[34.0] October 1862: The Men Fell Like Grass

v1.1.1 / chapter 34 of 93 / 01 sep 07 / greg goebel / public domain

* The Confederate high tide continued to recede during October 1862. Earl van Dorn suffered a stinging defeat from Union forces in Corinth, Mississippi. Braxton Bragg's army conducted a violent but inconclusive battle with Buell's army at Perryville, Kentucky that was followed by Bragg's withdrawal.

Despite the reversals to the South, Abraham Lincoln was not happy with the lack of aggressiveness of some of his generals. Don Carlos Buell was dismissed and George McClellan found himself in disfavor. More aggressiveness was required: although the Confederate offensives in East and West had failed, the rebels were still full of fight. Jeb Stuart conducted another brilliant cavalry raid, this one into Pennsylvania, and in Missouri a Confederate force under Jo Shelby bloodied Union troops under John Schofield. The Confederacy also scaled up conscription to bring in more soldiers to carry on the struggle.

[34.1] BATTLE OF CORINTH / PEMBERTON TRANSFERRED WEST

* Confederate General Earl Van Dorn's desire to re-take Corinth, Mississippi, had only grown stronger in the weeks following Sterling Price's retreat from Iuka. With Price's troops added to his ranks, Van Dorn had 22,000 men in three divisions. He planned to lead them north towards western Tennessee as a deception and then turn abruptly east to fall on Corinth.

Van Dorn had "reasonable" expectations of success. Price was happy with the plan as well and looking forward to a battle. Although Price had got the better of the Yankees at Iuka, he'd been forced to make a hasty exit and had been idle since then. Unionist editors in Missouri were calling Price "Old Skedad", and commented, in reference's to Price's hefty size, that "as a racer he had seen few equals for his weight." They even called him a "West Pointer", an unjust slur that his admirers were quick to deny.

Unfortunately, Van Dorn's guarded optimism was based on misperceptions. Grant was absent, having gone to Helena, Arkansas, to confer with Curtis on the prospects for military cooperation, leaving Rosecrans in charge in Corinth. Rosecrans was perfectly aware that the rebels might attack Corinth and so he had consolidated his forces in the town. Van Dorn's intelligence told him there were 15,000 Federals in Corinth, but in reality there were 23,000 in four divisions, meaning the defenders outnumbered the attackers. True, many of Rosecrans' soldiers were untrained, and since Corinth was a filthy pesthole, large numbers of his men were ill and demoralized.

To make matters worse, Van Dorn had received intelligence from a woman of Corinth that described the state of the town's defenses. The woman's message was correct as far as it went, but it had been intercepted by Union General Ord, who sat on it a while and then sent it on, unchanged, after the defenses had been greatly strengthened with a double set of earthworks.

Van Dorn's and Price's forces had linked up in the town of Ripley, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) southwest of Corinth, on 28 September. They moved north and reached the town of Pocahontas on 1 October, where they turned east as planned. They had to move quickly. The summer's drought had dried up all sources of water on the road from Pocahontas to Corinth, and besides, Rosecrans now knew what Van Dorn was up to.

The Confederates reached the outer earthworks of the Corinth defenses on 3 October 1862 and promptly attacked. After a half day's fighting, they managed to dislodge the Federals from their forward positions and take a few artillery pieces. However, the rebels had paid dearly for their gains, for the Yankees fought stubbornly and fell back only when forced to. Van Dorn's men still kept up the pressure and by nightfall were before the defenses around the town itself. Both Van Dorn and Rosecrans expected to renew the battle in the morning, and both expected to win. They had a long-standing rivalry that went back to West Point, having both graduated in 1856, with Rosecrans fourth from the top of the class, Van Dorn fourth from the bottom.

Before dawn on 4 October, Van Dorn's artillery opened up on the Federal positions and Union batteries immediately replied, rising to a noisy duel that one Union general with a romantic touch found "grand", like the "chimes of old Rome when all her bells rang out." The firing died down to occasional pot-shots from sharpshooters after sunrise. Rosecrans was puzzled, and told a colonel to take his regiment out to investigate: "Feel them, but don't get into their fingers." The colonel was full of steam and replied: "I'll feel them!" He took out his regiment to probe the forest outside the town and was immediately hit with a volley that cut up his regiment and sent the soldiers packing. The colonel was wounded and captured.

At 10:00 AM, Van Dorn sent his men in with a full-scale assault that was met by a storm of cannonballs, shells, and canister, inflicting terrible casualties on the attackers. An Alabama lieutenant wrote later: "Oh God! I have never seen the like! The men fell like grass." Three regiments in the center of the charge did manage to pierce Federal lines, taking a terrible volley from Federal troops firing from the rear that sent rebels falling down in "ghastly heaps", and some managed to even make it into the heart of the town itself. It was brave but futile. The Yankees were pressing them still, threatening to cut them off, and all the rebels could do was fight their way back out of the town again.

