USA > New Hampshire > Hillsborough County > Manchester > Semi-centennial of the city of Manchester, New Hampshire, 1896 > Part 11
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There is said to have been a time in the Sunday fighting at Chancellorsville when the Confederates were completely exhausted, and that Hooker had the victory in the hollow of his hand. It is true that Hooker was wounded, but there should have been others to watch the gauge of battle when the life of a nation was trembling in the balance. A vigorous onslaught by one or two of the three idle corps held in reserve and the victory had been won. After that the Confederates rested complacently on the heights of Fredericksburg. Alas! the campaign from Antietam to Gettysburg was an almost uninterrupted series of blunders and costly defeats. Happily General Burnside was speedily relieved and Hooker was retired at his own request. And it should be said here that both of these meritorious officers assumed the command against their inclinations. Surely our government and people were sorely disciplined, for the star of victory was but slowly developed from among the vitals of a bitter experience. Yet there was a silver lining to the cloud o'er land and sea. There was a light on the Hill of Zion that gave promise of relief. General Grant, February 6, 1862, had captured Fort Henry, and February 16, Fort Donelson, with fifteen thousand prisoners and eighteen thousand stand of arms. And then, April 6-7, the terrific battle of Shiloh was fought, and though the fates were at first against us we held the field with tre- mendous slaughter. Then there was the capture of New Orleans by the army and navy, under Butler and Farragut, and the far-reaching victory of the little "Monitor" over the iron-clad "Merrimac" in Hampton roads. These broke the monotony of defeat
and relieved the Atlantic cities of a terrible nightmare. They lifted the dark veil of 1862, and by the end of this year one million three hundred thousand volunteers had been called for, and our navy included six hundred vessels, such as they were.
It seemed to me that these events were more real to us in Washington than to our fellow citizens in remoter places. We saw the bronzed battalions and the long ambu- lance trains with their ghastly loads of maimed and dying heroes. We visited the hospitals, and were in daily contact with the repulsive features of black-visaged war. They were ever present factors in our daily lives. We listened to the tales of battle from those who were fresh from the carnage. We had actual eye to eye contact with men who had endured the long ennui of the camp, the fatigue, the picket, the trench, the long march, the assault, the bivouac, the reveille, the cold and the heat, and all that. But why epitomize this tangle of horrors except that it brings us into the open, into the glad sunshine of a better day.
Again the Army of the Potomac, now under the command of Gen. George B. Meade, is in rapid motion northward to confront Lee on the soil of Pennsylvania, and there was a sentiment among us, feverish though it might be, that as the arena was shifted, so the Virginia blight was lifted. And so it was, for on the morning of July 4, after a three days' battle such as this continent had never seen, there came the glad tidings of victory, and yet the Confederates got away again with a loss of thirty thousand men to our loss of twenty-three thousand. And on that same ever glorious day Vicksburg on the Mississippi surrendered to General Grant with thirty-one thousand six hundred prisoners, one hundred seventy-two cannon, sixty thousand muskets, and vast stores of ammunition. This great event was followed five days later by the fall of Port Hudson with six thousand prisoners, and henceforth the Father of Waters flowed unvexed to the sea. Our hearts were filled with rejoicing, and confidence was restored where there
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had been despondeney, if not despair. Military experts tell us that this great battle of Gettysburg was the turning point of the war, and though some of the fiercest battles of modern times were afterwards fought, yet from this time the slaveholders' rebellion was on the wane.
Then came the terrible fighting at Chickamauga, the romance of battle in the clouds on Lookout mountain, where Hooker led in the great Chattanooga campaign, and the deadly peril of Burnside at Knoxville, relieved by Sherman. General Grant was made lieutenant-general March 9, 1864, was assigned to the command of all the armies Mareh 12, and established his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac at Culpepper, Va., March 26, and between Washington and Richmond he found the relative positions of the contending armies practically the same as at the beginning of the war. It will thus be seen that General Grant did not come to the relief in Virginia until over eight months after Gettysburg. Yet the work that remained to be done was the work of a military giant, and as such he grandly filled the bill.
