v1.1.3 / chapter 33 of 93 / 01 sep 11 / greg goebel / public domain
* Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, defeated at Antietam, should have been destroyed, but McClellan characteristically did not press his advantage. He still felt he had won a great victory that would put him on the center stage and allow him to have a greater voice in how decisions were made. He was then abruptly pushed off the stage by President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, a clever document that neatly put the Confederacy in political check.
In the meantime, the war in the West went on. Ulysses Grant fought an inconclusive battle with Sterling Price at Iuka, Mississippi. Kirby Smith and Braxton Bragg continued their march into Kentucky, even as it became increasingly clear that the support the rebels had counted on from the citizens of that state was not materializing.
* The morning after the battle of Antietam, Thursday, 18 September 1862, arrived to reveal a ghastly scene of smashed equipment and dead bodies. Pickets exchanged a few pot-shots with each other, but for the most part the two sides, having established truces, were busy attending to their wounded and taking ownership of the dead. The air stank with the smell of the decaying corpses of men and horses; the Federals tried to burn some of the horses and only made the smell worse.
Lee considered attacking the Federals, but he knew he had been badly hurt and concluded he had to withdraw his army back to Virginia. McClellan received reinforcements of 14,000 men that day, but the slaughter of the previous day had reinforced his natural caution and he refused to attack. No doubt he still felt he was outnumbered. His critics back in Washington would proclaim the day "Black Thursday".
Lee withdrew that night. A fine rain fell and turned the road into soupy mud, making life even more miserable for his men. They crossed the Potomac at a place called Boteler's Ford. Lee was very apprehensive that the Federals would attack while his army was packed onto a narrow country road, but though Union pickets were perfectly aware the Confederates were pulling out, McClellan did nothing. In the morning, when Lee was informed that nearly all of his men had crossed the river, he let out a relieved: "Thank God!"
McClellan belatedly sent Porter's V Corps after the rebels. Porter's cavalry reached Boteler's Ford at about 8:00 AM. The Confederates had completed their crossing of the river, but a rear guard, consisting of two brigades of infantry and 44 guns, faced the Yankees from the Virginia side of the river. Porter brought up 18 guns of his own and started trading shots with them. Union sharpshooters took up positions in a dry canal running along the Maryland side of the river and picked off rebel gunners.
The Confederate rear guard was under the command of Brigadier General William Pendleton, who physically resembled Lee but had few of his military virtues. Pendleton, although a West Pointer, had spent much of his life as an Episcopal priest and was out of his depth in military command. The fighting went on all day. About dusk, the Federals sent over a raiding party of about 500 men and took four of the rebel guns. Pendleton panicked and rode off to find Lee. Sometime after midnight, Pendleton found him sleeping under an apple tree, roused him, and told him an overblown story of how the Federals had stormed him and captured all 44 of his guns. Lee was shocked: "ALL?!"
Pendleton replied: "Yes, General, I fear all!" Lee gave the matter some thought, then suggested that, since nothing could be done until sunup, they might as well get some sleep. Stonewall Jackson was not so calm about it. Although Jackson took no stock in Pendleton and his story, he still told A.P. Hill to be ready to move out at dawn.
In the meantime, McClellan had decided to send three brigades across the river. The lead Federal brigade, composed of regulars, crossed over about 7:00 AM on Friday, 19 September, and ran into Hill's men. The Yankees quickly realized they were outnumbered by the rebels, fell back to the river, and then withdrew back to the Maryland side, along with the second brigade that had just been sent over.
The third Federal brigade, under command of Colonel James Barnes, had moved across the river out of communications with the other two brigades. In the lead was the 118th Pennsylvania, a completely green regiment that had seen no combat. Barnes had sent the Pennsylvanians across a ravine and up a cliff when A.P. Hill's division, with 5,000 men, appeared before them. Barnes ordered his regiments to pull back, but when one of Barnes's lieutenants shouted up from the ravine frantically calling for the Pennsylvanians to withdraw, their commander, Colonel Charles E. Provost, insisted on being dignified, responding: "I do not receive orders in that way! If Colonel Barnes has any order to give me, let his aide come to me!"
Hill's men rushed the Pennsylvanians. Although Porter's artillerymen did the best they could to help, firing from across the river, the lone brigade was hopelessly outmatched. Worse, half the Pennsylvanians found their British Enfield rifles, normally good weapons, were defective. They still held their ground for over a half hour. Then Colonel Provost was wounded, and when a formal order finally arrived giving them permission to withdraw, the Pennsylvania men collapsed. It was Ball's Bluff all over again. The men tumbled down the cliff and tried to swim across the river while the rebels poured fire down on them. Yankee bodies floated downstream. The Federals managed to complete their withdrawal by about 2:00 PM, but 269 of the 750 men had been shot down.
McClellan, intimidated by the fiasco, gave up what few thoughts he had of pursuing Lee's army. He reoccupied Harper's Ferry with a large force, but most of the Army of the Potomac stayed in Maryland to refit. Lee wanted to renew the offensive, but he quickly realized that the Army of Northern Virginia was, for the moment, not up to more fighting, and withdrew down the Shenandoah Valley to Winchester to rest and reorganize. His soldiers wanted nothing more to do with Maryland. The popular Confederate anthem "My Maryland" fell into disuse.
