v1.1.1 / chapter 13 of 93 / 01 sep 07 / greg goebel / public domain
* The momentum of the war in the West continued to pick up in the spring of 1862, as the Federals moved against Island Ten on the Mississippi, while in Arkansas a rebel move against Missouri was blunted at Pea Ridge in a hard-fought battle. At the mouth of the Mississippi, the Union prepared to move against New Orleans, while the Confederates scrambled for resources to deal with the threat.
These were relatively small matters in comparison the major confrontation that was brewing in Tennessee. Union General Grant, after some political troubles, massed his troops near Shiloh Chapel in preparation for a further move South that he felt would do much to end the rebellion. To the south at Corinth in Mississippi, Albert Sydney Johnston similarly massed a force to take Grant by surprise. In the meantime, the Confederate thrust in the Far West was decisively stopped at Glorieta Pass, for all practical purposes ending the sideshow war in the Far West.
* While General McClellan adjusted his plans in the East, General Grant was having his own changes in fortune. Grant had won a great victory for the Union at Forts Henry and Donelson, and was finding out that no good deed goes unpunished.
Grant had indeed received a promotion to major general, on the recommendation of his boss, General Henry Halleck. However, Halleck was in a bad mood. He worried that the Confederates were getting ready to attack Cairo or Paducah, his political games with his rival Buell weren't going anywhere, and he didn't much care for Grant's loose style. Halleck was very unhappy at all the public praise being heaped on Grant, instead of the superior intellect who was in charge. Grant had been getting so many boxes of cigars from admirers who had read of how he had fought with a cigar between his teeth that he gave up smoking the pipe, his traditional habit, and turned to cigars instead.
Halleck decided to put Grant in his place. Halleck hadn't been getting
reports from Grant, and on 3 March Halleck telegraphed McClellan:
I HAVE HAD NO COMMUNICATION WITH GENERAL GRANT FOR MORE
THAN A WEEK. HE LEFT HIS COMMAND WITHOUT MY AUTHORITY
AND WENT TO NASHVILLE. HIS ARMY SEEMS TO BE AS MUCH
DEMORALIZED BY THE VICTORY OF FORT DONELSON AS WAS THAT
OF THE POTOMAC BY THE DEFEAT AT BULL RUN. IT IS HARD TO
CENSURE A SUCCESSFUL GENERAL IMMEDIATELY AFTER A VICTORY
BUT I THINK HE RICHLY DESERVES IT. I CAN GET NO RETURNS
NO REPORTS NO INFORMATION OF ANY KIND FROM HIM.
SATISFIED WITH HIS VICTORY HE SITS DOWN AND ENJOYS IT
WITHOUT ANY REGARD TO THE FUTURE. I AM WORN OUT AND
TIRED WITH THIS NEGLECT AND INEFFICIENCY.
McClellan promptly replied with a telegram that read, in part:
DO NOT HESITATE TO ARREST HIM AT ONCE IF THE GOOD OF THE
SERVICE REQUIRES IT.
Halleck immediately sent out a message ordering Grant to stay at Fort Henry
and place C.F. Smith in command. Halleck informed McClellan of the order in
a telegram that stated that Grant had "resumed his former bad habits",
meaning he was out getting drunk.
Halleck's accusations had little basis in fact, and complaining from his comfortable headquarters in Saint Louis that a general in the field and on the move wasn't keeping up with proper paperwork was mindlessly petty. Although Grant complied with the order relieving him of command, he then pointedly replied that the communications lapse was due to the desertion of a telegraph operator who had taken dispatches with him. Grant added that he had gone to Nashville to confer with Buell because he had received no instructions from Halleck.
Halleck didn't care about facts, and the sniping between the two men
intensified until Grant asked to be completely relieved of duty. Then,
abruptly, Grant was back in good graces with his boss. Halleck wired Grant:
INSTEAD OF RELIEVING YOU, I WISH YOU AS SOON AS YOUR NEW
ARMY IS IN THE FIELD TO ASSUME COMMAND AND LEAD IT TO NEW
VICTORIES.
Grant was restored to command on 15 March. There were a number of reasons
for Halleck's change of heart. First, the Army adjutant general had stiffly
informed Halleck that he had to put up or shut up: if Halleck had charges to
make against Grant, he needed to make them formally and provide evidence
justifying them. Second, the Confederate withdrawal from Columbus relieved
Halleck's worries about an imminent rebel offensive. Third, and most
importantly, on 11 March Halleck had, as noted in the previous chapter,
finally achieved his dream of putting Buell under his command. Halleck wired
back the adjutant general that all the "irregularities have now been
remedied."