By noon, it was over. Van Dorn's men had taken enough punishment and were falling back off the battlefield. Price wept as he saw his decimated regiments limping away from the fight. By 1:00 PM, Van Dorn was leading them from Corinth along the same road they had come, leaving the dead and badly wounded behind. A Federal wrote of the scene in front of one strongpoint: "The ground was covered so quickly with gray coated men that one could scarcely step without stepping on them. The ditch was literally full and the parapet covered as thick as they could lie -- in some places two or three deep."

Rosecrans did not follow, though Grant had ordered him to pursue if the battle went his way. Rosecrans wanted his men to get some rest, thinking they could pursue the Confederates in the morning. Grant was disgusted with Rosecrans' indifference and sent a force of 8,000 men south from Bolivar, Tennessee, to intercept Van Dorn. They succeeded in catching up with the rebels the next day, 5 October, resulting in a short, nasty little battle that left about 600 killed and wounded on each side. The Confederates doubled back towards Corinth and took an unguarded side road that ultimately led them back to Holly Springs. Rosecrans had by this time begun his pursuit, but took the wrong road and the rebels slipped past him.

Van Dorn had lost almost 5,000 men while only inflicting 3,000 casualties on the Federals. An immediate public cry went out for his blood, critics citing his "negligence, whoring, and drunkenness." A court of inquiry would be called at Van Dorn's request in November to investigate. It would exonerate him of all blame, but, as a Mississippi senator wrote Jefferson Davis, as far as the citizens of the state were concerned, "an acquittal by a court-martial of angels would not relieve him of the charge."

Whatever the case, Van Dorn had been badly beaten. On the afternoon after the battle of Corinth, Rosecrans had been riding over the battlefield, encouraging his men and chatting with rebel prisoners, a practice for which he had an odd fondness. He found an Arkansas lieutenant propped up against a tree and with a bullet through his foot, and commented on the sad litter of dead lying about that there had been "pretty hot fighting here." The lieutenant replied: "Yes, General, you licked us good. But we gave you the best we had in the ranch."

* Van Dorn's clear failure at Corinth figured in calculations that had already been in progress in Jefferson Davis's mind for the past two months. The calculations had been set in motion by a set of far-flung circumstances. The first was the problem the citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, had with their current military commander, General John C. Pemberton.

The 48-year-old Pemberton was something of an odd quantity. He was a Pennsylvanian by birth, but dedicated to the South and their cause. He was devoted to the concept of States' Rights, and had married to a Virginia woman. He was still an outsider, all the more so because he had never acquired Southern gentility, remaining blunt and efficient in a society which did not regard such traits as virtues. He had been placed in command of Charleston's defenses after the departure of Beauregard, but although he was effective and capable, he also overbearing and inflexible. He stepped on toes and the prominent citizens of the city wanted to get rid of this not-quite-a-Southerner.

The second of these circumstances was the peculiar position of the Confederacy's first hero, Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, still recuperating at Bladon Springs. Louisiana congressmen had lobbied Davis to restore Beauregard to the command he had lost to Braxton Bragg, but Davis flatly turned them down in sharp and inflexible terms. Despite that, the Charlestonians had fallen in love with Beauregard back in the early days of the war, and Davis felt the general might still have his uses. Beauregard was in fact an excellent military engineer who would do well building defenses for a city.

Beauregard was proud and it was not certain that he would accept an implied demotion, but when in early September he got orders sending him to Charleston, he swallowed his pride and accepted them. His enforced idleness had been irritating, and given how well he had been liked in Charleston during his previous stint there, he had every reason to look forward to the assignment. He arrived by train in Charleston on 15 September and received a hero's welcome.

Having moved that piece, Davis then moved the one displaced. Pemberton was to take command of the Department of Mississippi, organized on 1 October, and direct the defense of Mississippi and the free portions of Louisiana against further aggression by the Federals. Pemberton arrived in Jackson, Mississippi, on 14 October to take charge. He had a difficult task. There were only about 50,000 men in his command, including the demoralized Trans-Mississippians under Van Dorn and Price, plus the garrisons of Vicksburg and Port Hudson. They had to defend the region from much larger Union forces to the north and south. Davis felt that the inflexibility that had made Pemberton so unpopular in Charleston would be a positive asset in his new post. Pemberton would defend his command tenaciously and energetically.

Van Dorn, not surprisingly, was very upset at being passed over for the job in favor of an imitation Southerner who hadn't seen any fighting since the Mexican War, but Davis managed to soothe him by assuring him that with Pemberton in charge, he, Van Dorn, would be able to direct his energy on taking the offensive against the Yankees. This was not just soft talk from Davis. If Van Dorn had been rash in his capacity as an army commander and his men had paid bitterly for it, that sort of willingness to take great chances was often a virtue in a cavalry commander. Van Dorn was put in charge of Pemberton's cavalry, where he would prove highly enthusiastic and effective.

The command reshufflings had some promise for improving the South's difficult military situation. As if to prove it, on 22 October 1862, back on the Carolina coast, an amphibious force of 4,500 Federals under Ormsby Mitchel attempted to cut the rail line between Charleston and Savannah. They were driven off by roughly half that number of Confederates, who inflicted almost 350 casualties on the Yankees at a cost of about 160 themselves. Mitchel would become a casualty himself eight days later, dying suddenly of yellow fever. This was little more than a big skirmish, but good news was always welcome, particularly for Beauregard, since much of his last year had been so dismal. He wired Richmond with obvious satisfaction:

   RAILROAD UNINJURED.  ABOLITIONISTS LEFT DEAD AND 
   WOUNDED ON THE FIELD.  OUR CAVALRY IN HOT PURSUIT.

