v1.1.3 / chapter 79 of 93 / 01 sep 11 / greg goebel / public domain
* By the fall of 1864, the war was clearly going in the Union's favor. Lincoln was confident of reelection, and dissent among the Republicans had faded out for the time being. Phil Sheridan emphasized Union dominance by thrashing Jubal Early at Opequon Creek and then Fisher's Hill, demonstrating that the days of the Confederates pushing the Federals around in the Shenandoah Valley were now over for good. In Petersburg, Grant kept up the pressure on Lee, while in Atlanta Sherman considered what to do next.
Of course, the Confederacy wasn't beaten yet. A force under Sterling Price raided Missouri, while Bedford Forrest conducted another one of his patented lighting raids into central Tennessee. The raiders caused much damage and confusion, though they failed to weaken Sherman's grip on Atlanta. The Federals did manage to kill John Hunt Morgan, but he was no longer much of a factor in the war and that was little source of satisfaction.
* Phil Sheridan's caution in moving against Jubal Early in the Shenandoah Valley had been partly driven from the top by Grant's belief that Early had been heavily reinforced. Grant soon learned that Sheridan's force greatly outnumbered Early's, but having lost the initiative Sheridan was slow to pick it up again. Six weeks had gone by since Sheridan had taken command, and he was still not moving. In mid-September, after receiving a polite prod from Lincoln, Grant went north again to talk with Sheridan and get him back on track. To his relief, Grant was able to leave Meade in charge at City Point since Ben Butler was absent.
On 16 September, Grant arrived at Sheridan's camp near Harper's Ferry. The troops saw Grant among them and knew what it meant. One Vermont sergeant told another soldier: "That's Grant. I hate to see that old cuss around. When that old cuss is around, there's sure to be a big fight."
The sergeant was completely correct, though by this time Sheridan was getting ready to stir anyway. He had received intelligence from a Union sympathizer in the Valley that Anderson and his two divisions had left Early's command, having been recalled by Lee to Richmond to deal with continued Federal pressure there. In addition, Early had spread his forces around in hopes of spooking Sheridan; Early remained with one division at Winchester, while the other three were scattered to the north, trying to appear menacing. They seemed more like targets to Sheridan, who planned to fall on Early and his division, then block the escape of the rest. If all went well, the rebel force would be completely wiped out.
In fact, Sheridan was so obviously full of steam that Grant didn't even bother to press him. Sheridan said he would like to move out before dawn on 19 September. Grant simply replied: "Go in." Grant then left, spending a few days with his family in New Jersey before returning to City Point.
* On the dark hours of the morning of 19 September 1864, General James H. Wilson took his cavalrymen across Confederate lines at Opequon Creek, which ran by Winchester from the east, and drove off rebel pickets. When the sun came up, Wright's VI Corps went across the stream, with Emory's XIX Corps and Crook's VIII Corps following up. The rest of Sheridan's cavalry was to thunder down from the north and catch the Confederates in the flank.
Early had been moving north with part of his force to cross the Potomac again, though when he got wind from captured telegrams that something big was brewing, he hastily put his men on a forced march back south. Sheridan felt that if he moved quickly he could destroy the rebels by parts before they could group for an effective defense. Unfortunately, the bold advance quickly turned into a traffic jam, partly due to confused orders and partly due to the fact that the terrain was rugged and forced Union columns through chokepoints.
This sounded like the makings of yet another Union fiasco, but Sheridan was made of better stuff. Instead of blindly trying to push forward with a plan and ignoring that things were going wrong, he jumped into the thick of things, riding about, untangling the mess on the ground. When he saw wagons blocking the line of advance, he ordered in a rage that they be thrown off the road.
Unfortunately, the battle didn't start in earnest until about noon, and Early had managed to use the breathing space to collect all of his four divisions. The three divisions of the Union VI Corps went in side by side, accompanied by one division of Emory's XIX Corps. The advance was bungled, a gap opened up between VI Corps and the XIX Corps division, and the Confederates were quick to exploit it with a counterattack that stopped the Union advance and sent the XIX Corps division running. Another division of XIX Corps came up, along with a brigade under Emory Upton, and plugged the gap.
