v1.1.3 / chapter 55 of 93 / 01 sep 11 / greg goebel / public domain
* After the great battles of July 1863, the war went relatively quiet in August, save for a bloodthirsty raid on Lawrence. In September, events began to regain momentum. Federal columns moved into the interior of Arkansas, sending the Confederate defenders into the south of the state, and the Union scored a diplomatic coup by persuading the British government to block delivery of two powerful ironclad rams to the Confederacy. The bloody and clumsy fighting around Charleston, which had been sputtering on all summer, finally fizzled out in a stalemate. Elsewhere, Burnside's long-awaited drive into east Tennessee was proving an enormous success, while Rosecrans advanced rapidly across northern Georgia, barely aware that he was heading towards a violent collision with Confederate forces under Bragg.
* By the summer of 1863, the war in Missouri and Kansas had clearly become a sideshow. The outcome of the war would be determined elsewhere. However, as if to make up for a lack of strategic significance, the war there was extraordinarily savage.
26-year-old Charles Quantrill, a veteran of the prewar Kansas-Missouri fighting and now a Confederate guerrilla with the rank of captain, was eager to settle old scores and possibly obtain some loot while he was at it. He wanted to raid Lawrence, Kansas, on the border with Missouri about 40 miles (64 kilometers) north of Indian Territory, what is now known as the state of Oklahoma. Lawrence had been established by abolitionists and was prosperous, making it a desireable target in all respects.
Quantrill had trouble talking his colleagues into the idea, since raiding Lawrence would certainly provoke a harsh response from the Federals. However, the Union commander of the District of the Border, Brigadier General Thomas Ewing, managed to provide all the persuasion needed. Through the summer, Ewing had been arresting women who he believed to be assisting rebel guerrillas, locking the women in buildings in Kansas City. One of these buildings was clearly decrepit and collapsed on 14 August, killing four of the women and badly injuring others. Ewing was not particularly apologetic about this unfortunate incident; furthermore, on 18 August he announced a policy that the arrests of women would continue, and added that the families of known guerrillas would be evicted from their Missouri homes.
That was too much to tolerate, and on 19 August Quantrill led a column of 300 mounted men from Blackwater Creek, Missouri, towards Lawrence, 70 miles (113 kilometers) away. They rode fast and picked up more recruits on the way, arriving outside Lawrence at sunup on 21 August 1863 with 450 men.
They swept down on the town without warning. Quantrill's orders were simple: they were to kill "every man big enough to carry a gun." They diligently carried out the order: the only Union man to survive the raid was the hated Senator James H. Lane, who they had wanted to capture alive so they could treat him to a public hanging. Lane's survival instincts were well-tuned, however, and when the shooting started he fled into a cornfield in his nightshirt, remaining there in hiding until the violence had ended. The rest of the menfolk of Lawrence were shot down where they stood. The raiders spent three hours looting, drinking, killing, and burning, making a quick exit in midmorning, loaded down with loot. They lost only one man, who got drunk and passed out. He was found by an Indian, who killed and scalped him. The enraged citizens dragged the corpse through the streets behind a horse.
* Quantrill's raid on Lawrence was the only visible success that the Confederacy enjoyed during a summer of staggering defeats, but it was a victory Richmond was not eager to celebrate. The war in Kansas and Missouri was a dirty one, with plenty of brutalities on both sides, but the highly visible massacre of a large number of unarmed men did not square with the idealistic rhetoric of the Confederate leadership.
There was also the matter of the inevitable retribution, which was even more severe than expected. Federal forces combed the area; the raiders had broken up after reaching Missouri, each going his own way, and those that were caught were executed on the spot. On 25 August, on orders from Jim Lane, General Ewing issued General Order Number 11, ordering the depopulation of four Missouri counties near the border. Union troops chased out the citizens and torched their homes into mid-September; everything was destroyed so thoroughly that the area would be known as the "Burnt District" for decades. Quantrill retaliated as best he could, performing other, less spectacular, raids, and then withdrew to Texas with his men in October.
* Elsewhere in the Transmississippi, the Union was scoring new successes in a double drive into Arkansas, one towards Little Rock in the center of the state, and another towards Fort Smith near the state's western border, well up the Arkansas River from Helena.
After giving the rebels a humiliatingly one-sided bloodying in July in their doomed attack on Helena, Union General Benjamin Prentiss had received reinforcements in the form of a division under General Frederick Steele, returned from Sherman's corps after being borrowed from Prentiss eight months earlier. With these reinforcements, the Union seemed to be in a position to take the offensive in Arkansas. Orders were sent by the War Department to "break up Price and occupy Little Rock". Much to Prentiss's annoyance, however, the command of the offensive went to Steele, and Prentiss resigned in disgust. Steele was not entirely happy with his position either, since many of his men were sick and out of two divisions he only had 6,000 effective troops.
