v1.1.2 / chapter 24 of 93 / 01 oct 09 / greg goebel / public domain
* After the slaughter of the Seven Days' Battles, both McClellan and Lee went quiet to rest and refit their injured armies. The tensions between McClellan and his superiors in Washington had been enhanced by what the general perceived as their lack of support and incompetence, and McClellan was barely able to conceal his resentment. In Washington, however, the setback only seemed to make Abraham Lincoln more determined.
On the other side of the fighting lines, Lee and his men were encouraged by their victory and the large amounts of supplies captured from the Yankees. Lee now hoped to take the battle back to the Federals, instead of waiting to see what they would do next.
In the West, Don Carlos Buell pursued a plodding offensive towards Chattanooga. Despite the fact that Yankee armies in the region were stronger in almost every respect than Confederate forces in their path, Buell's lack of drive, as well as increasingly energetic Confederate countermeasures, frustrated Federal ambitions in the area. The Yankees found themselves very hard-pressed to deal with cavalry raids conducted by John Hunt Morgan and Nathan Bedford Forrest. Encouraged by the success of the raiders, Braxton Bragg planned a major offensive.
* The Seven Day's Battles left both McClellan's and Lee's armies battered and disorganized, and on 2 July 1862 there was not much more for either side to do but deal with their wounded and dead. There were still a few soldiers who wanted to fight, most particularly Jeb Stuart, whose cavalrymen had been sidelined through the week. Stuart was chafing to get into the battle for his fair share of glory.
On the morning of 3 July Stuart, while scouting out McClellan's position at Harrison's Landing, found that the Federals had failed to occupy a low ridge called Evelington Heights that overlooked their otherwise well-defended position. Stuart impulsively brought up a little cavalry howitzer, and at 9:00 AM opened up on the packed field of Union soldiers. The result was like poking an anthill, with the Yankees boiling around in great confusion and excitement. Stuart continued the bombardment, having been informed by Lee that reinforcements were on the way, but by 2:00 PM Stuart was almost out of shells, no help had arrived, and the Federals were closing in on his position. He fired his last rounds and pulled out. McClellan fortified the heights that night, plugging the last hole in his defenses.
There was no fighting on the 4th of July 1862. Opposing regiments on picket duty came to agreement not to fight each other on Independence Day. It was, after all, a holiday for both sides, and they "gathered berries together and talked over the fight, traded tobacco and coffee and exchanged newspapers as peacefully and kindly and if they had not been engaged for the last seven days in butchering one another."
* The battle left McClellan's army stranded on the mud flats of the James at Harrison's Landing. On the 4th, McClellan gave one of his ringing speeches to his men, saying that they would be immortalized by history and that each of them might "always say with pride: 'I belonged to the Army of the Potomac.'" It rang a little hollow, though the men still cheered Little Mac. Well, most of them did. It was said three infantry regiments remained coldly silent. They had been forgotten during the withdrawal from Savage Station, narrowly managed to evade capture, wandered around lost for three days, and were in no good humor when they managed to make their way to Union lines.
There was some dissatisfaction in the upper ranks as well. Phil Kearny's angry protests were hardly a secret and had leaked North, but in general the feeling among the soldiers was characterized by a certain uneasiness, not rebelliousness or despair. They had all fought well but, as one private put it: "The men feel that something is wrong and can't find what it is."
Harrison's Landing was not a pleasant place. It had rained intermittently and the ground was runny mud. Tent pegs wouldn't hold and fires were hard to start, while many of the soldiers had lost their knapsacks in the fighting and had nothing to sleep under at all. The weather was hot and sticky, flies and mosquitoes buzzed around in clouds, sanitation was nearly impossible, and the place stank horribly. Such drinking water as could be found was foul and diseased. Everyone was louse-infested. A colonel was told his by his surgeon that lice had only afflicted a few men who had failed to stay clean, and the colonel exploded: "The whole army is lousy! I am lousy! You are lousy! General McClellan is lousy!" The sick lists grew with cases of diarrhea and malaria.