However, the Federals could make no progress and casualties were heavy. Early believed that he had won another victory: of course the Yankees would soon give up the struggle and withdraw. Early, it seems, thought Sheridan was another Nathaniel Banks.
Early simply did not have a clue about Sheridan. Sheridan was full of energy, riding about, correcting problems, encouraging the men, driving them on, arranging parties of cavalry to round up stragglers and put them back in the fight. The soldiers on the line were impressed to see their commanding general among them, dashing through bullets and shellfire. Sheridan had the superiority in numbers and equipment, and in a toe-to-toe fight he had absolutely no doubt who was going to win.
By late afternoon, Sheridan had managed to get the full weight of his army pushing forward on Early's men, who began to give ground. Sheridan rode up to a division commander and shouted: "Press them, general, they'll run!" Sheridan swore and said it again: "Press them, general, I know they'll run!" The rebels fought hard, but the Yankees' blood was up and they kept pushing.
And then a Union officer cried out: "Boys! Look at that!" They looked, and a few miles away to the north they saw two divisions of Union cavalry in massed columns, swords gleaming in the setting sun, thundering down on the flank and rear of the Confederate line. The rebels tried to turn their guns around and break up the charge, but the Union cavalry wasn't going to be stopped. The troopers rolled up the Confederate line, slashing with sabres and sending the defenders falling back; the Federals surged forward, capturing prisoners, flags, guns. Sheridan rode around the field, keeping up the pressure on the rebels. His men cheered him and he shouted back: "Boys, this is just what I expected!"
Early managed to retreat through Winchester, holding off Union cavalry snapping at his rear guard. He would later proclaim that he had fought well against a superior force, inflicting more damage than he had taken, and withdrawn in good order. He even asserted that Sheridan should have been sacked for letting most of the rebel force escape.
It was true that the Confederates had fought well, and it was also true that
the Federals had repeatedly blundered. It didn't matter. Sheridan had lost
over 5,000 men to Early's 4,000, but the Federals could absorb the losses far
more easily, and the rebel dead included Major General Robert Rodes, one of
the Confederacy's best division commanders; Fitzhugh Lee had also been badly
wounded. As for the blunders, mistakes happen in the nature of things, and
Sheridan simply corrected them and pushed on. The rebels had been whipped,
and nothing Early could say could conceal that fact. Sheridan wired
Washington triumphantly:
I ATTACKED THE FORCES OF GENERAL EARLY ON THE
BERRYVILLE PIKE AT THE CROSSING OF OPEQUON CREEK,
AND AFTER A MOST STUBBORN AND SANGUINARY
ENGAGEMENT, WHICH LASTED FROM EARLY IN THE MORNING
UNTIL 5 O'CLOCK IN THE EVENING, COMPLETELY DEFEATED
HIM, AND DRIVING HIM THROUGH WINCHESTER CAPTURED
ABOUT 2500 PRISONERS, FIVE PIECES OF ARTILLERY,
NINE ARMY FLAGS, AND MOST OF THEIR WOUNDED.
When Grant got the news, he went out of his tent and threw his hat up in the
air. None of his staff had ever seen him that excited before.
* Early tried to make a stand on 22 September at Fisher's Hill, 20 miles (32 kilometers) to the south, below Strasburg. The mountains cut all the way across the Valley at that location, providing an excellent defensive position, described as the "Gibraltar of the Valley". Early felt his troops could hold their ground and inflict disproportionate casualties on the Yankees. The problem was that Early simply didn't have enough troops to adequately man the position.
Sheridan lined up most of his troops in front of the Confederate defense and told them to keep shooting, whether they had anything to shoot at or not, and then sent Crook's VIII Corps to sneak around and hit the rebels from the west. Early had realized his chances of holding out weren't good and passed out orders for a withdrawal after dark, but it was too late. As Crook's infantry bore down on the rebels the Confederates cried out: "Flanked! Outflanked!" A Federal officer wrote later: "Had the heavens opened and we been seen descending from the clouds, no greater consternation would have been created."