The time had now come when, if ever, the great rebellion must be literally stamped out of existenee. The drain of blood and treasure had been frightful, and was daily augmenting, and there was an evil and ever-growing disposition abroad to recognize the independence of the Confederaey. General Grant at once proceeded to formulate plans eovering vast operations over a wide area. There was to be a concerted forward movement east and west, aided by the navy when practicable, converging to a common center, and that eenter was Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy. In pursuance of this plan General Sherman, May 7, with ninety thousand men, started from Chatta- nooga, his objective point being Atlanta, Ga., and he defeated the great Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston in a series of battles at Dalton, Allatoona Pass, New Hope Church, Kenesaw Mountain, Jonesboro, and others hardly less famous, and by July 17 he was ready to begin the direct attack on Atlanta, which place he entered September 2 by outflanking the enemy with severe fighting. July 17 General Hood superseded Johnston, and with a large Confederate force he attempted to cut our lines of communi- cation with Chattanooga and regain possession of Tennessee. Sherman turned back long enough to administer a severe defeat to Hood at Allatoona Pass, drove him westward into Alabama, left two corps of his army to reinforce General Thomas at Nashville, and turned Hood over to the tender mereies of the latter officer. He then returned to Atlanta, and November 14, with sixty thousand men, eut loose from his base of supplies, destroyed railroads, bridges, and telegraph wires, and plunged into the heart of the enemy's country in a grand, wild march for the sea, subsisting on the enemy, and the swath he eut was forty miles wide. We next hear of him December 14, before Savannah, and the Confederaey was again eut in half. In these long weeks it was a common saying, "We know the hole he went in at, but where will he come out?"
It is now well established that our military experts in Washington were opposed to this apparently hazardous movement, and only General Grant seems to have been a con- senting party. But Sherman's march from Atlanta to the sea made him not only a continental star, but gave him a world-wide celebrity. In this same month. December 14-16, General Thomas inflicted a erushing defeat upon Hood at Nashville, Tenn .. and the ground covered by Sherman was thus made doubly secure. After a month at Savannah, Sherman resumed his mareh of four hundred miles along the seacoast, his objective point being Goldsboro, N. C. He fought two battles in which he defeated his old antag- onist, General Johnston, who had been reinstated after the annihilation of Hood's army by General Thomas. General Grant was personally present with the Army of the Potomac, nominally under the command of General Meade, the hero of Gettysburg. On the night of May 4, Grant erossed the Rapidan and plunged into the Wilderness with one hundred twenty-five thousand men. In thirty days he had lost forty thousand men in killed, wounded, and missing. The Confederates fought desperately from behind
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their earthworks, and no longer came out voluntarily into the open. The battle of Spottsylvania Court House, May 12, is said to have been one of the bloodiest battles ever fought in all time, and that was only one of the fierce and bloody battles from the Wilderness to Petersburg, for the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Hanover Court House, Cold Harbor, Mechanicsville, and the Chickahominy are forever memorable in the annals of war. At the indecisive battle of Cold Harbor, June 3, eight thousand of our men were slain in less than twenty minutes. After this deadly grapple Grant swung his army to the south side of the James river, and laid siege to Petersburg, the key to Richmond, Lee defending.
Sherman fought and flanked his great adversary from Chattanooga to Atlanta, but Johnston always appeared in his front at the decisive hour. Grant fought and flanked Lee from the dreary Wilderness to the close, but Lee never failed to discern the trend of his strategy. However rapid and skillful our movements and combinations might be, the Confederate army was sure to be encountered at the critical moment when success seemed assured. It was the play of giants and a carnival of death. General Sheridan came east with Grant, and it was not long before he commanded the finest army of cavalrymen in the world. It is said of him that he was never beaten in the field, and twice and thrice he snatched victory from the very jaws of defeat. He chased General Early up and down the Virginia valleys, and his brilliant victory at Winchester, Va., October 9, won with a retreating and defeated army, which he is said to have met on horseback, will live in song and story while history lasts. He covered the rear and flanks of our army. He made brilliant and successful raids into the enemy's country, in which he destroyed their stores and substance and cut their lines of communication. He made a bold and well-nigh successful dash at Richmond, and safely rejoined the army. He devastated the Shenandoah valley and other fertile sections of Virginia so that no rebel armies could subsist there, and it may be said of him that he was Grant's right arm in the closing scenes of the war.