McClellan's personal state was ambiguous. He felt betrayed by his political
superiors; in his letters to his wife, he poured out contempt for them, while
he continued to plead for reinforcements. On 1 July, the day of the fighting
at Malvern Hill, he had wired for 50,000 reinforcements. On 3 July, he asked
for 100,000. Lincoln replied on the 4th, with the labored reasoning of a
person whose patience was being tried, pointing out that such a request could
not be met in a month or even six weeks. He wired back:
SAVE THE ARMY, FIRST, WHERE YOU ARE, IF YOU CAN; SECONDLY, BY
REMOVAL, IF YOU MUST.
The President could not help himself from adding a postscript:
IF AT ANY TIME YOU FEEL ABLE TO TAKE THE OFFENSIVE, YOU ARE
NOT RESTRAINED FROM DOING SO.
* The machinery for generating reinforcements was already in motion.
Although the Federal military recruiting offices had been reopened in
response to Jackson's rampage in the Shenandoah Valley, there had been few
new volunteers. The reversals of fortune on the Peninsula indicated many
more men would likely be needed, but a call by the Federal government for
troops might lead to "a general panic and stampede", as Lincoln put it.
The situation demanded a little finesse. Lincoln wasn't in a position to call for troops, but there would be no problem with accepting them if they were offered. Secretary of State Seward was dispatched to New York to meet with the power elite of the northern states and arrange for the northern governors to "urge" the President to issue a call for volunteers. Seward carried with him a statement of resolve by written by the President:
BEGIN QUOTE:
I expect to maintain this contest until successful, or till I die, or am conquered, or my term expires, or Congress or the country forsake me ...
Yours, very truly, A. Lincoln.
END QUOTE
On 30 June, seventeen governors and the president of the military board of Kentucky signed a statement written by Seward requesting that the President "at once call upon the several States for such number of men as may be required" to "speedily crush the rebellion". The President responded immediately and, "fully concurring in the wisdom of the views expressed to me in so patriotic a manner", called out for 300,000 volunteers on 2 July. Localities and states offered bounties as an inducement to get men to sign up.
* The real problem, as far as Lincoln was concerned, was what would be done with the men once McClellan got his hands on them. The President once observed that sending troops to McClellan was like trying to shovel fleas across a barnlot; so few seemed to get across. Lincoln's concerns along this line were aggravated by reports of the poor condition of McClellan's army along the James, as well as by John Pope, who loudly and publicly maligned McClellan every chance he got.
The President decided to investigate matters on the James for himself. On the night of 7 July, he boarded the Navy steamer ARIEL and went to Harrison's Landing, arriving there the next afternoon to ride with McClellan for an inspection of the army. To Lincoln's surprise, the men appeared to be in good spirits and good condition. In fact, fresh provisions, clothes, and equipment had been arriving and the men were feeling much better off. They found the President's visit entertaining, watching a very tall man trying to control a short and nervous horse. A chaplain wrote: "I have seldom witnessed a more ludicrous sight than our worthy Chief Magistrate presented on horseback ... it did seem as though every moment the President's legs would become entangled with those of the horse and both come down together."
But the same chaplain added: "The boys liked him, his popularity is universal ... all have faith in Lincoln. 'When he finds out,' they say, 'it will be stopped.' ... God bless this man and give answer to the prayers for guidance I am sure he offers." McClellan did not feel any such admiration, writing his wife later that Lincoln was "an old stick and of pretty poor timber at that", and said that he had to "order the men to cheer and they did it very feebly."
The President spent the next day conferring with McClellan and his generals, and at this point McClellan made a serious error of judgement. A few weeks earlier, the general had asked the President for permission to present his views on the overall military situation. The President had graciously agreed and suggested they should be submitted in a letter if that would not take up too much time. McClellan now presented Lincoln with the letter. It proposed a war of restraint: "It should not be at all a war upon population ... neither confiscation of property, political executions of persons, territorial organizations of States, or forcible abolition of slavery should be contemplated for a moment." By combining forces under a general-in-chief, the Union would be able to defeat the South's armies in the field and restore the Union. McClellan humbly said he did not seek that post, but would not refuse it.
