v1.1.1 / chapter 43 of 93 / 01 sep 07 / greg goebel / public domain
* With the coming of spring 1863, military action began to pick up again. Union cavalry got into a fight with their Confederate counterparts at Kelly's Ford, Virginia, and though the Federals got run off they bloodied the rebels, a sign of their increasing professionalism.
Fighting also flared up in the sideshow theatre in the Carolina tidewater region, while Grant continued his imaginative attempts to outflank Vicksburg. David Glascow Farragut also did his part to deal with Vicksburg, taking his fleet upriver past Port Hudson to cut rebel commerce across the Mississippi. The Confederates took offensive actions of their own, launching cavalry raids into Tennessee.
In the meantime, the Federal government passed a conscription act. It was an unpopular move with the public, but it demonstrated the determination of the Union to carry on the war.
* While Joe Hooker got the Army of the Potomac back into shape for offensive operations, military confrontations with the Army of Northern Virginia remained limited to cavalry raids. On 24 February 1863, Robert E. Lee's nephew Fitzhugh Lee led 400 cavalrymen north of the Rappahannock to investigate rumors that Hooker was getting ready to move. The raid was intended merely to obtain information and did so, showing that the rumors of an imminent Federal offensive were false. However, Fitzhugh Lee also obtained the satisfaction of pouncing on the US 3rd Pennsylvania Cavalry just outside of Falmouth and routing them, taking 150 prisoners.
The commander of the 3rd Pennsylvania Cavalry was William W. Averell, a classmate of Fitzhugh Lee's who was now a division commander under General Stoneman. Averell took after the rebels with his cavalry division and two infantry divisions in support, but the Confederates escaped easily. Fitzhugh Lee left a note for Averell, which began: "I wish you would put up your sword, leave my state, and go home." -- and ended: "If you won't go home, return my visit and bring me a sack of coffee."
In an even more daring raid a week later, Captain John S. Mosby, the dashing bantamweight cavalryman who operated behind Union lines as an irregular, descended on Fairfax on the night of 8 March and grabbed a Union brigadier general from his bed. Mosby would be a pain to the Federals for a long time to come, appearing out of nowhere, striking suddenly, and then disappearing into the night.
Union cavalry was tired of being kicked around and Averell decided to accept Fitzhugh Lee's challenge. On 18 March, he and 3,000 troopers splashed across Kelly's Ford to move south. Fitzhugh Lee only had 1,000 men to oppose him, but the rebel pickets across the river put up a good fight, instilling some caution in Averell. He left behind 1,000 men as a rear guard, reducing his odds against the rebel cavalry.
Averell took his men only a mile south of the river. He knew Fitzhugh Lee well enough to know that the rebels would come to him, and put his men into position behind a stone wall to wait. The Confederates showed up as expected, charged the Union men, and were badly bloodied. Then Averell's 1st Brigade, under Colonel Alfred Duffie, countercharged and drove the rebels back. Averell moved up a short distance and stood off another Confederate charge, with similar unpleasant results for the rebels. The fighting then settled down into a long-range exchange of shots that lasted into the afternoon. Finally, on finding out from rebel prisoners that Jeb Stuart and his artillery commander Major John Pelham were present on the battlefield Averell decided to withdraw, leaving behind a sack of coffee and a note: "Dear Fitz: Here's your coffee. Here's your visit. How do you like it? Averell."
It had been a Federal victory of sorts, but not much of one. The Yankees had thrown Fitzhugh Lee's men into disorder twice, but Averell had lacked the nerve to follow it up. Furthermore, while Stuart had in fact been there he was not there with his men, having only been on hand because he had been participating in a court-martial. Hooker lit into Averell, criticising him for a failure of nerve due of "imaginary apprehensions" -- a remark that would come back to haunt Hooker later.
If the Federal cavalry had failed to exploit their advantage, the Confederates were not celebrating. Fitzhugh Lee had lost 133 men to Averell's 78, and was given notice that the days when Confederate cavalry could ride circles around their Union counterparts were drawing to a close. The real emotional blow, however, was that one of the 133 casualties was Major Pelham. He had dashed forward with the first charge and been struck down by a small shell splinter that buried itself through the base of his neck into his brain. Pelham had been heroic, boyishly handsome, and was admired through the South. His death was a shock to the public. It was also a personal shock to a number of attractive young women he had been courting. In fact, like Stuart, he had only been the fight by chance, becoming involved only because he had been visiting one of those young ladies in the area. He lay in state in Richmond and was then sent back home to his native Alabama, with a posthumous promotion to lieutenant colonel.