Early in July the enemy sought to create a diversion, and release Grant's hold on Petersburg by sending General Early with ten thousand men to menace Washington. This Confederate force finally settled down at Silver Springs, a near suburb, on the fine estate of Montgomery Blair. £ Communication with the North was at once suspended and Washington was invested.
Rebel sympathizers inside the city were numerous, and they were in constant communication with the enemy. No rumor of assault and capture of the outer works, however absurd, was deemed unworthy of attention. The defenses were largely manned by the Invalid corps, but their strength was hardly suffi- cient to hold the city against a vigorous and well-directed assault in the absence of reinforcements, and in this emergency companies and regiments were formed among the government clerks for the common defense. The weather was intensely hot, and the company to which I belonged took its first lesson in the manual of arms under the shade trees of Judiciary square. July 11, I think it was, we were on duty out Seventh street, near Fort Stevens, from which the Confederate lines were plainly visible, and they were carefully inspected by President Lincoln. Presently the grand old Sixth corps of our army, under General Wright, came tramping by. A quick passage up the Potomac had been made, and marching straight out to the front those hardy veterans, deployed in line of battle, advanced upon the enemy, and the siege was raised, for Early was quick to recognize the character of the men who now confronted him. The casu- alties were not large, though a considerable number were killed, but the relief to a beleaguered city was something to remember by those who were there.
It has been related to me by a regular army officer, in high authority, that the Confederate officers found a choice and abundant stock of liquors in Mr. Blair's cellar, and to this fact was due their delay in making the attack before reinforcements came. Thus ended Early's raid on Washington. There was an elenient of real danger in the
LINCOLN.
STATUE PRESENTED BY JOHN ROGERS TO THE MANCHESTER PUBLIC LIBRARY.
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situation, obscured to some extent by military operations of greater magnitude. It was confidently expected that Early's command would be destroyed, but in the conflict of orders issued from the war department to the several Union commanders here and there Early was lost sight of for several days, during which, July 30, he sacked and burned the defenseless town of Chambersburg in Pennsylvania, and gathered a consid- erable store of provisions in western Maryland. The situation became so complicated that General Grant secretly left the front and hastened to the Monocacy to ascertain from General Hunter the whereabouts of the enemy, and with his marvelous military instinct he soon located his game. At his earnest request, backed by the president, Sheridan was placed in command of all the forces for the defense of Washington, and from that hour a new order of things obtained. Early went whirling up the valley. But he had thrown the war department into a temporary panic of which it was said that Washington had been more in danger of being sacrificed by her friends than by the assaults of her enemies. And here I am tempted to read a dispatch from President Lincoln to General Grant. It was as follows:
Washington, D. C., August 3, 1864.
Lieutenant-General Grant, City Point, Va .:- I have seen your dispatch in which you say "I want Sheridan put in command of all the troops in the field, with instructions to put himself south of the enemy, and follow him to the death. Wherever the enemy goes let our troops go also."
This I think is exactly right as to how our forces should move; but please look over the dispatches you may have received from here, ever since you made that order, and discover, if you can, that there is any idea in the head of any one here of "putting our army south of the enemy," or "following him to the death" in any direction. I repeat to you, it will neither be done nor attempted, unless you watch it every day and hour, and force it.
A. LINCOLN.
It was thought in the war department that Sheridan was too young. President Lincoln was the marvel of the war. He seems to have been raised up by Providence for the great emergency, not from affluence, but from a lowly state. He was charitable, gentle hearted, and just. He was earnest and honest, and ever ready to bestow praise where praise was due. He bided his time and his judgments were almost intuitive. With an unslfish devotion and a rare singleness of purpose he consecrated himself to the cause of humanity, and his fame will endure forever.
