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CHAPTER XXX.

THE Union generals waited anxiously for the spring of 1864. Military operations with the opening of the season were first begun in the West. Early in February General Sherman left Vicksburg with the purpose of destroying the railways of eastern Mississippi. He advanced to Meridian, where, on the 15th of the month, he began the destruction of the tracks from Mobile to Corinth, and from Vicksburg to Montgomery. This work was carried on with fearful rapidity for a distance of a hundred and fifty miles. Bridges were burned, locomotives and cars destroyed and vast quan. tities of cotton and corn given to the flames. Sherman had expected to be joined at Meridian by a Federal cavalry force under General Smith, but the latter officer was met on the advance by the Confederate cavalry under Forrest and was driven back to Memphis. Sherman, disappointed by this failure, returned to Vicksburg, while Forrest continued his raid northward into Tennessee. On the 24th of March. he captured Union City, and then pressed on to Paducah, Kentucky, where he attacked Fort Anderson, but was repulsed. Turning back into Tennessee, he assaulted Fort Pillow, seventy miles north of Memphis. The place was defended by five hundred and sixty soldiers, about half of whom were negroes. Forrest, demanding a surrender and being refused, carried the fort by storm, and nearly all the negro soldiers were slain.

To the spring of 1864 belongs the story of the Red River Expedition of General Banks. The plan of this campaign embraced the movement of a strong land force up Red

River, supported by a fleet under Admiral Porter. The ob. ject was the capture of Shreveport, Louisiana. The Federal army advanced in three divisions, under Generals Smith, Banks and Steele. On the 14th of March Smith's division reached Fort de Russy, which was taken by assault. On the 16th Alexandria was occupied by the Federals, and on the 19th Natchitoches was captured. At this point the road departed from the river, and the army and the gunboats were separated. The fleet proceeded up the stream towards Shreveport and the land forces whirled off in a circuit to the left.

On the 8th of April the Union advance approaching the town of Mansfield was suddenly attacked by the Confederates in full force. The Federals were completely routed and were pursued as far as Pleasant Hill. Here a second battle was fought, in which the hard fighting of the division of General Smith saved the army from complete rout. Nearly three thousand men, twenty pieces of artillery and the supply train of the Federals were lost in these disastrous battles.

Meanwhile the Confederates planted batteries on the banks of Red River to prevent the return of the fleet. When the flotilla dropped down as far as Alexandria no further progress could be made on account of the low stage of the river. The gunboats could not pass the rapids. In this emergency Colonel Bailey, of Wisconsin, constructed a dam across the river, raising the water so that the vessels could be floated over. The whole expedition broke to pieces and the fragments rolled back into the Mississippi. General Steele, hearing the news on his advance from Little Rock, withdrew in safety to his station. The whole campaign appears to have been marked with misfortune, folly and incompetency of management. General Banks was relieved of his command and superseded by General Canby.

The Civil War had now developed its own leaders. First and greatest of these on the Union side was General Ulysses S. Grant. By degrees, and through every kind of hardship and contumely, that silent and self-possessed commander had emerged from the obscurity which surrounded him at the beginning of the conflict, and now stood forth in unequaled modesty as the leading figure of the time. After Vicksburg and Chattanooga nothing could stay his progress to the command-in-chief. Congress responded to the spirit of the country by reviving the high grade of lieutenant-general and conferring it on Grant. This brought with it the appointment by the President on the 2d of March, 1864, to the command-in-chief of the land and naval forces of the United States. No fewer than seven hundred thousand Union soldiers were now to move at Grant's command. He took leave of his Western armies and repaired to Washington City, where he received his commission at the hands of the President.

On the Confederate side Robert E. Lee, the idol of his people, achieved distinction for his great military genius, which enabled him to hold out nearly four years against a vastly superior force, and not infrequently to gain victories in the face of extraordinary disadvantages. Contemporary history, that cannot be wholly impartial, places Lee below Grant as a general, but prejudices are passing rapidly, and the estimate now made gives to him a position that is sufficiently lofty, for he was greatest of the Confederacy, and the Confederacy was extinguished in amalgamation with the restored Union. The nation therefore may, in the reconciliation of sections, pronounce Grant and Lee the greatest generals of the Civil War, without disparity to either.

Now it was that the grand strategy of the war began to appear. Two great campaigns were planned for the year. The Army of the Potomac, under immediate command of

Meade and the general-in-chief, was to advance on Richmond, still defended by the Army of Northern Virginia, under Lee. General Sherman commanding the army at Chattanooga, numbering a hundred thousand men, was to march against Atlanta, which was defended by the Confederates under General Johnston. To these two great movements all other military operations were subordinated. Grant sent his orders to Sherman for the grand beginning which was destined to end the war, and the 1st of May, 1864, was fixed as the date of the advance.

Promptly on the 6th of that month General Sherman moved out of Chattanooga. At Dalton he was met by Johnston with a Confederate army sixty thousand strong. Sherman by maneuvering and fighting succeeded in turning the Confederate flank and obliged his antagonist to fall back to Resaca. At this place on the 14th and 15th of May two hard battles were fought in which the Union army was victorious. The Confederates retreated by way of Calhoun and Kingston to Dallas. At the latter place Johnston made a second stand. On the 28th of May he was attacked, outnumbered, outflanked and compelled to fall back to Lost Mountain. From this position he was forced in like manner, on the 17th of June, after three days of desultory fighting.

Johnston made his next stand at Great and Little Kenesaw Mountains. Here a line was formed, and on the 22d of June General Hood fiercely assaulted the Union center, but was repulsed with heavy losses. Five days afterwards Sherman made an assault with great audacity and attempted to carry Kenesaw by storm, but he was hurled back with a loss of nearly three thousand men. The Union commander, however, at once resumed his former tactics, outflanked his antagonist and and on the 3d of July drove him across the Chattahoochee. A week later the whole Con.

federate army was crowded back within the defenses of Atlanta.

Then followed the siege of that city. Atlanta was, after Richmond, the most important seat of power within the limits of the Confederacy. Here were located the machine shops, foundries, car works and depots of supplies upon the possession of which the Confederate cause so much depended. The government at Richmond now became deeply dissatisfied with the military policy of General Joseph E. Johnston. That cautious and skillful commander had adopted the Fabian policy of falling back before the superior forces of Sherman and of conserving as much as possible the energies of his army. This method, however, displeased President Davis, and when the siege of Atlanta was begun Johnston was deposed from command and was succeeded by the rash but daring General J. B. Hood. The opinion prevailed that the latter would fight at whatever hazard, and this view of his military character was borne out by the facts. On the 20th, 22d and 28th of July he made three successive and desperate assaults on the Union lines around Atlanta; but in each engagement the Confederates were repulsed with dreadful losses. It was in the beginning of the second of these battles that the brave General James B. McPherson, the bosom friend of Generals Grant and Sherman and the pride of the Union army, was killed while reconnoitering the Confederate lines. In the three battles just referred to Hood lost more men than Johnston had lost in all his masterly retreating and fighting between Chattanooga and Atlanta.

Around the latter city Sherman daily tightened his grip. At last by an incautious movement Hood opened his line; the Union commander thrust a column into the gap, and the immediate evacuation of Atlanta followed. On the 2d of September the city was occupied by Sherman's army.

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