Reinforcements were sent in the form of 6,000 cavalry under Brigadier General John W. Davidson, detached from Schofield's command in Missouri. The horsemen arrived at Clarendon, Arkansas, west of Helena, on 8 August, and were joined by Steele and his soldiers on 17 August. The combined force, under overall command of Steele, then went into camp at nearby DeVall's Bluff for two weeks to refit for the offensive. On 1 September, Steele's Federals began their advance west towards Little Rock.
* In the meantime, the second force of Federals was moving in from Indian Territory. This little army was under Major General James Blunt, who had distinguished himself at Prairie Grove the year before. His force consisted of 4,000 men, including three regiments of white troops, three regiments of Indians who had sided with the Union, and a regiment of free blacks.
In mid-July, this mixed force had driven a Confederate force of nine regiments, three of them consisting of Indians, out of their base at Honey Springs. The battle was relatively bloodless since the rebels had discovered their powder was bad and decided it was wiser to flee, but the action had still broken whatever grip the Confederates had on the region. Blunt rested his men until mid-August, and then marched them east across the border into Arkansas, occupying Fort Smith without a fight on 1 August 1863. This put Confederate General Sterling Price, in command of 8,000 men, in the position of being attacked from west and east.
Steele's troops, advancing from the east, were the bigger and more immediate threat to Price, and so he deployed his men in good defensive positions astride the Arkansas River in front of Little Rock to block the move. However, on 6 September Steele ordered Davidson to south ride around the Confederate position; Davidson accepted the surrender of Little Rock on 10 September. By this time Price, faced with Federal infantry in front and cavalry behind, was pulling out south as fast as he could. He had sensibly relocated his base of supplies to safer locations when he had set up Little Rock's defenses and was able to withdraw in good order, setting up a new defensive line south of the Ouachita River.
Casualties for the entire campaign were light, with a loss of about 245 rebels and 212 Yankees. However, the Confederates had been evicted from Indian Territory and two-thirds of Arkansas was in Union hands, including the state capitol, Little Rock. The war in the Transmississippi might have been a sideshow, but the Union victories there were still cause for elation in the North and gloom in the South.
Price had also lost one of his cavalry commanders during the campaign, though not from enemy action. There was bad blood between Generals John Marmaduke and Lucius Walker, with Marmaduke accusing Walker of cowardice, and Walker demanding satisfaction in a duel. The duel was fought on 6 September and Walker was mortally wounded. While the roof was beginning to cave in around them, prideful Confederates fought each other over points of honor.
* While battles continued between Union and Confederate armies, the secret war overseas went on as well. Although the British government had become more vigilant in its efforts to block the supply of British men-of-war to the South, earlier in the year Confederate agents had managed to get their hands on a Scots-build fast merchantman named the JAPAN and take it to sea, one step ahead of British authorities and with the most minimal operational gear, on the only too appropriate date of 1 April. Fitted with guns and flying the rebel flag, the JAPAN became the commerce raider CSS GEORGIA. The GEORGIA was hardly in the same league of capability as the CSS ALABAMA, but the incident was another cause for fury from the Union and an embarrassment to the British government.
The efficient Confederate agent James Bulloch, under orders from Confederate Navy Secretary Stephen Mallory, had a much more ambitious project underway. Bulloch had been working with the British firm of John Laird & Sons of Liverpool since 1862 to build two ocean-going ironclads that would be powerful enough to tilt the naval balance of power in the war to the Confederacy all by themselves. Another Confederate agent, James H. North, was simultaneously working with James & George Thompson of Glascow to build an armored frigate with a displacement of 3,200 tons (2,910 tonnes).
The two Laird ironclads were very formidable, at the leading edge of contemporary warship design, totally superior to the Union Navy's wooden warships. They were armed with twin turrets, each mounting a pair of 9 inch (23 centimeter) Armstrong rifles, and had reinforced prows for ramming. They were capable of ocean journeys but had shallow draft for operations on rivers.
The problem for the Confederacy was that there was no way that anyone could pretend these vessels were anything but warships, and their delivery to the Confederacy would be an intolerable violation of Britain's official neutrality. In early 1863, after communications with Navy Secretary Mallory, Bulloch came up with a subterfuge. He set up a complicated arrangement in which a French firm paid for the rams, under the pretense of acting in behalf of the Pasha of Egypt. Once fitted, the rams would then be passed on to the Confederacy. Federal agents in Europe knew perfectly who was paying for the rams, but the documentation trail was so complicated that there was no way to prove anything. The first ram was launched on 4 July 1863. Bulloch was enthusiastic that he would soon have a fine pair of warships to send to his superiors across the Atlantic.
The US ambassador to Britain, Charles Francis Adams, browbeat the British government incessantly over the rams. Adams was stubborn to begin with, and his dedication had been stiffened by messages from Secretary of State Seward that the US Navy would take action against the rams if they went to sea, even following them into neutral ports to attack them if need be. Neutral ports clearly included British ports, and that left open the possibility of a shooting war between the Union and Great Britain.