"All right," Lincoln said, after reading the letter, and stuck it in his pocket without another word. He then discussed with McClellan and his generals about what to do next. Some of the generals wanted to withdraw, while others and McClellan himself wanted to attack Richmond once more. However, McClellan offered no concrete proposals for such an offensive and simply asked for more reinforcements.
Lincoln departed later that day and, having given few positive signs, left McClellan fearing the worst. The general wrote his wife that he feared the President had some "paltry trick" up his sleeve. For a week McClellan brooded and railed against his superiors, writing his wife of his contempt for the cowardly President, while reserving his deepest bitterness for Secretary of War Stanton. Stanton had been writing McClellan continuously to express his unshaking loyalty and devotion, while simultaneously working to turn the rest of the Cabinet against the general. Gideon Welles, who took a dim view of such weasel behavior, noted that McClellan "had failings enough of his own to bear without addition of Stanton's enmity to his own infirmities." To his credit, McClellan was not fooled by Stanton in the least. The general wrote his wife that Stanton was "the vilest man", "the most unmitigated scoundrel", "the most depraved hypocrite and villain", and described him as more treacherous than Judas Iscariot. By mid-month, McClellan was writing to friends in the North to sound out opportunities for new employment.
* While the letter McClellan had presented to the President was a dud, the general had no idea of how far off base he really was. The letter had proposed policies for a restrained war, at the very time Lincoln was realizing that a restrained war was out of the question. For example, in response to protests against the authoritarian measures his armies had imposed in conquered regions of the South, Lincoln had recently written a reply:
BEGIN QUOTE:
What would you do in my position? Would you drop the war where it is? Or would you prosecute it in future with elder-stalk squirts charged with rosewater? Would you deal lighter blows rather than heavier ones? Would you give up the contest, leaving any available means unapplied?
END QUOTE
He added in a letter: "I shall not surrender this game leaving any available
card unplayed." If that meant confiscations, arbitrary arrests, reducing
Confederate states to subjugated provinces, or, most of all, emancipation of
the slaves by force -- then so be it. McClellan had clearly proven with his
letter that he wasn't the kind of general who could fight such a war.
Lincoln made up his mind. On the morning of 11 July, General Halleck
received the following telegram:
ORDERED. THAT MAJ. GEN. HENRY W. HALLECK BE ASSIGNED
TO COMMAND THE WHOLE LAND FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES AS
GENERAL-IN-CHIEF, AND THAT HE REPAIR TO THIS CAPITAL AS
SOON AS HE CAN WITH SAFETY TO THE POSITIONS AND
OPERATIONS WITHIN THE DEPARTMENT UNDER HIS CHARGE.
* While the Army of the Potomac cowered under the protective firepower of
Union gunboats at Harrison's Landing, Robert E. Lee attended to his own
battered Army of Northern Virginia and considered what to do next.
On 6 July, two days before Lincoln's visit, McClellan had noticed considerable rebel activity beyond his lines and feared an attack, but on the 7th he found that Lee, having determined that the Federal gunboats made McClellan effectively invulnerable, had pulled most of his forces from the unhealthy airs of Harrison's Landing back to Richmond, where his army could be rested and brought back to full fighting condition.
The spirits of the Confederate soldiers were good. Northern newspapers had reported McClellan's description of his withdrawal to the James as a "change of base", and when the story got to the men, they would loudly laugh at the loser of a dog fight and call out: "Look at him changing his base!"
Despite their high morale, the rebels had been hurt as bad as the Federals in the fighting, and in particular there were shortages of all kinds of equipment. The Yankees had abandoned plenty of supplies that could be used to refit rebel regiments, and that matter was quickly dealt with. Lee then turned his attention to a larger task: reorganizing his army into a force that could respond to his commands.
