Authors: David Goldfield
Evangelicals attempted one last major intrusion into America's civil religion during the war. Eleven Protestant denominations from seven northern states banded together to promote a constitutional amendment proclaiming the United States as a Protestant Christian nation. The “Bible Amendment” would modify the opening paragraph of the U.S. Constitution to read, “We, the people of the United States,
humbly acknowledging Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government, the Lord Jesus Christ as the Ruler among the nations, His revealed will as the supreme law of the land,
[italics mine] in order to form a more perfect union.” Two lobbying efforts earlier in the war had proved successful. First, “In God We Trust” was engraved on coins, and second, Lincoln had proclaimed Thanksgiving, which had been a Protestant religious feast, as a national holiday in 1863. These were ecumenical measures, he believed.
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By 1864, the persistent flow of blood was giving soldiers and civilians alike second thoughts about God's role, if any, in the conflict and about the wisdom of injecting theology into public policy. The use of force to advance “Christian civilization” had left an American region in ruins and mourning crepe draped on dwellings across the land. Lincoln received the petition politely. “The general aspect of your movement I cordially approve, [but] in regard to particulars I must ask time to deliberate, as the work of amending the Constitution should not be done hastily.” That time never came.
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Evangelical religion had not prevented America from going to war; to the contrary, it fueled the passions for a dramatic solution to transcendent moral questions. Evangelical religion did not prepare either side for the carnage, and its explanations seemed less relevant as the war continued. The Civil War destroyed the Old South civilization resting on slavery; it also discredited evangelical Protestantism as the ultimate arbiter of public policy. Ideas, soldier Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. believed, must be adaptable to survive. Ideas should never become ideologies. Flexibility, adaptability, and humility, the strengths of Abraham Lincoln and the message of his Second Inaugural, did not suit the absolutes of evangelical Protestantism. Living a life of uncertainty with respect to one's mortal soul is considerably more uncomfortable than the evangelicals' certitude of eternal salvation, but it is likely to be more compatible with a democratic society and a political process that depends on accommodation.
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The war continued. Philip Sheridan and two divisions of his Army of the Shenandoah had joined Grant at Petersburg in late March, swelling the federal force to 125,000 men. Lee's army, whittled away by desertions and battle, had shrunk to 30,000 troops. Perhaps if Grant waited another month or two, Lee's army would just melt away and the war would end in a whimper. Then again, it might not. It was time to end the siege of Petersburg and take Richmond. Lee understood this, having written to his daughter on March 28, “Genl Grant is evidently preparing for something.” Lee's only hope was to dash to the West and join forces with the remnants of the Army of Tennessee, now in North Carolina attempting to slow Sherman's advance. Spring was in full bloom in Virginia.
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On April 1, Sheridan, with fifty thousand men, attacked ten thousand Rebels under the command of General George E. Pickett at Five Forks, west of Petersburg, and near a key railroad junction. While Pickett attended a fish fry (or shad bake, as Virginians called it), the Federals smashed through the thin Confederate lines, taking five thousand prisoners. News of Sheridan's victory encouraged Grant to challenge the Rebel entrenchments in front of Petersburg. By this time, there were simply not enough Confederate soldiers remaining to man the trenches. The Federals overran the defenses, sending Lee westward toward Lynchburg in a desperate attempt to meet up with Joseph Johnston's army. The siege of Petersburg was over.
It was Sunday, and Jefferson Davis sat worshiping at St. Paul's Church in Richmond. The congregation consisted mainly of women, many in mourning clothes. The few men present had hobbled in on crutches or were cabinet officers. A messenger found the president, who then quietly excused himself. When other officials began to peel out of their pews, the congregation knew something major was happening. The note told of Lee's evacuation of Petersburg and of Richmond's imminent danger.