Foreign Secretary Lord Russell was actually concerned about the Laird rams, but failed to make his concern known to Adams -- it appears because Russell found Adams' badgering offensive. Adams only got angrier, and on 5 September he sent an angry note that ended with: "It would be superfluous in me to point out to your Lordship that this is war." The statement sounded decisive but was deliberately ambiguous: did it mean that it would be a warlike act against the United States? Or did it mean that the Americans would take military action against Britain?
Russell had already acted by that time. On 3 September 1863, he ordered the rams to be detained and the matter investigated. He briefed Lord Palmerston on the decision, and Palmerston agreed, saying he had felt all along that Britain would be playing a "suicidal game" to sell the rams to the Confederacy. Palmerston was still not happy with the language Adams had used and told Russell: "It seems to me that we cannot allow to remain unnoticed his repeated and I must say somewhat insolent threats of war. We ought I think to say to him, in civil terms, 'You be damned', and I endeavored to express that sentiment to him in measured terms." Lord Russell handed Adams a frosty reply and Adams, his fury spent, immediately backtracked, to became apologetic.
There the matter sat for some time -- the British government had acted by decree on the matter, with the legal aspects to then be worked out in the courts. As a result, the fate of the rams became the topic of an extended wrangle between the Confederacy, the builders of the ships, and the government. In the meantime, the North continue its complaints against the British government over the depredations of the CSS ALABAMA, leading to a PUNCH cartoon in which poor John Bull was trying to calmly enjoy reading the newspaper and smoking his pipe, while hectored by two old women, one with the face of Abraham Lincoln, saying: "How about the ALABAMA, you wicked old man?!" -- and the other with the face of Jefferson Davis, saying: "Where's my rams?!"
The issue of the Laird rams was ultimately resolved when the Royal Navy finally bought up the two warships from the French intermediaries. As far as Commander North's frigate went, he gave up trying to get her to sea and sold her to Denmark. Warship design was in a state of rapid change at the time, and the two rams, which became the HMS WIVERN and HMS SCORPION, were quickly rendered obsolete. A few years later, Adams saw one of them at a naval review and was forced to admit: "As I looked on the mean little thing, I could not help a doubt whether she was really worth all of the anxiety she had cost us."
That was in hindsight; the two rams could have made great trouble for the Union had they gone to sea, and their loss was a blow to the Confederacy. There were no more such threats of war between America and Britain for the rest of the conflict -- which is not to say things remained all that peaceable between the two nations. Lord Russell's failure to communicate his sincere concerns over the rams to Adams led the North to conclude that it had only been loud protests that had finally "forced" Britain to take action on the matter, an attitude unhelpful to polite relations.
* After the terrible repulse before Fort Wagner in mid-July, the Federals were no closer to unlocking the defenses of Charleston than they had been before. However, Union General Quincy Gillmore was by no means ready to give up. If Fort Wagner couldn't be taken by frontal assault, he would dig it out.
He set his men to building siegeworks, shoveling out zigzag trenches on Morris Island to push Union lines closer and closer to the fort's ramparts, allowing big guns to be brought up to hit the rebels at pointblank range. It was hot, exhausting work. The island was basically a mud bank covered with a layer of sand, and handling heavy guns on such an insecure foundation was troublesome. Confederate sharpshooters also picked off Union soldiers who were careless enough to stick their heads up, and Gillmore had to establish his own team of sharpshooters to make the rebels keep their own heads down.
The worst part of the digging, however, was that as the sappers came closer to Fort Wagner, they ran into the bodies of Union soldiers who had fallen to the Confederate defense. At first they tried to dig out the corpses for a proper burial, but that proved so troublesome that they simply sealed the dead up in the walls of the trenches. Union artillery pounded Fort Wagner around the clock, helped at night by calcium floodlights that lit up the rebel defenses like a moonscape and blinded the defenders. The US Navy also assisted, with ironclads throwing shells into Fort Wagner, the gunners even learning to bounce them off the wavetops in order to toss them deep inside the walls of the fortress.
All through August, the Federal trenchworks crept closer to Fort Wagner. The Confederates inside were under continuous fire, the bombproofs were sweatboxes in the summer sun, and the rotting bodies of the dead had polluted the only wells available. Water was smuggled in at night but there was never enough.
As the trenches grew longer, Gillmore realized that he was also acquiring positions from which he could bombard Fort Sumter. He moved up long-range rifles and began a bombardment of Sumter on 17 August that lasted for a week. Dahlgren's ironclads moved as close as they could to add their weight to the assault. Beauregard knew an old masonry fort would not hold up to rifled artillery, and ordered most of its guns to be quietly removed at night. By 23 August, Sumter had stopped shooting back, and the next day Gillmore reported to the War Department: "Fort Sumter is now a shapeless and harmless mass of ruins." He was only half right: it was shapeless.
With fire from Fort Sumter suppressed, the Federals were able to increase the pressure on Fort Wagner. On 5 September, Union gunners began a two-day bombardment. The end was clearly near, and Beauregard gave the order to evacuate. All the men and many of the guns were pulled out after dark on 6 September. Gillmore's men stormed Fort Wagner the next morning and, much to their relief, found nobody home. Whatever satisfaction that gave Gillmore had to be tempered by the fact that a small force of Confederates had held up a Federal force ten times as big for two months, and had inflicted 2,300 casualties on the Yankees.