Eleven separate divisions had fought in the Seven Day's Battles and coordinating them had proven difficult. Clearly, some kind of higher-level organizational structure had to be imposed to ensure an effective chain of command. However, the Confederacy had a law banning military units larger than a division, another symptom of the South's sometimes over-the-top preoccupation with States' Rights. Lee was lobbying to repeal this law and it would be repealed in November, but in the meantime he divided the Army of Northern Virginia into two sections vaguely referred to as "wings", with one part under Longstreet and the other under Stonewall Jackson. Jackson was given much the smaller wing, 7 brigades to Longstreet's 28, an implied reprimand for his poor conduct in the fighting.
Lee also weeded out commanders who did not meet his expectations. John Magruder was offered the command of Confederate forces in Texas and had accepted it. Lee had not arranged the transfer, but his treatment of Magruder during the battles had demonstrated a certain prejudice against him. In hindsight, Lee's low regard for Magruder seems less than just, Magruder being a commander whose energy and inventiveness often made up for his weaknesses in formal military skills. However, his style was clearly at odds with Lee's, and Magruder recognized he would have better opportunities elsewhere. Both Magruder and Lee had reason to feel pleased with the transfer.
However, Lee also lost the promising Richard Taylor. Though Taylor had been stricken by a mysterious ailment that had paralyzed his legs during the Seven Days battle, the trouble was temporary, and he accepted command of unoccupied Louisiana, where he could focus his talent for fury and throw the Yankees out of his home state. Deaf old Theophilus Holmes followed Magruder and Taylor as their commanding officer, being placed in charge of the entire Department of the Transmississippi. Benjamin Huger, finally, was kicked upstairs to a Confederate War Department staff position.
Lee also had to work to keep the peace between the generals he valued, as they were in general proud and touchy Southern aristocrats. When a dispute between Longstreet and A.P. Hill started to escalate toward a duel, he intervened and imposed peace between them.
As Lee welded his forces into an effective army, the great question was what to do with it. The answer was broadly obvious. The Confederacy had repelled the Federals from the gates of Richmond, but had failed to destroy McClellan's army. The enemy could renew the contest, almost certainly on terms more to their own liking, whenever they found the will to do so. The only thing to do was seize the initiative and take the war to the North.
It was a difficult prospect. Lee was still confronted by Federal forces, consisting of McClellan's Army of the Potomac; various forces in Northern Virginia; and Burnside and his troops, who had been pulled up the coast from North Carolina during the battles and were sitting off Fort Monroe in transports. These forces could be moved in any number of combinations against the Confederacy. The trick was to move faster than they did. Lee began work on an extensive set of fortifications to protect Richmond from McClellan's army. Once completed, they would allow Lee to make use of his own army in offensive operations.
For the moment, however, matters still looked grim and opportunities were not obvious. Still, if Confederate leadership could spare a moment to reflect on matters, things still looked much more promising than they had a month earlier, when the North seem poised to win the war very quickly. Now the balance had shifted to the South, and Union leadership could no longer feel confident of a near-term victory. On the other side of the coin, however, the earlier Union defeat at Bull Run had only increased the resolve of the Lincoln Administration to fight the war, and no Confederate leader with sense thought the Union defeat in the Seven Days was going to make the Federal government give up now.
There was another shadow on the Confederacy that few, if any, noticed at the time. If McClellan had captured Richmond in 1862 and ended the war, the Union would have been restored -- with slavery left more or less intact. The longer the war dragged on, the more Union leadership would consider taking direct action against slavery to undermine the economic basis of the Southern war effort. Lee's actions in front of Richmond had given the Confederacy a new lease on life, but if the Union couldn't be defeated, in the long run the end results were going to be just that much more disastrous for the South.
* Don Carlos Buell's offensive towards Chattanooga, Tennessee, through most of June had been greeted with considerable enthusiasm in the White House. Capture of that important transport junction would open the door to Atlanta. Ormsby Mitchel, whose own offensive in that direction had stalled, had told Halleck that the region was "completely unprotected and very much alarmed".
Chattanooga would also provide an advance base for a Federal move on Knoxville and the liberation of east Tennessee from the Confederates, a matter very dear to Lincoln's heart. Even as Lee was hammering at the Army of the Potomac in late June and McClellan was screaming for reinforcements, the President cancelled McClellan's request for troops from Halleck when the reply came that it would mean giving up the push towards Chattanooga.
