Jubal Anderson Early

On the blisteringly hot afternoon of July 11, 1864, bold, battle-hardened Lieutenant General Jubal Anderson Early sat astride his horse outside the gates of Fort Stevens in the upper Northwestern fringe of Washington, D.C. The enigmatic 47-year-old Confederate, a veteran of Antietam, Gettysburg, the Wilderness and countless other fights was about to make one of the Civil War’s most fateful, portentous decisions: whether or not to order his 10,000 veteran troops to invade the United States’ capital.

Almost exactly one month earlier, Early’s commanding general, Robert E. Lee, had made a bold, risky decision of his own. He had ordered Early’s Second Corps to cut itself out of the Army of Northern Virginia, which had hunkered down outside Richmond awaiting the next move by Union Army commander U.S. Grant. The Federals had massed an unprecedented number of troops outside the capital of the Confederacy, the final element in what Grant called his Grand Campaign to end the war.

In the pre-dawn hours of June 13, Early marched his men out of their Richmond-area encampment and into Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Lee had ordered Early to wreak havoc on Yankee troops in the Valley, then to move north and invade Maryland. Lee envisioned an audacious mission: to free some 15,000 Confederate prisoners at the Point Lookout POW camp east of Washington in southern Maryland, and, if Early found the conditions right, to take the war for the first time into President Abraham Lincoln’s front yard. Lee’s agenda included forcing Grant to release a significant number of troops from the stranglehold he had built around Richmond.

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Note: This article is adapted from Marc Leepson’s book, Desperate Engagement: How a Little-Known Civil War Battle Saved Washington, D.C., and Changed American History (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press) and appears here through the courtesy of the author.

The 2009 Roundtable field trip will be to the Richmond, Virginia area and will include visits to the battlefields of the 1862 Peninsula campaign, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, and Five Forks. Other likely stops include: the White House of the Confederacy, the American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar, Hollywood Cemetery (whose famous residents include Jefferson and Varina Davis, Confederate generals Fitzhugh Lee, Richard Garnett, Henry Heth, John Pegram, George Pickett and JEB Stuart, historian Douglas Southall Freeman, Supreme Court Justices Peter Daniel and Lewis Powell and Presidents James Monroe and John Tyler), Pamplin Park, the National Museum of the Civil War Soldier and City Point. 

Our guide will be Dr. Lynn Sims, Professor Emeritus, U.S. Military History, University of Richmond and retired U.S. Army.  A Richmond native, Dr. Sims has had a varied career that included being a historian for the Department of Defense at Fort Lee, Virginia, serving as Director of the Richmond Bicentennial Commission and city historian and serving as a civilian instructor at the Command & General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He earned his undergraduate degree in history from Wheaton College in Illinois, and his masters and Ph.D. in United States Military history from New York University.  Dr. Sims currently serves as the VP (Programs), Richmond chapter, Sons of the American Revolution.

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Our Webmaster, Paul Burkholder, asked me to report on this year’s Lincoln Forum as I did on last year’s sessions (“If it would not suck all the pleasure out of attending for you.”), and I am happy to comply – any opportunity to talk about my favorite president is good for me. (Sucking and all.) Please realize that no brief notes of mine can do justice to our speakers – I only hope to give you a feel for or a sense of what they said. This, our 13th Forum, was one of the best ever. Its theme was: “The Forum Launches the Lincoln Bicentennial.”

These annual symposiums always begin on November 16 – a Sunday this year. Once again, the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable was well represented. Attending along with me were Lou Braman, Anne Davis, Kirk Hinman, Gordon Doble, Dick Crews, Maynard and Betty Bauer. My son Mike, Rick’s brother, also attended for the first time.

Mike, Betty and Maynard rode to Gettysburg with me. Jim Getty, a noted portrayer of Abraham Lincoln (he once performed for our Roundtable), told me that he would be in a show that Sunday in Hanover, PA - just 15 miles from Gettysburg. This show was the “Mount Rushmore Presidents,” so after checking in for the symposium, we drove to Hanover to see it. It featured, as you might imagine, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln (Jim Getty.) The show was presented in the very nice auditorium of Southwestern High School.

