v1.1.2 / chapter 41 of 93 / 01 oct 09 / greg goebel / public domain
* Not all Southerners were enthusiastic about the Confederacy, particularly the people in the hill country, and the result was a sputtering, small-scale guerrilla war, often mercilessly conducted on both sides. Even among those fighting earnestly for the Confederacy, there were differences of opinion and frictions -- most spectacularly evident in the Confederate Army of the Tennessee, whose commander, Braxton Bragg, seemed to have a particular gift for encouraging dissension.
While Southerners quarreled, the single-minded Union General Grant considered what he could do next to crack Vicksburg. He continued to have setbacks, but none of them did much to persuade him that he ought to give up.
On the high seas, the Confederacy was shining bright, in the form of commerce raiders like the CSS ALABAMA and the CSS FLORIDA. While the South could never hope to match the naval strength of the North, the rebels could conduct a maritime hit-and-run war against the Union and did so with considerable dash and success.
* While Confederate loyalty was generally strong, it was not so strong in North Carolina, which had only joined the Confederacy when forced into it by events. In the western part of the state, as in other parts of the mountain region extending into the south, Unionist sympathy was very strong.
In the spring of 1861, for example, Confederate officials put on a recruiting show in the little North Carolina town of Concord to enlist soldiers to fight for the South. They were shocked when a poor farmer named Ellsberry Ambrose stood up and denounced the proceedings: "The rich people are only going to make the poor people do all the fighting. The rich only pretend to go."
Ambrose was promptly thrown in jail, but if the authorities thought that settled the matter they soon found out they were mistaken. When the Confederates ran another recruiting show, the members of the district militia company voted Ambrose as their captain, which strongly hinted there was substantial sympathy for the farmer and his views in the area.
The governor refused to approve the appointment of Ellsberry Ambrose and sent a loyal Confederate officer to take charge of the militia company. Matters continued to deteriorate. Henry Ambrose, a relative of Ellsberry's, publicly declared: "I am a Lincoln man, and I'll be damned if anyone who voted for Jeff Davis ought not to be hanged." The authorities in the area were so alarmed that they called in 21 Confederate cavalrymen, who arrested Henry Ambrose and threw him in jail. Finally, another member of the family, Warren Ambrose, placed his name on the ballot for militia captain, but he was voted down strongly. For one reason or another, the citizenry had tired of the quarrel and the controversy faded out.
* There was something half-comical about the feuding between the Ambrose family and Confederate authorities, but as the war dragged on, resistance to Confederate authority became much less humorous. Desertions began to increase as soldiers became disillusioned with the Confederate cause, or more often were simply driven out by bad conditions in the ranks and particularly by the difficult circumstances of their impoverished families back home.
The deserters often took their weapons with them and formed up bands in their backwoods communities for mutual self-protection. The local citizens in these areas were loyal to their own folk, and Confederate officials trying to track down deserters were given little help at best, terrorized or murdered at worst. In some cases, Confederate authorities shrugged and let the deserters alone on the principle that struggling with them would be more trouble that it would be worth. Other Confederate officials were not so easy-going about the matter.
One of the most brutal confrontations took place in Madison County, North Carolina, in January 1863. One night, a gang of deserters went into the town of Marshall to raid for supplies. There they wounded a Confederate captain and terrorized the family of Colonel Lawrence Allen, who was widely hated in the area. Two of Allen's children were close to death of scarlet fever, but the raiders showed little sympathy, smashing open trunks and stealing money and clothes. They then fled into the night to their hide-outs in nearby Laurel Valley.
Allen was a day's ride away when he heard the news, and obtained permission from his superior officer, General Henry Heth, to go deal with the raiders. According to the story, Heth told Allen: "I want no reports from you about your course at Laurel. I do not want to be troubled with any prisoners and the last one of them should be killed." Allen and another officer, James Keith, each led columns through the snow to Laurel Valley. When they arrived, they found that local Confederate militia had already fought with the raiders, killing 12 and wounding 20 of the insurgents. The forces now arriving got into a fight themselves, killing 14 others.
Allen's two sick children died over the next few days, leaving him preoccupied with personal matters and clearly in a very black state of mind. After their burial, he and Keith decided to deal with the raiders once and for all. They led their soldiers to Laurel Valley, where they burned barns, killed farm animals, and tortured citizens until they were told where to find the raiders. They arrested 15, though two managed to escape.