By midnight, the Confederate government and their families abandoned the capital. Flickering gaslights cast a yellow pall over crowds in the streets, drunken mobs looting shops, and throngs at the railroad depot. Confederate General Richard Ewell ordered evacuating troops to burn cotton, tobacco, and military stores, and the glow grew brighter, punctuated by explosions from ordnance, turning the city into an inferno. Dogs, cats, and rats ran alongside citizens fleeing the conflagration. The fire destroyed nearly 90 percent of the city center. All that remained of Richmond's industrial might was isolated brick chimneys and the piers of the city's three burned bridges. Lincoln telegraphed Grant, “Allow me to tender to you, and all with you, the nation's grateful thanks for this additional, and magnificent success.” Richmond had finally fallen.
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Sheridan's cavalry galloped into the charred Rebel capital on Monday, April 3. Major Atherton H. Stevens Jr. of Massachusetts raised the American flag atop the Capitol. A Richmond woman watching the ceremony wrote, “I saw them unfurl a tiny flag, and I sank on my knees, and the bitter, bitter tears came in a torrent.” As more federal troops entered the city, blacks clustered on the streets and cheered each column as it passed, reserving the loudest acclaim for a black regiment whose band struck up a lively rendition of “Dixie.” The city's black residents “danced and shouted, men hugged each other, and women kissed.” The following day, President Lincoln, escorted by only ten sailors, toured the still-smoldering city, nodding to thousands of cheering former slaves. “Thank God I have lived to see this,” he exclaimed. “It seems to me that I have been dreaming a horrid dream for four years, and now the nightmare is gone.” A freed slave exulted, “I know I am free, for I have seen Father Abraham and felt him.” Lincoln toured the Confederate White House, sat at Jefferson Davis's desk, ate lunch, and resumed his tour. When officers asked him what policy they should pursue in occupying the city, Lincoln replied, “If you were in my place, you would not press them.”
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Lee, with his fast dissolving army now numbering fewer than thirty thousand men, found Grant blocking his way to Lynchburg and Sheridan harassing him from the rear, a combined force of more than eighty thousand troops. On Friday, April 7, Grant wrote to Lee: “The result of the last week must convince you of the hopelessness of further resistance ⦠and [I] regard it as my duty to shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of blood, by asking of you the surrender of the ⦠Army of Northern Virginia.” Lee's depleted men would have to fight through a force three times as large to reach Lynchburg. At dawn on April 9, he tried, but abandoned the assault when he saw the numbers arrayed against him. He had reached a decision. Borrowing Grant's turn of phrase, he announced, “It would be useless and therefore cruel to provoke the further effusion of blood, and I have arranged to meet with General Grant with a view to surrender.”
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In the early afternoon, Lee and Grant met in the home of Wilmer McLean at Appomattox Court House. The apple and peach trees surrounding the house were in full color, a beautiful backdrop for a momentous occasion. McLean, ironically, had owned a house near Manassas that the Confederates used as their headquarters during the First Battle of Bull Run. He had moved to a more remote portion of the state to this sturdy brick house with a small green lawn in front to escape the war, and now found himself in the midst of the war's final act. Lee, resplendent in his finest dress uniform, and Grant, in a crumpled, soiled private's jacket, reminisced about their Mexican War service, avoiding for some moments the awkward conversation that must follow. Grant allowed the Confederate soldiers to go home with their horses for spring planting, a gesture that Lee remarked “will have the best possible effect upon the men. It will be very gratifying and will do much toward conciliating our people.” Grant ordered twenty-five thousand rations for Lee's famished army, a welcome sight to soldiers who had been living on parched corn for the past week. It also reflected a well-oiled war machine that could come up with enough food to feed an enemy army so quickly.
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Grant, initially jubilant at the prospect of meeting Lee, found himself saddened as he stood before the stoic Confederate general. “I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought.” When news spread among Union ranks about the purpose of the meeting, the men began firing a hundred-gun salute, which Grant immediately stopped, as “we did not want to exult over their downfall.” Some of Grant's officers requested permission of Lee to go inside the Confederate lines to visit old friends. Lee acquiesced, and soon Union and Confederate were mingling in the gentle spring afternoon at Appomattox. Grant marveled that the former enemies seemed as “friends separated for a long time while fighting battles under the same flag.”