[34.2] BATTLE OF PERRYVILLE

* To the north, in Kentucky, the Federals were on the move against the Confederates. The army that Don Carlos Buell marched out of Louisville on 1 October to attack Braxton Bragg and Kirby Smith looked impressive enough on paper. There were over 75,000 men in 10 divisions, organized in three corps, with each under the command of a major general.

Appearances were deceiving and Buell knew it. A large number of the men barely knew one end of a rifle from another, and none of three major generals, Thomas L. Crittenden, James McCook, and Charles Gilbert, had real qualifications for their rank. Crittenden was enthusiastic, all the more so because his brother had chosen the Confederacy, but hardly more than a country lawyer in uniform; McCook was only 31, and something of a smartass, an "overgrown schoolboy" according to a reporter; and Gilbert was just a regular army captain who happened to be in Louisville when the present emergency began, to be abruptly promoted to a brevet major general. Buell had George Thomas, an entirely sensible senior officer, but true to form Buell paid Thomas no mind, and Thomas was too easy-going to assert himself. Although the Federals substantially outnumbered the Confederates, Smith and Bragg's men were well-drilled veterans.

In any case, Buell directed his three corps southeast towards Bragg's army, which was arrayed around Bardstown, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) away. Buell sent two divisions, including one very big division of very green troops, under Brigadier General Joshua Sill directly east towards Frankfort, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) away, as a feint.

* The rebels had problems of their own, mostly in the form of Braxton Bragg, who was at the moment not even with his army. He was still toying with the inaugural ceremony he planned for 4 October. Most of his cavalry was away: Forrest was recruiting in middle Tennessee and John Hunt Morgan was pursuing George Morgan north across the Kentucky barrens. Bragg still got wind of the advance of Sill's divisions towards him in Frankfort on 2 October; he jumped at the bait, sending an order to General Polk down by Bardstown to move north and strike the Federals in the flank while Kirby Smith, whose forces were to move from Lexington to Frankfort, struck them from the front.

Polk, in the meantime, simultaneously sent couriers to Bragg to inform him of the three Yankee columns that were bearing down on Bardstown. When Polk finally got Bragg's orders to strike north, he replied on the next day, 3 October, that the conditions made "compliance with the order not only eminently inexpedient but impractical." He proposed to fall back that evening. Bragg agreed, instructing him the next day, the 4th, asserting that movement was "not a retreat, but a concentration for a fight. We can and must defeat them." And later added: "We shall put our governor in power and then seek the enemy."

The inauguration ceremony was under way even as he wrote, around noon on 4 October, but while Hawes recited his inaugural address the Federals began tossing shells into Frankfort. Bragg ordered his forces there to withdraw and burn bridges behind them; Hawes' return from government-in-exile proved very brief. On that same day, Polk and Hardee abandoned Bardstown, falling back to the southeast. Kirby Smith was moving south from Frankfort, trying at last to link up with Bragg's divisions. An onlooker observing Bragg's men marching past described the Confederates as "distressed, weary and harassed."

The Yankees followed in their four columns. Sill's two divisions were marching south, their feint having served its purpose, to link up with the rest of the army. The columns were very loosely coordinated and probed uncertainly for contact, but only encountered rebel cavalry that melted from sight. They were also desperately searching for water, for the long hot summer had dried up almost all the streams and lakes and there was little water to be found. Such as was available wasn't the best. A fellow in an Ohio regiment reported: "The boys got some water out of a dark pond one night and used it at supper to make their coffee and to quench their thirst also. What was their disgust next morning to find a dead mule or two in the pond. I imagine that coffee had a rich flavor."

The Confederates were moving towards the town of Harrodsburg, roughly at the southeast corner of a triangle formed with Frankfort to the north and Bardstown to the west. Bragg wanted to concentrate his men there to hit the Yankees, though he was still under the delusion that Sill's column was the real Federal striking force and the other columns were feints, a perception completely opposite to the truth. This fundamental confusion caused Bragg to scatter his divisions over the area, leaving them vulnerable to destruction in detail.

The Federals in turn were moving towards the town of Perryville, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) southwest of Harrodsburg, where Buell hoped to concentrate his own forces for a stand-up fight and obtain much-needed water. Gilbert's column reached the outskirts of Perryville on the evening of the 7 October, where they made contact with one of Bragg's scattered units and got into a small fight over access to a stream. The Federals were bloodied and had to pull back. This was not getting off to a good start, and with his typical bad luck Buell was in an ambulance at the time, having taken a nasty fall off a high-strung horse that afternoon. Buell was still as excited as he ever got, since he thought he had actually made contact with all of Bragg's army. He sent messages to the other columns that night to advance with all speed.

