America At War - Concise Histories Of U.S. Military Conflicts From Lexington To Afghanistan (13 page)

The Union commander was relentless. After Cold Harbor he again ordered Meade to move south, this time to Petersburg. This was a small town directly south of Richmond. It embraced a railroad line on which supplies were transported to both the Southern capital and Lee’s army. Take the town and the Army of Northern Virginia would have to move out into the open and fight. Grant wanted such a battle, for he was sure he could win it.

A battle did occur at Petersburg, but not of the type Grant had envisioned. Instead of a few days of assault and counterattack, as had taken place at Cold Harbor and Spotsylvania Court House, the Union army laid siege to Petersburg. For nine months Meade’s men kept Lee’s penned up. Toward the end of the siege, Union trenches extended some fifty miles. It was warfare that foreshadowed the type of fighting that would later characterize the First World War.

While Grant and the Army of the Potomac were at Petersburg, Sherman was marching through Georgia. And Franz Sigel was attempting to take control of the Shenandoah Valley. Unfortunately for the North, Sigel failed to do so. As did his replacement, General Daniel Hunter. Grant then sent Philip Sheridan to deal with the Confederates. A favorite of Grant, Sheridan was an officer who knew how to fight. He vanquished the rebels, whose commander, General Jubal A. Early, previously had moved troops across the Potomac and threatened Washington. So Grant had dispatched troops from the Army of the Potomac to the Northern capital, and Early wisely withdrew. Washington was safe, and thanks to Sheridan, the Shenandoah Valley was at last no longer in Southern hands.

During the siege of Petersburg an episode occurred worthy of mention. Union soldiers from Pennsylvania, men who had been miners before the war, proposed that a tunnel be dug under the Confederate positions, filled with explosives, and then ignited. The result would be a huge gap in the enemy’s defensive structure through which Union troops would pour. The proposal was accepted and the digging began. In overall charge of the project was one of Meade’s corps commanders, none other than Ambrose Burnside.

On July 30, 1864, eight tons of explosives were detonated, surprising the Confederates and creating a gigantic crater. But the advance of the Union soldiers was slow. The Confederates recovered, and, worst of all, Burnside’s men were unable to move out of the crater once they had entered it. The soldiers in gray poured fire downward and slaughtered the Union troops. The attack failed, with considerable loss of life. General Burnside was relieved of command and the siege continued.

By early 1865 the Confederacy was crumbling. Southern armies in Tennessee and Georgia had been defeated. The Carolinas essentially were out of the war, courtesy of Sherman as well as of General Alfred Terry and Admiral Porter. Early in January, these latter two gentlemen had led a combined army-navy task force that seized Fort Fisher outside of Wilmington. Mobile and New Orleans were under Northern control. The economy of the South was in ruins. The Union navy owned the waters offshore and on the rivers. Confederate forces—particularly the army facing Grant and Meade—were short of manpower and short of supplies. Many of Lee’s men lacked shoes. Many more had little to eat.

So the Army of Northern Virginia did what it was good at. It attacked, striking a Union position around Petersburg called Fort Stedman. The assault took place on March 25 and, as in the past, was conducted with skill and courage. But the Union troops, by now a match with their Southern counterparts, recovered and beat back the attack. Grant responded in kind. He sent Sheridan and twelve thousand men to the southeast, where, on April 1, they met up with a force commanded by George Pickett of Gettysburg fame. Sheridan’s men demolished their opponents, in the process taking five thousand prisoners. Lee’s army was disintegrating. The next day, Grant ordered a full-scale assault along the entire line of siege. Union artillery blasted away and Union infantry swarmed across the Confederate positions. It was an unstoppable tidal wave of military might, and when it was over, Robert E. Lee and his army were in full retreat.

Union forces occupied Petersburg, and on April 3, 1865, the Army of the Potomac marched into Richmond. Lee hoped to reach North Carolina, there to link up with Joseph Johnston’s remaining troops. Grant prevented this. He ordered Meade’s men to pursue the Southerners. On April 6, Sheridan caught up with the Army of Northern Virginia at Sayler’s Creek and inflicted further damage on the Confederate’s already depleted force. Lee and his army continued to flee. Three days later Union cavalry overtook them at Appomattox Court House and the Confederate general called it quits.

