After the exhausting Gettysburg campaign,
Carleton was obliged to rest some weeks. So far
as his letter-book shows, he did not engage in war
correspondence again until the opening of the next
year, when he entered upon his fourth hundred of letters,
and began a tour of observation through the border
States. Traversing those between the Ohio River
and the Lakes, besides Missouri and Kansas, he kept
the Journal readers well informed of the state
of sentiment, and showed the preparations made to
pursue the war. At the last of April, we find
him in Washington preparing his readers for the great
events of the Wilderness, in letters which clearly
describe the prospective “valley of decision.”
The grandest sight, that week, in the city, was the
marching of Burnside’s veteran corps, in which
were not only the bronzed white heroes, following
their own torn and pierced battle-flags, but also
regiments of black patriots, slaves but a few months
before, but now no longer sons of the Dark Continent,
but of the Land of Hope and Opportunity. From
slavery they had been redeemed in the Free Republic.
Unpaid sons of toil once, but free men now, they were
marching with steady step to certain victory or to
certain death, for at that moment came the sickening
details of the massacre of Fort Pillow. On the
balcony of the hotel, standing beside the handsome
Burnside, was the tall and pale man who, having given
them freedom, now recognized them as soldiers.
As they halted by the roadside and read the accounts
of massacre, their white teeth clenched, and oaths,
not altogether profane, were sworn for vengeance.
Out from the broad avenues of the
nation’s capital, and away from the sight of
the marble dome, the great army and its faithful historians
moved from sight, to the bloodiest contests of war.
No more splendid pageants in the fields, but close,
hard, unromantic destruction in the woods and among
trenches and craters! One mind now directed all
the movements of the many armies of the Union, making
all the forces at the control of the nation into
one mighty trip-hammer, for the crushing of Slavery’s
conspiracy against Liberty.
General Grant recognized in Carleton
his old friend whom he first met in Cairo, and whom
he had invited to take a nail-keg for a seat.
Having established his reputation for absolute truthfulness,
Carleton won not only Grant’s personal friendship,
but obtained a pass signed “U. S. Grant,”
which was good in all the military departments of the
country, with transportation on all government trains
and steamers. In hours of relaxation, Carleton
was probably as familiar with Grant as was any officer
on the general’s own staff. Carleton profoundly
honored and believed in Grant as a trained, regular
army officer who could cut loose from European traditions
and methods, and fight in the way required in Virginia
in 1864 and 1865. Further, Grant wanted the Army
of the Potomac to destroy Lee’s army without
the aid of, or reinforcement from, Western troops.
Carleton comprehended the magnitude
of the coming campaign, in which were centred the
hopes of eighteen millions of Americans. In his
eyes it was the most stupendous campaign of modern
times. “It is not the movement of one army
merely, but of three great armies, to crush out treason,
to preserve the institutions of freedom, and consolidate
ourselves into a nation.” Butler and Smith
were to advance from the Chesapeake, the armies of
the South and West were in time to march northward
in Lee’s rear, while from the West and North
were to come fresh hosts to consummate the grand combination.
Carleton’s foresight had shown
him that, in this campaign, an assistant for himself
would be absolutely necessary; for, in one respect,
Grant’s advance was unique. Instead of,
as heretofore, the Union army’s having its rear
in close contact with the North, and all the lines
and methods of communication being open, the soldiers
and the correspondents were to advance into the Wilderness,
and cut themselves off from the railway, the telegraph,
and even the ordinary means of communication by horse,
wheel, and boat. Carleton, at short notice to
the young man, chose for his assistant his nephew,
Edmund Carleton, now a veteran surgeon and physician
in New York, but then in the freshness and fullness
of youth, health, and strength. Alert and vigorous,
fertile in resource, courageous and persevering, young
Carleton became the fleet messenger of the great war
correspondent. He assisted to gather news, and
soon learned the art of winning the soldier’s
heart, and of extracting, from officers and privates,
scraps and items of intelligence. Even as the
hunter becomes expert in noting and interpreting signs
in air and on earth which yield him spoil, so young
Carleton, trained by his uncle, quickly learned how
to secure news, and to make a “beat.”
He kept himself well supplied to the extent of his
ability with tobacco, always welcome to
the veterans, for which some “would almost sell
their souls;” and with newspapers, for which
officers would often give what was worth more than
gold, items of information, from which letters
could be distilled, and on which prophecies could
be based. Very appropriately, Carleton dedicates
his fourth book on the war, “Freedom Triumphant,”
to his fleet messenger.
Carleton’s first letter in the
last long campaign is dated May 4, 1864, from Brandy
Station. There four corps were assembled:
the Second, Hancock’s; the Fifth, Warren’s;
the Sixth, Sedgwick’s; the Ninth, Burnside’s.
With Sheridan’s riders, these made a great city
of tents. The cavalry was not the cavalry of
Scott’s day, but was in its potency a new arm
of the service. From this time forth, the Confederate
authorities, by neglecting this arm of their service,
furnished one chief cause of final failure, while those
in Washington steadily increased in generous recognition
of the power of union of man and horse. In equal
ability of brute and rider to endure fatigue, the
Union cavalryman under Sheridan was a veritable centaur.