McClellan was proud of his achievement at Antietam, writing his wife: "Those in whose judgement I rely tell me that I fought the battle splendidly and that it was a masterpiece of art." In reality, it was the soldiers of the Army of the Potomac who had fought the battle. McClellan had been little more than a spectator; he had committed his forces piecemeal when on several occasions a coordinated attack would have cracked the Confederate defense, and in the end, when he was given the opportunity to smash the bruised rebels once and for all, let it slip away entirely. This last failure did not go unnoticed by his superiors.
Despite that, McClellan was again the hero of the hour, and he felt strong enough in his position to be able to write his wife Ellen on 20 September that he had, through intermediaries, let it be known to his superiors that if Secretary Stanton was not removed from his position and that if he, McClellan, were not restored to the position of Army Commander in Chief over Halleck, then the Administration would have his resignation. Lincoln then upstaged him and his demands became irrelevant.
* Antietam was a painful and limited victory but it was still a victory, and so Lincoln finally had the opportunity he wanted to play the ace up his sleeve: emancipation.
The matter had been on his mind ever since he had proposed it to his cabinet back in late July and then shelved it. In the meantime, he had been playing his cards close to his vest. A Quaker woman who visited the President in office to inform him that she had been sent by the Lord to inform him that he was divinely appointed to end slavery got a cool reception, indicating that he had no time or inclination to discuss the matter with her. He dismissed her, exasperated as anyone might be with a self-appointed messenger from God, saying afterward that "if it is true that the Lord has appointed me to do the work she has indicated, it is not probable He would have communicated knowledge of the fact to me as well as her?"
But wheels were turning in Lincoln's head. On 22 August, even as the movements that would lead up to the Second Battle of Bull Run were in progress, Horace Greeley's NEW YORK TRIBUNE had printed a letter from the President that replied to a critical editorial published by Greeley two days earlier. Lincoln's letter read in part:
BEGIN QUOTE:
As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing", as you say, I have not meant to leave anyone in doubt.
I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored, the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there would be those who would not save the Union if they could not at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them.
My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.
What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors, and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be my true views.
I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal view that all men everywhere could be free.
END QUOTE
On the Monday after the battle at Antietam, 22 September 1862, the President assembled his cabinet. In his easy-going way, he did not immediately get down to business, instead reading them a story by the humorist Artemis Ward, "High-Handed Outrage In Utiky", from a book given to him personally by Ward. The story related how the proprietor of a traveling show set up in Utica, only to have one of his exhibits vandalized by a local:
BEGIN QUOTE:
Sez I, "You egrejus ass, that air's a wax figger -- a representshun of the false 'Postle."
Sez he, "That's all very well for you to say, but I tell you, old man, that Judas Iscarrot can't show hisself in Utiky with impunerty by a darn site!" with which observashun, he kaved in Judassis hed. The young man belonged to 1 of the first famerlies in Utiky. I sood him, and the Joory brawt in a verdick of Arson in the 3d degree.
END QUOTE
His people smiled or chuckled, except for the solemn Salmon Chase and the sour Edwin Stanton. Then Lincoln got down to business, starting out with: "Gentlemen, I have, as you are aware, thought a great deal about the relation of this war to slavery." He reminded them of the draft Emancipation Proclamation he had presented to them back in July, and said: "I think the time has come now. I wish that we were in a better condition. But the rebel army is now driven out, and I am going to fulfill that promise."
The Proclamation was a compact document. Its first two paragraphs stated that it was being issued on the basis of the President's authority as Commander-in-Chief, as a military measure, with the only goal of restoring the Union; the President still offered the promise of compensated emancipation to loyalist slaveholders, and proposed that freed slaves be colonized elsewhere on a voluntary basis. It was the third paragraph that was of central importance:
BEGIN QUOTE:
That on the third day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.
END QUOTE
Secretaries Seward and Chase proposed a few minor refinements and the Proclamation was released the next morning, 23 September 1862. It was a very odd document, in which there was at one time both less and more, much more, than met the eye.
As noted, the document established emancipation as a strictly military measure, performed under the authority of the Commander-in-Chief, since the rights of slaveholders were protected by the Constitution and the President had no authority to enact universal emancipation as such. It only applied to territories where the Federal government had at the time no power to enforce it, with even occupied Louisiana exempted. Another interesting fact was that it did not take effect immediately. If the Confederacy returned to the Union before the end of the year, slavery would remain intact; and if emancipation were to then take place after that time, it would be on a compensated basis.
By such measures, the Emancipation Proclamation was less than it seemed, but the practical effects of the document were, if anything, made sharper by its seeming contradictions. First, although the geographic scope of the Proclamation was limited, the idea that slavery could be eliminated in its heartlands and survive elsewhere was laughable; if the heart was torn out, the rest of the body was unlikely to survive very long.