The practical situation at the close of the campaign of 1864 was that Grant had the Confederacy by the throat, with Sherman in a position to intercept the enemy should he break away. Some time after the re-election of Mr. Lincoln active operations were suspended for the winter, with the enemy holding Petersburg, and our army drawn up close to his lines watching every movement lest Lee escape. Meanwhile Sherman continued his march from Savannah to Goldsboro, taking Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, in his route, and compelling the evacuation of Charleston and other coast cities of the Confederacy, and finally went into bivouac at Goldsboro, March 21, 1865. It now only remained to close in upon Lee, for it can hardly be said that General Johnston was even a serious menace to Sherman, who experienced no difficulty in holding him as in a vise. Sheridan was preparing to cut the railroads and canals by which the Confed- erates were alone supplied, for by this time the coast cities and blockade running ports were in our possession as the result of a series of splendid naval operations achieved in co-operation with our land forces. The last resource of the rebellion was now verging to a point of collapse. Already the Confederate peace commissioners were within our lines near Petersburg, negotiating for an armistice, but the abolition of slavery had now become an ultimatum. The southern people had at last seen the writing on the wall. The great fear was that Lee would escape from Petersburg, form a junction with John- ston, and fall upon Sherman with their united forces. To prevent this Sheridan was sent out to act the lion's part in Lee's path. Sherman was ready for anything.
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General Grant's closing eampaign opened late in Mareh. Sheridan fought a severe cavalry battle at Dinwiddie Court House, another near Hatcher's Run, and April first he fought a decisive battle at Five Forks, capturing six thousand prisoners. The south side railroad was broken, and April 2 the Union forces under Grant and Meade assaulted and carried the outer works of Petersburg, capturing twelve thousand prisoners. This rendered the further occupation of Richmond untenable, and Lee evacuated Peters- burg. Jeff Davis received this intelligence while attending church in Richmond, and with his trusted followers he fled from the Confederate capital with such stores and archives as he was able to take along. The city was fired by the retiring Confederates, and on the third day of April, at a quarter past eight o'clock in the morning, our forces entered the citadel of the rebellion, and at onee proceeded to quench the vandal flames. Lee retreated in a southwesterly course for Danville, where he had calculated upon secur- ing provisions and such transportation as would result in a junction with Johnston in North Carolina; but Sheridan had preceded him. At Sailor's Creek, April 6, he attacked Lee, capturing seven thousand prisoners, and there were other engagements at Detonville and Farmville. Finally, April 9, surrounded, nearly starved, and unable to proceed, Lee surrendered what remained of his army at Appomattox Court House, a small hamlet about thirty miles southwest of Richmond. This event was followed April 26 by the surrender of Johnston and his army to General Sherman. Lee surrendered about thirty thousand men and twenty thousand more straggled in afterwards to avail them- selves of General Grant's generous terms, and they were also paroled. Our loss in killed, wounded, and missing, beginning with the Wilderness and including General Butler's Army of the James, was eighty thousand men, and it is estimated that Grant captured in battle seventy thousand of the enemy. Thus ended the war of 1861, and it would tax the pen of a St. Paul to fitly characterize the scenes, the feelings, the rejoic ings of a mighty people. As to the results, perhaps I ean do no better than to quote the language of the historian:
"It had eost hundreds of thousands of lives, and thousands of millions of dollars; it had settled the question of slavery and of the stability of the Union; and take it for all in all, it must be pronouneed the most stupendous conflict in all history."
For some time before the end it had become a serious question with the more thoughtful and philosophical as to what would follow the last convulsion of organized resistance to federal authority. Many were fearful that a guerilla warfare would suc- eeed, extending over a period of years, in the unspeakable agony of which our institu- tions would suffer a permanent blight, if not a total eelipse. And yet the boldness, the skill, the dauntless eourage of our erring brothers on the other side, isolated, torn, and bleeding at every pore, challenged our admiration if not our sympathy, for we are bound together by the traditions of history and by a common lineage. And after such a war, that such a people, numbering twelve million souls, inhabiting a garden spot of eight hundred thousand square miles, could again be brought into harmony and fraternal fellowship with their vietors, and become their generous rivals in a race of unex- ampled prosperity, under one flag and one government, is a tribute to the race that finds no parallel in history.