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Note: This is the final installment of a three-part series.

Patrick Cleburne

Patrick Ronayne Cleburne

Patrick Cleburne was called the “Stonewall of the West” by Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Robert E. Lee called Cleburne like “a meteor shining from a clouded sky”. Like Meagher and so many other Civil War soldiers, Cleburne was Irish-born. Unlike many other Irish-Americans, however, Cleburne was neither poor nor Catholic. He was born in 1828 and grew up near Cork as a member of the Protestant gentry. His father was a doctor. Unfortunately, his mother died at 37 when he was only 1, leaving his father a widower with 4 children. Then, his father died at 51 when Patrick was only 15, leaving him an orphan. Six years later, without notifying his stepmother, Cleburne enlisted in the British army but served only 3 years before departing Ireland for America. Having failed to pass exams to become a pharmacist in Ireland, he made his way to Cincinnati, where he clerked in a drugstore. He quickly moved on to Helena, Arkansas to work in a drugstore, of which he later became an owner. After selling it, he became a lawyer. He worked with fellow lawyer and future Civil War comrade Thomas Hindman to combat the Know-Nothing party’s campaign against Irish immigrants. As the 1860 election loomed, Cleburne helped to organize a militia company (the “Yell Rifles”) in Helena.

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December...

It’s December of 1864. As Lincoln prepares for his second term, the news is mostly good on the war: Grant has Lee pinned down at Petersburg, Sherman is almost to Savannah, and John Bell Hood has been bloodied at Franklin – however, Hood now threatens Nashville. Here are some voices from that month:

General George Thomas to U.S. Grant on December 9, 1864 before the Battle of Nashville:

“I had nearly completed my preparations to attack the enemy tomorrow, but a terrible storm of freezing rain has come on today, which will make it impossible for our men to fight to any advantage. I am therefore compelled to wait… Major General Halleck informs me that you are very dissatisfied with my delay in attacking. I can only say I have done all in my power to prepare, and if you deem it necessary to relieve me. I shall submit without a murmur.”

U.S. Grant in a telegram to General Thomas on December 11, 1864:

“If you delay attack longer the mortifying spectacle will be witnessed of a rebel army moving for the Ohio River, and you will be forced to act, accepting such weather as you find. Let there be no further delay… I am in hopes of receiving a dispatch from you today that you have moved. Delay no longer for weather or reinforcements.”

William T. Sherman in his memoirs, December 1864:

“…on the 15th and 16th of December were fought, in front of Nashville, the great battles in which General Thomas so nobly fulfilled his promise to ruin Confederate General John Bell Hood...His official report came in on the 24th. I wrote at once to General Thomas, complimenting him in the highest terms. His brilliant victory at Nashville was necessary to mine at Savannah to make a complete whole.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes – December 22nd:

“Like the tribes of Israel – Fed on quails and manna - Sherman and his glorious band - journeyed through the rebel land - fed from Heaven’s all bounteous hand. Marching on Savannah!”

Charles C. Coffin as aid from the north arrives in Savannah - near the end of the month:

“The fire of Secession had died out…at a meeting of the citizens of Savannah, resolutions, expressive of gratitude for the charity bestowed by Boston, New York and Philadelphia were passed - also of the desire for future fellowship and amity. A store at the corner of Beatty and Barnard streets was taken for a depot…I passed a morning among the people who came for food… Well-dressed women wearing crape for their husbands and sons who had fallen while fighting against the old flag – all stood patiently waiting their turn to enter the building, where through the open doors, they could see barrels of flour, pork, beans, and piles of bacon, hogsheads of sugar, molasses and vinegar.”

Abraham Lincoln, to a group of Kentuckians who wanted the controversial General Benjamin Butler assigned to their state near the end of the month:

“You howled when Butler went to New Orleans. Others howled when he was removed from the command. Somebody has been howling ever since at his assignment to military command. How long will it be before you, who are howling for his assignment to rule Kentucky, will be howling to me to remove him?”

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