Second, the fact that the Federal power did not, for the most part, extend over the states in rebellion was not an absurdity that had to be glossed over: it was actually the point of the exercise. By declaring emancipation in the rebellious states, Lincoln struck at the Confederate war effort. That was the only rationale by which the President felt he had the authority to take such an action, or for that matter wanted to. Although he believed that slavery should be abolished, his continuous attempts to push compensated emancipation in the face of total indifference had demonstrated he did not really want to take drastic action, and had only been forced into it by the realization that it was an absolute necessity if he wanted to win the war.
The direct material effects were uncertain. Of course, the news of emancipation would quickly spread through the slave population of the south, exerting ever more strain on a system that was already under great stress while the white menfolk were away on the battleground. But the proclamation would not likely greatly increase that stress much, since slavery was dissolving spontaneously wherever Union armies touched it, and that was really not the point.
The true effect was ideological. One of the first shrewd things that Lincoln had done in his presidency was to put the Confederacy technically in the wrong by provoking them into firing the first shot, by bombarding Fort Sumter. Now he played another card in the same game by putting them in the position of fighting for no greater cause than that of slavery.
The war of course had been caused by slavery but it was not really being fought for slavery. Lincoln had said again and again that his goal was to "preserve the Union", and that was what most Union soldiers had signed up to do. The Emancipation Proclamation was clearly stated and intended as a means to that end. On the other side of the coin, as noted most Southerners drew their intense fighting spirit out of a passion to defend their homes and families from an invader, not directly out of the wish to keep other people in chains. Although the states of the Deep South had made no secret that they had seceded over slavery, the states of the Upper South had only left the Union when the Federal government mobilized for war.
Slavery was behind the conflict, of course, but at first the Union had tried to tiptoe around it, in hopes that things could be patched up as they were. Lincoln had realized they couldn't. He also knew that the abstract goal of "preserving the Union" meant in practice the invasion and subjugation by military force of the South, and it is likely if the matter were posed to him in such a blunt fashion, he would have agreed it was exactly the fact. What else could it possibly mean? It put the Union in the position of being an aggressor, and cast Lincoln as a ruthless tyrant. What else could it possibly do?
In one sweeping, revolutionary move, the President had turned everything upside-down. There was no more tiptoeing around the issue of slavery. It was brought to the center stage, with the effect of putting the Confederacy on the wrong side of the dispute. Now there was no way, then or ever, of being sympathetic to the Confederate nation without being accused of being sympathetic to slavery.
To twist the knife, the document was not effective immediately. The rebels could keep their slaves if they gave up the struggle and returned to the fold before the end of the year, and Lincoln would in turn give up his war against the South. Confederates could legalistically argue State's Rights all they wanted, but outsiders might be forgiven for wondering why such legalisms justified a conflict when the Union had declared it was willing to give up the war against the South and respect Southern rights. Instead of a noble struggle against an invader and a tyrant, the Confederacy's fight was now put in the light of being simply pigheaded.
When the time limit expired, the knife would become sharp as a razor. If the Confederacy continued the struggle into the new year, the Federal government would adopt as a primary official war aim the destruction of the Southern way of life. Lincoln told an official that once the new year came, "the character of the war will be changed -- it will be one of subjugation." As a peace offering, the Emancipation Proclamation was hollow; its real effect was to undercut the Confederacy in a deep, fundamental way while making the Union's war policy much harsher.
Lincoln had not spent his grown life as a high-profile lawyer for nothing; and yet, at the same time, in hindsight it was a perfectly obvious ploy. Slavery was the Confederacy's blatantly visible political weakness, and the only reason it hadn't been exploited before was because doing so was so drastic and radical as to be unthinkable. The President, however, was willing to think the unthinkable.
* None of this was lost on Confederates. They knew they'd been had, and howled. A clause in the Proclamation that stated that Federal forces would not restrain slaves attempting to gain their freedom was read as an incitement to bloody revolt, and the limitation of emancipation to the Confederacy was blasted as blatant hypocrisy. The Confederacy's Northern sympathizers understood matters as well, with conservative Democrats almost as angry as the Confederates. Of course, although Frederick Douglass wrote: "We shout for joy that we live to record this righteous decree!" -- some abolitionists were upset for their own reasons, blindly complaining about the incomplete nature of the Proclamation without thinking of what a bone-shattering blow it was to slavery.
However, most of the citizens of the North took the simple message in the Proclamation as enough for them: Lincoln had freed the slaves. The details seemed of no concern, and to a large extent they weren't. Along with denying the Confederacy foreign recognition, Lincoln had done much to brace up support for the war effort in the North, and he had also managed to make some peace with the radical elements of his own party. They might grumble that the Proclamation wasn't enough, but they understood that it was certainly a big step in the right direction.
When the news finally sailed overseas, the British ruling classes were contemptuous -- how could the Lincoln Administration claim to free the South's slaves while retaining slaves in the Union itself? Newspapers mocked the "sad document" and a member of Parliament calling it the "last card" of a "reckless gambler" -- with the satirical magazine PUNCH, no friend of the Union, showing a frustrated Abraham Lincoln angrily tossing down the "last card" in front of a smirking Jefferson Davis. Foreign Secretary Lord Russell more carefully and perceptively said that the Proclamation was "of a very strange nature" and very correctly noted that it contained "no declaration of a principle adverse to slavery." Lincoln had deliberately been careful not to state such a principle.