While Buell was preparing to attack the Confederates, thinking there were many more of them than were actually present, the Confederates were preparing to attack him, under the opposite impression that there were far fewer Yankees than were really there. This was due to Bragg's continued belief that the Union forces that had been pursuing Polk and Hardee were little more than diversions. He sent orders to the two generals to "give the enemy battle immediately." Hardee would strike with two divisions, while Polk would send in one, marching his other northward towards Harrodsburg.

Hardee got the orders after dark that evening. Though he approved of striking back, he was appalled that it would be done with Bragg's forces in such a scattered state. He immediately wrote a letter to Bragg recommending greater concentration of forces before making the attack.

* Perryville was a small town straddling the Chaplin River. A stream named Doctor's Creek flowed into the river north of town, running down from heights to the south. It was along Doctor's Creek that initial collision took place. Gilbert's corps was directly west of Perryville, and just before dawn -- it was 8 October 1862 -- a brigade under Brigadier General Philip H. Sheridan moved east, shoved the rebels out, and seized the precious water as well as the heights beyond it.

Sheridan had only been a general for two weeks. He was a short, stocky, roundheaded 31-year-old Irishman, tough and aggressive, with a strong dislike of Southerners and their aristocratic pretensions. Sheridan went forward with such enthusiasm that Gilbert signaled him not to bring on a general engagement. Sheridan replied that the enemy had been preparing to attack him and he wanted to hit first. The Confederates counterattacked, but Sheridan brought up the other brigades of his division and held his ground. The counterattack fizzled out.

The field remained quiet for the rest of the morning while McCook's men filed into line north of Gilbert's position and Crittenden's men moved in to the south. By early afternoon, there were 55,000 Yankees lined up, ready to move forward. Buell was uncertain of rebel strength, but his intelligence indicated there were two divisions present. There were, as noted, actually three, consisting of two under Hardee and one under Polk. Bragg himself rode up at about 10:00 AM and asked why they hadn't attacked as ordered. Polk replied that he suspected he was facing all of Buell's army, but had been observing their activity at the north end of the line and would strike them if there was an opportunity. In reply, Bragg demanded that Polk attack.

Polk began massing two divisions in the woods. One division was under Simon Bolivar Buckner, and the other was under Benjamin Franklin Cheatham. At 1:00 PM, after an hour of bombardment, they went forward, supported by ranks of artillery. Cheatham sent his men forward with a cry: "Give 'em hell, boys!" Polk, being a bishop, added a little more circumspectly: "Give it to 'em, boys! Give 'em what General Cheatham says!"

McCook's men were just moving into position and were unprepared. The rebels fell hard on McCook's lead division, under the command of Brigadier General James S. Jackson, and particularly on Jackson's foremost brigade, under Brigadier General William Terrill, a Unionist Virginian. Jackson was killed almost at the outset. The Federals buckled and fell back, then broke when Terrill was horribly wounded by a shell. The Confederates pursued, but as they encountered other divisions of McCook's command, they found the going increasingly rough and their progress slowed.

The rebels were attacking an army three times their own size and by all logic, once the Yankees got organized to counterattack the Confederates would be in serious trouble. In practice, the Federals failed to exploit their overwhelming advantage. While McCook asked for help from Gilbert and his corps to the south, Gilbert failed to respond decisively. Two brigades under Brigadier General Patton Anderson had attacked Sheridan and been driven back. Gilbert assumed this was the prelude to a full-scale attack and did not want to move out of position. Sheridan was far out on the front lines and at least could support Gilbert with artillery. His guns fired up the ranks of the attacking Confederates and did much to confuse them and slow their advance further. Gilbert, seeing the rebels falter, detached two brigades to help McCook, and then Sheridan advanced on Anderson and drove him back to Perryville, where the Confederates and Federals engaged in an artillery duel over the roofs of the town while the terrified citizens huddled in their cellars.

Further to the south, Crittenden didn't get into the fight at all, having been alarmed by Confederate cavalry feints. There was actually more to the odd lack of mutual support between the three Union corps than simple timidity: for whatever reasons sounds weren't carrying over the battlefield and, except to those directly engaged, there was little evidence that any fighting was even going on. Buell had no idea there was a battle under way until 4:00 PM.

By this time, the fight had bogged down into a confused brawl, with friends and foes intermingled and soldiers firing on their own. One of Gilbert's brigade commanders went up to General Polk and said: "I have come to your assistance with my brigade!" -- and Polk, on finding out that the brigade in question wore Union blue, replied: "I believe there must be some mistake. You are my prisoner." The brigade itself escaped capture and carried on the fight without their unlucky leader.

By the time the sun went down two hours later, the Confederate advance had ceased and the fighting began to die down, though the confusion persisted, aggravated by the fading light. Polk observed a unit firing into the flank of one of his brigades and galloped over to it by himself in excitement to tell the colonel in charge to cease firing on friends. The colonel replied in surprise: "I don't think there can be any mistake about it. I am sure they are the enemy."

"Enemy!. Why, sir, I have just left them myself! Cease firing, sir! What is your name, sir?!"