* Now the Federals decided to take Fort Sumter. It seemed that all they had to do was row a few boats over, walk over the rubble, and put up the Stars & Stripes. Taking back Fort Sumter would be a major propaganda victory that could be obtained at a small price. The seeming vulnerability of the fort led to complacency, and both General Gillmore and Rear Admiral Dahlgren independently came up with their own easy schemes to take the fort.
Dahlgren moved first, starting by sending Beauregard a demand for the fort's surrender. Beauregard replied: "Inform Admiral Dahlgren that he may have Fort Sumter when he can take it and hold it". It was what Dahlgren had expected, and on the night of 8 September 1863, he sent in a force of 500 volunteer sailors and marines in small boats, under the leadership of Commander Thomas Stevens. Stevens had been worried about the operation, suggesting that it was too risky, but Dahlgren had told him: "You have only to go in and take possession. You will find nothing but a corporal's guard."
The reality was that Sumter was occupied by 320 Confederate infantry under Major Stephen Elliott JR. The boats were spotted by a lookout, a signal was sent up, and the boats were taken under heavy fire by rebel shore batteries. Those in the party that managed to land were shot or captured. The landing party lost 124 men. Gillmore immediately dropped his own plans to capture the island.
* In any case, the War Department was no longer very interested in Charleston. The victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg had clearly unhinged the Confederacy, and resources were better used elsewhere. The Federals did not leave Charleston alone, however, and in fact even before the bumbling attack on Fort Sumter, Union actions had turned ugly. While Gillmore had been pushing trenches forward on Morris Island towards Fort Wagner and setting up batteries to pound Fort Sumter, he had also ordered a heavy gun to be set up on Morris Island to hit Charleston itself.
The gun was an 8 inch, 200 pounder (20 centimeter, 90 kilogram) Parrott rifle. Federal troops called it the "Swamp Angel", and it was to fire incendiary shells. Putting it into place was a monstrous task, requiring that Union soldiers build a road several miles into a marsh, and then drive pilings into the marsh until they hit solid ground to provide a foundation for the heavy gun.
The Swamp Angel was ready for action by 21 August. Gillmore sent a demand to Beauregard, threatening to bombard the city if the Morris Island fortifications and Fort Sumter did not surrender within four hours. Beauregard was off performing inspections and was not available to reply. Gillmore began pounding Charleston with the Swamp Angel in the dark hours of the following morning.
Beauregard protested angrily, calling the bombardment "an act of inexcusable barbarity". Gillmore later justified his actions by pointing out that the rebels were building gunboats along the waterfront and the city was occupied by rebel troops. Besides, the city was open on the land side and civilians could easily escape. There was certainly little feeling of concern over the bombardment in the North. The famous diarist George Templeton Strong wrote of Charleston: "She deserves it all."
Although the citizenry were terrorized at first by the bombardment, they found the Swamp Angel's shells were generally duds and soon began to go about their business as if nothing of concern was happening. Furthermore, the Swamp Angel was firing at extreme range, and a heavy powder charge had to be used. On the 36th firing, the Swamp Angel blew up, tossing the heavy barrel of the gun up on the sandbags that formed a parapet around the gun position. Gillmore did not replace the gun.
* Although Union General Ulysses S. Grant was a national hero for his victory at Vicksburg, he received mixed rewards for it. While he proposed to Halleck to join forces with Banks and move on Mobile, Alabama, the War Department had other ideas and rejected the proposal in mid-August, and then began to methodically loot Grant's command to provide help to other theaters. Various corps and divisions were sent south to New Orleans to reinforce Banks for new offensive operations towards Texas; west for a drive into Arkansas; upstream to reinforce Memphis and Missouri; and east to help Burnside with his advance into eastern Kentucky. Grant was reduced from five corps to two, the corps of Sherman and MacPherson, and some of their units were detached as well.
That left Grant with little to do. He didn't like the inactivity, but his political stock was good for the present and not a worry. He was now one of the only two permanent major generals in the army, the other being Halleck. Halleck was still his obnoxious superior, but the scales were at least better balanced in Grant's favor, all the more so because the President had a realistic grasp of the strengths and weaknesses of both men.
With relatively little concern about watching his back and time on his hands, Grant went on what might later be called a "boondoggle", steaming upstream to Memphis where he was the guest of honor at a banquet and wildly applauded. It was not something he was used to, but he found he liked it. He then steamed downstream to Natchez, Mississippi, where he met with local Southern men of influence and found them pleasantly cooperative with the new powers in the land. He continued his trip down to New Orleans, arriving on 2 September, where he was given an opulent welcome by General Nathaniel Banks.