Even across the Atlantic, however, the simple message was still enough. Although there was considerable sympathy for the South in Britain, there was very little sympathy for slavery; British friends of the South were fond of hinting, ever so deniably, that the Confederacy would free their slaves once independence was assured -- but any sensible Briton could then only ask what the point of secession was supposed to be. Britons had been disgusted with the Union's refusal to address the slave question to that time; now it had been addressed, and to most British citizens the fine print of the matter did not outweigh that fact.
In October, Emperor Napolean III of France would propose that France, Russia, and Britain intervene and enforce a six month's armistice between the Federals and Confederates -- a move that would in practice guarantee Southern independence. Lord Russell would endorse the proposal, but Palmerston's cabinet would reject it; the scales were clearly tipping towards the Union.
* Lincoln had played his emancipation card well, but there were two dangers in the game. The first threat was from the border states. Lincoln cared little about the predictable fury of the South over the Proclamation, but antagonizing the loyal slave states was taking a big chance. Secretary Blair had pointed this out in the cabinet meeting on 22 September. Lincoln replied in essence that when he had attempted to discuss compensated emancipation with the border state men, they had not listened. Now he had no choice but to act.
The Proclamation would in fact antagonize border state men, but as the Confederate invaders of Kentucky were finding out, angry talk was not the same thing as action. Federal power was great and much in evidence in the border states, and would-be rebels in loyal states stood to lose a great deal if they flew off the handle. States had joined the Confederacy in a rush when the President had called out the militia against secession, when nobody quite understood what they were getting into. Now everybody knew what the stakes really were, and there was no such rush when he proclaimed emancipation.
The second threat was from the military. There was much bitterness over the Proclamation among the officer corps of the Army of the Potomac, and some wild ideas were being tossed around. Lincoln was aware of their grumblings, and took immediate steps to suppress it. It came to Lincoln's attention that a Major John Key of the War Department staff, brother of McClellan's aide Colonel Thomas Key, had explained to another officer that McClellan had not destroyed the Army of Northern Virginia because "that is not the game. The object is that neither army shall get much advantage of the other; that both shall be kept in the field till they are exhausted, when we will make a compromise and save slavery."
The President had no patience with officers spinning conspiracy theories to slander the integrity of the government to which they were responsible. Lincoln commented that if the major had indeed said such a thing, then "his head should roll." On 26 September, the President sent a note to Major Key to ask him to confirm or deny his remarks. The major did so, and was immediately sacked. Lincoln did this as a warning to the major's comrades: "I thought his silly, treasonable expressions were 'staff talk', and I wished to make an example."
McClellan himself was suffering through great personal doubts in response to the Proclamation. A few days after the Proclamation was issued, he wrote to a friend, commenting that: "At one stroke of the pen, it changed our free institutions into a despotism." For a while McClellan wavered between going public with his protests or complying with the will of his superiors. One night, he had some of his generals over for dinner and discussed the matter with them. When he mentioned the idea that with the loyalty of the Army of the Potomac he might be able to oppose the Proclamation, he was told in response that those who were telling him such things were his worst enemies and that "not a corporal's guard" would follow him if he tried to take matters into his own hands. On 9 October, McClellan would publish General Order Number 163, intended to suppress the loose talk running through the command ranks. He reminded them of their "highest duty" under the Constitution, which was "earnest support of the authority of the government."
There would be no military coup. In fact, there were more than a few soldiers in the ranks who understood and appreciated the President's logic far better than McClellan did. The Union had to defeat the Confederacy, and if undermining slavery helped put down the rebellion, then that was all for the good -- abolitionism be damned, the secessionists were going to be crushed come hell or high water. Halleck, in one of his moments of perceptiveness, saw matters clearly, telling Grant: "Every slave withdrawn from the enemy is the equivalent of a white man put hors de combat."
* The practical impact of the Emancipation Proclamation could not be truly assessed for some time to come, but despite its limitations there were some who immediately saw what it meant. After the cabinet meeting on 22 September, Secretary Chase had told John Hay that the behavior of the slave holders was "a most wonderful history of the insanity of a class the world had ever seen." In the Union, slavery had been protected and might have survived for a generation or more, but by resorting to secession the slave power had "madly placed in the very path of destruction" the institution they had intended to preserve at all costs.
Lincoln himself understood this well, and was further beginning to see in the pattern of events that he struggled to direct as they flowed around him evidence of some greater purpose, much more compelling than lectures from overly enthusiastic Quakers. He had never been a religious man, but had a certain sense of mysticism that made him increasingly believe that the chaos and disaster of revolt and war reflected a terrible and agonizing agenda that humans could only faintly understand. John Hay found on the President's desk a "Meditation on the Divine Will":
BEGIN QUOTE:
The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party; and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose.
I am almost ready to say that this is probably true; that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By His mere great power on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And, having begun, He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds.
END QUOTE
* While Confederate armies were moving north into Maryland and Kentucky during the month of September, another rebel offensive took shape in northern Mississippi. Grant's scattered forces in the region included:
They were threatened by two Confederate forces still remaining in the area after Braxton Bragg's roundabout move to Tennessee: Major General Earl Van Dorn's army in Holly Springs, Mississippi, roughly 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of Corinth, and Major General Sterling Price's army in Tupelo, Mississippi, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Corinth.