Halleck was happy, so Grant was happy. Grant went by steamship up the Tennessee from Fort Henry to rejoin his command. Halleck, exercising his new command prerogatives with undoubted satisfaction, ordered Buell to march his forces to reinforce Grant's.
* While Grant was having his troubles with Halleck, the war on the Mississippi continued. The 7,000 men Polk had withdrawn from Columbus and sent to New Madrid found their new surroundings swampy and miserable at first, but soon realized that the swampiness made their position much easier to defend. Furthermore, just upstream from New Madrid, the Mississippi turned northward for a short distance and then switched back south at the town in the river's meandering way. Federal vessels would have to slow down and maneuver around this double bend, and so it was an ideal position for a battery of guns.
The first bend in the river contained a flat, muddy island with the odd name of Island Ten, so called because it was the tenth island in the Mississippi below the confluence with the Ohio. It no longer exists; the Mississippi shifted its course after the war and Island Ten became part of the riverbank. The Confederates mounted 39 guns at Island Ten, 16 of them on a floating battery, where they had a clear field of fire into any Federal vessels approaching from the north. At New Madrid itself, which overlooked the second bend, the rebels built three forts, with seven guns each.
Beauregard considered the defense of New Madrid absolutely vital. He had ordered the construction of a new defensive position named Fort Pillow a hundred miles (160 kilometers) downstream, but until that installation was completed, the batteries at Island Ten and New Madrid were the only things that stood between the Federals and the mouth of the Mississippi. The position was to be held "at all costs".
The Federals understood the important of the position as well. Shortly after the fall of Fort Donelson, Halleck ordered Brigadier General John Pope to march south and take New Madrid and Island Ten.
* Commodore Andrew Foote's ironclads had taken a pounding at Fort Donelson, and he had been wounded himself. After the battle, Foote had taken his ironclads back down the Cumberland to Cairo to repair his vessels and tend to his wound. From Cairo he considered what should be done next on the Mississippi.
The damage suffered by his gunboats had made Foote cautious, and the Mississippi was bigger than either the Tennessee or the Cumberland. It was much longer and wider, ran swifter, and the Federals would be moving downstream, not upstream, meaning that if any of his ships were disabled, they would drift into the teeth of Confederate fire. Foote understood the difficulties, but he didn't want to sit and dither. On the morning of 4 March, he and his fleet left Cairo to attack the Confederate stronghold at Columbus. When they arrived, everything seemed peculiarly quiet.
A landing party went ashore and found the Stars & Stripes flying over the town. There were four companies of Illinois cavalry rummaging through the litter Polk's men had left behind and making themselves at home. The cavalrymen had come there on a scouting mission the day before and found the place deserted.
General Pope had arrived at New Madrid the day before with four divisions, totalling 20,000 men, who he had marched down the west bank of the river after disembarking at Commerce, Missouri, north of Cairo. Pope, a vigorous 40-year-old who had a aggressive, brute-force mindset, immediately set siege to New Madrid and Point Pleasant, 11 miles (18 kilometers) downriver. He captured them both on 13 March 1862, seizing 25 cannon and large amounts of supplies, while the defenders ran across the river to take refuge in the fortifications at Island Ten.
Taking New Madrid had been easy. It had not been defended with any enthusiasm and casualties on both sides had been light. The hard part was taking Island Ten. There was no practical way to move against it from the north on the east bank of the river since it was almost surrounded by swamps, The only way in was from the south, along a road that ran through the town of Tiptonville. If there was only one way in, that meant only one way out as well: If Pope could get across the river and seize Tiptonville, the rebels would be trapped. To make the crossing, Pope needed transports, and Foote's ironclads as well, since Confederate batteries overlooked the crossing and the rebels were patrolling the river with a little fleet of improvised gunboats. None of these warships were very impressive, but they were armed and for the moment Pope had nothing on hand to deal with them.
Foote and his ironclads were delayed by further repairs at Columbus. They finally arrived on 17 March, only to be blocked by the guns of Island Ten. Foote was still hobbling around on crutches with his unhealed wound and lacked his usual nerve. He worried that running the guns would be suicide, and so decided to reduce Island Ten by siege instead. To this end Foote had brought with him eleven "mortar boats", armored hexagonal barges 60 feet long by 25 feet wide (18.3 by 7.6 meters), each mounting a 13 inch (33 centimeter) mortar. As soon as he arrived, he set the mortar boats to firing on Island Ten from two miles (3.2 kilometers) upriver.
The shelling was impressively thunderous. There had been suspicions that the first time a mortar was fired the mortar would simply drive itself through the bottom of the boat, but each boat kept up a steady fire, with gun crews taking refuge on the outer deck, hands over ears and mouths open, to protect themselves from the concussion. However, the bombardment proved more noisy than effective. After days of firing, a Federal colonel was asked what the fleet of mortar boats was accomplishing. He replied wearily: "Oh, it is still bombarding the state of Tennessee at long range."