The true relation of the great American war of 1861 to the eause of human liberty can hardly be estimated for years-to come. We are yet too near for correct analysis. It was a erisis, an epoch in the affairs of men, and its real significance will become more and more apparent from generation to generation. If plutoeracy and democracy can harmonize their aims and interests the republic should endure for centuries. Out of the barbarism of mediaeval times our fathers laid the foundation of the grandest super- structure of human government in the world's history, and ecmented it with the best philosophy of the ages. It has dazzled mankind. It has been a boon, a joy, an inspira- tion, a beacon, a perennial hope among the lowly of the earth, and a demonstration of the
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brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God. Our political constitution has been heralded as something more than human and somthing less than divine. But it con- cealed a fatal defect that human philosophy should have detected, and that divine authority could not tolerate, for it sought to confer a joint heirship upon the institutions of human slavery and civil liberty.
Manchester, whose Semi-Centennial life as a city we now celebrate, honored herself by sending two thousand eight hundred twenty-eight men to serve in the army and navy in defense of the Stars and Stripes. There were privates and subalterns. There were colonels and brigadiers, and sailors too. There was one among them who went forth in the humble capacity of a regimental quartermaster. To his untiring vigilance the boys in blue were indebted for their coffee and hardtack after many a hard-fought battle. His charge may have been forty miles long in the enemy's country, but the vast stores of an army in the field were safely delivered at the front when needed. Who can estimate his service in the dark hours of the Wilderness. I refer, of course, to our fellow citizen Richard N. Batchelder, quartermaster of the Army of the Potomac, and late quartermaster general of the United States Army." We welcome his return.
Veterans of the Grand Army :- It was your high privilege to take part in this great struggle, and your service is a legacy to your country forever. It is therefore befitting that we of Manchester should recapitulate, on occasions like this, the events to which all America is indebted for the blessings of a reunited country, and the benign institu- tions of civil and religious liberty. Without these there would be little left worth celebrating.
Other patriotic addresses were made by Hon. Martin A. Haynes of Lakeport, George S. Fox of New Bedford, Mass., Hon. John G. Crawford, Rev. T. Eaton Clapp, and Rev. W. H. Morrison.
CAVALRY DRILLS.
An important feature of the program for the Semi-Centennial week was the exhibition drills given by F Troop, Third United States Cavalry, Capt. George A. Dodd, Lieuts. D. S. Tate and J. S. Ryan. Through the intervention of Gen. R. N. Batchelder and the congressional delegation, this distinguished troop was ordered to march from its headquarters at Fort Ethan Allen, Burlington, Vt., to Manchester, to take part in the celebration. Captain Dodd and his command, consisting of fifty-one men, left Burlington on August 28, and arrived in Manchester on Sunday, September 6, at noon. The troop was met at Goffstown on Saturday by General Batchelder and Lieut. Col. Harry B. Cilley of the First Regiment, N. H. N. G. On Sunday morning the troop was met on the road by Lieutenant-Colonel Cilley and Quartermaster-Sergeant Charles B. Bodwell, and escorted to city hall, where Mayor Clarke officially welcomed the cavalry to the city. The troop went into camp on Maple street, near Varick park. The regulars gave exhibition drills each afternoon during the week, to the great delight of crowds varying from five thousand to fifteen thousand people. The drills comprised the most daring feats of rough riding, hurdle jumping, fencing, sabre exercises, wrestling, exercises with carbines and revolvers, etc., the various evolutions eliciting the highest enthusiasm.
The officers and members of the troop were the recipients of numerous social courtesies from military gentlemen of the city, and citizens, and on Thursday a banquet was tendered the corps at the Manchester House by prominent citizens. Upon this occasion Mayor Clarke took occasion to express to the troop the deep gratitude of the city of Manchester for the excellent entertainment which they had furnished the citizens and their guests during the celebration of the Semi-Centennial anniversary. They had provided an entertainment in their exhibition drills which had proved one of the superb features of the week, and the city felt deeply indebted to them for their services, which contributed so greatly to the success of the week.
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