Price had orders to harass the Yankees and had called on Van Dorn for help. Unfortunately, Van Dorn was as usual full of grand plans, once more seeking a drive on Saint Louis or other targets in the upper Mississippi Valley. He suggested instead that Price assist him instead. Not surprisingly, communications between the two men fell apart, and Van Dorn decided to pull rank, or at least seniority, calling on the Confederate Secretary of War to back him up. Jefferson Davis personally wired Van Dorn to inform him that he was in charge.
Price, however, was not available to be informed, since he was on the march from Tupelo towards Iuka, which was being used by the Federals as a supply depot. On 14 September, the Union garrison in the town, under the command of a Colonel Robert Murphy, fled without destroying the stocks of hardtack and salt pork, and leaving behind a small fortune in bales of confiscated cotton. Price moved in, unopposed, seizing the stores and burning the cotton.
Price had hoped to proceed from there towards middle Tennessee to support Braxton Bragg's offensive, but Confederate intelligence was faulty. Although Grant had sent off several of his divisions to support Buell, Price discovered that Rosecrans was still nearby with two divisions. While Price was weighing his options, a courier arrived to inform him that Van Dorn was now in charge. Price decided to stay in Iuka and wait to see what Van Dorn wanted him to do.
One of Grant's great virtues was that he saw opportunities where others saw threats. He later wrote: "It looked to me that, if Price would remain in Iuka until we could get there, his annihilation was inevitable." Grant moved against Price with four divisions, the two under Rosecrans and two under Ord, with a total of about 17,000 men. Since Price had about 15,000 men Grant could not hope to overwhelm him with superior numbers, all the more so because a defender generally had the advantage. Grant decided to rely on strategy, sending Ord and his men to fall on Iuka from the north while Rosecrans quietly swung around to attack from the south to take the rebels by surprise. It sounded nice on paper and both Ord and Rosecrans were enthusiastic, but armies tend to be blunt instruments and not always the tool for finesse. Rosecrans also warned that Price would be hard to trick, describing him as an "old woodpecker."
On 17 September, while McClellan's men were throwing themselves at Lee's fighters at Sharpsburg, Ord moved out of Corinth to the town of Burnsville, about 12 miles (19 kilometers) down the rail line towards Iuka. There Grant made his headquarters and sent a message to Rosecrans, telling him to concentrate at Jacinto, eight miles (13 kilometers) south of Burnsville. The two columns would then move on Iuka and attack at dawn on 19 September.
Rosecrans was delayed, but Ord moved up on schedule, making tentative contact with Price's cavalry patrols around Iuka on the 18th. Since nothing more could be done until Rosecrans arrived, Ord could do little more than wait. Grant took advantage of the idle period to send a message to Price telling him of the Confederate defeat at Sharpsburg, concluding that "this battle decides the war finally", and suggesting that Price avoid "further useless bloodshed and lay down his arms." Price, unimpressed, replied politely that he would lay down his arms when the Confederacy won its independence from the United States.
Grant shrugged and sent Ord forward on the 19 September 1862, telling him to move carefully, since Rosecrans apparently was still on the road. Ord's men advanced slowly, encountering little resistance, but as the afternoon wore on there was still no sign of Rosecrans, and so Grant ordered them to halt and wait for the sounds of battle before moving to attack. About 6:00 PM, Ord got a dispatch from the commander of his lead division written two hours previously, reporting "dense smoke" rising from Iuka and concluding that the enemy was withdrawing, burning their supplies as they pulled out. Ord moved forward again, just as cautiously, until night halted his men in place.
* Unknown to Grant and Ord, however, not only had Rosecrans arrived at the southern approaches to Iuka at about 2:30 PM that day, but a violent battle had followed. The fight was the cause of the smoke that had been reported to Ord. For some unfathomed reason, sounds of the fighting had not carried upwind.
Price had indeed been originally misdirected by Ord's movements and had his men in place facing north to meet that movement, but on being told of Federal columns approaching from the south, he had ordered Brigadier General Henry Little to move south with two brigades and meet the new threat. Price went along to see what was going on. Rosecrans' men were dispersed in an extended column that was hampered by forest; Little wasted absolutely no time in attacking the Federal advance units, overwhelming a Union battery of artillery, who stood to the last while taking severe casualties. The rebels seized nine guns and things seemed to be going very well for them, but then Little, conferring on horseback with Price, was struck in the forehead by a bullet and killed instantly. Rosecrans was able to bring his forces to bear and drive the Confederates back, only to be forced back himself once again by a stubborn rebel countercharge. Roughly 800 Federals and a little over 500 rebels fell in the fight.
Grant didn't know any of this until the following morning, when he got a message from Rosecrans outlining what had happened. It wasn't welcome news by any means, but Grant thought he had Price where he wanted him. A little after 8:00 AM on the 20th the Federals moved on Iuka in the pincer movement they had originally planned.