The Confederates broke and ran; the Federals captured twelve guns and a thousand prisoners. Sheridan wrote Grant: "I do not think there was ever an army so badly routed." And Sheridan had been on Missionary Ridge. His men were exultant.
In an independent action, Wilson had taken his cavalry division to flush out rebel cavalry camped out near Front Royal, and the Federals scattered the rebels, attacking through early-morning fog with hundreds of bugles sounding "CHARGE!" Not everyone in Sheridan's command had proven energetic enough for his liking. When he learned that Averell had put his men into camp instead of pursuing the Confederates in the dark, Sheridan relieved him of command immediately. It was effectively the end of Averell's military career.
Early had lost over 1,400 men in the fight, while Sheridan had lost only about 528. Although Sheridan would find out that Early hadn't exactly been taken off the playing board, the North finally seemed to have the upper hand in the Shenandoah Valley after years of Federal defeats in that region. Sheridan now continued the savage campaign of burnings and destruction he had refined in the northern end of the Valley to ensure that the Union kept the upper hand.
* If Early seemed to be no longer an issue of consequence to Sheridan, the same could not be said of John Mosby and his Rangers, who continued to be a nuisance, striking where they pleased and then disappearing without a trace. Between Mosby and the less disciplined gangs of bushwhackers, no party of less than fifty armed men was safe. Even some of Sheridan's staff were ambushed and killed. Sheridan had no more patience with this annoyance than he had with any other, and no great hesitation to deal with it harshly. He wrote Grant on the matter, who replied: "When any of Mosby's men are caught, hang them without trial."
In late September, Custer's men captured six of Mosby's Rangers. The Yankees shot four of them dead, and hanged the other two. The two corpses were left to dangle with a placard around their necks: THIS WILL BE THE FATE OF MOSBY AND ALL HIS MEN. If Sheridan and Custer thought this intimidated Mosby, they were dangerously wrong, but it would be some time before they learned about it the hard way.
* While Sheridan cleaned up the Valley, Grant did what he could to keep up the squeeze on Petersburg. This had been his strategy before, but the rebels had also given him a score to settle. On 14 September, Wade Hampton had left Confederate lines at Petersburg with three cavalry brigades, on a loop around the Federal defenses to the south. His objective was a large herd of cattle being kept as provisions on the hoof for Grant's army a few miles from City Point. The raiders reached their objective before dawn on 16 September. Two brigades kept the Federals busy, while the other seized the cattle, and then they all managed to escape. They got back to rebel lines with 2,500 cattle, having suffered under 60 casualties while inflicting 300.
It was as if the ghost of Jeb Stuart was having another laugh at the Yankees. Lee's hungry troops not only got full stomachs out of the raid but great satisfaction, with some Confederates calling over to Yankee lines to come over and enjoy the meat. Grant arrived back at City Point from his conference with Sheridan to hear the bad news. A few days later, when he was asked when he expected to starve Lee into submission, Grant replied: "Never, if our armies continue to supply them with beef cattle."
Grant decided to make another one-two punch against Lee's lines to regain face. Since Hancock's II Corps was essentially a wreck, the drive against the Richmond defenses fell to Ben Butler, who had actually suggested the operation to Grant in the first place. The attack would use August Kautz's cavalry division; XVIII Corps under Edward Ord; and X Corps under David Birney, who had replaced Gillmore. Butler had learned from his earlier fiascos and planned meticulously, keeping the matter entirely secret up to the last moment.
The troops were sent north of the James on the night of 28 September to go forward in the early morning fog. Ord's objective was a redoubt named Fort Harrison, while Birney's was Fort Gilmer. The small rebel garrison holding Fort Harrison was surprised and quickly overrun, though Ord was badly wounded in the leg and had to be carted off the field; his departure from the field did much to rob the attack of momentum. Birney got off a little later than Ord and found the Confederates in Fort Gilmer alert and entirely unwilling to budge, throwing the assault back.