The Navy proving unhelpful, Pope sought alternatives. He began to build floating batteries out of empty coal barges and boiler plate to force the crossing himself. He also set his men to building a canal. The peninsula that cut off Pope's soldiers from Foote's fleet was mostly flooded at the time. Pope's engineers suggested that waterways could be cut to link various watercourses and bypass the route past Island Ten, so 600 men were put to work. They devised ingenious means of cutting down trees below the waterline and pulling out stumps, and did a great deal of digging and dirty, hard work. In the end they had a waterway 6 miles (9.7 kilometers) long, 50 feet (15.25 meters) wide, and a little over 4 feet (1.2 meters) deep.
Pope would have his transports, though Foote's gunboats drew too much water to make the passage themselves. In the meantime, the Navy continued their bombardment, and the Confederates remained firmly dug in on Island Ten.
* On 21 January 1862, David Farragut was declared Flag Officer of the West Gulf blockading squadron, giving him the authority to prepare for the Federal naval move against New Orleans. He immediately set to work with his usual energy. His flagship was the HARTFORD, a 24-gun screw sloop of 2,900 tons (2,640 tonnes) displacement. It would be accompanied by the big frigate COLORADO; three more screw sloops of the HARTFORD's class; a sailing sloop; a heavy side-wheel sloop named the MISSISSIPPI; three lighter sloops; and one gunboat. The fleet mounted 166 guns and 26 howitzers, and arrived at Ship Island on 20 February 1862.
In the meantime, his foster brother David Porter had arranged for the manufacture of twenty 13 inch (33 centimeter) mortars and 30,000 shells. The mortars were mounted on circular tracks on the reinforced decks of sail schooners, which would be towed into place by seven steamers Porter had purchased. Farragut spent four weeks on Ship Island, waiting for Porter and his mortar boats to arrive, and for General Benjamin Butler to assemble the force raised for the operation, a total of 18,000 soldiers in all. While Farragut waited, he made meticulous preparations for the assault. Farragut was always enthusiastic, but he never considered it a replacement for careful planning.
While Porter worked on his mortar schooners, he also carried on a correspondence with Assistant Navy Secretary Fox in which Porter did his best to cast doubts about Farragut. Porter worked on concerns that been planted in Fox's mind by a request from Farragut for some light-draft ships that would take months to be delivered. While Farragut had simply wanted them to help run down blockade runners, Fox had jumped to the conclusion that they were for the attack on New Orleans and that Farragut was dragging his feet. Porter told Fox: "Men of his age in a seafaring life are not fit for important enterprises, they lack the vigor of youth," -- and added: "... he talks very much at random at times, and rather under-rates the difficulties before him, without really comprehending them ... he has no administrative qualities, wants stability, and loses too much time in talking."
Farragut too busy to care even if he knew about the correspondence. Farragut left Ship Island on 7 March with his fleet and would spend the rest of the month trying to get his big vessels over the bars that blocked the Mississippi Delta.
* In New Orleans, Confederate General Mansfield Lovell was doing what he could to prepare for the attack. He had managed to direct the construction of a log raft to block the Mississippi between Fort Saint Philip and Fort Jackson. The raft was a stout structure, built of 40 foot (12.2 meter) long cypress logs bound by chains, crisscrossed by timbers, and firmly anchored. Unfortunately, the Mississippi rose in the spring to the highest flood level anyone could remember, the river pounded the raft with driftwood and debris, and in early March the structure gave way. A new barrier was quickly thrown together, using $100,000 voted by the New Orleans city council, but this raft fell apart as well. All Lovell could do then was link a number of hulks together with chains and hope for the best.
Lovell had a second hope. The ironclads LOUISIANA and MISSISSIPPI were under construction in Jefferson City, a little to the north of New Orleans. In principle, they were impressive warships. The LOUISIANA was 264 feet (80.5 meters) long and carried 16 heavy guns. The MISSISSIPPI was 270 feet (82.3 meters) long, displaced over 4,000 tons (3,640 tonnes), was covered in three inches (7.6 centimeters) of armor, carried 20 guns, and was powered by three engines. If completed, either vessel would make short work of Farragut's fleet, and the powerful MISSISSIPPI was also expected to take to the open sea and tip the balance of naval power towards the Confederacy.
The problem was that neither vessel was close to ready. A shipbuilder named E.C. Murray was working on the LOUISIANA, while the brothers Asa and Nelson Tift were constructing the MISSISSIPPI. They had been finding out that they had signed on to a nightmare. Even getting the timber to build the hulls was troublesome. The South had plenty of lumber, but the Federals were blocking the Mississippi both up and down river, making transport of bulky materials extremely difficult.