By this time, news of the trouble had spread. North Carolina Governor
Zebulon Vance had telegraphed General Heth:
DO NOT LET OUR EXCITED PEOPLE DEAL TOO HARSHLY WITH
THESE MISGUIDED MEN. PLEASE HAVE THEM DELIVERED TO
THE PROPER AUTHORITIES FOR TRIAL.
Those "excited people" had other ideas. Keith led the prisoners to a
clearing and ordered his soldiers to shoot them. They hesitated, and Keith
threatened them: "Fire, or you will take their place!" They shot the
prisoners and threw them into a shallow grave. When the families of the dead
men came the next morning to retrieve the bodies, they found wild hogs
eating the corpses.
* Braxton Bragg's decision to withdraw from the battlefield at Murfreesboro unsurprisingly exposed him to the most savage criticism of the poisonous Southern press, some claiming that he had retreated against the advice of his generals. Bragg was hardly the most objective of men -- since the battle he had been energetically blaming the defeat on everyone else, including his troops, who had fought with superhuman endurance and persistence -- but he was perfectly within his rights to be outraged by such accusations. He had belligerently resisted suggestions to pull out, doing so only when the facts in favor of it seemed overwhelming, and with the general assent of his senior officers.
Bragg decided to challenge the newspapers, and on 11 January 1863 he sent a letter to his corps commanders asking them to publicly back him up. This was fine, as far as it went, but Bragg then demonstrated an astonishing lack of judgement by adding: "I shall retire without a regret if I find I have lost the good opinion of my generals, upon whom I have ever relied as upon a foundation of rock."
It is very hard to understand what Bragg was thinking. He couldn't have been unaware that his relationship with his generals was not the best. Either he simply failed to think things out, or more likely was hoping that such an expression of confidence in them would be returned in kind. It wasn't. All five generals who received Bragg's letter agreed that he had not acted against their counsel at Murfreesboro, and all five said they had no confidence in him, in some cases attempting feebly to temper the blow to Bragg's ego by praising his conscientiousness and good character.
Hardee, for instance, replied: "Frankness compels me to say that the general officers whose judgements you have invoked are unanimous in their opinion that a change in the command of this army is necessary. In this opinion I concur." He added that he had "the highest regard for the purity of your motives, your energy, and your personal character," but was "convinced, as you must feel, that the peril of the country is superior to all personal considerations."
Jefferson Davis, never very patient, was greatly distressed by this new and ridiculous outburst of bickering in Tennessee and Bragg's foolishness in provoking it. He wrote Joe Johnston: "Why General Bragg should have selected that tribunal and have invited its judgements upon him is to me unexplained; it manifests, however, a condition of things which seems to me to require your presence." The letter caught up with Johnston while he was on an inspection tour in Mobile, Alabama, and he left for Tullahoma to investigate. Johnston's enthusiasm for his command and his hopes for military success in the West were not high. Having to go sort out such a petty mess could not have made him any happier.
With Braxton Bragg, unhappiness was something like a contagious disease. Everyone from Joe Johnston down to the lowest private in the Army of Tennessee seemed to be unhappy, with Bragg at the root of it. There was a story at the time that Bragg, not long after his retreat from Murfreesboro, had ridden up to a man and asked him directions. He was given them, and thanked the man. Since uniforms were informal at best in his command, Bragg did not know if the man was a soldier or civilian, and asked the fellow if he was part of Bragg's army. The fellow scowled and replied: "Bragg's army? Bragg's got no army. He shot half of them himself, up in Kentucky, and the other half got killed at Murfreesboro."
It is recorded that Bragg managed to laugh. Not many people in his army were laughing, and it is doubtful that his laugh was particularly enthusiastic.
* Ulysses Grant arrived in Memphis, Tennessee, on 10 January 1863, ahead of his columns as they withdrew north out of Mississippi after the failure of his offensive against Vicksburg. Major General James MacPherson, one of Grant's ablest and most trusted generals, stayed with the men to lead their retreat, while Grant returned to headquarters to sort out whatever confusion had accumulated there in his absence.