By early July, Buell had four divisions with a total of 35,000 men in Huntsville, Alabama, with Ormsby Mitchel nearby with 11,000 more. There was another division to the north in the Cumberland Gap that could come to Buell's assistance if need be, as well as a division under George Thomas in the rear at Iuka, Mississippi, near the Tennessee-Alabama border. If push came to shove, two more divisions could be obtained from Grant in Memphis.
By this time, the last thing Buell wanted was more soldiers. The men and animals he already had on hand were on half-rations. His main supply route was a single rail line to Louisville that ran in a roundabout fashion through northern Alabama to Corinth, and then north through Tennessee into Kentucky. This route had been damaged during the Federal advance and was easily attacked by the Confederate raiders. Sniper fire was so common that armored boxcars had to be provided to protect train crews. To aggravate the difficulties, in late June Buell's staff had completely bungled the shipment of vital rations. Buell reported: "We are living from day to day on short supplies and our operations are completely crippled."
Then, on 8 July, Buell got more bad news. He received a telegram from
Halleck that reported the Confederates were preparing to move against him.
The message went on to state:
THE PRESIDENT TELEGRAPHS THAT YOUR PROGRESS IS NOT
SATISFACTORY AND THAT YOU SHOULD MOVE MORE RAPIDLY.
THE LONG TIME TAKEN BY YOU TO REACH CHATTANOOGA WILL
ENABLE THE ENEMY TO ANTICIPATE YOU BY CONCENTRATING
A LARGE FORCE TO MEET YOU. I COMMUNICATE HIS VIEWS,
HOPING THAT YOUR MOVEMENTS HEREAFTER MAY BE SO RAPID
AS TO REMOVE ALL CAUSE OF COMPLAINT, WHETHER WELL
FOUNDED OR NOT.
Buell was so shocked and upset by this message that he refused to answer for
three days, and responded only when he received a follow-up telegram:
I WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU. H.W. HALLECK.
Buell responded with a detailed explanation of his difficulties, and added:
THE DISSATISFACTION OF THE PRESIDENT PAINS ME EXCEEDINGLY.
Halleck replied on the next day, 12 July, demonstrating his odd habit of
giving a subordinate a kick in the ass and then following it with a pat on
the back. He assured Buell that he understood the problems, explained that
the Administration's impatience was due to the fact that "the disasters
before Richmond have worked them up to a boiling heat," and promised to
smooth matters over with the politicians.
* Buell had further troubles for the moment: John Hunt Morgan was raising hell in the Federal rear up in Kentucky. Morgan had left Knoxville on 4 July with orders from Kirby Smith to ride into Kentucky and disrupt the Federals there. Morgan was a Kentuckian by birth and breeding, very much the Kentucky gentleman, tall and with refined manners. His cavalry troopers demonstrated the flair and dash expected of their kind, with fancy clothes and gear and dapper beards. Among them was George Ellsworth, an expert telegrapher and wiretapper, whose skills proved particularly useful.
It took the raiders three days to get out of the mountain territory while they were persistently harassed by Unionist bushwhackers. When they arrived at the town of Sparta, about a third of the way to Nashville, they found plenty of Confederate sympathizers who were eager to sign up. Not all of these men were interested in the glory of the thing. They were mountain men who had a long tradition of vendettas and were after revenge. One, Champ Ferguson, was picked up by Morgan as a guide, but had to be told not to murder Yankee prisoners. One of Morgan's men observed of Ferguson:
BEGIN QUOTE:
Ill-treatment of his wife and daughter by some soldiers and Home-guards enlisted in his own neighborhood made him relentless in his hatred of all Union men. He had a brother of the same character as himself in the Union army, and they sought each other persistently, mutually bent on fratricide. The mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee were filled with such men, who murdered every prisoner they took.