Iron was very hard to find. Murray had to get permission from Richmond to tear up railroad tracks to construct armor. The Tifts were able to find a mill in Atlanta to make armor plate only after a long, agonizing search. Both contractors sent agents scouring the South for such elementary pieces of hardware as bolts and angle irons. There were few machine shops in the Confederacy, even fewer machinists available to put them to use, and the Tifts were only able to find one place in the South, the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, that could build a propeller shaft suitable for their powerful vessel.
Sherman had clearly forseen their troubles, seemingly ages ago, as he had lectured his professor on the foolishness of secession. The material weakness of the Confederacy was underscored by financial weakness: Richmond simply didn't have the funds. Bills were not paid for months, and so some shops refused to accept government orders. When the Confederate Navy Department tried to provide funds, it was usually in the form of drafts for Confederate bonds payable in Richmond, which nobody in New Orleans would accept as payment. A New Orleans citizen's committee managed to raise some funds and keep the construction moving at a snail's pace. Unfortunately, the Confederate government might have been lacking in funds but it wasn't lacking in bureaucracy: when General Lovell tried to push matters along, he was told by Jefferson Davis and the Confederate War Department that naval matters were none of his business.
The naval defense of New Orleans actually rested on one of the most motley fleets ever assembled. There were a number of Confederate Navy ships available, including the MANASSAS, which had chased the Federals out of the Head of the Passes the October before, and the MCRAE, which was a small and respectable naval vessel that mounted eight guns. The rest were all steamships and tugs which had been given a gun or two, some structural reinforcement, cotton bales to protect their engines, and iron prows for ramming Federal vessels. Two of these improvised rams belonged to, surprisingly, the Louisiana State Navy; Louisiana was one of several Confederate states that had their own naval militias. The other ships, some 14 vessels, comprised the so-called River Defense Fleet, which had been thrown together using over a million dollars of funds provided by Richmond.
The three groups of vessels were all under different commands, consisting of the Confederate Navy, Louisiana State Navy, and River Defense Fleet. General Lovell had no authority over any of them. The rams were also handed over to Mississippi riverboat captains whose concepts of military discipline were weak at best. The combat capacity of the fleet was almost completely negligible.
To add to this whole sorry picture, the Confederate government was more worried about the threat upriver to Fort Pillow and Memphis than the threat to New Orleans from the south, and was sending the rams upriver as they came off the ways. They had similarly been looting Lovell's command for infantry and other military resources. This neglect was partially the fault of Lovell himself, who had discounted the importance of the Federal military buildup in the Gulf. Lovell's military intelligence was good, and he had an accurate knowledge of the size and location of Farragut's fleet. However, he also knew that Ben Butler was in charge of the Union ground forces, a fact that caused him to downplay the importance of Federal preparations against New Orleans. Lovell had written Richmond in late February: "I regard Butler's Ship Island expedition as a harmless menace so far as New Orleans is concerned. A black Republican dynasty will never give an old Breckinridge Democrat like Butler command of any expedition which they had any idea would result in such a glorious success as the capture of New Orleans."
Lovell was not the first nor the last person to form mistaken judgements about Ben Butler who, for whatever his defects, was full of surprises. Lovell was doing his best, but given his resources his best was faint, and time had almost completely run out. On 15 March, Lovell declared martial law, and a week later he informed Richmond that the forts downriver were in imminent danger of attack.
* Farther to the West, along the southeast border of Missouri and Arkansas, the sputtering war in the Trans-Mississippi flared up again. The spark that lit the fire was Confederate Major General Earl Van Dorn. Earl Van Dorn was a dapper, feisty little man, 41 years old and 5 feet 5 inches (165 centimeters) tall, a picture of Southern charm and courtesy, a West Point professional with a record of distinction, and multiple wounds from the Mexican War and Indian fighting. He was ambitious and a fighter. He had started the war as a militia major general of his home state of Mississippi, resigned to join the Confederate Army as a colonel, found some action in Texas and made a name for himself, and soon found himself a major general again, in charge of Confederate cavalry in Virginia.
In mid-January 1862, Jefferson Davis assigned Van Dorn command of the Confederate Transmississippi Department Number 2, which consisted of Missouri, Arkansas, Indian Territory, and Louisiana down to the Red River. The rebel forces in the region were disorganized and demoralized. Confederate Generals Sterling Price and Ben McCulloch, whose disagreements had kept them from following up their victory at Wilson's Creek the summer before, were feuding more bitterly than ever.