With communications cut by Van Dorn and Forrest, for all Grant knew Sherman might have had better luck in his move on Vicksburg. Of course, that wasn't the case. When Grant got to Memphis, he received a letter sent by McClernand from Milliken's Bend, informing him of the failure of Sherman's attack and indicating McClernand's intention to attack Fort Hindman. Grant was not pleased by this news, regarding the attack on Fort Hindman as a diversion of effort from the proper goal of moving down the Mississippi and cutting the Confederacy in half -- and even irresponsible, considering that Nathaniel Banks was supposed to be moving upstream to link up with them.
Grant said as much in a reply sent to McClernand the next day, 11 January,
even as McClernand's forces were pressing Fort Hindman to surrender,
concluding the message with an order telling McClernand to return to
Milliken's Bend. Grant echoed the criticism in a telegram to Halleck,
complaining that McClernand had gone off on a "wild-goose chase", and
requested instructions. He got them, in terms that were remarkably direct
for Halleck:
YOU ARE HEREBY AUTHORIZED TO RELIEVE GENERAL MCCLERNAND
FROM COMMAND OF THE EXPEDITION AGAINST VICKSBURG, GIVING
IT TO THE NEXT IN RANK OR TO YOURSELF.
Halleck strongly disliked McClernand, and Grant had just given Halleck a
opportunity to do something about it.
If Grant felt he now could put McClernand firmly in his place, he was quickly forced to be cautious doing it. Within a day, news arrived that Banks hadn't made it past Port Hudson in his upriver drive, and that Fort Hindman had fallen, handing McClernand a shiny little victory that made Grant think twice about handling him roughly. Besides, Grant also found out that his friend Sherman had been behind the whole adventure, which cast a different light on the matter.
In any case, on 17 January Grant left Memphis on a steamship for Napolean, just south of the outlet of the Arkansas River into the Mississippi, to meet McClernand, Sherman, and Porter, and take command in person. Grant arrived the next day. An Illinois soldier pointed him out to a colleague: "There's General Grant!" The other soldier looked over the shabby-looking Grant and shook his head: "I guess not. That fellow don't look like he has the ability to command a regiment, much less an army."
Grant was actually commanding an army, and at that moment was ensuring that he remained in command of that army. McClernand had been busy exploiting his success at Fort Hindman by sending two gunboats up the White River, where they sent the rebels fleeing from Saint Charles and then smashed the railroad depot at De Valls Bluff, the midway point on the rail line between Little Rock and Memphis. McClernand had still been at Fort Hindman when he got Grant's message. He had obeyed and gone downriver to Napolean, but had also sent Grant's letter along to his old associate, Abraham Lincoln, along with a note complaining about Grant's unreasonable and spiteful interference, and lobbying for the independent command that would allow him to ignore Grant's orders. Whatever case McClernand could make for himself, he was severely handicapped. He had made too many enemies, including Sherman, Porter, Halleck, and Secretary Stanton, and he had to live with the consequences, like them or not.
Grant, in turn, was having his own preconceptions adjusted as he talked to Sherman and Porter about the failed adventure at Chicksaw Bluffs. It appeared Grant's vision of a bold drive down the Mississippi was not, for the moment, realistic. An indirect approach might actually be appropriate. This didn't mean that he felt any more sympathetic to McClernand. Grant sent a somewhat devious message to Halleck on 20 January to obtain reassurances on his own command authority, commenting that he had been informed that the "Army and Navy" had no great confidence in McClernand. The two branches of the service in this case were represented largely by Sherman and Porter, who had expressed such opinions in response to Grant's own queries. The next day Halleck gave Grant the reassurances he wanted and command of almost 100,000 men scattered about the Mississippi basin. Halleck had once tried to put Grant on a leash; now he was giving Grant everything he wanted. Grant proposed to consolidate his force and conquer Vicksburg once and for all.
In the message of 20 January, Grant had also indicated that he wanted to finish the canal across the hairpin turn of the river near Vicksburg, abandoned by the Federals the summer before. On 25 January, Grant received a message from Halleck reporting the President was very enthusiastic about this idea.
Sherman was already laboring on the canal. It was wretched work, since the rains that had forced him to give up his first attempt on Vicksburg were continuing to pour down. While the summer and fall had been drought-stricken, the winter was proving to be one of the wettest anyone could remember. There was no way to stay dry and it was everything the soldiers could do to keep from being washed away by rising waters. Sherman himself took a couple of good dunkings, once on a horse and once on foot, when he stumbled into potholes hidden under the muddy water. The air was black in places with gnats. The canal seemed like a fool's errand. Even if the Federals improbably succeeded in getting the Mississippi to shift its course away from Vicksburg, the Confederates could easily move their defenses south to the canal's outlet.