* With the Army of the Potomac busy with refitting, Robert E. Lee had felt that he could spare troops to other threatened sectors, and so on 17 February 1863 James Longstreet was detached to take command of the newly-formed Department of Virginia & North Carolina, in charge of defending the tidewater areas of those two states from Yankee incursions.
Troops had actually been dribbling down to the area for a month previous to that, starting out with Daniel Harvey Hill and his division, and by the time Longstreet arrived fully half of Longstreet's original command had been subtracted from the Army of Northern Virginia. It was risky, but various Federal moves seemed to indicate another advance up the Peninsula towards Richmond; the threat posed by the Yankees in control of towns on the North Carolina coast to vital Confederate rail lines could not be ignored. Besides, the region provided great quantities of foodstuffs needed to support Southern military forces in the field.
Longstreet thought he was badly outnumbered by the Federal forces in the area. He actually was outnumbered, with some 50,000 Yankees to 45,000 rebels, but had he known the odds were that close he wouldn't have worried much about it. Whatever the odds, Longstreet wanted to at least distract the Federals or even inflict some serious damage on them. To this end, D.H. Hill was assigned to attack the Federal stronghold in New Berne. The Yankee-hating Hill had suggested the move himself, having sworn to drive the Yankee invaders from their "rat holes" in North Carolina tidewater towns. As the rebels' good luck would have it, the Union commander in New Berne, Major General John G. Foster, had just had his command reduced by 10,000 men, sent south down the coast to participate in operations against Charleston, and so the two sides were evenly matched for a fight, with about 15,000 men on each side.
Or at least they were matched in principle. Longstreet had instructed the Confederate commander in charge of the defense of Wilmington, Brigadier General W.H.C. Whiting, to assist Hill, but Whiting had flatly refused, claiming he needed every man he had to build up local defenses.
On 13 March 1863, Hill's men went forward. They quickly drove the Federals out of their outer line of defense and marched toward New Berne, 10 miles (16 kilometers) away. The next morning one of Hill's brigade commanders, Brigadier General James J. Pettigrew, began to bombard a key Federal position named Fort Anderson. After pounding the fort for some time, Pettigrew sent a courier over to demand its surrender. The Union officer in charge, Lieutenant Colonel Hiram Anderson, simply stalled for time, and by the time Pettigrew ran out of patience, Federal gunboats had moved up to return fire. Pettigrew's artillery then suffered a series of malfunctions and the rebels had to pull out.
Hill had also sent a cavalry column behind New Berne to cut the rail line that provided supplies and reinforcements from the town of Morehead City. However, the cavalry commander, Brigadier General Beverly H. Robertson, was inept and failed to inflict any real damage on the rail line. Hill complained bitterly about Whiting's lack of support in his report to Longstreet about the action. His complaints were so hot and angry that Longstreet, not notoriously tactful himself, suggested that Hill modify his comments and did not pass the report up the chain of command. Hill dropped the matter.
It was evident that Hill's offensive had failed, though Southern newspapers wrote of a great victory. The rebels soldiers on the scene knew better. One said: "These big generals don't always have such deep-laid plans as people give them credit for." -- and another wrote: "To the admirers of Daniel H., it would not seem exactly orthodox to say he had no definite object in view when he set out ... but I must say it looks very much like it to a man up a tree."
* Out West on the Mississippi, events mercifully finally put a stop to the canal-digging efforts of Sherman and his men across the river from Vicksburg. In early March the rising Mississippi broke through the earth dam protecting the northern end of the cut, flooding the Union men out of their camps. The Federals tried to return when the water went down, only to come under fire by the Confederates across the river. Grant called the whole thing off.
It was obvious by this time that the Lake Providence route wasn't going to work, either. The only real option for the moment was the Yazoo Pass route. Lieutenant Colonel James Wilson, after laboring to clear Yazoo Pass all the previous month, finally cut through, and in the first week of March he and his men accompanied ten armed vessels, including two ironclads, to make a back-water attack on Vicksburg. 22 transports were to follow once the gunboats cleared the way. Wilson wasn't actually in charge of the expedition; the vessels were under the command of Navy Lieutenant Commander Watson Smith.