When Van Dorn arrived in the region on 3 March after conferring with Albert Sidney Johnston, he found Price, McCulloch, and their commands camped in the Boston Mountains, 70 miles (113 kilometers) below the Missouri line. He was struck by the differences between the two men. Price was big, weighing 290 pounds (132 kilograms), tall, and aristocratic, with polished manners and style, while McCulloch was thin and wiry, a tough Texan frontiersman to the core, who wore in battle a gaudy suit of black velvet with high-topped boots and a broad Texas hat. It wasn't surprising they got along so poorly, but they were both good soldiers and would obey orders, and placing the tactful Van Dorn in command put a quick end to the bickering. Both men were infected with Van Dorn's enthusiasm as he outlined his plans to take their troops north into Missouri, drive on to Saint Louis, and then invade Illinois.
Van Dorn was able to assemble roughly 15,000 men for his offensive, including a contingent of 2,000 Indians, including Creeks, Seminoles, Cherokees, Chickasaws, and Choctaws. They had been won over to the Confederate cause by Brigadier General Albert Pike, an Arkansas lawyer, an interesting combination of intellectual and man of action, as well as something of a born salesman.
The immediate obstacle to the rebel advance from Arkansas to Saint Louis was Union Brigadier General Samuel R. Curtis and his army of 12,000 men, which had chased Price and his men out of southern Missouri in February. Curtis was in his mid-fifties, a West Point graduate who had seen action in the Mexican War. He had returned to civilian life to become chief engineer for the city of Saint Louis, then mayor of Keokuk, and finally Republican Congressman from Iowa for three years. He resigned his Congressional seat when the war broke out to become a general of volunteers.
After the removal of Fremont, Curtis was given the job of clearing the rebels out of Missouri. He set about it in an engineer's methodical fashion, driving Sterling Price and his men southward through a region laid waste by feuding armies, dotted with the looted and burned skeletons of homes, barns, and mills. Curtis was a decent man and took no pleasure in the destruction, writing: "A sickening sight, which for the sake of humanity I could pray were effaced from the record of events."
* Van Dorn went north with his men on 3 March 1862. Curtis's four divisions were scattered, with two of them under General Franz Sigel south of the Missouri line near Bentonville, Arkansas, where they were in danger of being cut off and destroyed. However, Curtis had become worried about the dispersion of his forces, and when scouts reported the Confederates on the move, he ordered Sigel to fall back north to join the other two Federal divisions and dig in to face the rebels. Sigel arrived on the evening of 6 March after fighting with Van Dorn's men that cost him two regiments, leaving Curtis with 10,500 effectives.
Curtis's soldiers were drawn up behind a stream named Sugar Creek, just south of the Missouri line. A mile (1.6 kilometers) to the north, in their rear, was the village of Leetown, and a mile to the rear of that was a long, high, imposing granite outcrop known as Pea Ridge. A road called the Wire Road ran northeast through the Federal position to skirt Pea Ridge's eastern flank. At the junction where the road from Leetown joined the Wire Road was a two-story hostel named Elkhorn Tavern, which displayed an elk skull with a large rack of antlers over its entrance.
The snow was falling that evening as Curtis and Sigel inspected their men. Campfires were springing up south of Sugar Creek as the Confederates arrived, and the rebels were certain to attack in the morning. The dawn of 7 March was overcast, though a little warmer, but when it grew light enough to see across the dispersing fog over Sugar Creek, Curtis's men suddenly realized no one was there.
The rebels had marched 50 miles (80 kilometers) in three days, were out of rations, and were hungry and tired. Van Dorn knew they would have to fight immediately, but he was clever enough not to simply charge into Curtis's lines. Instead, he ordered his men to make a night march around the west side of the Federal position. Price was to come around the east side of Pea Ridge to advance by Elkhorn Tavern on the Union positions at dawn. McCulloch and Pike were to attack later through Leetown from the west side of the Ridge. The Federals would be caught in a trap.
The move left Curtis confused until his scouts reported the Confederates moving behind Pea Ridge in force. The rebels were behind schedule; Curtis had taken the precaution of ordering an industrious Iowa colonel named Grenville Dodge take detachments to block the road behind Pea Ridge. Dodge and his men had done a good job of holding up the Confederates, but Price's men would arrive soon. Curtis knew that his forces would likely be destroyed if they tried to run, so he turned his divisions around and prepared for the attack. One division was sent up the Wire Road beyond Elkhorn Tavern to face Price; two marched to the vicinity of Leetown to face McCulloch and Pike, while one remained in reserve.
Price began his attack at 10:30 that morning. The Federal division commander, Colonel Eugene Carr, had set up a defense in depth, but his men were forced back to Elkhorn Tavern, where they beat back two poorly-coordinated rebel charges. The rebels regrouped to charge again, this time in concert, and Carr send a courier back to headquarters to ask Curtis for reinforcements.