However, on 4 September, a horse he was riding through the city bolted at the sound of a locomotive and ran into a carriage, falling to the pavement and taking Grant with it. For once, his knack with horses seriously failed him. Grant was knocked unconscious and suffered a dislocated hip. He was so badly battered that he lay in bed for a week before the swelling and bruises subsided enough to even allow him to roll over.
Malicious rumors went around that Grant had been so blind drunk that he had simply fallen off his horse. That was probably not precisely the case -- Grant could ride horses when he was blind drunk that most people wouldn't try to ride when they were sober -- but even Nathaniel Banks, who wasn't inclined to snipe at others, wrote his wife that Grant's drunkenness "was too manifest to all who saw him."
* Nathaniel Banks was not accustomed to winning, but in the previous months he had basked in the sunshine of a series of victories, capped by the surrender of Port Hudson. Now the clouds started to roll back in.
Banks had wanted to cooperate with Grant to move on Mobile, Alabama, to close one of the South's remaining seaports, but the Lincoln Administration redirected his sights west, towards Texas. Texas was not only a source of considerable potential resources for the Confederacy, but it bordered on Mexico, which had been invaded in the spring and taken over by France, with the French Emperor Napoleon III installing Prince Maximilian as the resident Mexican Emperor. Decades before, the Monroe Doctrine had established as a cornerstone of US foreign policy that European interference in the affairs of the New World was unwelcome. The Lincoln Administration wanted to make sure that the French didn't provide assistance to the Confederacy, or worse, decide to exploit the feud in America to seize Texas. The Federal government also wanted to put US forces on the Mexican border to back up suggestions that the French go home.
Some have suggested that this decision reflected confused priorities. Once the North won the Civil War, the French could be dealt with easily, but trying to fight both rebels and foreigners at the same time simply prolonged the internal struggle without providing enough force to clearly intimidate the French. Others have suggested the political logic of the situation demanded an immediate response. Whatever the case, Nathaniel Banks was ordered to invade Texas and secure it for the Union.
Halleck suggested that Banks move up the Red River to Shreveport or thereabouts, and then advance into northeastern Texas. Banks replied that the Red was very shallow at the time and such an offensive was impractical without gunboat and river transport support. Banks proposed an alternative. The Sabine River defined the border between Texas and Louisiana; it flowed into the Gulf at Sabine Pass, and Banks thought he could easily make a lodgement there that would allow him to move on Houston with 15,000 men. Houston would give him control of the railroads and the biggest part of the thin population of the state.
On 5 September 1863, an advance force of 4,000 men, led by Major General William B. Franklin, left New Orleans in transports to move up the Gulf coast with an escort of river gunboats. The only opposition they faced was an incomplete fortification at Sabine Pass, manned by little more than a platoon of Texans with six guns and led by a Lieutenant Richard Dowling.
When the Yankees arrived, Franklin thought he would simply use the Navy to bombard Dowling and his men into submission. On the afternoon of 8 September, the gunboats ARIZONA, CLIFTON, SACHEM, and GRANITE CITY moved up to pound on the rebels. Less than an hour later the SACHEM and CLIFTON were crippled, their boilers wrecked by accurate Confederate fire. Both gunboats surrendered. The ARIZONA ran aground but managed to get free, while the captain of the GRANITE CITY never got his vessel into the fight at all.
This fiasco made it clear to Franklin that his initial plan of attack was flawed. He then turned to his alternate plan, which was to turn around and go back to port in New Orleans. Confederate General John Magruder, in charge of the region, believed the timid attack had been a feint and was expecting more trouble. He was delighted when he found out otherwise. Banks' fortunes were back to their normal, dismal state. He compounded the failure by not sacking Franklin immediately. As a general, Franklin was a loser, always had been a loser, and would never be anything but a loser.
* Ambrose Burnside always tried his best to do things right, but always seemed to bumble it in the end. However, every dog has his day. Although John Hunt Morgan's raid into Kentucky and Ohio had delayed Burnside's move into east Tennessee towards Knoxville, in the end Morgan was caught and his command killed, wounded, taken prisoner, or dispersed. Burnside had every reason to be happy with the way things had turned out.
The capture of Morgan didn't mean that the stream of telegrams from Halleck and the War Department nagging Burnside to GET GOING slowed down. Burnside finally moved out on 15 August 1863, with 24,000 men in three divisions with supporting cavalry. Opposing him were scattered rebel forces under Simon Bolivar Buckner, who was being forced to send troops to assist Bragg, now being threatened by Rosecrans and his Army of the Cumberland.
The most direct route into east Tennessee was through the Cumberland Gap, which the Federals had been forced to abandon when Bragg moved northward the previous fall. There were about 2,500 rebels in the Cumberland Gap, under the command of Brigadier General John W. Frazer. The assumption was that Frazer would be able to delay any Federal move until Confederate reinforcements arrived.
