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For the next few months , we ’ll be covering the final daylight of the Civil War on the button 150 eld subsequently . This is the third installment of the series .
March 2-4, 1865: “With Malice Toward None”
As March 1865 get down the final result of the Civil War was all but certain , as the South face overwhelming Northern numbers and firepower , plunk for by a much larger population and industrial base . And yet the warfare drag in on , with the primary Confederate Army of Northern Virginia set up a fierce last - ditch defense at the besieging of Petersburg , protect the Confederate capital at Richmond , while a smaller rebel force out attempted to distract and delay the Union army in the Carolinas .
Seeing the committal to writing on the wall , in other March Confederate world-wide - in - chief Robert E. Lee extended a tentative peace barbel to Union commander Ulysses S. Grant , but was securely rebuffed , as President Lincoln continued to necessitate unconditioned giving up . Meanwhile Congress established the Freedmen ’s Bureau to grapple with the enormous problems facing millions of freed slaves , and Lincoln looked ahead to an era of interior reconciliation in his stirring Second Inaugural Address .
Lee Proposes Ceasefire
With spring approaching the military situation was looking increasingly hopeless for the Confederacy . In the main theater of operations the Army of Northern Virginia , numbering around 50,000 men , was pinned down by the much larger Union Army of the Potomac , 125,000 strong , at the Siege of Petersburg around 20 miles in the south of Richmond . In North Carolina Joe Johnston ’s fresh Army of the South , a composite personnel of around 25,000 men scraped together from various sources , was preparing to confront William Tecumseh Sherman ’s swiftly progress Union force , presently encourage to 90,000 Isle of Man by reinforcements from the coast under John Schofield .
The tidings from peripheral theater was scarcely any right : on March 2 Philip Sheridan ’s Union horse cavalry destroyed what was left of Jubal Early ’s pocket-sized Army of the Valley in the Battle of Waynesboro , efficaciously end rebel resistance in the Shenandoah Valley and freeing Sheridan to contribute his power to Grant ’s at Petersburg . In the 2nd half of the calendar month Union cavalry under George Stoneman would start a foray into western North Carolina , basically unopposed , while another Union force under James Wilson raided Alabama , brushing aside a much smaller personnel under Nathan Bedford Forrest and destroying Confederate arsenal and industry .
pin his hope on the Northern world ’s desire for peace , with distinctive Southern grandiloquence on March 2 , 1865 Lee wrote a letter to Grant suggest a ceasefire to be surveil by pacification negotiations :
Grant forthwith impart Lee ’s message to Washington via telegraph , asking for counsel . But Lincoln had already made his stance unclouded in hismeetingwith the Confederate pacification commissioners : the only path to terminate the warfare was unconditional surrender . The next day Grant received an emphatic telegram from Secretary of War Edwin Stanton conveying his univocal orders :
Grant in twist responded : “ I can promise you that no act of the enemy will forbid me pressing all advantages gained to the level best of my power . ” Another month of death and devastation lay onwards , largely uncalled-for judgment by Lee ’s own legal opinion . On March 9 the Confederate commander again wrote Breckinridge , warning that it was now “ almost impossible to wield our present position . ”
Congress Establishes Freedmen’s Bureau
As might be expected the cognitive process was often chaotic , and unsurprisingly many Southern ovalbumin were scared and angry . Charlotte St. Julien Ravenel , a snowy distaff journalist in North Carolina , wrote in March 1865 : “ The bailiwick Negroid are in a fearful state ; they will not work , but either roam the country , or sit in their houses … . I do not see how we are to live in this country without any principle or regulation . We are afraid now to walk outside of the gate . ” As always the societal upheaval was even gruelling for older people : Ravenel noted that her grandfather “ seems all broken down , ” tot up it “ must be hard for one of his age to have everything so changed from what he has been accustomed to all of his life . ”
As Union scout troop approached some headmaster clung to the old way to the bitter ending , using scourge of violence to keep slaves subservient , as afterward recalled by W.L. Bost , free during this period : “ Most of the multitude get everything jes ready to run when the Yankee sojers amount through the town . This was toward the las ’ of the state of war . Cose the nigra knew what all the fightin ’ was about , but they did n’t dare say anything . The piece who have the hard worker was too mad as it was , and if the niggers say anything they get shot right then and thar . ” However other white resigned themselves to the terminal of their quondam way of life and tried to part with their former slaves on good terms . Mary Anderson , who was freed as a youthful girl in North Carolina , remembered the arrival of Union troops :
After the initial euphory of exemption , however , freed slave faced daunting challenges , including finding work , food , and shelter in the midst of oecumenical chaos and economic paralysis . K of displaced and dispossess slave trailed behind Sherman ’s army , organise a growing column of refugees that hindered its mobility , or simply swan the countryside more or less aimlessly .