END QUOTE
Morgan rode north from Sparta to Tompkinsville, roughly in the middle of the Kentucky border with Tennessee, where he surrounded a Federal battalion and forced them to surrender. All the prisoners were paroled except for their commander, Major Thomas Jefferson Jordan. Jordan had earned a bad reputation by insulting and intimidating the women of one Kentucky town, and so he was packed off to prison in Richmond to reflect on the errors of his ways.
The raiders moved another 30 miles (48 kilometers) north, where Ellsworth tapped into the telegraph line from Nashville to Louisville. He sent reports over the wire of Morgan's force striking towards Louisville and Cincinnati, Ohio. The bogus reports helped spread confusion to the north. In reality, Morgan's troopers circled around north of Louisville to the banks of the Ohio, then rode back southeast to overrun a small garrison of green Union troops at Cynthiana, Kentucky, on 17 July. While Morgan and his men numbered only about a thousand and weren't really more than a painful nuisance, their unpredictability and mobility spread panic through Unionist circles in Kentucky and through the neighboring states. Lincoln sent an understated message to Halleck: "They are having a stampede in Kentucky. Please look to it." Halleck responded by mindlessly badgering Buell.
It was too late by then. Morgan was already on his way back to Tennessee after inflicting a considerable amount of damage in Kentucky, and would return safely to Tennessee on 28 July. He wired Kirby Smith to tell him that if he were to march his army into Kentucky, "25,000 or 30,000 men would join you at once." The truth was that only about 300 men had joined up with Morgan during the raid, and he had alarmed Unionist sympathizers in the region so much that they flocked to the recruiters. Over 7,000 men signed up in Kentucky alone. Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes, later a US president, was recruiting in Kentucky and proclaimed: "Hooray for Morgan!" Morgan had many virtues, but he also had a certain tendency to believe what he wanted to believe instead of facing reality. It would catch up with him eventually.
* However, while the raid was in progress it helped bog down the Union movement on Chattanooga even further, but Buell received some good news, too. In early July, the Federal advance across northern Alabama reached the town of Stevenson in the northeast corner of the state, which connected to Nashville through a rail line going northwest through a place called Murfreesboro. This gave Buell a second, more direct line of supply that was not so easy to cut, and he sent a brigade to Murfreesboro under Brigadier General Thomas T. Crittenden -- a cousin of Senator John Crittenden's son Brigadier General Thomas L. Crittenden -- to protect the rail line. The same day that Buell received Halleck's reassuring telegram, 12 July, he was also informed that supply trains would arrive from Nashville in a day or two, allowing him to take his men off half-rations.
Unfortunately, Buell had the black-magic touch: nothing good ever seemed to last for him. On 6 July, Colonel Nathan Bedford Forest had left Chattanooga with a thousand troopers to harass the Federals in central Tennessee. They acquired reinforcements from scattered Confederate units in the area and arrived at the town of Woodbury, Tennessee, about 18 miles (29 kilometers) east of Murfreesboro, on 12 July. The locals were glad to see Forrest and his troopers. The Federals had moved into the town the evening before, arrested most of the men as Confederate sympathizers, and intended to hang six of them on the morning of 13 July. Forrest promised to stop the executions, and he was as good as his word.
That morning Forrest and his men swept into Murfreesboro, taking the Yankees completely by surprise. The raiders attacked Crittenden's scattered forces, while a column on horseback melodramatically charged into town to rescue the condemned men. The Union jailers wanted to shoot the prisoners in their cells instead of seeing them liberated, but the rebels were on them too fast. A jailer set the building on fire and fled with the keys, and the rescuers were barely able to pry open an iron door and get the men out safely. In the meantime, another group of Confederates had seized the town's hotel, along with General Crittenden and his staff. By noon it was all over. The Federals had put up a fight in some places, but Forrest managed to cow the entire brigade into surrendering. He captured about a half-million dollars worth of stores and then thoroughly wrecked the railroad depot.