Grant’s terms were generous. He permitted Lee and his men, once they pledged not to take up arms against the United States, to retain their horses and go home, which is what they did. Once soldiers of the South, they were once again simply Americans. With their departure, for all practical purposes, the War Between the States was over.

Could the South have won?

Perhaps, but a Confederate victory was unlikely. The North simply had too great a material advantage. The South was largely an agrarian society, while the North, though full of farms, was replete with companies small and large that could manufacture what a nation at war required. Resources, natural and man-made, favored the North. For example, of the thirty-one thousand miles of railroad track in the United States twenty-two thousand were in the North. Of the firearms produced in the United States only 3 percent were made in the South. The North also possessed the majority of shipyards. Most telling of all were the population figures: there were twenty-two million people in the North, whereas in the South the population was but nine million, of whom four million were slaves.

Hence those states that formed the Confederacy were outmatched. The American War Between the States was far from an equal contest.

How then might the South have won?

The South might have gained independence from the federal union by doing better than it did on the battlefield. Military victory could have led to successful secession. Had Vicksburg not fallen, had Lee routed McClellan at Antietam or beaten Meade at Gettysburg, the North may well have sued for peace. If Sherman and Sheridan had failed in 1864, Lincoln in all likelihood would not have been reelected and the American union of states would probably have split in two. What if sometime in 1863 or 1864 Robert E. Lee had crushed the Army of the Potomac, had beaten it so badly that it simply disintegrated? Were that to have happened, surely the outcome of the war would have been different. But it didn’t happen. The great victory parade was held not in Richmond but in Washington.

Might Great Britain have altered the course of the war?

Official recognition of the Confederacy by Great Britain might well have produced a different outcome. In addition to legitimacy and prestige, recognition would have brought much needed supplies to the South. Even without official support, Britain at times aided the Southern cause, in one instance permitting Confederate agents to obtain eight hundred thousand British rifles. At first, before Lincoln’s determination to hold the Union together became apparent, Britain’s political elites thought the North could never take control of the 750,000 square miles the rebel states comprised. Plus, they had no love for the United States, a country many of them viewed as uncultured and a commercial threat. But they also had no desire to go to war with the United States. The British wanted the South first to win independence on its own, and then they would bestow recognition and its benefits. The South was hoping that the Union naval blockade, in preventing Southern cotton from reaching English mills, would so damage the British economy as to force the government in London to side directly and substantially with the Confederates. The blockade did hurt England’s industrial midlands but not to the degree the South had hoped. What decided the matter was the Emancipation Proclamation. Once it became evident that the North was fighting to free the slaves, while the South was rebelling in order to preserve slavery, Britain simply could not side with the Confederacy.

What happened at Gettysburg?

What happened, in essence, is that the Army of the Potomac, under the command of Major General George Meade, decisively defeated the Army of Northern Virginia. In July 1863 Meade stopped Lee’s second invasion of the North and, in so doing, inflicted heavy losses on the Confederate army. Responsibility for the defeat rests squarely on Robert E. Lee. In American history Lee is a revered figure. He was a gifted leader and a skilled commander. That he was fighting to uphold the institution of slavery seems not to have lessened the respect in which he was, and is, held. Yet his management of the Battle of Gettysburg requires a reassessment of his talents. Lee failed miserably at Gettysburg. His insistence on directly attacking the Union center on day three was crucially wrong. Pickett’s Charge was suicidal, the results catastrophic. A Union general who did what he had done would have been sacked. But Lee was not. He continued on, beloved by his men and respected—then and now—throughout the entire country.

Of course, another view of the Battle of Gettysburg shifts responsibility from Lee to others. Instead of blaming the Confederate leader, credit is given to Meade and the troops he commanded. This view is wonderfully expressed, according to Civil War historian James M. McPherson, by Pickett himself, who, when asked after the war what had led to the Confederate defeat, is said to have replied, “I always thought the Union army had something to do with it.”

How best to think about Ulysses S. Grant?

In comparison to that of Lee, Grant’s reputation suffers. Much of that stems from his less than successful years as president. Some originates with the widely held view that his approach to battle was excessively costly in blood. And his lack of success in business simply adds to his tarnished reputation.