The exercise proved to be a little more difficult than expected. While the Coldwater was wider and deeper than Yazoo Pass, and the Tallahatchie that it flowed into wider still, they were still cramped waterways for large steamships. Squeezing around tight bends was troublesome, but worse, overhanging branches knocked down smokestacks and tore off anything not nailed down tight.
The real trouble came after they had proceeded more than a hundred miles (160 kilometers) downstream, when they encountered a crude fortification built by the rebels directly in their path. Fort Pemberton, as the Confederates called it, had been thrown together from sandbags and cotton bales, and mounted nothing more potent than a 6.4 inch (16.3 centimeter) rifle and some smaller artillery. There were 1,500 rebels there, under the command of Major General William W. Loring. It wasn't much of a fort in itself, but it was sited so that any vessels coming downstream would have to do so in single file, exposed to continuous fire at long range and with no way to bring more than one or two guns to bear in return. The banks of the Tallahatchie were flooded, one of the consequences of blowing the levee, and too much of a quagmire for infantry.
On 11 March, the two ironclads in the Union fleet, the CHILLICOTHE and the DEKALB, moved downstream to take Fort Pemberton under fire. Unfortunately, while the gunners on the CHILLICOTHE were loading their 11 inch (28 centimeter) guns, a rebel shell slammed through the gun port into the turret, setting off the Federal shells and mowing down the gun grew. Lieutenant-Commander Smith, who had been showing increasing signs of agitation as he moved his fleet downstream, went into a frenzy of distress and ordered the two ironclads to fall back. His men described his behavior as "incoherent".
They tried again on 13 and 16 March and took a terrible pounding. Both ironclads were badly shot-up, while they had hardly scratched the Confederates. "Give 'em blizzards, boys!" Loring called out to his gun crews, and from that time on he would be known as "Old Blizzards". On the 17th, Smith, recovering his senses for a moment, called it quits. Wilson protested loudly, but Smith sent his fleet back upstream anyway. Two days later, the little fleet ran into the second division that Grant had committed to the project, under the command of command of Brigadier General Isaac Quinby.
Quinby was the ranking officer and didn't want to give up without investigating further, so the entire fleet went back downstream, spending about two weeks there while Quinby inspected the situation. In early April he agreed that the matter was a lost cause. In fact, by this time even Wilson had given up, since the rebels had brought up a steamship to sink and block the river if the Federals tried to come through. Interestingly, the blockship was the STAR OF THE WEST, whose attempt to resupply Fort Sumter had helped set off the war.
The Union vessels went back upriver once more, and this time they didn't go back. Wilson was apprehensive of his standing in Grant's staff because of the failure of the project, but Grant was undiscouraged. Porter was less kindly to Watson Smith, who he relieved of duty and sent back north. Smith did not recover his nerve, and in fact it appears in hindsight that he may have been suffering from a medical condition; he later died in a delirium in a sanitarium.
* Grant's sympathy with Wilson was partly based on the fact that Grant had been finding out for himself what Wilson had been going through. After the loss of the QUEEN OF THE WEST and the INDIANOLA, David Porter had wanted to take action to restore his self-assurance and public reputation, and so he conceived his own back-door route to attack Vicksburg. The heavy rains and Wilson's destruction of the Yazoo Pass levee had resulted in flooding most of the lower Yazoo Delta. Porter believed that he could snake a river fleet through the twisty bayous of the region to land it upriver of the Confederate defenses at Haine's Bluff.
Porter took Grant on a short excursion through these bayous, navigating between flooded treetops down roads covered with 15 feet (4.6 meters) of water, and Grant was so enthusiastic that he issued immediate orders to begin the "Steele Bayou" expedition, as it would come to be known. Sherman, more or less unemployed since the abrupt end of his canal-building efforts, was ordered to provide troops for the project, and slogged through the mud with a division to make contact with Porter's little navy on 16 March. Sherman's troops boarded the transports accompanying Porter's fleet, which immediately steamed forward.
However, as James Wilson and Watson Smith had found out with their own plans, the idea looked better on a map than it did in practice. The bayous were narrow and tangled, resulting in damage to the vessels and a rain of vermin -- mice, rats, snakes, lizards, and cockroaches -- from the trees. Sherman's men swept them off the decks, though encounters with agitated wildcats who had been rudely knocked from the branches resulted in a few exciting confrontations.
