The Collapse of the Confederacy

Learning to Say "Enough": Southern Generals and the Final Weeks of the Confederacy

Mark Grimsley Learning to Say “Enough” Southern Generals and the Final Weeks of the Confederacy The process by which wars end is often even less rational than the process by whichtheybegin.Theleadersofafailingcausedonotcoollydecidethatdefeat has become inevitable and they must surrender or negotiate a settlement. Often they convince themselves that the situation, though superficially grim, is far from hopeless; that with firm resolve their cause may yet prevail. Even those who despair privately often remain staunch in public, for it is hard to seem weak (even traitorous) and hard to admit that so many lives and so much treasure have gone for naught. No one wants to be the first to do it. The last months of a war thus can have a surreal quality, as the losing side continues to act as if it has a genuine chance to win. That surreality was redolent in the Confederacy of January 1865. With the implacable Lincoln administration back in power for another four years and Unionmilitarystrengthstillgrowing,itwasdifficulttoseehowtheSouthcould continue the war much longer. Yet the press remained defiant. The government insisted that it still had the will and the resources to fight on indefinitely. That, in turn, obliged the top Confederate generals to find plausible courses of action in an increasingly unyielding strategic environment. In theory, they could force the government to recognize the situation’s hopelessness and openly endorse negotiation of a settlement, but within the American tradition of civil-military relations such a step was almost unthinkable. Yet the story of the Confederacy’s final months is, in large part, the story of how its generals shifted from trying to fight a lost war to trying to end it. They, more than their civilian counterparts, found the courage to say “enough.” Nominally the Confederacy contained seven full generals in early 1865.1 Of these, however, only those charged with the defense of Richmond-Petersburg 40 Learning to Say “Enough” 41 and the Carolinas really mattered because this region alone was vital to the Confederate government’s continued survival. As long as the government remained in existence, protracted resistance remained a possibility. But if Richmond, the capital, were to fall, the government would become a fugitive. Its legitimacy, its very ability to function, might speedily wane. The continued defense of the Richmond-Petersburg sector was thus the highest priority. Gen. Robert E. Lee’s formidable Army of Northern Virginia had successfully held that sector for half a year, and after numerous failed attempts it was unlikely that the besieging Union army under Lt. Gen. U. S. Grant could break through on its own. The real peril, everyone understood, was Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman’s army, then at Savannah, Georgia. If this force should manage to join Grant, Lee could not possibly hold on. Yet oddly, the Confederate government gave no single commander formal responsibility for stopping Sherman. One logical choice, Gen. John B. Hood, whose Army of Tennessee had confronted Sherman until the loss of Atlanta, was now at Tupelo, Mississippi, hundreds of miles out of position to oppose him. Another, Lt. Gen. William J. Hardee, who commanded the Department of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, had the jurisdictional responsibility but only a fraction of the troops required to stop Sherman. Ultimately, Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard unofficially assumed the task of organizing a defense, although as chief of the Military Division of the West his formal authority did not extend into the Carolinas. Beauregard’s first problem was to assemble enough troops in Sherman’s path to defeat him. Only about nineteen thousand men were already in place. The rest would have to come from Lee’s army, Lt. Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith’s Trans-Mississippi Department, or the Army of Tennessee. Lee reluctantly dispatched a cavalry division under Matthew Butler and later additional horsemen under Wade Hampton, but this contribution was not nearly enough. Kirby Smith reported himself powerless to help because he could ferry no troops across a Mississippi River infested with Union gunboats. That left Hood and his Army of Tennessee. Hood demurred. His army, he informed Beauregard, was in bad shape. Bled heavily by a four-month campaign to keep Sherman out of Atlanta and crippled by the disastrous battle of Nashville in December 1864, the troops urgently needed extended furloughs to restore their shattered morale. The Trans-Mississippi contingent in particular, Hood insisted, needed to go home for one hundred days. Beauregard passed along Hood’s request to the Confederate government...