Sherman was depressed at his work and the progress of the war. Porter described the general as "half sailor, half soldier, with a touch of the snapping turtle," and did what he could to bolster his colleague's morale. Porter sent Grant a message on 27 January: "If this rain lasts much longer we will not need a canal. I think the whole point will disappear, troops and all, in which case the gunboats will have the field to themselves." That day, Grant got on a steamship, and the next day joined Sherman and Porter near Vicksburg. Porter reported to Gideon Welles: "I hope for a better state of things."
* The US Navy had no sooner repaired the hole in the blockade by the Confederate recapture of Galveston harbor than they were bloodied again in the same place. After arriving on 8 January, the USS BROOKLYN and the six gunboats that accompanied her passed their time with ineffectual bombardments of the rebels positions on land. On 11 January, just before sundown, a vessel appeared from the south and halted when it saw the blockaders. The sidewheel gunboat USS HATTERAS was sent to investigate. The mysterious ship fled, though in an oddly half-hearted fashion that failed to make the captain of the HATTERAS suspicious, with the Yankee warship drawn out into the open sea and moonless twilight.
Finally the mystery ship halted and the HATTERAS sent out a boarding party on a small boat. The boat approached the mysterious vessel, only to be greeted by a loud proclamation: "This is the Confederate State steamer ALABAMA! FIRE!" The rebel ship slammed a broadside into the HATTERAS. Even though the Union ship had ten guns to the ALABAMA's eight and weighed a hundred tons more, the Confederates had the advantage of surprise. About fifteen minutes later, the disabled Union vessel ran up the white flag. "Have you struck?"
"I have."
"Cease fire! Cease fire!" The HATTERAS went to the bottom a few minutes later. The ALABAMA picked up the 118 survivors and fled towards Jamaica, disappearing into the darkness ahead of other Federal warships that had seen the flash of cannon fire and come to investigate.
* Captain Raphael Semmes and the ALABAMA had accomplished much for the Confederacy in the time since the ship had left the Azores in late August 1862 to begin its career as a maritime raider. He had taken his first victim on 5 September, bloodlessly seizing and then burning the whaler OCMULGEE. In the following two weeks he destroyed seven more whalers and two other Union vessels in the region. The crews and passengers of the vessels were put in lifeboats, where they easily made their way to the Azores. The American consulate there packed them all back to the USA on a chartered ship, where they told stories that were likely exaggerated to begin with and were certainly greatly played up by the newspapers, making the chivalrous Semmes sound like a bloodthirsty pirate.
The next month, Semmes transferred his operations to the American coast off New England and Newfoundland, destroying eight ships and releasing three after payment of ransom bonds. He then took the ALABAMA south past Bermuda and into the Caribbean, where he ended up at Galveston on 11 January.
Semmes had learned of Nathaniel Banks' proposed expedition to Galveston from northern newspapers found on one of his victims, and hoped to smash Union troop transports unloading soldiers. He had instead found nothing but Union warships, but he was just as willing to fight ships that could fight back, and sank the HATTERAS to prove it. By the end of March, the ALABAMA would claim 13 more ships. Once more, Confederate audacity had proven that it could do wonders to compensate for a lack of resources.
* Her sister raider, the FLORIDA, which had been on the loose since late March of 1862, had been almost as busy. Her captain was John Newland Maffitt, shown in an old photograph dressed like a dandy, his cap at a rakish angle and a twinkle in his eye. He had spent seven months at sea, racking up a score of 23 vessels, and coming within 50 miles (80 kilometers) of New York harbor to inspire hysterical articles in the excitable Union press. Maffitt fitted several of his prizes up as little raiders in themselves. One, the TACONY, took 15 prizes of her own.
Unfortunately, Maffitt, stricken with yellow fever, took the FLORIDA into harbor at Mobile in September, and the blockade had kept her bottled up since then. However, on the night of 15 January 1863, the FLORIDA, now under command of Captain Charles Morris in place of the ailing Maffitt, slipped between the blockaders and sped into the open sea, leaving the startled Yankees in her wake. The raider's escape was a great embarrassment to the US Navy and Secretary Welles, who was raked over the coals in the newspapers. The Confederates seemed to be consistently tweaking the nose of the Federals at sea. The US Navy's image badly needed some shine.