Buell was outraged, calling the surrender of Crittenden's brigade one of the most "disgraceful examples of neglect of duty" and added that it "fully merits the extreme penalty for such disconduct." Buell hurried William Nelson's division up the railroad line to chase after Forrest, but the rebel cavalry disappeared back towards the mountains. They reappeared again on 21 July, burning three bridges near Nashville and frightening the Yankees there into believing they would soon be swept up as well. Nelson marched his men north from Murfreesboro to intercept the rebels, but Forrest took his men on a side road and quietly listened to the Federals tramp past.
* Buell set his work gangs to repairing the damage, and they did it swiftly. By 29 July, they had the line to Nashville working and trains began to arrive in Stevenson bearing carloads of rations. Buell's men went off half-rations and got new shoes, but all things considered, that was too little to make them happy. If Lincoln suspected Buell was taking his time, Buell's men were sure of it. One of his officers called it "holiday soldiering", and the soldiers in general regarded their commander with contempt. Buell was methodical to a fault, and nothing anybody could do would hurry him along.
Buell also had little concept of leadership. He was a disciplinarian who had no ability to inspire his men and no interest in doing so, a sour fellow who tended to give criticism instead of praise. He earned no favors with his soldiers with his severity. Before Buell's arrival, Mitchel's men had been becoming increasingly disorderly, and Mitchel had complained to Secretary Stanton that "the most terrible outrages -- robberies, rapes, arsons, and plunderings -- are begin committed by lawless vagabonds connected with the army."
The violence done by Mitchel's men had been greatly aggravated by attacks by Confederate guerrillas, which predictably led to an escalation of Federal reprisals. For example, Colonel John Beatty of the 3rd Ohio Infantry was bringing his men down to Huntsville by train in May when they were ambushed near the town of Paint Rock. He stopped the train, went into the town, assembled the citizens and told them with threats of hangings that the bushwhacking would cease, and then torched the place to show he meant business. Another colonel, John Basil Turchin, in command of Illinois troops, took his men into Athens, Alabama, in response to another guerrilla attack. Turchin, who had once been an officer in the Russian Tsar's army, told his men: "I shut mine eyes for one hour." The men had a party, robbing the residents of their jewelry and silver, trashing things as they pleased, and raping slave girls.
Buell would have none of such disorderliness. When he arrived in Huntsville and learned of the incident in Athens, he was shocked that "not only straggling individuals, but a whole brigade, under the open authority of its commander, could engage in these acts." He had Turchin court-martialed and drummed out of the service. Restraint in dealing with the civilian population was not an unusual policy at the time -- Sherman, a much more popular leader, was for the moment more severe in this discipline than Buell -- but Buell's cold, sour leadership gave him no saving graces. Colonel Beatty, who was involved in Turchin's court-martial, wrote in his diary:
BEGIN QUOTE:
Turchin has gone to one extreme, but Buell is inaugurating the dancing-master policy: "By your leave, my dear sir, we will have a fight; that is, if you are sufficiently fortified. No hurry; take your own time." To the bushwhacker: "Am sorry you gentlemen fire at our trains from behind stumps, logs, and ditches. Had you not better cease this sort of warfare?"
END QUOTE
Turchin's wife later appealed to the President, and the Russian colonel not only found himself reinstated, but promoted to brigadier general. Lincoln's patience with polite warfare had run out long before. Incidentally, Ormsby Mitchel was recalled to Washington in early July to explain illegal cotton transactions in his department. He survived this interrogation well enough to be promoted to major general, and was sent to the South Carolina coast.
In any case, Buell's army was going nowhere, and he didn't seem like the kind of man who could take it anywhere.
* If Buell wasn't willing to move, no such hesitation afflicted Braxton Bragg, even though the resources available to Bragg were far inferior to those of his adversary.
After taking over command in June from Beauregard of the Confederate forces in Tupelo, Mississippi, Bragg found himself in charge of a broken-down army that had never been in good condition to begin with. Many of his men were on the sick list, and large numbers of them had been sent elsewhere to deal with other Federal threats. Just before Beauregard's departure, 6,000 had been marched off by Earl Van Dorn to Holly Springs, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of Corinth, to protect Vicksburg, and another 3,000 were later detached to assist in the defense of east Tennessee. Bragg was determined to make the best use of what he had and began an energetic program to whip his army into shape. His efforts highlighted both his virtues and his defects.
