Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 2.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

Gold,

that unfailing barometer of the hopes and fears, the joy and despair, of a purely commercial people, indicated clearly enough the gloomy forebodings of the nation. Every tick of the second-hand on the dial registered an additional $35 to the national debt, or $2,100 per minute, $126,000 an hour, $3,024,000 a day. Ragged veterans, leaning on the blackened guns in the trenches, reading the newspapers just passed across the picket lines — men who had left their ledgers and knew the mysteries of money — marked, while their faces puckered with shrewd wrinkles of successful trade, the course of the precious mercury. When Grant crossed the Rapidan, gold had gone down with a rush from 1.89 to 1.70,¹ and though from the Wilderness on, Mr. Stanton--who was Napoleonic in his bulletins, if in nothing else — persistently chronicled success whenever battle was joined, gold rose with a like persistency after each announcement — a signal example of cynical unbelief in a truly good and great man.

True, for a few days after Cold Harbor, the telegraph wires became mysteriously “out of working order,” “owing,” as he candidly confesses to General Dix in New York, “to violent storms on the Peninsula,” but the dreadful story gradually leaked out, and gold gave a frantic bound to 2.03, to 2.30--before the end of the month [263] to 2.52--while Congress in a flurry passed a silly “gold bill,” and the New York Herald shrieked out curses against “Rebel sympathizers in Wall street” --as if Wall Street ever sympathized with anything save the Almighty Dollar.

Of the temper of the enemy, I myself do not presume to speak, but there are not lacking indications that General Grant's theory of action, which he summed up in the phrase “to hammer continuously,” had become somewhat modified by experience, and that, at this time, his new evangel of “attrition” found but few zealous disciples in the Army of the Potomac. Lee had lost in the campaign between 15,000 and 16,000 men²--veterans, whose lives, it is true, regarding them simply as soldiers, were precious beyond numerical reckoning. Of the Army of the Potomac, not counting the losses in the Tenth and Eighteenth corps, which had been called up to take part in the battle of Cold Harbor, more than 60,000 men had been put hors du combat, including 3,000 officers — a loss greater by 10,000 than the total force which Lee had carried into the Wilderness.³ “Had not success elsewhere come to brighten the horizon,” says the historian of that army, “it would have been difficult to have raised new forces to recruit the Army of the Potomac, which, shaken in its structure, its valor quenched in blood, and thousands of its ablest officers killed and wounded, was the Army of the Potomac no more.”

This apparent digression from my theme has seemed to me, comrades, not impertinent, because, as I have said, the temper of this army at that time has been misunderstood by some and misrepresented by others; because the truth in regard to the matter, will alone enable those who come after us to understand how such a handful, ill-appointed and ill-fed, maintained for so long a time against overwhelming odds the fiercest defence of modern times. Nay, more, I believe that when the whole truth shall be told touching this eventful campaign, it will be shown that, at no time during the war, had the valor of this army and the skill of its leader been so near to compelling an honorable peace as in the days immediately succeeding Cold Harbor. Such is the testimony of Federal officers, high in rank, whose courage you admired in war and whose [264] magnanimity you have appreciated in peace. Mr. Greeley, in his History of the Rebellion, says emphatically, these were “the very darkest hours of our contest — those in which our loyal people most profoundly despaired of its successful issue.” ⁴ Swinton, a shrewd observer and candid historian, says: “So gloomy was the military outlook after the action on the Chickahominy, and to such a degree by consequence had the moral spring of the public mind become relaxed, that there was at this time great danger of a collapse of the war.” And he adds, significantly: “The archives of the State Department, when one day made public, will show how deeply the Government was affected by the want of military success, and to what resolutions the Executive had in consequence come.” ⁵ But, alas! the “success elsewhere,” of which the historian speaks, had “come to brighten the horizon,” and, continuing, quickened into vigorous action the vast resources of the North.

Grant, reinforced by over thirty thousand men at Spotsylvania,⁶ was heavily reinforced again; and putting aside with great firmness the well known wishes of the Federal Executive, prepared to change his strategy for the fifth time, and