There was nobody there. All of Price's captured stores had been loaded on wagons, ready to move, even before the clash with Rosecrans, and Price had pulled out during the night over a road that Rosecrans had left unguarded. Rosecrans' judgement of Price had proven completely justified. Grant ordered Rosecrans to pursue the rebels, but his men ran into an ambush and Rosecrans gave it up. In the meantime, Ord was moving his men back to Corinth by rail, just in case Van Dorn intended to try something while the opportunity was available.
The Confederates were not actually marching on Corinth for the moment, but it was in fact exactly what Van Dorn had in mind. It was too important a rail junction to be left to the Yankees and he planned to move on it in good time.
* After defeating William Nelson and his green Union troops at Richmond, Kentucky, Kirby Smith and his men moved in an arc curving northwest through eastern Kentucky. They occupied Lexington on 2 September, and Smith set up his headquarters there. His cavalry moved into Frankfort, the state capitol, the day after the governor and the legislature prudently made a hasty exit to Louisville. Louisville was on the Ohio River and was the continuation of that arc, making it the logical next target for the rebels, though it was just as plausible that they could strike directly north from Lexington to Cincinnati, Ohio.
While crowds had cheered the rebels as they marched into Lexington, the ranks of Kentuckians that Smith had expected to fall in with his army were not materializing. Some of the citizens of the city made no secret of their dislike for the Confederates. When a pretty 17-year-old girl named Ella Bishop saw the American flag being dragged through the streets by rebel soldiers, she ran out, grabbed it, wrapped it around her, and said she would surrender it only with her life. They didn't dare lay a hand on her.
Unfortunately, Buell was not as bold or brave as Ella Bishop. While his forces in central Tennessee were in a position to strike quickly at Braxton Bragg's columns marching north, Buell was confused by events and demoralized. He did not attack. Bragg's forces continued their northward advance unhindered. They were warmly greeted by Kentuckians, who cheered them and gave them food and drink. Bragg was pleased by events. He had managed to derail the Federal drive across northern Alabama towards Chattanooga.
The arrival of George Thomas, sent from Grant with two divisions, stiffened
Buell's spine. Furthermore, Bragg's northward advance threatened the Union
supply center at Bowling Green, Kentucky, and he had to protect it. Buell
wired Halleck that he intended to move against the enemy. Halleck, somewhat
recovered from his collapse after Pope's disastrous defeat in Virginia,
replied wearily:
GO WHERE YOU PLEASE, PROVIDED YOU FIND THE ENEMY AND FIGHT HIM.
On 7 September, Buell set out northward with five divisions in parallel to
Bragg's march, leaving George Thomas to hold Nashville with the three
remaining divisions. Buell reached Bowling Green on 14 September.
Bragg had moved into the town of Glascow, 30 miles (48 kilometers) to the east, where he was between Buell and Kirby Smith and could move in support of Smith in an offensive towards Louisville. Louisville was a major supply center for the Union army, and Confederate capture of a major city on the Ohio would spread shock through the Union and hopefully encourage the recruiting that had proven sluggish so far.
* Bragg's men had seen almost no fighting during the campaign to that point, but it was certain that violent collisions would occur in time. On 13 September, while his army was moving into Glascow, Bragg had sent a Mississippi brigade under Brigadier General James R. Chalmers 10 miles (16 kilometers) north to cut the rail line over the Green River at Cave City.
That was easily done, but then Chalmers linked up with some of Kirby Smith's far-ranging cavalry detachments who wanted help in attacking a Federal outpost at the nearby town of Munfordville. Chalmers agreed without consulting headquarters. The next morning, 14 September, Chalmers attacked, thinking there were only a handful of Yankees in front of him. Instead, he ran directly into the teeth of a brigade-sized force of 4,000 Indiana volunteers under Colonel John T. Wilder and took a nasty bloodying, losing almost 300 men, over four times more than the Federals.
Chalmers hadn't expecting it. He sent Wilder a message complimenting him and his men on their "gallant defense" but indicated that with Bragg's army nearby their position was hopeless, and demanded unconditional surrender "to avoid further bloodshed." Wilder responded: "Thank you for your compliments. If you wish to avoid further bloodshed keep out of the range of my guns."
Chalmers pulled out and reported the incident to Braxton Bragg the morning after that, 15 September, stating his "fear that I may have incurred censure at headquarters by my action in this matter." That was an understatement. Bragg, never particularly good-natured, was angry that Chalmers had acted without consulting him, and furious at the defeat. Bragg sent all four of his divisions to Munfordville that same day, two of them under General Hardee to approach the Federal garrison from the south and two under General Polk to circle around and approach from the north. There was to be no repetition of the humiliation of 14 September.
By mid-afternoon on 16 September, the Confederates had sealed off Wilder's men and had fired a few shots to establish range. Bragg sent a message to Wilder, stating that the Federals were surrounded by overwhelming force and were to unconditionally surrender immediately. Wilder was skeptical and responded to Bragg with the question. What proof did Bragg have that he in fact had such a great force around him? Bragg replied that he would provide proof when he attacked, and gave Wilder a one-hour deadline.