He deserves better. True, his years in the White House were undistinguished and his talents for business were limited. But as a military commander in the War Between the States, Ulysses S. Grant had no peer. He understood the North’s need for a comprehensive strategy. And, unlike his predecessors as general in chief, he was able to implement one. His reputation as a butcher of men is unfair. As noted above, Lee had a higher rate of casualties, and as the Vicksburg campaign revealed, Grant could maneuver an army in the field as well as anyone. What his actions in the East against Lee showed was his determination to do what had to be done to wear down and eventually destroy the Army of Northern Virginia. In thinking about Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant, it’s well to remember who won.

The plain fact of the matter is that Grant was the best of the American civil war generals. That’s because he knew how to fight and, more important, how to win. He may not have looked the part—in appearance he was nondescript and in dress ordinary (he usually wore a private plain blue shirt with the stars of his rank sewn on)—but as a military commander he was superb. The American army has had no better general.

What did Philip Kearny, John Reynolds, and John Sedgwick have in common?

They were all major generals in the Union army and they were all killed in battle. During the American War Between the States high rank was no guarantee of safety. Often generals led from the front and often they were killed or wounded. Thousands more of lesser rank lost their lives. Indeed, the years 1861–1865 in the United States saw killing become a common occurrence. The battles between North and South resulted in the death of approximately 618,000 men. Then—and now—that is an enormous number. In 1865 it represented 2 percent of the U.S. population. There was hardly a town in America that did not have someone killed. The war was many things—a sectional conflict, a crusade against slavery, an effort to keep the Union together, a spur of economic growth in the North, and in the South a misguided attempt to preserve the status quo—but, above all, it was a bloodbath. Young men, boys really, marched into battle. Wearing blue or gray, they shouldered arms and advanced in the face of enemy fire. Courage was their companion, as was the angel of death. Again, 618,000 men were killed. The price of union was high, very high.

5

SPAIN

1898

As the year 1898 began, few Americans held kind thoughts toward Spain. They resented a European political presence in the Caribbean, Spain then controlling both Cuba and Puerto Rico. They identified with Cuban insurgents fighting for independence. They were repelled by accounts of Spanish brutality on the islands. Moreover, they blamed Spain for the destruction of the battleship
Maine
, which mysteriously had exploded in Havana Harbor on February 15, 1898, resulting in considerable loss of life. In all these areas American anger was encouraged by widespread newspaper reporting that faulted Spain. That the reports often exaggerated the truth seemed not to matter. Spain was the target of American ire.

So when the president of the United States, then William McKinley, called on Congress to take action, the legislators responded. On April 20, 1898, both the House of Representatives and the Senate adopted a resolution that: (1) stated that the people of Cuba were and should be free and independent, (2) directed the government of Spain to relinquish control of Cuba and to withdraw its military from the island, and (3) required the president to direct the armed forces of the United States to take steps necessary to realize the objectives laid out in (1) and (2). Further, the congressional resolution stated that save for the time necessary to rid the island of Spain, the United States had no intention of exercising sovereignty over Cuba.

Naturally enough, the government in Madrid took exception to the resolution. It withdrew its ambassador to the United States, saying the resolution was equivalent to a declaration of war. Were there any doubt as to what was intended—and there really wasn’t—Congress, at McKinley’s request, formalized its action on April 25, declaring quite specifically that a state of war existed between the United States of America and the Kingdom of Spain.

It was to be an uneven fight. Spain had neither the economic resources nor the military might to wage a successful war against the United States. The conflict would last less than four months. Casualties would be modest in number, although the consequences for the United States would be great. Senator John Hay called it “a splendid little war.” Theodore Roosevelt said it was “a bully fight.”

American strategy was straightforward. The U.S. Navy would neutralize its Spanish counterpart in the waters around Cuba and the Philippines, then blockade the Cuban coast. This would enable the army to safely invade Cuba as well as Puerto Rico and, in combat with the Spanish troops, free the islands of control by Spain.