Birney got reinforcements from XVIII Corps and tried again, but the rebels were throwing in reinforcements of their own; the second assault did no better than the first. Grant arrived on the scene that afternoon and ordered a third charge, which suffered the same fate as the other two. Grant then gave up the assault on Fort Gilmer and set up his troops to receive a counterstroke on Fort Harrison.
In the meantime, Kautz and his cavalry had been probing at the Richmond defenses nearby, causing considerable panic among the rebels for a time, though not amounting to a real threat. The troopers came back to see the infantry frantically digging in at Fort Harrison. The expected counterattack took place in the afternoon of the following day, 30 September. Richard Anderson led 10,000 Confederate troops in an attempt to push the Yankees out, but it was now the Federals' turn to refuse to be budged.
Lee gave up the attempt and rebuilt his lines to the rear of Fort Harrison, resulting in an even stronger defense than before. The Federals had lost about 3,327 men to 2,000 rebels and gained nothing of great consequence from the assault, but Grant was still happy with it. The casualty ratio was by no means unsatisfactory for an assault on well-prepared fortifications, as any comparison with such fiascos as Cold Harbor would show; while Fort Harrison was no strategic treasure, it still made headlines, a nice addition to the string of successes reported by the northern press; and it had proven entirely effective in drawing Confederate troops to the northern end of the Richmond defenses, while another push was made against the southern.
* There was of course the question of what might be made of such a diversion. While Butler's troops were hammering at the gates of Richmond, another assault was underway south of Petersburg, with Warren leading two divisions of his V Corps and John Parke with two divisions of his IX Corps, supported by David Gregg's cavalry division. They set out from Globe Tavern on 30 September, in a push to cut the Boynton Plank Road and the Southside Railroad. Once these two lifelines were cut, Richmond would wither and die. The Confederates of course strongly objected, and the next day, 30 September, Wade Hampton's cavalry managed to halt Warren's column near Poplar Springs Church, while A.P. Hill scavenged two divisions from the now frighteningly thin Petersburg defenses and fell on Parke at Peebles Farm.
Hill tried to push Parke back to where he came from, but Warren sent reinforcements; that night the Federals dug in and consolidated their gains, such as they were. They hadn't got near either of their objectives, and lost about 2,900 men to about 900 rebels. However, in the end the Federals were in the stronger position, having strained Lee's manpower reserves even further, and well able to absorb their own losses.
* Although the fall of Atlanta had been a major moral and political victory for the North, it was really only the lesser of Sherman's objectives. The Confederate Army of the Tennessee remained an effective, if weakened, fighting force, and until the Union could destroy the Confederacy's ability to make war, the conflict would go on.
Sherman wasn't quite sure for the moment what his course of action should be. In the meantime, he had a few practical worries to deal with, most prominently how to care for the civilian population of Atlanta. Having captured the city, he could not very well just sit there and watch the citizenry starve, which meant that he would have to keep them fed using his already overstretched supply lines. That wouldn't do, so Sherman settled on a ruthless solution: on 8 September, he ordered the evacuation of the entire civilian population of the city to rebel territory. If they starved there, it was not his concern, and as a further benefit he would eliminate his own problem by passing it off to the Confederacy, like it or not.
Unsurprisingly, the Confederates didn't like it much. When Mayor James M. Calhoun protested that the suffering this action would cause would be "appalling and heart-rending", Sherman replied that he understood this, but the order would stand, concluding: "War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it."
Sherman sent a message to Hood to arrange a ten-day truce with Hood to allow the citizens to cross into rebel lines. Hood replied that he had no choice but to agree, and went on to register his outrage, writing Sherman that "the unprecedented measure you propose transcends, in studied and ingenious cruelty, all acts ever brought to my attention in the dark history of war." Sherman, who enjoyed a verbal battle at least as much as he did a shooting match, replied in length and detail that he understood the implications of his actions, but that they were logical in terms of military necessity in a war that had been forced on the nation by secessionist provocations -- which Sherman listed in detail. The two generals bickered for several more days, until even the obstinate Hood finally recognized that Sherman was enjoying the game far too much.