Curtis's headquarters were between Leetown and Elkhorn Tavern. When the courier arrived, a sudden racket was heard from the west, and moments later another courier arrived to announce that one of the Federal divisions, led by a German-born colonel named Peter Osterhaus, was under attack by a horde of screaming Indians. Unnerved, Osterhaus's division was dissolving from the battlefield. The other division, under the command of a colonel with the unlikely name of Jefferson C. Davis, was holding fast but needed reinforcements. Curtis, faced with crisis on both fronts, told Carr and Davis to hold out with what they had. The reserve division, under a Hungarian-born colonel named Alexander Asboth, would remain in reserve until events showed where it had to be committed.
Van Dorn was ecstatic over the progress of the battle. He had been worried about the delay in his march that morning, but Price's third attack had indeed forced Colonel Carr's men back from Elkhorn Tavern, and McCulloch and Pike's attack seemed to be going well. Unfortunately, by afternoon, the weary and hungry Confederates were running out of steam and the Federals were continuing to fight back stubbornly. Carr's men had formed a third line to the south of Elkhorn Tavern and were holding fast.
Worse, McCulloch and Pike's attack was not as successful as it had seemed at first. Pike's Indians had driven Osterhaus's men from the field in panic, but the Indians were almost as disorganized themselves. They were fighters but, for the most part, had no great enthusiasm for military discipline and drill. Artillery in particular was something new to them, and they didn't see any good reason to stand out in the open and have Yankees take shots at them with monster guns. Pike couldn't get them to re-form and come to the aid of McCulloch's men, now busy trying to deal with Colonel Jeff Davis's troops.
McCulloch was a fighter, too, and hardly cared if the Indians helped him or not. When an Illinois regiment held up his advance, he took an Arkansas regiment forward personally to shake out the Federals, only to meet a volley that threw the Arkansas men back. They re-formed and advanced again, to find the body of McCulloch, with a bullet through his heart. "McCulloch's dead! They killed McCulloch!" went through the Confederate ranks, and the attack began to bog down in confusion. The next officer in line was killed less than an hour later, and the third in line made the mistake of trying to rally some soldiers -- who turned out to be Yankees and took him prisoner.
Pike had been busy trying to get his Indians back on the move again and wasn't notified of events until very late in the afternoon. All he was able to do was reassemble such of McCulloch's units as still remained organized and then march them around Pea Ridge to help Price. Davis and Osterhaus had been hard-pressed, were happy to see the rebels go, and didn't pursue.
The exhausted rebels didn't have much daylight left and were low on ammunition. Van Dorn had only one chance left to break the Federals, and sent his combined forces once more against Carr's men. The Yankees fell back, though a Union gunner threw a smoldering quilt across a cassion, which made a great explosion as the rebels moved around it. The explosion was heard at headquarters. Curtis decided that Osterhaus and Davis were out of danger, and sent Asboth's division up the Wire Road to help Carr. By the time they arrived, the rebel attack had spent its momentum and the fighting had died down.
Curtis inspected his men's positions in the dark. The soldiers were still wound up from the day's battle and seemed perfectly willing to carry on the fight in the morning. Their commanders were another story. Curtis called a council of war at midnight, and Sigel, Osterhaus, Asboth, and Carr all wanted to retreat. Only Davis, habitually moody and close-mouthed, remained silent. Curtis wasn't happy with Sigel and his two foreign-born generals, since they had done little to help Carr and Davis. He weighed that and their counsel carefully in his engineer's manner, and then concluded that the rebels had shot their bolt. The threat from the west was gone; Curtis could reinforce his line to the northwest, and possibly even take the offensive in the morning.
When the sun came up, Curtis found the rebels drawn up in a long defensive line that ran from batteries placed on Pea Ridge to southwest of Elkhorn Tavern, proving the wisdom of his judgement. The Confederates were not about to make any more attacks on his lines. Van Dorn had his artillery open up on the Federals, even though he was low on ammunition, in hopes that the Union men were about ready to give up and only needed a little shove. Instead, the Federals were massing for an assault and the timidity of the barrage only encouraged them. Curtis sent Sigel forward to attack along the western part of the Confederate line. Sigel wasn't much of a general, but he had style. He sent guns forward to fire on the enemy and rode among them as though on parade while they smashed the rebel artillery. His men cheered, and then he led then forward in a long, sinuous line that swept the rebels before them.
On the eastern part of the line, Colonel Davis's men began to shout for a charge as well, lest Sigel's Germans get all the credit. Curtis was there and gave them the nod. They surged forward and threw back the exhausted rebels, meeting Sigel's men north of Elkhorn Tavern. The Confederates disintegrated. "Victory!" Curtis shouted, his normal restraint gone. "Victory! Victory!"
