received. I have endeavored to represent you my condition. In the present position of my line an attack by me would be simply preposterous. Not only that - an attack on the part of the enemy of any vigor, would probably carry my lines more than half their length.”

- General W. F. Smith
to George G. Meade at the Battle of Cold Harbor, June 2, 1864

“I noticed that the men were calmly writing their names and home addresses on slips of paper and pinning them on the backs of their coats, so that their dead bodies might be recognized upon the field, and their fate made known to their families at home. Such courage is more than heroic - it is sublime.”

- General Horace Porter
aide to U.S. Grant at Cold Harbor, June 2, 1864

“Grant was determined to fight the decisive battle of the war and amassed his troops and rushed them on our works amidst a storm of shot and shell that it seemed no man could stand, but they were repulsed with great slaughter. The battle, at least the main part of it, did not last more than an hour. It was the most destructive that had been fought during the war considering the length of time considering the length of time the engagement lasted.”

- Confederate soldier John O. Casler
on the Battle of Cold Harbor, June 3 1864
from his book, “Four years in the Stonewall Brigade”

“In the opening of a majority of its survivors, the Battle of Cold Harbor should never have been fought. There was no military reason to justify it. It was a dreary, dismal, bloody, ineffective close of a lieutenant generals first campaign with the Army of the Potomac, and corresponded in all its essential features with what had preceded it.”

- Lieutenant Colonel Martin T. McMahon
on the Battle of Cold Harbor, June 1-3, 1864

“I do not allow myself to suppose that either the Convention or the League have concluded to decide that I am either the greatest or the best man in America, but rather they have concluded it is not best to swap horses while crossing the river, and have further concluded that I am not so poor a horse that they might not make a botch of it in trying to swap.”

- Abraham Lincoln
addressing a delegation of the National Union League
following his renomination at Baltimore, June, 1864

“Of Andrew Johnson is enough to say that there is no man in the country unless it be Mr. Lincoln himself whom the rebels more cordially hate."

- Harpers Weekly
after the Republican Convention in Baltimore, June 23, 1864

May...

“This advance by General Grant, inaugurated the seventh attack in the “On to Richmond” drama played by the armies of the Union. The first advance, led by General McDowell, had been repelled by Beauregard and Johnson Bull Run; the next five, under the leadership respectively of McClellan, Pope, Burnside, Hooker and Meade, had been repelled by Lee.”

- General John B. Gordon
before the Battle of the Wilderness, May 1864
from “Reminiscences of the Civil War"

“Whether you shall remain at the head of the Treasury Department is a question which I do not allow myself to consider from any standpoint other than my judgment of the public service, in that view, I do not perceive occasion for change.”

- Abraham Lincoln
to Secretary Salmon P. Chase, who had appeared
as a potential rival candidate for the presidency

“We reached Chancellorsville and bivouacked near the blackened ruins of the old Chancellor House. Weather stained remnants of clothing, rusty gun barrels and bayonets, tarnished brasses and equipments with bleaching bones and grinning skulls, marked this memorable field. In the cavity of one of the skulls was a nest with three speckled eggs of a field bird. In yet another was a wasp nest. Life in embryo in the skull of death.”

- Union soldier Warren Lee Goss
on the Battle of the Wilderness, May 4 1864
from “Recollections of a Private”

“What awful, what sickening scenes! No, we have ceased to get sick at such sights. Here, a friend struck dead by a ball through the head or heart. Another dropping his gun quickly clapping his hands upon his breast stomach or bowels, through which a Minnie has passed and walking slowly to the rear to lie down and die…many more with bullet holes from which the blood is freely flowing, walking back and remarking, with a laugh somewhat distorted with pain, ‘See the rascals have hit me.’”

- Chaplin A. M. Stewart
on the Battle of the Wilderness, May 5 1864
from “Camp, March and Battlefield"

“(General Meade): “This is a crisis that cannot be looked upon too seriously. I know Lee’s methods well by past experience; he will throw his whole army between us and the Rapidan and cut us off completely from our communications.” The general (Grant) rose to his feet, took his cigar out of his mouth, turned to the officer and replied, with a degree of animation, which he seldom manifested: “Oh, I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to… Go back to your command, and try to think what we are going to do ourselves, instead of what he is going to do.”-

- General Horace Porter
on the Battle of the Wilderness, May 5 1864
from “Campaigning with Grant"

“Grant's military standing with the enlisted men this day hung on the direction we turned to the Chancellorsville House. If to the left (Northward) in retreat, he was to be rated with Meade and Hooker and Burnside and Pope. At the Chancellorsville House we turned to the right (towards Spotsylvania.) Our spirits rose. The enlisted men understood the flanking movement. That night we were happy.”

- Union soldier Frank Wilkeson
on the Battle of the Wilderness, May 7 1864
from “Recollections of a Private Soldier in the Army of the Potomac”