"Colonel Shyrock, of the 87th Indiana. And pray, sir, who are you?" If Polk had been amused at the confused Yankee officer earlier in the day, he now had an opportunity to see how funny the joke was when it was on him. He managed to keep his head, shaking his fist in the colonel's face: "I'll soon show you who I am, sir! Cease firing, sir, at once!" He then turned his horse around and ordered the Federals to stop firing, then rode deliberately back to his own lines, expected a bullet between his shoulders all the while.

There was a bright moon up that night and many of Buell's officers wanted to continue the fight past sundown, but the Federals couldn't shake off their confusion. By the time they got organized the next day, the rebels were gone. Bragg had finally realized that he was facing most of Buell's army, and at midnight ordered the divisions around Perryville to withdraw back to Harrodsburg. The Federals lost about 4,200 men, the Confederates about 3,300, but comparing numbers meant little. The battle had been confused and inconclusive, and if the Yankees lost more men they had much more of them to lose. As a Confederate private, Sam Watkins of the First Tennessee, put it: "Both sides claiming the victory, both whipped." Watkins, who would fight in many of the major battles of the West, would often prove to be a more astute judge of events than the generals.

* General William Terrill had died during the night while Bragg's men stole away. Terrill's decision to stay with the Union had infuriated his father. His only brother James decided to fight for the Confederacy under Robert E. Lee, and would be killed in turn. The family would raise a memorial to them on which was inscribed: GOD ALONE KNOWS WHICH WAS RIGHT.

BACK_TO_TOP

[34.3] BRAGG RETREATS / BUELL RELIEVED

* The fight over, Bragg's divisions fell back in the rain. The drought had ended. Some thought the firing of the cannons had something to do with it. The rebels finally managed to achieve the concentration at Harrodsburg that Bragg had been seeking. There Bishop-General Polk conducted church services in the local Episcopal church, and wept with released tension from the fight the day before.

The morning after that Kirby Smith arrived, and a few hours later Buell's Federals moved into position outside the town. It seemed that the two armies were now going to have it out once and for all. Kirby Smith pleaded with Bragg: "For God's sake, General, let us fight Buell here." Bragg replied: "I will do it, sir." However, Bragg had been waffling for several weeks, and his insecurity was only increased by the news of Confederate defeats at Antietam and Corinth. That night Bragg ordered his forces to withdraw, much to the anger of Kirby Smith, Hardee, and Polk.

When the sun came up, Buell found Harrodsburg deserted. He advanced cautiously into the town, suspecting a trap. Everyone had been expecting to fight and the rebels' departure didn't feel like it was supposed to be in the script. The two armies subsequently went through this odd dance of touchy approach and withdrawal a second time, and then on 13 October, Bragg made up his mind to pull out completely, marching his men back towards the Cumberland Gap in two columns. It was, an observer remarked, "a dismal but picturesque affair", with large herds of livestock driven down the road of retreat by cowboys pulled from Texas regiments, and a long train of heavily-laden wagons ranging from stagecoaches to 400 new Union army wagons that had been captured from Nelson at Richmond.

For a time, the rebels were harassed by Buell's cautious attacks at the rear of their columns, blunted by active Confederate cavalry and by mud and hard rains. On 16 October Buell broke off his pursuit, such as it was, and sent his army on the march towards Nashville. The Confederates had no further immediate worries from the Yankees, but they were very worn down by deprivation and exposure. Thousands would be on the sick list the time they returned to eastern Tennessee, a little less than a week later. They were deeply demoralized, with resentment against Bragg expressed by everyone from Kirby Smith, Polk, and Hardee down to the lowest private. A surgeon summed up the general feeling when he wrote that Bragg was "either stark raving mad or utterly incompetent."

The Southern newspapers lit into Bragg as well. On 23 October, he was summoned to Richmond by Jefferson Davis with a message:

   THE PRESIDENT DESIRES THAT YOU WASTE NO TIME IN COMING HERE.  

Bragg argued, with much basis in fact, that his military adventure was in many ways a success. He had inflicted 25,000 casualties on the Federals and captured immense quantities of weapons, ammunition, supplies, and equipment. He had penetrated deep into Union-held territory and thrown the Yankees on the defensive. Most importantly, he had removed Union pressure on Chattanooga and the lands beyond it to the south and east. The offensive had really amounted to nothing but a very big raid, but the refusal of Kentuckians to rise up in support of the invaders meant it couldn't have been anything else: had Bragg attempted to hold Kentucky, the Federals would have assembled far superior forces and simply wiped him out. By all reasonable measures, Bragg's operation had been the most successful of all three of the fall offensives staged by the Confederacy.

Bragg had plans for the future as well. He wanted to move his army to Murfreesboro and then liberate Nashville from the Federals. Davis was reassured, sent Bragg back to Tennessee, called Kirby Smith and Polk to Richmond in their turn, promoted them both to lieutenant general, and managed to persuade them to return to duty. This was a remarkable exercise in diplomacy for the sharp-edged Davis, but then the two generals were military men who he regarded as brethren. Braxton Bragg had been given a reprieve. He returned to his command facing a superior enemy and dissatisfied subordinates, conditions not very promising for success.