The rebels scattered in all directions except any that would lead them back toward's Curtis's men. They drifted back in groups to the Boston Mountains. It would take them a week to reassemble. Van Dorn reported about 1,300 men killed, wounded, captured or otherwise missing. Curtis's casualties were about the same, with the majority not surprisingly suffered by Carr's division. Curtis reported without overstatement that he had "completely routed the whole rebel force, which retired in great confusion," and then added in his factual way, "but rather safely, through the deep, impassable defiles."
It had been a narrow victory for the Federals. They were almost out of supplies and ammunition themselves by the time the battle was over, but Curtis had demonstrated a cool head and solid judgement that had defeated the more impetuous Van Dorn. Curtis was saddened by the killing, however, writing his brother: "The scene is silent and sad. The vulture and the wolf now have dominion, and the dead friends and foes sleep in the same lonely graves."
* Van Dorn had managed to get away with most of his force and didn't feel beaten at all. Whether his men agreed was another question. On 23 March, he was leading the survivors north towards Missouri once again when he received an order to them across the Mississippi. The Confederate high command had its attention on bigger things.
Beauregard had quickly recovered from the gloom that had afflicted him after he had ordered the evacuation of Columbus, and began to lay grand plans to consolidate Confederate forces in the region, take the offensive, and drive up to Cairo, Paducah, Saint Louis. Van Dorn's defeat at Elkhorn Tavern was a setback, but Beauregard was not discouraged. The 10,000 men who had left Columbus with General Polk were now in Corinth, joined by 10,000 under Major General Braxton Bragg from Mobile and Pensacola, and 5,000 under Brigadier General Daniel Ruggles from New Orleans. Sending these men northward left the Gulf Coast largely defenseless, but the situation in the upper Mississippi had become critical. The Union seizure of Memphis and Corinth would cut vital rail links extending east to Chattanooga and from there to Knoxville, Richmond, Charleston, Savannah, Atlanta. The Confederacy had to respond.
With his current forces, Beauregard had 25,000 men. Albert Sidney Johnston, leading a force of 15,000 under Hardee and Forrest, arrived in mid-month. When Van Dorn arrived, the total would be roughly 55,000 men, making the Army of the Mississippi the largest army assembled so far in the Confederacy, and a force that Beauregard could use to reverse the Federal drive down the Mississippi.
Albert Sidney Johnston had assumed command on arrival, but he approved of Beauregard's plan and in fact had been considering similar ideas himself. In a typically graceful gesture, Johnston offered to become department commander and give Beauregard command of the operation. Although Beauregard was vain, he was sensible enough to see this was a cosmetic distinction and turned down the offer.
The two men got down to working their poorly-trained and disorganized army into shape and set up command arrangements to their liking, dividing the force into four corps, made up of 10,000 men under Polk, 16,000 under Bragg, 7,000 under Hardee, and 7,000 under John C. Breckinridge. Breckinridge had left his US Senate seat; his Confederate sympathies had been too strong to tolerate, and he decided to leave when Kentucky came down on the side of the Union. He had joined Albert Sidney Johnston back in the fall, who made the politician a general. When Van Dorn arrived, his forces would constitute a fifth corps.
Their target was only 20 miles (32 kilometers) to the north, in the vicinity of a backwoods meetinghouse named Shiloh Chapel along the Tennessee River, where U.S. Grant was massing his own forces while Johnston and Beauregard were massing theirs.
* After regaining command, Grant had steamed upstream to Savannah, Tennessee, on the east bank of the Tennessee river, where C.F. Smith had set up his headquarters. One of Grant's divisions was at Crump's Landing, three miles (4.8 kilometers) upstream to the south on the west bank of the Tennessee, while another five divisions were sent ashore six miles (9.6 kilometers) south of that, at a place called Pittsburg Landing, also on the west side of the river. The site had been recommended by William Tecumseh Sherman, who was now back in the field and commanding one of the divisions. Despite his loss of nerve in the fall, he had returned to duty in Saint Louis before Christmas, demonstrated considerable energy in organizing logistics for the seizure of Fort Donelson, and had been returned to combat command. Grant had a high opinion of him, and Halleck had decided that Sherman wasn't really crazy, just exciteable. Besides, Sherman had a brother in the United States Senate and it didn't hurt to make powerful men happy.
Sherman's men had not been so certain of him at first, but in mid-month he had steamed them up the Tennessee past the Mississippi state line to cut the vital Memphis and Charleston Railroad. They had disembarked from their transports at midnight in a driving rainstorm, found bridges washed out, losing some cavalrymen to the flood in the process, and realized they were in danger of being stranded by waters rising behind their advance. Sherman had cancelled the operation and led them back to the transports. It had seemed quite a fiasco, except that Sherman had kept his head under pressure and made all the right decisions. Like Grant's bloodying at Belmont a few months previously, it had been a useful exercise for both commander and men, and gave them mutual confidence.