Wilder's reaction to this was unconventional. He walked to the Confederate lines under a flag of truce and asked to speak to Major General Simon Bolivar Buckner, who commanded one of Hardee's divisions. Once there, Wilder explained that Buckner had been recommended to him as a man of honor, and wanted his advice. Was it his duty to surrender, or fight it out? Wilder wasn't a professional soldier, after all. 13 months before he had been an Indiana industrialist and knew little of formal military matters.
Buckner was flabbergasted. As naive as this action might have seemed, Bolivar actually was a man of honor, and he later said that he "would not have deceived that man under those circumstances for anything." After some awkward discussion, Bolivar sensibly decided the best thing to do was simply give Wilder a tour of the rebel positions and let the Yankee make up his mind for himself. Wilder accepted, and the two men made their inspection in the dark. It was after midnight; Bragg's time limit had expired but there was no sense in fighting until daylight. After counting 46 guns on the south side of his position alone, Wilder sadly concluded: "I believe I'll surrender."
The next morning the Yankees walked out their position on parole. The officers were allowed to keep their swords and sidearms. Bragg was pleased: he had captured a large quantity of weapons, including ten guns, as well as ammunition, supplies, and a number of horses and mules. He gave his men a day's rest. However, the rebels had not seen the last of John T. Wilder.
* In the meantime, Kirby Smith, from his roost in Lexington, had been sending out detachments of troops and cavalry in all directions to keep the Federals off balance. They had been doing a great job of it, and both Louisville and Cincinnati were in a panic.
William Nelson, recovering from his flesh wounds, was in Louisville, trying to organize a defense with another set of raw recruits only too painfully like those who had run away from Kirby Smith's men. Lew Wallace had been summoned to Cincinnati to direct the defense of that city. He declared martial law and impressed citizens into service to help beef up the city's defenses. Thousands of backwoodsy Unionists showed up in the city with squirrel rifles with the expectation of bagging Confederates, and the local press made much of the heroic "Squirrel Hunters". A "Black Brigade" was also organized from the black citizens of the city, though it was strictly a labor organization; the men were not armed and the brigade was only for the duration of the emergency.
George Morgan, down in the Cumberland Gap, finally decided that he was too isolated and withdrew on 17 September, doing a thorough job of torching everything that might be of use to the rebels. He and his men made a 200 mile (320 kilometer) forced march across the barrens to the Ohio river with the rebels in futile pursuit.
Having the Yankees on the run was gratifying to the Confederates, but Kirby Smith was really not a serious threat by himself. His men were spread too thin to overrun any position held in force, though few Yankees realized it at the time. However, the Federal leadership realized that if Braxton Bragg moved north to link up with Smith, the rebels would become a much bigger threat. The strange thing is that the rebels didn't seem to understand that at all. Braxton Bragg had been determined to drive on to Louisville, but while the affair at Munfordville had delayed him two days, he seemed in no hurry once that obstacle was removed. Kirby Smith, on his part, seemed totally disinterested in any cooperation with Bragg.
On the other side, Buell was suffering some indecision of his own. After arriving in Bowling Green, he had sent for George Thomas to join him with two of the three divisions left behind in Nashville. The threat posed by Bragg's army seemed substantial enough to commit almost everything he had. Buell moved forward towards Munfordville on 18 September, with every expectation of doing battle with Bragg, who certainly would be expected to block Buell's line of advance to Louisville. However, after some maneuvering along the Green River, Bragg pulled out and withdrew to the north, toward the town of Bardstown, where he expected to link up with Kirby Smith. Bragg had lost his nerve, later reporting to Richmond that he had been concerned about supplies.
Buell followed on 20 September when George Thomas arrived with his two
divisions. Much to Buell's surprise, Bragg was gone, and as the Federals
moved cautiously up the road to Louisville, they discovered that Bragg had
left nothing to resist them in their path. Advance units of Buell's army
marched into Louisville on 24 September, with Buell himself following the
next day with the rest of the army trailing behind. William Nelson was
relieved, wiring Cincinnati:
LOUISVILLE IS NOW SAFE. WE CAN DESTROY BRAGG
WITH WHATEVER FORCE HE MAY BRING AGAINST US.
GOD AND LIBERTY.
BACK_TO_TOP
* Bragg understood he was at risk, reporting the news to Richmond that same day, 25 September, and complaining bitterly about the failure of Kentuckians to rally to the Confederate cause: "General Smith has secured about a brigade -- not half our losses by casualties by different kinds." Bragg had been counting on Morgan's reports that tens of thousands of Kentuckians would join his ranks, but, as Smith had reported to him the week before: "Their hearts are evidently with us, but their blue-grass and fat cattle are against us."
Secession had been a popular idea at the beginning of the war because many hadn't believed the Federal government would do much about it. That belief had been proven thoroughly, frighteningly wrong. With Buell and a large army of Federals at large, the Kentuckians stood to lose everything if Confederates marched off and left them at the mercy of the Union army. It was a no-win game: Bragg could not get local reinforcements unless he crushed Buell, and he could not crush Buell unless he got local reinforcements. Bragg railed at the "cowardice" of the Kentuckians, failing to see that he was asking them to stake their lives and property on a wild leap into the unknown.