* Don Carlos Buell was under judgement as well. His crawling and labored offensive through northern Alabama during the summer had made the President impatient. His failure to seriously engage, much less crush, the rebel invaders of Kentucky was more than Lincoln could tolerate. Buell tried to explain to his superiors that he had not followed the Confederates into the Kentucky barrens because the roads were bad and the land too inhospitable. He wanted to resume the interrupted offensive towards Chattanooga.

His superiors weren't listening. Halleck replied angrily on 17 October that Buell should "drive the enemy from Kentucky and East Tennessee. If we cannot do it now, we need never to hope for it." Halleck later added, reporting the President's continued failure to understand "why we cannot march as the enemy marches, live as he lives, and fight as he fights, unless we admit the inferiority of our troops and our generals."

Buell blandly replied on 20 October in a long, legalistic message that "the spirit of the rebellion enforces a subordination and patient submission to privation and want which public sentiment renders absolutely impossible among our troops" and concluded that "the discipline of the rebel army is superior to ours." Lincoln wanted winners, and this was not the stuff of which winners were made. On the 25th Buell received a dispatch from Halleck:

BEGIN QUOTE:

General: The President directs that on the presentation of this order you will turn over your command to Maj. Gen. W.S. Rosecrans, and repair to Indianapolis, Ind., reporting from that place to the Adjutant General of the Army for further orders.

END QUOTE

Rosecrans received instructions from Halleck that spelled out in completely specific terms what was expected of him: "Neither the country nor the Government will much longer put up with the inactivity of some our armies and generals." Lincoln's patience with both the rebels and his generals was now used up. Buell would remain idle in Indianapolis all through 1863, waiting for orders. They never came, and he would resign from the Army in the spring of 1864.

* Buell's dismissal had an odd result. Brigadier General Jefferson C. Davis, under arrest for the killing of William Nelson, eventually found himself a free man. In the confusion of the war his case was generally forgotten, and having the powerful Governor Oliver H.P. Morton on his side didn't hurt either. He returned to duty with his rank intact, having literally gotten away with murder. No doubt his fellow officers were very careful not to step on his toes.

BACK_TO_TOP

[34.4] MCCLELLAN UNDER SCRUTINY / STUART RAIDS PENNSYLVANIA

* The month's progress had led to the fall of General Buell, and the signs for General McClellan weren't so good either. His Army of the Potomac had spent the remainder of the month of September recuperating in western Maryland from the horrendous battle at Antietam, and McClellan did not seem inclined to disturb its rest.

On 1 October, President Lincoln left Washington to pay McClellan a surprise visit. The general got wind of the trip and met him at Harper's Ferry. Lincoln apparently hoped to press McClellan to move against Lee while the weather still permitted it. McClellan was unresponsive and the President did not press the matter; it was as if Lincoln had been expecting it.

Lincoln spent three days inspecting the troops. Though they saw him as pale and worn, they greeted his visits with enthusiasm, but not as much enthusiasm as they reserved for General McClellan. Lincoln saw this as cause for concern. One morning, before dawn, he went out with an old Illinois friend, O.M. Hatch, to watch the sun come up over the camp. With a sweep of his hand over the camp, Lincoln asked his friend in a quiet voice: "Hatch, Hatch -- what is all this?"

Hatch replied: "Why, Mr. Lincoln, it is the Army of the Potomac."

Lincoln shook his head. "No, Hatch, no. This is General McClellan's bodyguard." The President went back to Washington on 4 October. On 6 October, McClellan got a telegram from General Halleck:

   THE PRESIDENT DIRECTS THAT YOU CROSS THE POTOMAC AND 
   GIVE BATTLE TO THE ENEMY OR DRIVE HIM SOUTH.  YOUR ARMY 
   MUST MOVE NOW WHILE THE ROADS ARE GOOD.  ... I AM 
   DIRECTED TO ADD THAT THE SECRETARY OF WAR AND THE 
   GENERAL-IN-CHIEF CONCUR WITH THESE INSTRUCTIONS.

Stuart was disappointed to find that an official of the local bank had kept enough presence of mind to take all the money out of the vault and carry it to safekeeping, and that the rebels did not have the means to destroy the iron railroad bridge. Stuart did, however, capture and parole almost 300 Union soldiers and seized more than a thousand horses, many of them well-bred plow horses, complete with harness. Their owners protested loudly at seeing their prized animals taken away, some invoking their loyalty to the Union. They were apparently under the mistaken impression that Stuart's men were Federals, a misunderstanding Stuart's men likely found amusing and encouraged.

Stuart bundled up his loot, which included over 30 public officials taken as hostages to help secure the release of Southerners in Federal hands, and left town the next morning. He went due east, not back along his original track. He knew the Federals would be waiting for him if he went back the way he had come, and besides, it would be great fun to run another circle around the Yankees. The Yankees were determined to prevent it; Halleck wired McClellan:

   NOT A MAN SHOULD BE PERMITTED TO RETURN TO VIRGINIA.  

   I HAVE GIVEN EVERY ORDER NECESSARY TO INSURE THE CAPTURE 
   OR DESTRUCTION OF THOSE FORCES, AND I HOPE WE MAY BE 
   ABLE TO TEACH THEM A LESSON THEY WILL NOT SOON FORGET.