Porter's gunboats ranged well ahead of the transports. The transports were too wide to fit through the narrow passages, and the infantry had to help clear the way for them through the tangle. On 19 March, the gunboats got into trouble. Encountering a wide, green patch of water at daybreak, Porter asked some slaves on the banks if it were safe to enter. One replied that it was nothing but a patch of willows and that the vessels shouldn't have any trouble.
That might have been true for rowboats, but when Porter steamed his ironclad into the patch of water it quickly became snarled tight in the willow branches. The vessel was all but defenseless if the Confederates wanted to seize it, since the banks blocked the ship's guns. Porter set up four smoothbore howitzers on an Indian mound for self-defense and put his men to cutting the ironclad out of its trap.
Suddenly the ironclad and the gun crew on the mound came under long-range artillery fire. The Confederates had two six-gun batteries bearing on them from opposite directions. Porter managed to return fire using mortar boats. Desperate for help, Porter found a contraband, who he addressed as "Sambo", who replied with offended dignity: "My name ain't Sambo, sah. My name's Tub." With names all straight, Porter paid Tub a half dollar to carry an unintentionally humorous message back to Sherman: "Dear Sherman: Hurry up, for Heaven's sake. I never knew how helpless an ironclad could be steaming around through the woods without an army to back her."
Tub honored his bargain with Porter, finding Sherman late that night. The slave then led Sherman and his troops first on a steamship, and when the steamship couldn't proceed further, on foot through the muck. Drummer boys carried their drums on their heads and the men slung their cartridge belts around their necks to keep them dry. They spend a day and another night on this wretched slog, and the soldiers finally came to Porter's aid on the morning of Sunday, 22 March. Brisk fighting was in progress, with rebel and Union artillery trading shots. Confederate soldiers were trying to sneak behind and chop down trees to cut off the stranded gunboats.
Sherman's men chased off the rebel soldiers and then made contact with Porter. By this time, Porter had managed to free his vessel. Their rudders removed, the ships of Porter's fleet were trying to steam backwards to where they had come from, since there was no room to turn around. Porter was relieved to get the help, since he had feared being encircled and captured. Sherman wrote later: "I doubt if he was ever more glad to meet a friend than he was to see me." Both men had gone through enough, however, Sherman calling it "the most infernal expedition I was ever on." The gunboats continued their backwards progress, Sherman's soldiers mocked the Navy crews mercilessly, who swore back at them angrily.
The fleet finally managed to inch its way back to the mouth of the Yazoo, where their damage was repaired and the vessels were painted and polished back to a shine. Despite the whole expedition being a preposterous fiasco, or more likely because of it, the Steele Bayou expedition became something of an adventure that its participants looked back on with a bit of pride.
* Sherman's canal had failed; McPherson's Lake Providence route had gone nowhere; Wilson's expedition down Yazoo Pass had run into a dead end; and so had Porter's meanderings through the Yazoo Delta. Grant ordered McClernand to investigate another canal, but that project went nowhere fast when the Mississippi began to fall again. Someone less persistent than US Grant would have been discouraged. The last word on the futile bayou efforts was given by a Union officer who had been taken prisoner during the Steele Bayou experiment. The rebels asked him what he thought Grant was thinking: "Hasn't the old fool tried this ditching and flanking five times already?"
The prisoner replied: "Yes, but he has thirty-seven more plans in his pocket."
* Down the Mississippi, Nathaniel Banks had been similarly considering what he might do to isolate or capture Port Hudson, the linchpin of the Confederate Mississippi corridor in the south. Unlike Grant, however, Banks was much more worried about what the rebels might do to him instead of the reverse, and so he ended up doing nothing.
His naval counterpart, David Farragut, was made of much more fiery stuff. On hearing of Porter's loss of the QUEEN OF THE WEST and the INDIANOLA, Farragut took it as a personal insult. He resolved to move upstream immediately past the high bluffs and guns of Port Hudson and show the rebels just who the boss really was. He had seven wooden vessels: the heavy warships HARTFORD, RICHMOND, and MONONGAHELA, the old side-wheeler MISSISSIPPI, and three gunboats. He planned to make the run during a moonless night to limit his casualties. Banks wasn't to be left completely out of the action, however. He was to lead a feint on Port Hudson with 12,000 men to distract the defenders while Farragut prepared for his dash.
