An aberration or negligence of Grant was certain to be followed by a gleam of his military genius, and such a gleam it now falls to me to record. August 1 he ordered General Philip H. Sheridan to the Shenandoah valley on temporary duty, this order furnishing the text for a despatch from Lincoln, which is sickening in its despair. "I have seen your despatch,” the President wrote to Grant, “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 despatches you may have received from here even 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 of '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." Grant now paid a visit to the army of Hunter, and as that general in conversation expressed his willingness to be relieved, Sheridan was placed in permanent command." A different chapter on the Shenandoah valley from that of 1862, 1863, or 1864 until August 1 is henceforward to be written.3

6

I may not leave this part of my subject without mentioning the tradition that, on account of the failure and great loss of life of Grant's campaign, over which the feeling of the country was intensified by the Confederate invasion of the North and the imminent danger of Washington, the question of his removal from command was mooted; or, to present another phase of the story, that he was warned that a further cam

1 Aug. 3, O. R. vol. xxxvii. part ii. p. 582.

2 Ibid., vol. xxxvi. part i. p. 30; vol. xliii. part i. p. 719.

3 On Early's invasion, see reports of Lee, Early, Wallace, Hunter, and the despatches of Sigel, ibid., vol. xxxvii. part i.; the correspondence, ibid., part ii. and vol. xl. part iii.; Rec. of Lincoln, Chittenden; Grant's Personal Memoirs, vol. ii.; Life of Lee, Long; Early's article, Century War Book, vol. iv.

paign of attrition must be avoided. There are two despatches which may be considered to support, moderately, the less extreme version of the matter. July 17 the President thus telegraphed Grant: "In your despatch of yesterday to General Sherman, I find the following, to wit: I shall make a desperate effort to get a position here which will hold the enemy without the necessity of so many men.' Pressed as we are, by lapse of time, I am glad to hear you say this; and yet I do hope you may find a way that the effort shall not be desperate in the sense of great loss of life." The next day Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for 500,000 volunteers, by virtue of the Act of Congress of July 4, 1864,2 the passage of which had been largely influenced by the great losses in the Wilderness, at Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor, and ordered a draft to take place immediately after September 5 for any unfilled quotas.3 July 19 Halleck wrote Grant: "We are now not receiving one-half as many as we are discharging. Volunteering has virtually ceased, and I do not anticipate much from the President's new call, which has the disadvantage of again postponing the draft for fifty days. Unless our government and people will come square up to the adoption of an efficient and thorough draft, we cannot supply the waste of our army.

"4

Whatever implied warning there may have been in these despatches of Lincoln and Halleck, I have found no evidence indicating the shadow of an intention of the supersedure of Grant, nor do I believe that such a thought even occurred to the President. Indeed, there was no one to take his place. Extenuating none of his faults, there can be no doubt that so far as any military ability had been developed, Grant was the

1 Complete Works, vol. ii. p. 549.

2 This act repealed the $300 exemption clause which had been a large factor in the incitement of the New York draft riots; if one were drafted now, he must go into the service or furnish a substitute.

3 Complete Works, vol. ii. p. 551.

4 O. R., vol. xxxvii. part ii. p. 385.

5 Halleck, be it remembered, was the President's chief-of-staff.

fittest of all the generals to command the armies of the United States. That the President had confidence in him is plainly manifest. Before Grant knew of the proclamation calling for 500,000 volunteers, he suggested that there ought to be an immediate call for 300,000. Lincoln, in reply, informing him of what he had already done, said, “Always glad to have your suggestions."1 During July and August there obtained the usual pressure which came in time of disaster, for the restoration of McClellan to command; 2 but I have written in vain if the reader can suppose that Lincoln entertained the idea of displacing Grant by McClellan, or that such a change would have redounded to the benefit of the Union cause.3

Despondency and discouragement are words which portray the state of feeling at the North during the month of July,

1 July 19, 20, O. R. vol. xxxvii. part ii. pp. 384, 400.

2 This is well illustrated by Francis P. Blair's self-imposed mission to McClellan about July 20. - Appleton's Annual Cyclopædia, 1864, p. 790. The Cincinnati Commercial (Rep.) of Aug. 2 thought that McClellan should be placed in command of the defences of Washington. The N. Y. World of Aug. 5, in citing the Cincinnati Commercial article, said that several Republican newspapers had expressed the same view. A pedler told a guest at a New York City hotel that he now sold more of McClellan's portraits than he did of Grant's (N. Y. Tribune, Aug. 12), an exhibition of surface public sentiment different from that of the previous April, when at the Metropolitan Sanitary Fair in New York City the sword-voting contest (each vote costing one dollar) terminated amid great excitement and some turbulence in 30,291 votes for Grant and 14,509 for McClellan.-N. Y. Tribune, April 23, 25, World, April 25.