In the North, McClellan was loudly criticised and derided. Lincoln no longer concealed his impatience, a bad sign from a patient man. While on a steamer returning from a review in Alexandria, someone asked him: "What about McClellan?" The President looked at the deck and drew a circle on it with the tip of his umbrella. "When I was a boy we used to play a game, 'Three Times Round and Out'. Stuart has been round him twice. If he goes around him once more, gentlemen, McClellan will be out."

On 13 October, the President sent McClellan a nagging letter, encouraging to move against Lee while the weather still permitted it:

BEGIN QUOTE:

You remember my speaking to you of what I called your over-cautiousness. Are you not over-cautious when you assume you cannot do what the enemy is constantly doing? Should you not claim to be at least his equal in prowess, and act upon the claim?

END QUOTE

Lincoln went on in this vein, pointing out that he was nearer to Richmond than Lee and emphasized that the objective was to crush Lee's army once and for all. He finished it with: "This letter is in no sense an order."

McClellan in no sense regarded it as one. He continued to ask for more soldiers and more supplies, even though his own quartermaster told him that "no army was ever more perfectly supplied than this one as a general rule." On 21 October, Halleck wired McClellan to press him to move. McClellan replied that he was nearly ready, but needed more horses, since his were broken down by labor and disease. Lincoln gave way to one of his rare fits of temper on hearing this, wiring McClellan on the 25th:

   WILL YOU PARDON ME FOR ASKING WHAT THE HORSES OF YOUR 
   ARMY HAVE DONE SINCE THE BATTLE OF ANTIETAM THAT FATIGUES 
   ANYTHING?

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[34.5] UNION RESHUFFLINGS: PORTER IN CHARGE, MCCLERNAND INTRIGUES

* While fighting flared on land, David Glascow Farragut was not idle at sea, or, more precisely, along the coast of Texas. He had bombarded Corpus Christi in mid-August, conducted a naval raid up the Sabine River on the border of Texas and Louisiana in September, and on 4 October seized Galveston, Texas, with a small amphibious force. The US Navy now had a blockade port on the Texas coast. In fact, it had one in every Confederate coastal state except Alabama.

Navy Secretary Gideon Welles had been angry with Farragut for abandoning the fight against the ARKANSAS, but Welles was pleased with his aggressiveness against the Texans. Welles was not as pleased with Farragut's colleague up the Mississippi, Captain Charles H. Davis, in charge of the river fleet. Davis was a very pleasant man of considerable intellectual capacity, but to Welles his lack of action during his time in charge demonstrated he lacked the will to fight. On 1 October, Davis was kicked upstairs, likely to his relief, to the Bureau of Navigation, where his skillset would be put to better use. Davis was replaced by Commander David Dixon Porter.

This was somewhat surprising, since Porter lacked seniority and Secretary Welles, a very good judge of men, was perfectly aware that Porter was a conceited blowhard and a backstabber. In compensation Porter was brave, energetic, resourceful, and aggressive, which Welles saw as greater virtues than his faults, and so on 9 October Porter was given responsibility for the Mississippi squadron. On 15 October 1862, he arrived in Cairo, Illinois, to take charge of the 125 vessels, 1,300 officers, and 10,000 men of his command.

* Another Federal reshuffling was taking place that would affect the war in the Mississippi region, but this one was taking behind the scenes. General John McClernand, nominally under Grant's command but chafing at circumstances that left him little opportunity for military glory and personal advancement, had gone to Washington in late September to propose a plan of action to President Lincoln.

McClernand, an Illinois politician turned general of volunteers, was ambitious and inclined to self-promotion. He had good access to the Lincoln, since both had not only been sent to Congress from Illinois but also had worked as lawyers in that state. McClernand suggested to the President that a new levy of Illinois troops be raised and that he, McClernand, lead them down the river and seize Vicksburg. Lincoln, frustrated in his attempts to get regular army generals to move against the rebels and taking account of McClernand's political influence in their mutual home state, approved the plan. However, McClernand had gone over the heads of General Halleck and Secretary Stanton to make his case to the President, and Halleck had objected to the scheme, to be overruled. McClernand's insubordination was not forgotten by either Stanton or Halleck.

McClernand received secret orders from Stanton on 21 October, authorizing him to raise troops in Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa for an expedition against Vicksburg, with the important constraint that these forces not be required by General Grant. McClernand was delighted and set out at the end of the month for Illinois to begin raising troops.

* Grant knew nothing of this, at least for the moment. He was preoccupied with the challenge of maintaining an overextended army in enemy territory and had given some weight to his fears. When Halleck had sent him a message asking why he hadn't pursued Van Dorn after the battle of Corinth, living off the land to support his men, Grant replied that such an action would result in disaster. This was an odd reversal, with Halleck urging action and Grant dragging his feet. It was entirely unlike Grant, and an indication of how discouraged he had become over the hot, dry summer.