Burnside had no interest in trying to push directly through the Cumberland Gap. He sent one division through the mountains to the north to make a flanking attack on the gap, while the other two divisions went through the mountains to the south towards Knoxville. The mountain paths were terribly rugged but Burnside had sensibly acquired pack mules for transport. It was still tough going; mules and sometimes their drivers fell off the paths through the mountains, to be killed as they tumbled down the rocky slopes. One Union soldier wrote: "If this is the kind of country we are fighting for, I am in favor of letting the rebs take their land."
Despite the difficulty of the terrain, Burnside's men faced little or no opposition and made excellent progress. One of the columns reached Knoxville on 2 September, and on 3 September 1863 Burnside himself rode into the city at the head of two divisions of infantry. The citizens applauded him enthusiastically. When a Union soldier set up a banner on the building that Burnside selected as his headquarters, the crowd went wild, the soldier writing later: "Shout after shout rent the air. Old men and gray-haired matrons took each other by the hand and laughed, shook and cried, all at the same time. Young men and maidens were uproarious, and little children were 'clean gone crazy'."
Burnside was swept up in the emotion, trading handshakes with two of his generals inside the building while tears ran down their cheeks. The whole scene was more like the Fourth of July than a battle. Burnside was a star among the citizens of the city. Whatever failings he had as a general, he at least looked the part; he was a big fellow, always likeable, and also had his incredible side whiskers. The locals were impressed, one calling him a "show general", commenting: "Not that he made any show, he was naturally that."
Burnside was delighted with his unaccustomed success. On 6 September, he sent a brigade of cavalry north towards Cumberland Gap. The brigade arrived the next day, and the cavalry commander demanded the surrender of the rebels. General Frazer refused. On the 8th, the division that had been sent north through the mountains arrived as well, and a second request was made for Frazer to surrender, which was also refused. In the meantime, Burnside had left Knoxville with an infantry brigade. He arrived on the 9th, making another request for surrender. Frazer finally decided to call it quits and gave up. Burnside sent his forces further east to complete the eradication of all Confederate authority in east Tennessee.
* After chasing the rebels out of Tullahoma, Tennessee, at the beginning of July, Union General William Rosecrans halted to rest and refit his army. He didn't wait long, since Halleck was nagging him to get moving again. On 16 August, Union forces resumed the advance on Chattanooga, Tennessee.
The terrain was extremely rugged, and the Confederates felt confident that they could thwart Rosecrans and his Army of the Cumberland. However, when Rosecrans was in good form, he could be a very tricky opponent, and he managed to thoroughly confuse the defenders by sending three brigades up the north bank of the Tennessee river to put on as noisy a show as possible. Special details pounded on barrels and threw bits of plank into the river to convince rebel scouts that boats were being built for a large-scale river crossing, and on 21 August Federal gunners shelled Chattanooga itself, sinking a steamboat at the riverfront landing and disabling another.
In the meantime, Rosecrans kept the main body of his force hidden. His deceptions worked perfectly. 50 miles (80 kilometers) downstream from Chattanooga, just south of where the Tennessee crossed the state line into Alabama, Braxton Bragg had posted a brigade on the north side of river to block the crossing at Bridgeport. In response to the demonstrations upstream, Bragg pulled the brigade out to deal with the supposed threat.
Rosecrans moved swiftly, throwing pontoons over the river and marching Thomas' corps across at Bridgeport; McCook's corps across at Caperton's Ferry, 12 miles (19 kilometers) downstream; and Crittenden's corps across at Shellmound, 10 miles (16 kilometers) upstream. Except for the three brigades engaged in continued deceptions plus a reserve division, the entire Union Army of the Cumberland was across the Tennessee by 4 September, complete with a wagon train carrying enough supplies and ammunition for several weeks of offensive operations. There was little rebel resistance to the crossings.
Of course, Rosecrans now had new obstacles in his path, in the form of three high ridges that blocked his advance. The first was Raccoon Mountain; backed up by Lookout Mountain; and then finally Missionary Ridge. Rosecrans had planned accordingly, and had detailed companies with long ropes to help pull cannons and wagons up steep roads.
The most critical thing was to move quickly. McCook's column moved to hook southeast below the southern end of Raccoon Mountain, though Winston Gap to cross Lookout Mountain, and then due east into Georgia at the town of Alpine. Thomas' column went directly over Raccoon Mountain and then into Steven's Gap in the middle of Lookout Mountain, targeting the town of Lafayette, Georgia. These two columns threatened Bragg's vulnerable rail line towards Atlanta, while Crittenden's moved west along the railroad between the river and the mountains towards Chattanooga.
Rosecrans was aware that dividing his army into three columns meant that they could be destroyed by parts by an alert enemy. Most of Rosecrans' cavalry was accordingly assigned to precede McCook's column, which was the most isolated and at the greatest risk, while one brigade scouted ahead of Crittenden's column. Thomas' column had no cavalry, but it was the biggest, with 22,000 men, and could presumably take care of itself. Rosecrans accompanied Thomas, since it gave Rosecrans a central location in the advance to keep track of matters. It also gave Rosecrans the opportunity to keep up a little pressure on Thomas, who was an excellent officer but whose unexciteable nature sometimes led to a lack of haste.