While the great army lay waiting and
expectant at Brandy Station, it was significant to
Carleton when the swift-riding orderlies suddenly
left headquarters carrying sealed packages to the corps
commanders. First began the tramping of the cavalry.
Next followed the movement of two divisions of the
Fifth Corps. All night long was heard the rumble
of artillery. Carleton wrote: “Peering
from my window upon the shadowy landscape at midnight,
I saw the glimmering of thousands of camp-fires, over
all the plain. Hillside, valley, nook, and dell,
threw up its flickering light. Long trains of
white canvas wagons disappeared in the distant gloom.
“At three A. M., the reveille,
the roll of innumerable drums, and the blow of bugles
sounded, and as morning brightened, dark masses of
armed men stood in long line. With the first beams
of the sun peering over the landscape, they moved
from the hills. Disjointed parts were welded
together, regiments became brigades, brigades grew
into divisions, and divisions became corps. The
sunlight flashed from a hundred thousand bayonets
and sabres.” Thus in a few hours a great
city of male inhabitants, numbering over the tenth
of a million, disappeared. By night-time, in
a rapid march, Grant was in headquarters in a deserted
house near the Germania Ford. There Carleton
noticed the general’s simple style of living.
Unostentatious in all his habits, he smoked constantly,
often whittling a stick while thinking, and wasting
no words. Grant had stolen a march upon Lee, and
was as near Richmond as were the Confederates, who
must attack him in flank and retard him if possible.
Knowing every road and bridle-path in the Wilderness,
Lee, having drawn all the resources of the Confederacy
east of Georgia into his lines, had gathered an army
the largest and the most complete he had yet commanded.
He must now cut up Grant’s host; or, if unable
to do so, even without defeat, must begin a march
which meant some American Saint Helena as its end.
The campaign which followed in that
densely wooded part of Virginia, a few miles west
of the former battle-field of Chancellorsville, had
not been paralleled for hardship during the whole
war. In the ten days succeeding May 4th, when
the army broke camp at Culpeper and Brandy Station,
there had been a march of eighteen miles, the crossing
of the Rapidan with hard fighting on May 5th, and
on the 6th, the great battle in the Wilderness, among
the trees from which the foe could hardly be distinguished.
On the 7th, there was fighting all along the line,
with the night march after Spottsylvania, and on Sunday,
the 8th, under the burning sun, a sharp fight by the
Fifth Corps. On the 9th, another terrific battle
followed, in which three corps were engaged, one of
them, the Sixth, losing its noble commander, Sedgwick,
with a score or two of able officers. On the 10th,
in the afternoon, a pitched battle was fought all
along the line, lasting until midnight, in which all
the corps were engaged. On Wednesday, the 11th,
skirmishing and picket firing formed the order of the
day along the whole front. On Thursday, the 12th,
at daybreak, the Second Corps began its attack, capturing
twenty-three guns and several thousand prisoners.
Sunday, the 13th, was a time of rain, hard work, hunger,
and fatigue. In a word, within twelve days there
had been four great pitched battles, with heavy fighting,
mainly in the woods, and hard pounding on both sides,
with many thousands of dead and wounded.
During the war Carleton had seen no
such fighting, suffering, patience, determination.
General Grant freely admitted that the fighting had
been without a parallel during the war. There
was little work done by the artillery. Swords
and bayonets were but ornaments or emblems. Only
lead had the potency of death in it. Even the
cavalry dismounted, sought cover, shooting each other
out of position with their carbines. Bullets,
which do the killing, were the fixed forces.
In war it is musketry that kills, and it was a question
which side could stand murder the longest.
At the end of the Wilderness episodes,
Carleton, after first answering those critics far
in the rear, who, to all the noble tenacity of Grant
and his army, queried “Cui bono”
wrote: “I confidently expect that he [Grant]
will accomplish what he has undertaken, because he
is determined, has tenacity of purpose, measures his
adversary at his true value, expects hard fighting,
and prepares for it.” It was trying almost
to discouragement, to this brave, honest, patient seeker
after truth, to find with what chaff and husk of imaginary
news, manufactured in Washington and elsewhere, the
editors of newspapers had to satisfy the hungry souls
of the waiting ones at home.
In one of the engagements, when our
right wing had been forced by the Confederates; when
the loud rebel yells were heard so near that the teamsters
of the Sixth Corps were frightened into a panic, and,
cutting the traces, ran so far and wide that it was
two days before they were got together again; when,
to many army officers, it seemed the day had been
lost, as lost it had been, save for the
stubborn valor of the Sixth Corps; when many a face
blanched, Carleton looked at Grant. There was
the modern Silent One, tranquil amid the waves of
battle. Sitting quietly, with perfect poise, eyes
on the ground, and steadily smoking, he whittled a
stick, neither flesh nor spirit quailing. “He
himself knew what he would do.” And he did
wait, and, in waiting, won. Carleton’s
faith in Grant, strong from the first, was now as
a mountain, unshakable.