After darkness fell on 14 March, the fleet steamed upriver, with the HARTFORD leading the way. The ships moved quietly and remained undetected until the HARTFORD cleared the first battery below Port Hudson, when she was detected by Confederate pickets, who lit pitch-pine bonfires and set off rockets to alert the gunners on shore. The night was misty and windless, and the exchanges of cannon fire between the ships and the guns on the bluffs above the river covered the river with black smoke, blinding the gunners on both sides.
The HARTFORD made it beyond the batteries with three casualties and damage to her spars and topdeck. Unfortunately, the RICHMOND was struck in her engine room and lost steam. She floated back downstream, to be followed by the MONONGAHELA, which suffered an engine failure and other damage. It was the side-wheeler frigate MISSISSIPPI, which had been Commodore Matthew Perry's flagship during the US Navy expedition to Japan a decade before, that took the worst beating, taking hits not only from the rebels but, in the confusion, from the RICHMOND as well, and then ran hard aground, right in full view of the rebel gunners.
Pounded by shot and shells and stuck tight, her captain ordered the crew to abandon ship and set the MISSISSIPPI on fire. She burned until morning, then slid off the mud bank where she had grounded, floated in flames downstream past the injured ships nursing their wounds below the town, grounded again, and then blew up. Banks' men had arrived too late to seriously distract the Confederates, but they got a spectacular fireworks show. Only three of the seven vessels that started out made it past Port Hudson, and there were 112 casualties, with 35 men killed outright. Still, Farragut was now past the guns of Port Hudson. The three ships steamed upriver for the day and the following night, dropping anchor near the mouth of the Red River when the sun came up again.
The rebel ram WEBB and the captured Ellett ram QUEEN OF THE WEST had retreated back up the Red after the INDIANOLA fiasco. They had been heavily damaged in the fight with the INDIANOLA and were in no condition to take on Farragut, but in any case he rigged up further protection for the HARTFORD by using logs and anything else he could find as armor, and then continued upriver in hopes of making contact with Porter's vessels.
Porter was thinking along much the same lines. He sent two Ellett rams, the SWITZERLAND and the LANCASTER, downstream past Vicksburg on 25 March to link up with Farragut. The LANCASTER took several hits, while the SWITZERLAND was hit so badly that she broke up and sank, giving her captain, the young Charles Ellett, another dunking in the Mississippi. Despite the losses, Porter's plan for a naval blockade between Port Hudson and Vicksburg was now a reality. The Federals had now effectively cut commerce between the eastern and western halves of the Confederacy. Unfortunately, as long as the rebels maintained their fortresses at each end of the corridor, they in turn blocked commerce from the American Midwest into the Gulf of Mexico. It was up to Grant to put an end to this stalemate.
As a footnote to the incident, Charles Ellet was soon out of the war. Later in the year, his health began to fail and he went to Illinois, where he died in late October at age 20, buried with the rank of colonel in the Union Army.
* The controversy that General Braxton Bragg provoked in January by his half-baked letter did not seem to die out as spring approached. If anything, the barking grew worse. Joe Johnston was sent to Bragg's headquarters at Tullahoma, Tennessee, to investigate the trouble. After ten days of inspection, he reported to Richmond on 3 February that the troops were "in high spirits, and as ready as ever to fight" and that Bragg had demonstrated "great vigor and skill." It is likely that this was Johnston's sincere opinion, but there was more to the matter than met the eye.
General Polk had been away on leave in North Carolina visiting his family, which had fled Louisiana to get away from the Yankees, when the uproar broke out. On returning, Polk had found himself in a most uncomfortable position. He had sent a message asking Bragg if he really desired criticism, and Bragg responded to the effect that he did not. Polk had seen no reason to disturb matters further, except for the fact that Hardee and most of Polk's own generals had already expressed their opinions very bluntly to Bragg. If Polk did not back them up, they would merely seem like sullen subordinates.