The American navy was up to its tasks. It had several battleships, modern by the standards of the day, and a large number of well-armed cruisers. Among the latter were four ships: the
Olympia
,
the
Baltimore
, the
Boston
,
and the
Raleigh
(at that time cruisers were given names of American cities, while battleships, larger vessels with bigger guns, were named after the states). These four cruisers comprised the principal assets of the navy’s Asiatic Squadron. Based in Hong Kong, this small fleet was commanded by Commodore George Dewey. Days prior to the outbreak of war, Dewey had been instructed to make his ships ready for action. On the other side of the globe, American warships were already at sea, having been ordered by McKinley to institute a blockade of Cuba.

The U.S. Army was less well prepared. No longer the formidable force once commanded by Ulysses S. Grant, the American army at the beginning of 1898 numbered but twenty-eight thousand. This made it one-twentieth the size of Germany’s army. Moreover, as historian Edward M. Coffman has noted, the army by then was essentially a frontier constabulary. Given the absence of military threats to the United States, plus America’s traditional distrust of standing armies and her reliance on citizen-soldiers, there was no need for a larger, standing army.

Thus, when war broke out, the army had to be, and was, rapidly enlarged. While Congress authorized additional regular troops, the bulk of the increase came from volunteers. Like Lincoln before him, McKinley issued calls for the states to meet the need. The president requested two hundred thousand men be armed and trained. The states responded in full. Practically overnight, the U.S. Army became manpower rich.

But the supply system could not cope. The new troop levels overwhelmed the capacity to provide required equipment. Clothing, tents, transport, medicines, and guns were all in short supply. In both training camps and combat, U.S. troops would face shortages that made their tasks more difficult and more dangerous.

Initially, once the sea-lanes were free of Spanish warships, the army was to attack Havana, the capital city of Cuba. However, this plan was set aside when a Spanish naval squadron led by Rear Admiral Pascual Cervera y Topete evaded the blockade, dropping anchor in the harbor of Santiago de Cuba on the island’s southeastern coast. A new plan called for the Americans to land troops nearby and take the city. Once that was done, Cervera’s ships would have to sail, into the waiting guns of the U.S. Navy. Entrusted with the assignment of capturing Santiago was Major General William R. Shafter, who, as a younger man, had fought in the War Between the States. He commanded V Corps, which consisted mostly of army regulars, though several regiments of volunteers brought his total force to approximately twenty-five thousand men. Their port of embarkation was Tampa.

It was an unfortunate choice. Tampa lacked the size and equipment required to handle the men and material of V Corps. Additionally, the army no longer possessed the logistical expertise necessary to embark such a large force aboard ships. The result was several days of confusion. Eventually things got sorted out, and most of the men, but not all, and their supplies, but not all of them either, got put into the waiting vessels.

On June 14, the ships sailed. On board were 16,300 soldiers, 2,295 horses and mules, and 34 pieces of artillery. Escorting the thirty-two transports were several naval ships. Among the latter was the new battleship
Indiana
. Her big guns were ready to protect the transports from any Spanish warship that might stumble on the convoy.

George Dewey had no such big ship. As mentioned, cruisers comprised his little fleet. On learning of the declaration of war, he and his ships steamed to the Philippines (a distance of 638 miles), intent on engaging Spanish warships known to be off the waters of Manila. Like Cuba and Puerto Rico, the Philippines was a colony of Spain. Her warships, if they could, hoped to destroy the Americans. If they could not, they aimed to uphold the honor of Spain by not shrinking from a fight.

Dewey arrived at the Philippines on April 30. That night, he led his ships into Manila Bay. In line astern, at intervals of four hundred yards, with the
Olympia
in the van, the American squadron steamed toward the waiting Spanish vessels. These were seven in number and moored in such a way as to be augmented by guns ashore. Unlike the American ships, these vessels were neither modern nor heavily armed.

The next morning at 5:41, when Dewey issued his famous command to the captain of the
Olympia
, “You may fire when ready, Gridley,” the battle began. It did not last long. The attacking warships made short work of their Spanish adversaries. Dewey soon ordered his ships to cease firing and the Spaniards surrendered. Their casualties were heavy. Eight hundred and eighty-one sailors were killed or wounded. The American losses were minimal, with but nine men wounded.