Near the end of October, Grant received news that helped put the wind back into his sails. He was sent orders clearly designating him as commander of the Department of the Tennessee, giving him authority along the Mississippi from Cairo on down to rebel-held territory. The order sending Rosecrans to Nashville to replace Buell gave Grant further relief, since he had found Rosecrans pigheaded and insubordinate, and had been considering sacking him. Rosecrans had been no happier with Grant, and in fact the day before Rosecrans had received orders for Nashville, he had written Halleck to ask for a transfer.

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[34.6] THE CONFEDERACY AND THE TRANSMISSISSIPPI / BATTLE OF NEWTONIA

* Old deaf Theophilus Holmes was now a Confederate lieutenant general, in charge of the department of the Transmissippi. He had arrived in Little Rock, Arkansas, to take command of his department in mid-summer, to be confronted with the prospect of fighting lots of Yankees with very few resources.

By the middle of October, Holmes had become very discouraged, though not unwilling to fight the Yankees by any means. His department commanders, John Magruder in Texas, Richard Taylor in west Louisiana, and Thomas Hindman in Arkansas, were just as resolute and nowhere near as discouraged. Magruder was working out plans to evict the Federals from their Texas toehold in Galveston. Taylor, though confronted by a Union force ten times the size of his own, wanted to drive them from New Orleans. Hindman, after building up a scratch force of 16,000 men after Van Dorn had left Arkansas with everything previously available, was actively preparing to take the offensive into Missouri.

Hindman was confronted in Arkansas by 15,000 Federals in Helena, under Brigadier General Frederick Steele. Curtis had been given command of the entire department and had moved back to headquarters in Saint Louis, leaving Steele in charge in Arkansas. Hindman also had to consider about 16,000 men under Union Brigadier General John M. Schofield in southern Missouri.

Hindman had sent a third of his men north in late August under the command of Colonel J.O. "Jo" Shelby, a veteran of prewar Kansas fighting. They occupied the town of Newtonia in southern Missouri and stayed there all through September. On the last day of that month, the 5,500 Confederates repulsed an attack by 4,000 Federals sent by Schofield and drove the Yankees off, but on 3 October, Shelby learned that Schofield had massed 12,000 men and so pulled out to the south, conducting a skillful fighting withdrawal.

Hindman was not upset about this turn of events. He thought that if Schofield pursued the rebel forces into Arkansas, the Federals would be at the end of an overextended supply line and that much easier to cut off and destroy. All through the rest of the month of October, he prepared his forces for the coming battle.

And then, suddenly, the battle appeared to have been cancelled. On 27 October, Richmond sent orders to Holmes, directing him to march himself and whatever forces he could find across the Mississippi to assist in the defense of Vicksburg. The orders were signed by Secretary of War George Randolph.

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[34.7] CONFEDERATE WAR MEASURES

* Jefferson Davis was faithful in his support of those he trusted, and Robert E. Lee had done much to cultivate that trust and show it was well placed. Having earned this trust, Lee could then make necessary requests of Davis and be assured that they would be pressed to the utmost, no matter how much it cost Davis. Lee had told Davis that to be more combat effective the Confederate military needed greater powers of summary judgement, with the authority to execute stragglers and deserters, and that the general conscription act passed in April needed to be expanded, with the age limit raised from 35 to 45. Neither idea was likely to be popular, but when the Confederate Congress had convened in mid-August, Davis pressed both matters energetically.

The reaction was predictable outrage and abuse. The measure granting the military greater powers of judgement went nowhere. In fact, there was much protest that the military was performing too many executions already. The revisions to the conscription act met with even greater resistance.

By the time Congress adjourned in mid-October, the modifications to the conscription act had been passed, though the political cost to Davis had been steep, and some uncomfortable concessions had been made. The most controversial was to exempt Confederate citizens who owned more than 20 slaves from the draft. The logic behind this exemption was actually hard to dispute: if slaveowners were taken away from their plantations and put in the ranks, who would maintain control over the slaves? The slaves would hardly be likely to do much on their own, and if the only white folk on the plantation left were the old folks, women, and children, they might very well be at risk from slave violence.

Leaving the slaveowners back on the plantation help maintain control over the slaves. From that point of view, it was a smart deal, since the relatively small number of exemptions -- the number of families who owned 20 or more slaves was a small proportion of the Southern population -- returned a large dividend in the continued productive efforts of a far larger number of slaves. However, to the common men fighting in the ranks and supporting the war effort from farms and workplaces, it was an insult that did much to undermine their morale -- once again, a "rich man's war, poor man's fight."

There was little sign of such demoralization in the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. Conscription and return of stragglers and convalescents to the ranks had brought Lee's strength back up to almost 70,000 men by early October. These soldiers were supremely confident, having stood up to the worst the Yankees could throw at them, and had even literally run circles around them a few times.

Lee's pride in his raggedy men was enormous. It supported him when he heard from his wife that their second of three daughters, 23-year-old Ann, had died on 20 October. He was, as would be expected, stoic in his grief, though an aide who came on him in his privacy discovered him weeping. Lee wrote his wife: "I cannot express the anguish I feel at the death of my sweet Annie." There was still a war to fight against a powerful and dangerous enemy. Lee could not be distracted from his duties.

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