Pittsburg Landing itself was little more than a narrow shelf, backed by high bluffs, which in turn led to a plateau dotted with farm clearings and second-growth timber. Sherman found it conveniently crisscrossed with roads and protected by streams -- Owl Creek running along the west side, Snake Creek along the north -- with plenty of space to bivouac and drill five divisions of soldiers. The only building in the area of any note was Shiloh Chapel, towards the southern end of the campground, so the place was informally known as Camp Shiloh.
Halleck was cautious, as he always was, sending orders to Grant to dig in and wait for instructions. However, nobody was digging in at Pittsburg Landing. C.F. Smith was in bed, having scraped his leg on the seat of a rowboat and come down with an infection, but would have none of such timidity: "By God, I ask nothing better than to have the rebels come out and attack us! We can whip them to hell. Our men suppose we have come here to fight, and if we begin to spade it will make them think we fear the enemy." Grant agreed, telling Halleck the war was on its last legs and the enemy was too demoralized to be dangerous. Sherman didn't agree, telling reporters privately that "we are in great danger here", but having been overwhelmed by his fears a few months before, he gradually went to the other extreme and let them go to sleep.
Grant had over 42,000 men in his six divisions. Now that Halleck was the top boss in Tennessee, Buell and 30,000 soldiers were being sent as reinforcements. With such a combined force, the Federals would make short work of the rebels at Corinth. Albert Sidney Johnston knew all this, and knew he would have to strike Grant before Buell and his men arrived, or face total destruction.
* While a fight was brewing along the banks of the Tennessee, the sideshow war in New Mexico territory came to a climax. Confederate Brigadier General Henry Sibley, after defeating Union Colonel Edward Canby at Valverde, had led his Texans north along the Rio Grande toward Albuquerque. They met no opposition and made the march in a week, arriving in Albuquerque on 1 March.
The Federal garrison there did not try to fight and pulled out for Santa Fe the next morning, taking care to set fire to all their supplies as they left. Sibley continued his march to Santa Fe and arrived there on 5 March, only to find once more an empty town with smoldering piles of burned supplies. This left Sibley in a difficult situation, as Canby had planned. The Texans had begun their advance with minimal supplies, and as those supplies dwindled so did prospects of survival in the desert wasteland. Worse, the public support that the Confederates had counted on failed to materialize and Sibley obtained no help from the local citizens.
Most of the Union soldiers that had fled from their advance were now holed up in Fort Union, 60 miles (96 kilometers) east of Santa Fe. Sibley sent out 600 men to block Apache Canyon, which led to the fort, while he reorganized his forces to take the fort. Then, on 26 March 1862, word came that about 400 Federal cavalrymen were moving west through the canyon. The Texans went to meet them.
The Confederates formed a line inside the canyon and waited for the Federals to come forward and be slaughtered, but suddenly the hills around the Texans came alive with rifle fire that killed many of them and sent the rest into a panic as they vainly tried to find protection. The attack came from the 1st Colorado Regiment, over 1,300 strong, which had arrived at Fort Union after a long march on the same day that Sibley had occupied Santa Fe. The Coloradans had been after a fight, and now they got one that was more than to their satisfaction. The Texans fell back to the canyon mouth to make a stand, only to be overrun by Union cavalry; the rebels broke and ran. In the end, they took almost 150 casualties, with roughly half taken prisoner. The Federals suffered 19 casualties; they withdrew to wait for reinforcements from Fort Union.
The surviving Texans fled back to Santa Fe. Sibley responded by sending out two regiments to strike back at the Yankees. They came head to head with the Federals in Apache Canyon an hour before noon on 28 March, in a constricted gorge named Glorieta Pass. It was a terrible place for a fight, with no place to hide and no place to run. The two sides shot it out for five hours in the dust, finally calling a truce to tend for their wounded and bury the dead, and then the Confederates learned that a few hundred Coloradans had circled behind them and wiped out their supply train, burning 85 wagons and bayoneting 600 horses and mules.
The Texans had no alternative but to retreat back to Santa Fe. The Federals wanted to pursue, but they had received orders from Colonel Canby at Fort Craig to take no chances. Canby feared the Confederates were planning to send another army into New Mexico Territory and didn't want to be lured into a trap. Despite the fact that they had given the rebels a decisive whipping, inflicting over 120 casualties at a cost of less than 90, the Federals went back to Fort Union.
It hardly mattered. Sibley and his men were now out on a limb deep in territory that was hostile in every sense of the word. Simple survival was going to demand everything they had.
