1865

GOING BACK IN TIME

LOOKING BACK: 1865

By the spring of 1865, when Cassie’s story takes place, it had been four long years since the country split in two in the bloody conflict we know as the Civil War. The storm that erupted on April 12, 1861, over Fort Sumter, South Carolina, had been brewing for a long time.

For years the North and the South had behaved like quarrelsome siblings, bickering over which region should have the most power in government—which should be the “boss.” Since the North had more money, people, factories, and businesses, it sometimes acted like the “big sister,” trying to force the South to “do things my way.” The South, in turn, would threaten to secede—to declare its independence and form a separate nation—if the North didn’t give in to it. One of the biggest arguments had to do with slavery. Many people in the North wanted to end slavery, but the wealthiest and most powerful Southerners relied on slave labor to run their vast plantations.

In 1861, the South made good on its threats and seceded, declaring itself the Confederate States of America. The North, led by President Abraham Lincoln, was determined to keep the United States from breaking up. Lincoln sent Federal troops to try to force the Confederacy back into the Union.

The Confederate army was not filled with wealthy slave owners, however. Soldiers were mostly laborers and yeoman farmers like Pa and Jacob—men who owned only a few acres of land and had no slaves. These men went to war not to preserve slavery but to protect their homes and families from the Northern invaders.

At first, neither side believed the other was truly serious about the war. Most people thought the fighting would be over quickly. Full of excitement and patriotism, young men on both sides rushed to join militias, or local military groups. With parades and celebrations, communities outfitted their militias and grandly sent them off to “whip the enemy.” Sisters and girlfriends urged hesitant brothers and sweethearts to volunteer, just as Emma did with Jacob.

Like Jacob, many who volunteered were mere boys. Confederate Charles Carter Hay enlisted in 1861 at age 11; when he surrendered in 1865, he was one month shy of his 15th birthday. A young private from Texas was 13 when he lost a leg in battle. Drummer boys and musicians were sometimes as young as 9 or 10.

But the war did not end quickly. Months dragged on into years, and the war turned bloody. Fewer and fewer men volunteered to fight. Both sides began to draft soldiers. Husbands and fathers, like Cassie’s pa, were forced to go to war, leaving their families to fend for themselves.

Because almost all the fighting took place in the South, the war took an especially terrible toll on women and children there. Fields and backyards became battlefields. Houses and farms were destroyed. To supply their troops, Federal armies foraged the countryside, taking food and supplies from local families without paying for it. Soldiers sometimes looted homes for valuables, then burned anything they didn’t take. Destroying towns, cities, and farmland became a policy of some Northern generals late in the war. Philip Sheridan’s troops devastated Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, and William Tecumseh Sherman set out to “make Georgia howl.” As marching armies drew near, frightened families fled. Many were left homeless and destitute.

Even in areas farther from the fighting, times were hard. Women like Cassie’s mother and boys like Philip struggled to keep farms running. “No-good soldiers” like the ones Mama warned Cassie about roamed the countryside, stealing and committing acts of violence against civilians. Money was in short supply, and with Southern ports blockaded by Northern ships, all goods were scarce. Basic items like sugar, coffee, nails, writing paper, and fabric either disappeared from stores or cost so much that no one could afford them. Townspeople, unable to produce their own food, suffered the most. Toward the end of the war, food prices were sky-high. Flour sold for as much as $1,000 a barrel. Many families were near starvation. In some southern cities, citizens were reduced to eating rats.

Things were not much better for Confederate soldiers. Johnny Reb, as Southern soldiers were called, might live for days on nothing but crackers called hardtack. Sometimes there was not even that. One soldier wrote to his father, “What is to become of this army without rations. Men can’t fight on nothing to eat.” Men did fight, though—hungry, often barefoot, and with their clothing in rags. It was the lucky Reb who had a coat or blanket to keep off the wind and rain and to see him through the winter. It is no wonder that more soldiers died from sickness than were killed in battle.

Though comforts were greater for the Union soldier—Billy Yink—he also faced the daily threat of dying in battle. Some soldiers decided they could no longer take it all and deserted, or ran away from the army. Deserters who were caught faced the death penalty. Even if a deserter wasn’t caught, he risked being scorned by his family and community. People in those days greatly valued duty, honor, and reputation. They considered a coward or deserter a disgrace to the family.

Late in the war, however, many people changed their attitudes as they grew desperate for their men to come home. Some wives even wrote letters to their husbands, and mothers to their sons, begging them to desert. One heartrending letter tells a father how his children cry from hunger and grow thinner by the day. “Please, Edward,” his wife begs, “unless you come home we must die.”

Eventually, so many Confederate soldiers deserted that it helped bring about that army’s collapse. The end came in April 1865, when Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Virginia, and a few weeks later Joseph Johnston surrendered to Sherman in North Carolina.

With the South’s defeat, the North achieved its goal of preserving the nation. Slavery also came to an end. But the cost was agonizing. The Civil War claimed more than 500,000 lives and left the South in ruins.