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Lee walked out of the house and faced his men. Speaking softly, he confided, “I have done for you all that it was in my power to do. You have done all your duty. Leave the result to God. Go to your homes and resume your occupations. Obey the laws and become as good citizens as you were soldiers.” Recently wounded Rebel soldiers lay on wooden pallets as Lee spoke. They asked their comrades to prop them up so they could see the general. Tears streaked down the begrimed faces of the Rebel soldiers. When he finished, there was silence, except for a few muffled groans. Lee mounted his horse, Traveler, and cheers erupted as he rode toward the men, his head uncovered, his countenance reflecting a deep sorrow. All the men took off their hats, including the Union soldiers. Some noticed water welling in the general's eyes. As his horse waded slowly through the ranks, the men brushed their hats against the animal's withers. The soldiers stacked their arms, some smashing their weapons on rocks so that a serviceable gun would not fall into the hands of the enemy, and set down their cartridge boxes. They tenderly folded their battle-worn, torn, and bloodstained flags, and laid them down as well. Some men rushed forward to press the flags to their lips. The war was over.
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In Chicago early Monday morning, citizens awakened by the roar of cannon thought for a moment their city was under attack. Washington set off a five-hundred-gun salute that shattered all the windows in Lafayette Square. Lincoln appeared before a large crowd around the White House and asked the band to play “Dixie,” “one of the best tunes I have ever heard.” He joked with his attorney general that the song was now a “lawful prize” of war. Similar celebrations erupted in cities throughout the North. It would be another two weeks before Joseph Johnston surrendered his army to Sherman in North Carolina, and more than a month before the last Confederate force, the Army of Trans-Mississippi under the command of General E. Kirby Smith, surrendered, but the war ended, for all intents and purposes, on that bright day in Virginia, April 9, 1865. An array of factors converged to doom the Confederacy: a disintegrating economy, a war-weary civilian population, the inability to manufacture and distribute provisions for the armed forces, social class and geographic divisions, and a limited reservoir of manpower. The most important failure, though, occurred on the battlefield. The Union victory was not inevitable. General George Pickett had it right when asked about the reasons for the demise of the Confederate States of America: “The Yankees had something to do with it.”
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Some Rebels wanted to continue the conflict and undertake a guerrilla war against the Yankee invaders. Jefferson Davis toyed with the idea for a time. Lee would have none of it. Guerrillas, he said, “would become mere bands of marauders, and the enemy's cavalry would pursue them and overrun many sections they may [otherwise] never have occasion to visit.” A private in the Army of Northern Virginia summarized the feelings of some of his comrades: he “would be very much tempted to become a desperado and prey upon our enemy in every possible way that a strong feeling of hate and vengeance could devise.” But he thought better of it. “With my little ones still living and looking so anxiously for my safe return, I must take care of myself and try to live to protect them, and care for them.” Most white southerners, whatever their personal animus toward Yankees, thought continuation of the war by any means was, as a former Confederate senator from Texas noted, “madness.” Going home was what the Rebel soldier thought about after April 9.
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As news of Appomattox spread throughout the South, despair and depression were much more common emotions than defiance. A soldier noted that he and his comrades, as well as the civilians they encountered on their way home, were “steeped in a fatal lethargy, unwilling or unable to resist or forward anything.” A Georgia girl confided to her diary, “The demoralization is complete. We are whipped, there is no doubt about it.” A woman in North Carolina confessed that she slept “endlessly.” The paralysis would eventually dissipate, but not the memory.
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According to friends who saw President Lincoln on Good Friday, April 14, he seemed “in perfect health and in exuberant spirits,” as if a great burden had lifted. During a cabinet meeting that day Lincoln related a recurring dream of a ship “moving with great rapidity toward a dark and indefinite shore.” If anyone in attendance offered an interpretation, it has been lost to posterity, though the president had similar dreams when he anticipated good news. He hoped to hear soon from General Sherman that Joseph Johnston had surrendered the Army of Tennessee. Lincoln had also experienced darker dreams recently about an assassination and funeral services in the East Room of the White House. He had received enough death threats that he created a special compartment marked “Assassinations” on his stand-up desk. He made light of these menacing messages, but lately, they had begun to trouble him.
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