Caught in a bind, Polk had written Jefferson Davis with advice, suggesting that Bragg be relieved and sent to Richmond, where his organizational skills would be valuable, and replaced as commander of the Army of Tennessee by Joe Johnston. Johnston learned of the letter and it did not sit well with him. He completed his inspection on 12 February, and once more reported the condition of the men in glowing terms, praising the "great skill" of General Bragg. Johnston concluded: "I am sure that you will agree with me that the part I have borne in this investigation would render it inconsistent with my personal honor to occupy that position ... General Bragg should not be removed." Johnston, always considerate of his subordinates, could not consider giving Bragg the axe and then taking his place.
Johnston then left Tullahoma for Chattanooga. Davis and Secretary of War Seddon begged him at length to reconsider taking charge in Bragg's place, but Johnston, thoroughly disgusted with everything, was tight-lipped. Finally, on 12 March, while back in Mobile, Johnston received peremptory orders to go back to Tullahoma and take command anyway.
He dutifully returned and then things took an even more bizarre turn. Bragg's wife had typhoid and was not expected to live. Johnston indeed had to take command, since Bragg was constantly at his wife's bedside, but Johnston could not possibly order Bragg to Richmond when the poor man's family was in such trouble. The woman recovered, but by that time Johnston was down and out himself from a relapse of his old wound. Bragg remained in command of the Army of Tennessee.
Bragg had been given a reprieve in spite of all the odds, and laid plans to carry on the war against the Yankees. Rosecrans had let the rebel Army of the Tennessee get away at Murfreesboro, and there was going to be a rematch sooner or later. The next Federal objective in the region would be Chattanooga, the key to east Tennessee and Georgia, and Bragg was determined to make Rosecrans pay dearly for it.
* In the meantime, while waiting for the main event, Bragg's cavalrymen were doing what they could to make Rosecrans pay in smaller ways, if with mixed results.
Joe Wheeler had gone off raiding in January, and on the 13th of that month had achieved a notable success by sinking four cargo vessels and a gunboat at Harpeth Shoals, upriver from Nashville, interrupting Federal use of the Cumberland as a supply line. Unfortunately, on 3 February he ordered a half-baked attack on a Federal outpost at Dover, not far from Fort Donelson, and was thrown back with serious losses. Bedford Forrest lost some of his best men and had two horses shot out from under him. Unimpressed with Wheeler's leadership, Forrest told Wheeler to his face that he would resign before taking any more orders from him. Wheeler, having had enough for a while, took his men back to Columbia, the western linchpin of Bragg's defense on the Duck River to rest and refit for a while.
Wheeler was joined on 22 February by two divisions of cavalry under Major General Earl Van Dorn, sent from Pemberton's command to protect the presumably more-vulnerable Central Tennessee line. Wheeler was assigned to protect the eastern part of the line, while Van Dorn, with the help of Forrest, was assigned to protect the west.
Van Dorn and Forrest quickly found themselves engaged with the enemy. On 4 March, Rosecrans sent two columns toward Columbia, one moving south along the rail line under Colonel John Coburn, another moving west from Murfreesboro under Phil Sheridan; Sheridan was to join Coburn's column as it moved down the railroad line at a place named Thompson's Station. Unfortunately for Coburn, Van Dorn and Forrest met him there first on 5 March, taking Coburn himself and 1,200 of his men prisoner and scattering the rest of his 3,000 troops. The rebels turned east to deal with Sheridan, but he was cautious and remained out of reach.
Forrest wasn't quite ready to go home yet. He rode his men deep into Union lines and struck at Brentwood, only 10 miles (16 kilometers) south of Nashville, on 25 March, seizing 800 prisoners and destroying a Federal supply depot, and then escaped by his accustomed method of throwing out blows and feints to slip away in the confusion. This was satisfying, but elsewhere Bragg's cavalry didn't done quite so well. John Hunt Morgan had taken a nasty bloodying on 20 March from a smaller Yankee force at the town of Milton, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) southeast of Nashville, and would take another like it two weeks later at the nearby town of Liberty. Morgan's star was beginning its slow and irreversible fall. Bragg still was pleased, and Rosecrans was distressed. Win or lose, the Confederate cavalry were still distracting Old Rosey.
* Lincoln had attempted to resolve the squabbling between Generals Schofield and Curtis and their partisans by first ordering Schofield to come east of the Mississippi. The bickering didn't die down, having achieved enough of a life of its own to continue without the presence of its prime mover, and so Lincoln transferred Curtis to Kansas and ordered Bull Sumner to Missouri to replace him.