News of the battle electrified the American public. Dewey became a national hero and received a promotion to rear admiral (his flagship, the USS
Olympia
, has been preserved and can be seen today in Philadelphia). Later, he helped engineer the peaceful surrender of the Spanish garrison in the city of Manila. The results of his efforts were substantial. Spain no longer held sway in the Philippines. America did.

What the United States would do with its new possession was unclear. Its purpose in sending Dewey to Manila Bay was to neutralize a Spanish naval squadron. It ended up being responsible for a vast new territory, on which a larger number of armed Philippine insurgents had rather strong views as to who should be in charge.

Far from the Philippines and several weeks after Dewey’s victory, Shafter’s V Corps was approaching Cuba. Because Santiago was well fortified, the American general chose to land his troops sixteen miles to the east, at the little town of Daiquiri. This turned out to be a poor choice. So the next day, disembarkation was moved to Siboney, farther west, toward Santiago. At neither location did the landings—they were unopposed—go particularly smoothly. But, eventually, the soldiers got ashore. The United States military was on Cuban soil.

The story is told that most of the horses in the expedition had to swim ashore, suitable landing craft not being available. Some of the horses, however, began to swim out to sea. An alert bugler, seeing where the animals were headed, sounded recall and the horses turned around and came ashore.

The soldiers at Daiquiri and Siboney were not the first U.S. troops to land in Cuba. That honor belonged to the United States Marine Corps. On June 10, 1898, some six hundred marines had secured the beaches and surrounding hillsides at Guantánamo Bay, forty miles east of Santiago. The bay provided a safe haven for the blockading U.S. Navy ships in the event of a hurricane. It also provided a secluded spot where the ships could refuel. Accompanying the marines was a newspaper correspondent. His name was Stephen Crane, the author of the Civil War classic
The Red Badge of Courage
. With the Corps’s encouragement, he made sure the Americans back home knew that the marines had been the first to fight.

The day after V Corps had completed its landing at Siboney, they learned from Cuban insurgents that Spanish troops were nearby. Joseph Wheeler, one of Shafter’s senior commanders and a former Confederate general, sent U.S. soldiers to investigate. The result was a nasty little skirmish at a place called Las Guasimas. This was not a town, but simply an intersection of trails. There, the Americans learned that Spanish soldiers were not lacking in courage or marksmanship. For their part, the Spaniards learned that the Americans had no fear of battle. The war, albeit limited in scope and duration, was going to be hard fought.

In charge of defending Santiago was Lieutenant General Arsenio Linares y Pombo. With some ninety-four hundred men he had to keep the insurgents in check as well as stop the Americans. With dwindling supplies this was no easy task. Uncertain as to whether the United States might land additional troops, he spread his soldiers around the perimeter of Santiago.

To the east, in the direction from which the Americans were advancing, Linares placed soldiers along a ridge known as San Juan Heights. He also dispatched 520 men eight miles to the northeast, to a little town called El Caney. Their mission was to prevent the Americans from outflanking the main line of defense along the Heights. Linares hoped that if he could hold off Shafter and his men for a few weeks, the onslaught of yellow fever in the summer months would destroy the Americans. It was not an unreasonable strategy.

Major General Shafter was aware that tropical diseases soon would cripple his force. Although V Corps contained 150 surgeons and physicians, conditions in Cuba and the state of medical knowledge were such that tropical diseases would cause a large number of fatalities. Shafter was eager to do battle, but he too was short of supplies. Several days passed before the American was able to order an attack. His plan was straightforward. He would send a substantial force to neutralize El Caney, keeping his right flank protected, then have them rejoin the rest of his men for a frontal assault on the Heights. He expected a fierce but short fight. Shafter got the former but not the latter.

The Spanish soldiers at El Caney were commanded by Brigadier General Joachim Vara del Rey. He was a fine soldier and determined to hold on to El Caney. The town’s defense was well laid out, with barbed-wire barriers, interconnected trenches, wooden blockhouses, and a stone fort. Though heavily outnumbered—the Americans had sixty-five hundred men—the Spanish soldiers had one key advantage. Their rifles used smokeless powder and, thus, when fired, did not reveal the shooter’s position. Not all the Americans had such ammunition, nor did their artillery, which placed them at a disadvantage.