The scheme worked perfectly. Rebel forces, faced with being cut off, pulled out of Chattanooga on 8 September, retreating to Rossville just across the state line into Georgia where they could block a gap in Missionary Ridge. Crittenden's corps moved into Chattanooga unopposed the next day. The Federals were triumphant, their morale boosted by the grandeur of the scenery through which they moved. Rosecrans was in high spirits.
Confederate deserters coming into Union lines reported to Federal officers that rebel forces were demoralized and disorganized. Rosecrans appeared to believe these reports, despite the famous shiftiness of Confederate deserters, many of whom were surrendering on orders from their superiors and carrying well-rehearsed stories. Rosecrans heard what he wanted to hear.
* Braxton Bragg had been outfoxed out of Chattanooga, but he wasn't panicked by any means. In fact, he was now laying a trap for Rosecrans. While Rosecrans had been building up supplies, Bragg had made preparations of his own, for example in June sending troops to work at farms to ensure that the bumper wheat crop was brought in to provide his troops with bread when the time came to fight.
Bragg had also been receiving assistance, with two "fighting generals" added to his command. Daniel Harvey Hill, who had been a lieutenant in Bragg's battery in the Mexican War, had been promoted to lieutenant general and sent west in mid-July from North Carolina to replace William Hardee, who had been detached to manage the demoralized herd of parolees from Vicksburg. The aggressive Thomas C. Hindman also arrived from Arkansas in mid-August, and room was made for him as well.
Fighting commanders were all very good, but they needed troops to fight with. The soldiers were arriving. One of the silver linings of the defeats that the Confederacy had suffered that summer was that forces were now available for action elsewhere. The other side of the coin was that the Confederacy could not face more defeats any time soon. Bragg was receiving reinforcements in surprisingly large numbers.
Jefferson Davis had called a conference in late August to discuss the Confederacy's dire military situation. With disasters flaring up everywhere, Davis was hard-pressed to find the resources to deal with any one of them, let alone all. But for the moment the Yankees were more or less inert along the Mississippi and in the East, and so Davis was able to divert forces to assist Bragg.
Robert E. Lee was not enthusiastic about shifting forces to Bragg since he wanted to take the offensive against Meade again, but his voice now carried less weight in council than it had before Gettysburg, and so Bragg would get his reinforcements. Jefferson Davis wanted to send Lee west as well to take command of the Confederate Army of the Tennessee, but Lee declined, saying that Bragg as the officer on the spot would have a much better grasp of the battlefield situation.
General Simon Bolivar Buckner, pulling out of east Tennessee ahead of Burnside's far superior forces, added 8,000 men to the ranks of the Confederate Army of the Tennessee. With Grant's forces reduced and idle in Mississippi and Banks looking toward Texas, Joe Johnston detached 9,000 men under Generals John C. Breckinridge and W.H.T. Walker. They were followed by a second installment of 2,500 more.
On 8 September, the day before the Yankees occupied Chattanooga, General James Longstreet and his 12,000 men broke camp to be moved by railroad to reinforce Bragg. It was a difficult operation. There had actually been a reasonable rail line for the journey a few weeks earlier, but it went through Knoxville, now in the hands of Ambrose Burnside. As a result, the move was clumsy and roundabout, made all the worse because the Confederacy's railroads were falling apart. One of Longstreet's officers commented: "Never before were such crazy cars used for hauling good soldiers." The move would take the better part of two weeks, and about half the reinforcements would get there too late.
Even if only half of Longstreet's 12,000 men arrived, that still gave Bragg a total of almost 70,000 men for operations. Although Rosecrans had 80,000 men in his command, a good proportion of them were guarding supply lines and otherwise holding down the rear. Bragg stood a good chance of actually outnumbering Rosecrans on the battlefield, a rare circumstance for a Confederate general.
However, Bragg did not feel confident. When D.H. Hill arrived, he had expected to be greeted warmly by his old commander, but found Bragg taciturn, gloomy, and nervous. In fact, Bragg's health, never good, was steadily growing worse. Though he had few admirers, a sympathetic soul observed that Bragg's biggest problem was often in the saddle when he should have been in bed. Along with his health problems, Bragg was plagued by his bad relationships with Polk and most of his other lieutenants, and by the past history of defeats suffered by the Army of the Tennessee. Even after being bolstered by waves of reinforcements, Bragg simply could not quite accept that he might really win a battle. Hill was astounded by Bragg's lack of intelligence on Yankee movements and intentions, and found the battle planning at Bragg's headquarters to be "haphazard".
* In contrast to Bragg, who lacked confidence, Rosecrans was working himself into a state of mind where he thought himself invincible. After taking Chattanooga, Pap Thomas had suggested consolidating their gains to make sure the Army of the Cumberland was properly supported for further offensive actions south. Rosecrans wouldn't hear of it. No doubt he knew that if he stopped again, Halleck would immediately send telegram after telegram to tell him to get going again, but Rosecrans was also extremely excited, thinking he was closing in for the kill. His columns were still on the march, chasing what he believed was an enemy in flight. He thought if he could keep up the pressure on Bragg, the Union Army of the Cumberland would quickly be in Atlanta or even all the way to the seacoast.