3 I believe that the following citation from Wilkeson, Rec. of a Private, represents the sentiment which preponderated in the army: "The enlisted men spent much time in comparing Grant with McClellan. The latter had many warm friends among the soldiers. He only of all the men who had commanded the Army of the Potomac was personally liked and admired by his troops. Soldiers' eyes would brighten when they talked of him. Their hard, lean, browned faces would soften and light up with affection when they spoke of him, — and still it was affection only; they did not, as a rule, concede to him military talent. And the general opinion among them was, given Grant in command of the army in 1862, and the rebellion would have been crushed that year. Asked how McClellan would have done with the army of 1864 under his command, they shrugged their shoulders and said dryly, 'Well, he would have ended the war in the Wilderness- by establishing the Confederacy.'" - P. 192.

and the closer one's knowledge of affairs the gloomier was his view; but the salient facts put into every one's mind the pertinent question, "Who shall revive the withered hopes that bloomed on the opening of Grant's campaign?"1

A resolution of Congress adopted July 2 was worthy of the Hebrews of the Old Testament or the Puritans of the English Civil War. It requested the President "to appoint a day for humiliation and prayer," and to ask the people "to convene at their usual places of worship" in order that they may "confess and repent of their manifold sins, implore the compassion and forgiveness of the Almighty, that, if consistent with his will, the existing rebellion may be speedily suppressed," and "implore him as the supreme ruler of the world not to destroy us as a people." The President, "cordially concurring... in the penitential and pious sentiments expressed" in that resolution, appointed the first Thursday of August to be "observed by the people of the United States as a day of national humiliation and prayer."

Two despatches during Early's invasion of Maryland are worthy of note. Brigadier-General West having asked Halleck by telegraph from the Continental Hotel, Philadel phia, whether he could be of service in that vicinity, Halleck made this grim reply: "We have five times as many generals here as we want, but are greatly in need of privates. Any one volunteering in that capacity will be thankfully received." Thomas A. Scott, who was always ready to help efficiently the government in a time of trouble, and who now offered the services of himself and his railroad,5 telegraphed from Philadelphia to Stanton, "The apathy in the public mind

1 N. Y. World, July 12. Yet this journal was fair in its treatment of Grant, see July 1, 12, 20, Aug. 4.

2 Lincoln, Complete Works, vol. ii. p. 544.

3 O. R., vol. xxxvii. part ii. p. 81.

66

4 July 11, ibid., p. 196. Halleck may have thought of Artemus Ward's proposal to raise a 'company composed excloosively of offissers, everybody to rank as Brigadier-General."

5 The Pennsylvania Railroad.

is fearful." It might well be doubted whether men in sufficient number and money in a sufficient amount would be forthcoming to complete the work of conquering the South. The financial condition of the country was deplorable, and may be measured by the fluctuations of the price of gold. January 2 gold sold in New York at 152, and when in April it reached 175 the Secretary of the Treasury endeavored to depress the price by the sale of about eleven millions; but the effect was only temporary. It continued to advance, and by June 17 had passed 197. On this day the President approved an act of Congress which aimed to prevent speculative sales of gold, and which calls to mind futile human efforts to stay a flood. After this enactment the speculation became wilder than before, and owing to the military failures and the resignation of Chase, gold touched, on the last day of June, 250. July 2 "An Act to prohibit certain sales of gold” was repealed. July 11, when Early was before Washington and communication with that city was cut off, gold fetched 285, its highest price during the war; the next day, the day of the skirmish in the vicinity of Fort Stevens and of the rumor in Philadelphia that the capital had fallen, it sold at 282. Such prices meant that the paper money in circulation was worth less than forty cents on the dollar. As the government bonds were sold for this money, the United States were paying, with gold at 250 (at which price or higher it sold during the greater part of July and August), fifteen per cent. on their loans.2 Nevertheless, money could be had. The continued issue of legal-tender notes had inflated the currency. Business, though feverish, was good; and many fortunes of our day had their origin in the excited business years of 1863 and 1864, when sales were easily made, most transactions were for cash, and nearly every one engaged in trade or manufactures seemed

1 O. R., vol. xxxvii. part ii. p. 255. On the apathy in New York City, see a startling article in the N. Y. Round Table of July 16.

2 Schuckers's Life of Chase, chap. xxxvi., also p. 633; N. Y. Tribune, July 11, 13; N. Y. World, July 13; N. Y. Round Table, July 23; Boston Advertiser, Aug. 10.