The odd impasse between Bragg and Smith continued as well, with Bragg in Bardstown asking for help from Smith to assist him in a drive on Louisville while Smith up in Lexington, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) away, encouraged Bragg to do it himself. In the meantime, both men scrounged up supplies from the rich countryside.
Militarily, the rebel offensive was going nowhere. Bragg instead concentrated on a publicity stunt. A provisional Confederate Kentucky government had been established in November 1861, but had been forced to flee south after the fall of Fort Donelson, and the provisional governor had been killed in action at Shiloh. Bragg intended to inaugurate the current Confederate provisional governor-in-exile of Kentucky, Richard Hawes, in a formal ceremony in Louisville to establish Kentucky as a de facto Confederate state. Bragg spent the last days of the month of September working on this scheme.
* In the meantime, Don Carlos Buell had been proving that somehow he and Braxton Bragg deserved each other. A reporter on the march to Louisville noted the man's shabbiness and taciturn nature: "Buell is, certainly, the most reserved, distant, and unsociable of all the generals in the army. He never has a word of cheer for his men or his officers, and in turn his subordinates care little for him save to obey his orders, as machinery works in response to the bidding of the mechanic."
Buell seemed to have dragged a black cloud with him to Louisville, immediately getting into a squabble over jurisdiction with the commander of the local military district, General H.G. Wright, that was only resolved in Buell's favor after an exchanged of telegrams with Halleck. Buell's jinx went much deeper than that, and came to full black bloom on 29 September. Among William Nelson's officers was Brigadier General Jefferson C. Davis, who had fought as a colonel under Curtis at Pea Ridge. Davis was thin-skinned, Nelson tended to bully, and the two men clashed. Nelson finally had ordered Davis to get out of his department the week before.
Davis, who was an officer of Indiana volunteers, came back that morning with serious reinforcements in the shape of Indiana governor Oliver Hazard Perry Morton, a man every bit as obstinate as Nelson and carrying a few gripes of his own with the general. They confronted Nelson in the lobby of the hotel Buell used for headquarters and an angry argument followed. Nelson called Davis an "insolent puppy", Davis retaliated by throwing a wadded-up calling card in Nelson's face, and Nelson backhanded Davis.
Nelson asked Morton if he had come to insult him. Morton said he had not, and Nelson went up the stairs to Buell's room on second floor, angrily speaking to a passer-by going down the stairs: "Did you head that damned insolent scoundrel insult me, sir?! I suppose he don't know me, sir! I'll teach him a lesson, sir!"
In the meantime, Davis wandered around the lobby asking to borrow a gun; he found a captain who loaned him a revolver. Davis ran up the stairs after Nelson and found him at Buell's door. When Nelson approached him, Davis cried: "Not a step farther!" -- and shot the big man in the chest. Nelson turned around and tried to walk off but fell to the floor. Men gathered around Nelson and he said: "Send for a clergyman. I wish to be baptized." They managed to carry his huge frame into a nearby room and rest him on a bed, with the wounded general saying: "I have been basely murdered." He died about a half hour later. He was 38 years old.
* Buell had lost one of his best officers over an idiot quarrel. He had
General Davis placed under arrest on charges of murder. And then lightning
struck twice that morning: Buell was informed by courier that he was
relieved of command and that George Thomas would take his place. Halleck had
dispatched one of his aides, a colonel, on 24 September to give Buell the
message, at the President's request. Lincoln indeed felt, as many of the
general's officers did, that Buell would no longer do. The colonel had been
told to not deliver the order if Buell had fought, or were to fight, a
battle. When, three days later, Halleck learned that Buell had reached
Louisville, he wired the colonel:
AWAIT FURTHER ORDERS BEFORE ACTING.
The colonel apparently never saw the message, for he wired Halleck at noon on
29 September:
THE DISPATCHES ARE DELIVERED. I THINK IT IS FORTUNATE
I OBEYED INSTRUCTIONS. MUCH DISSATISFACTION WITH
GENERAL BUELL.
A telegram from Buell himself arrived shortly afterwards, acknowledging the
order and indicating that he would leave for Indianapolis. Three congressmen
and a senator from the region immediately protested, for Buell was something
of a hero in the region. Halleck found himself in a bind. George Thomas
managed to break the impasse with a message of his own, declining command:
GENERAL BUELL'S PREPARATIONS HAVE BEEN COMPLETED TO MOVE
AGAINST THE ENEMY, AND I THEREFORE RESPECTFULLY ASK THAT
HE BE RETAINED IN COMMAND. MY POSITION IS VERY EMBARRASSING.
Halleck replied:
YOU MAY CONSIDER THE ORDER AS SUSPENDED UNTIL I CAN LAY
YOUR DISPATCH BEFORE THE GOVERNMENT AND GET INSTRUCTIONS.
The dismissal was then suspended "by order of the President." Granted a stay
of execution, Buell replied on 30 September:
OUT OF A SENSE OF PUBLIC DUTY I SHALL CONTINUE TO DISCHARGE
THE DUTIES OF MY COMMAND TO THE BEST OF MY ABILITY UNTIL
OTHERWISE ORDERED.
By this time, he had organized an army of over 75,000 men, and on 1 October
1862, he set off in pursuit of the Confederates.