In reality, Bragg was holding a line from Lee & Gordon's Mill, on Chickamauga Creek south on the from Rossville, to Lafayette, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Chattanooga, with the line directly in the path of Thomas' force. Forrest's troopers were operating to the north of the line, keeping track of Crittenden's force, while Wheeler's cavalry were operating to the south, tracking McCook's column.
Bragg intended to concentrate his forces to trap Thomas' corps and destroy it. The terrain provided a ready-made trap. A ridge named Pigeon Mountain broke off from Lookout Mountain from the south, running in front of Lafayette and wrapping around the southern end of Missionary Ridge to create a dead-end valley known as McLemore's Cove, through which Chickamauga Creek ran. Thomas and his men were advancing over Missionary Ridge into McLemore's Cove, headed toward a break in Pigeon Mountain known as Dug's Gap. Bragg hoped to box the Federals inside McLemore's Cove and then wipe them out.
This operation involved sending out two columns of troops. One, a division from D.H. Hill's command and led by the tough Irish fighter Pat Cleburne, was to plug up Dug's Gap and engage the Federals. With Thomas and his men preoccupied with the fight in front of them, a division under Hindman would move down Chickamauga Creek and hit the Yankees in the flank and rear.
Hindman's men moved out in the dark, and by the time the sun came up on 10 September they were a few miles away from the head of Thomas' column and were ready to strike. At this point Bragg's disastrous lack of "people skills" began to make itself felt.
Hindman waited for word that Cleburne had made contact before striking, but he waited and waited and heard nothing. Hindman finally got a message from D.H. Hill, who claimed that he hadn't heard anything about the move until sunup and added that he wasn't in a position to attack quickly anyway, since Cleburne was sick in bed and several regiments had been detached anyway. Apparently Bragg had simply issued orders and assumed, without checking on them, that they would be followed to the letter. On finding out that Hindman hadn't moved, Bragg sent orders for him to hurry up, since Crittenden's column was now moving through Rossville, directly in Hindman's rear. This had the exactly opposite result from what Bragg expected, since Hindman, who could not have failed to reflect while he had time on his hands that Bragg's plans seemed half-baked, now realized he was in a position to be surrounded and destroyed himself.
The next morning, Hindman pulled out the way he had come in. Bragg sorted out the command confusion with D.H. Hill, and Cleburne went forward through Dug's Gap. Bragg sent Buckner and his troops to back up Hindman and get him to move, and finally the entire trap was working the way it was supposed to. The only problem was that there was nobody there to trap. Thomas had finally taken notice of the movements of the Confederates, and pulled his lead division back out of McLemore's Cove. Bragg was furious, and characteristically traded accusations with Hindman and Hill. They were now getting a full education of how things were done in the Confederate Army of the Tennessee.
* There was no hope of trapping Thomas now, so Bragg decided to try the same trick on Crittenden's column to the north. Crittenden had split his forces, with one division taking control of Lee & Gordon's Mill and the other two moving against the railroad line to Atlanta.
Leonidas Polk had withdrawn his corps in front of Crittenden's advance, but Bragg sent him cavalry reinforcements under Walker and ordered him to attack Crittenden's men at Lee & Gordon's Mill on 13 September. Polk protested that Crittenden had taken alarm and pulled his other two divisions back to that location, but Bragg pointed out that the Federals were still outnumbered and re-emphasized the order to attack.
Bragg and Polk simply did not ever get along. Bragg rode up that morning to see how the battle was going; he arrived at midmorning and found out that it wasn't. Enraged, he finally organized Polk, Walker, and Buckner to move out in an assault at noon on 13 September, only to find out there were no Yankees to assault. Crittenden, like Thomas, had become aware of the rebels fumbling around in front of him and pulled back over Missionary Ridge. In a black mood, Bragg decided to concentrate his forces at Lafayette and wait for developments.
By this time, Rosecrans was entirely aware that there was an aggressive and reinforced rebel army in front of him, and indeed intelligence was filtering in that Longstreet was moving west on the railroads with more reinforcements. Rosecrans ordered Thomas and McCook to bring their columns northwest out of imminent danger and link up with Crittenden's men near Lee & Gordon's Mill, on Chickamauga Creek. The move was difficult in the rugged terrain, with Rosecrans becoming more frantic by the hour. He was angry that Burnside had decided to move east through Kentucky instead of sweeping south towards Chattanooga to link up with the Army of the Cumberland, though in reality Burnside had been encouraged to change plans by glowing reports of Rosecrans' easy successes.
Bragg began to concentrate his own forces on the east bank of Chickamauga
Creek. He wired Richmond:
ENEMY HAS RETIRED BEFORE US AT ALL POINTS. WE SHALL
NOW TURN ON HIM IN THE DIRECTION OF CHATTANOOGA.
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