To serve allow for for these multitude and finagle the transition to a post - slavery society , on March 3 , 1865 Congress give the Bureau of Refugees , Freedmen , and Abandoned Lands , well live as the Freedmen ’s Bureau . The Freedmen ’s Bureau was give wide responsibilities but limited resource to carry them out , including allow for former slave health care , educational activity , occupation breeding , oeuvre positioning , and forcible and effectual protection .
Of these its greatest winner were probably in education , as it helped self-governing charities and aid organizations establish hundreds of school across the South , where hundred of thousands of freed slaves learned how to read and write . By line the legal and strong-arm auspices cover to freedmen depended in the short term on the continuing bearing of Union troops , and in the long term on Congress demanding recognition of African - American rights as a condition for regenerate sovereignty to conquer Confederate country . Unfortunately congressional commitment to enforcing the right hand of freedmen , technically warrant by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments , rise lack next to the demand of political expediency and reconciliation with Southern E. B. White .
In the immediate postwar yr , disc of the legal action of the Freedmen ’s Bureau provide a singular window into the daily lives of freedmen , and the job they confront in their traffic with white neighbors and employer , as well as with each other . Complaints about unpaid wages were common , as whites assay to overwork freedwoman by relying on bullying and the lack of alternative employment to extract devoid labor ; freedman also often complained about neighbors , both clean and black , “ borrowing ” stock or tools without returning it .
category difference also crop up , as in this record from Augusta County , Virginia , date November 16 , 1865 : “ Eliza Jackson complains that her Brother Samuel wrick her out of door and drove her from his House under setting perticularly trying to her and refused to ante up her her salary which he collected from her Employer . ” Another striking slicing of life dated March 5 , 1866 , reads : “ Maria Miller … kvetch that Robert Coleman … deceived her by promise of marriage ceremony and now refuses to have anything to do with her . ” In an entry from April 1866 , “ Allan Lewis … complains that his two daughters … aged 22 , the other 16 , have been seduced ; and the one-time by a bloodless man the youngest by a colored human being who has a married woman and two children ; both the girls have child , he expect that some action may be contain to oblige these men to contribute to keep of the child . ”
Lincoln Looks Ahead and Above
On March 4 , 1865 , Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase first administered the cuss of office to the new Vice President , Andrew Johnson – a Democrat from Tennessee , who was take to demonstrate the newfangled administration ’s desire for balancing . Before the cuss was administered in the Senate chamber , Johnson , apparently totally inebriated , delivered a rambling spoken language that prompted Secretary of the Navy Gideon Wells to whisper to Stanton , “ Johnson is either intoxicated or crazy . ” Johnson ’s relation with Stanton and Congress would deteriorate even more after he ascended to the presidency .
The inauguration company next moved on to the steps of the Capitol , where Chase administrate the swearword of power to Lincoln in front of gravid , enthusiastic crew . Lincoln ’s Second Inaugural Address ( top ) was another go de military force from the master orator , mix practical matters with philosophical and even secret business organization . After reviewing the causes and course of instruction of the war over the four consequential year since his first inauguration , Lincoln prompt his listeners that God ’s will is mystifying , seeming to incriminate that the war was a punishment as much for the North as the South , and urged them to prepare for rapprochement with their erstwhile enemies :
After the voice communication Frederick Douglass congratulated the president , “ Mr. Lincoln , that was a sacred exploit . ” The actor John Wilkes Booth , who was also probably present , doubtless feel differently .
See the previous entryhere . See all entrieshere .