General Sumner never got there. He went on leave to Syracuse, New York, en route to the West, and fell ill. He weakened and became unconscious, floating towards death. He revived for a moment on 21 March to cry out: "The Second Corps never lost a flag or a cannon!" An aide came to help, and the old soldier opened his eyes and added: "That is true; never lost one."
The aide set him up and poured him a glass of wine. He drank from it, saying: "God save my country, the United States of America." Sumner breathed his last breath, dropped the glass, and became still. He was 66 years old. There was nothing to do then but send Schofield back to Missouri, while Curtis proceeded on to Kansas.
Schofield still had no reason to be happy with matters. Not only was the guerrilla fighting in Missouri widespread and vicious almost beyond belief, but, in much the same way that Theophilus Holmes on the rebel side found his department being systematically looted for fighting men, the Federal government was taking every available man from Missouri for the fighting east of the river. As winter turned to spring, Schofield had no hope of resuming his offensive into Arkansas.
* There was a peculiar symmetry between the Yankees and the Confederates in the trans-Mississippi that winter. They both being used as a pool of manpower, and they were equally confused in their command organizations.
In the middle of January, Jefferson Davis had appointed Lieutenant General Kirby Smith to command the new Department of West Louisiana and Texas. Smith sensed he was being sent into exile, but Davis managed to reassure Smith that he was indeed being given an important assignment.
Smith left in early February, only to find out shortly after he left that his command had been expanded to all of the Department of the Transmississippi. He arrived in Alexandria, Louisiana, on 7 March to take command, to then find out that the command structure he was inheriting was dilapidated, disorganized, and pathetically undermanned; in the entire vast region, there were no more than 30,000 soldiers available to him.
Theophilus Holmes had become Kirby Smith's subordinate, in charge of Arkansas, Missouri, and the Indian Territory. Hindman was displaced in the command shuffle and resigned in anger to look for military opportunities elsewhere. Kirby Smith had arranged for the popular and capable Sterling Price to be sent from Pemberton's command to help, however, and Price arrived near the end of March to take charge of what forces were available.
Kirby Smith had meanwhile set up headquarters in Shreveport, Louisiana, a "miserable place with a miserable population", but centrally located. He threw himself into his work energetically, though it might have been just to distract himself from the hopelessness of his situation. If the Federals decided in earnest to overrun all of "Kirby-Smithdom", as his kingdom was soon known, there was little he could do to stop them. The only saving grace was that the Yankees gave the region roughly the same low level of priority.
* While the fighting went on, the US Congress continued to extend the rule of the government over the Union. The "National Banking Act" was put into law on 25 February 1863, establishing Federal charters for banks that met certain criteria and bought US bonds to the tune of the third of their capital. They could then issue banknotes of 90% of the value of such bonds. The exercise helped fund the war effort and establish a national currency, though theme scheme would require a few legal tweaks over the next few years.
Democrats were largely against the measure and there were protests at this extension of Federal power. However, the National Banking Act was overshadowed by the "Enrollment Act", passed on 3 March 1863. It was an unprecedented law with far-reaching implications, the first American national military conscription act. The act allowed the Federal government to draft able-bodied men between the ages of 18 and 45 for a period of military service of up to three years. Previously, the Federal government had made requests to the states for manpower, and the states had recruited men and formed regiments by whatever means they thought appropriate. The national conscription act bypassed state authority, empowering the Federal government to obtain manpower as necessary.
Reaction to the Federal conscription act in the North was similar to the reaction to the earlier Confederate conscription act in the South. State politicians complained bitterly about the way the rights of states were trampled. The conscription act also had a loophole that was likely to cause resentment: any man of wealth who was selected for the draft could escape service by paying $300, a process referred to as "commutation", though he could be selected again when the next levy came, or could simply hire a substitute. $300 was an unimaginable sum to a poor man, and the unfairness of the act was plain.
The conscription act was not scheduled to go into effect until the coming summer. It would prove cumbersome to implement, suffering badly from fraud and incompetence, and in hindsight is not believed to have done much to meet the Union Army's manpower requirements. It is much more certain that it led to a good deal of public unrest and trouble. In the future conflicts of the United States, the Enrollment Act of 1863 would be used as an example of how not to conduct a draft.