While Buell was colorless, Bragg was simply unpleasant. Grant had known Bragg in Mexico and described him as "remarkably intelligent and well-informed" and "thoroughly upright", but "naturally disputatious", willing to quarrel fiercely with his superiors and harass his subordinates for the "slightest neglect" of his "most trivial order". Much of this was apparently due to persistent headaches and chronic indigestion, but Bragg demonstrated no inclination to keep his bad disposition on a leash.
There was a story from the old Army that Grant was fond of in which Bragg, a young lieutenant, was assigned the dual roles of company commander and quartermaster. He submitted requisitions as company commander to himself as quartermaster and then denied them; challenged the denial; rejected the challenge; and finally took the dispute to the post commander, who replied: "My God, Mr. Bragg, you have quarreled with every officer in the army, and now you are quarreling with yourself!" This was far-fetched, but a more likely story claimed that during the Mexican War, one of his Bragg's men had lit a shell and rolled it under Bragg's cot while he lay sleeping. The shell was defective, and Bragg was shaken by the blast but unharmed.
Braxton Bragg could not hope and did not care to be liked, but, like Stonewall Jackson, if he could deliver victories that would not matter at all. At first, it seemed to his soldiers that he might just be the man who could do it. He imposed harsh discipline: not only did he drill his men incessantly, but desertions and other serious crimes were dealt with by firing squads, with the execution of the offender witnessed by all his comrades. Lesser crimes were dealt with by brandings and savage floggings. To his credit, Bragg believed in carrots as well as sticks, and provided better rations and new uniforms. On one hand, Bragg demonstrated that he meant business, and on the other he showed the ability to carry it out. The healthier camp at Tupelo had brought many of his soldiers off the sick list, and in general their morale improved. Probably having a commander they could all hate improved their solidarity as well.
* Bragg had been officially appointed commander of the Army of the Mississippi on 27 June. By 12 July, he was able to report Richmond that his army's "condition for service" was good. He was ready to take the offensive.
Morgan and Forrest were providing an inspiring example for Confederates throughout the West who wanted to take on the Yankees, and in mid-July Bragg dispatched two brigades of cavalry to harass Buell's supply lines in northern Alabama and western Tennessee. On 22 July, Bragg wrote Beauregard, who was enduring his exile and recuperation at Bladon Springs: "Our cavalry is paving the way for me in Middle Tennessee and Kentucky."
Bragg intended to move. Kirby Smith, in command of Confederate forces in
Knoxville, had been growing increasingly nervous about the buildup of Federal
forces around him. Smith had been wiring Bragg and everyone else in
authority with frantic appeals for help. There was little response to his
pleas until 21 July, when Bragg wired Richmond:
WILL MOVE IMMEDIATELY TO CHATTANOOGA IN FORCE AND ADVANCE FROM THERE.
On 24 July, Bragg began his move. Leaving Sterling Price with 16,000 men in
Tupelo to help protect northern Mississippi, Bragg sent engineers and
horse-drawn elements west from Tupelo across Alabama. Four infantry
divisions, over 30,000 men, were then sent by rail. Their route was a
remarkably roundabout one, due to the fragility of the Southern rail system
and the intrusions of the Yankees, with the men sent all the way south to
Mobile on the Gulf Coast and then back north to Chattanooga.
The rail movement went very smoothly, a tribute to Bragg's organizational skills. He personally reached Chattanooga on 30 July. Kirby Smith, who had not been informed of Bragg's move, finally got word of it and came down from Knoxville to meet with Bragg the next day. Smith was enthusiastic about the prospects for dealing a blow to the Yankees with their combined Confederate force of over 50,000 men.
Braxton Bragg had not only acted energetically. He had demonstrated strategic insight in recognizing the railways as a key to military operations. By attacking Buell's rail connections and exploiting his own, he hoped to level the imbalance between his forces and the enemy's.