* The eviction of Atlanta's citizens was useful to Sherman, but when it was done he still had a list of other worries to consider. Many of his men were reaching the end of their enlistments, and the vulnerabilities of his extended supply line were obvious. He told a friend: "I've got my wedge in pretty deep, and must look that I don't get my fingers pinched."
Sherman's grand army needed a period of rest and refit before he could go on to the next phase of the campaign, whatever that might be, and that handed the initiative for the moment over to Hood. Hood wanted to fall on Sherman's supply lines and had called to Richmond for reinforcements, but the answer he received was obvious: "No other resource remains." To compound his frustration, on 10 September Georgia governor Joe Brown effectively removed all the Georgia militia from Hood's command by granting blanket furloughs so they could go home and tend their farms. They had been second-line troops, to be sure, but Hood was still furious.
Hood remained indomitable. His position at Lovejoy Station protected the Confederate prison camp at Andersonville, and to free the Army of the Tennessee for action he proposed to Richmond that the 30,000 Union prisoners there be transferred out of Sherman's reach. Richmond agreed, and on 21 September, all able-bodied prisoners at Andersonville began to be transferred to Florida.
Hood was deep in preparation for his offensive when Jefferson Davis arrived for a visit on 25 September. One of the reasons Davis had decided to come to Georgia was to help bolster morale, and his speeches to the troops were met with cheers -- along with the occasional call: "Johnston! Give us Johnston!" Davis ignored these calls, but in fact a second reason he had come to Georgia was to make a few changes in the command structure of the Army of the Tennessee. Hood put much of the blame for the various disasters his army had suffered in recent months on Hardee, and made no secret to Richmond that he wanted Hardee to go.
Davis spoke with the two generals, who were full of complaints about each other, and then made his decision. The result was a neat, circular command shuffle that solved a number of problems. Davis proposed that Hardee be relieved of command of his corps and sent east, while Cheatham, Hardee's senior division commander, replaced him. Hardee would take charge of the Department of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. This was nominally Beauregard's command, though Beauregard had been literally holding down the fort at Petersburg for the past few months. To complete the circle, Davis suggested that Beauregard be given command of the Military Division of the West, consisting of Alabama, Mississippi, large parts of Georgia and Louisiana and nominally Tennessee, to the extent that the Confederacy had any practical authority there.
There was less and more to this than met the eye. To be sure, Beauregard would be in command of both Hood's and Taylor's departments in principle, but would mainly act in an advisory role, with limited authority to direct the movements of troops. The arrangement was reminiscent of Bragg's "promotion" to "Commander In Chief of the Confederate Armies", which in reality simply made him Jefferson Davis's military adviser -- though Beauregard would have somewhat more authority and independence of action.
While this cosmetic arrangement was set up partly to appease Beauregard's advocates, it had practical benefits as well. Although Beauregard was egotistical, he was still a very competent general, and having him in the West might help reign in Hood's tendency towards rash action -- but not too much, since Beauregard was famous for grand, aggressive military visions of his own. Another practical benefit was that moving Beauregard West helped stifle the cries for returning Johnston, which Davis wouldn't consider.
All present seemed happy with this rearrangement. Davis then sat down for a strategy session with Hood, very much approving of the general's plans for taking the offensive. By cutting Sherman's supply lines, the Federals would be forced to react, allowing Hood to lure the Yankees into attacking his troops on terrain of his own choosing. Much of the terrain through which those supply lines ran featured naturally strong defensive positions. Hood would be able to inflict a devastating defeat on Sherman with inferior numbers. That was the plan, anyway, and no better was available.
* Davis left Hood's camp on 27 September, traveling to Macon, where he delivered a morale-boosting speech to the locals the next morning, 28 September. He appealed to Southerners to take up arms and drive out the invader: "Sherman cannot keep up his long line of communications, and retreat, sooner or later, he must. And when that day comes, the fate that befell the army of the French Empire from its retreat from Moscow will be re-enacted. Our cavalry and our people will harass and destroy his army as did the Cossacks that of Napoleon, and the Yankee general, like him, will only escape with a bodyguard ... let us with one arm and with one effort endeavor to crush Sherman." When the news got to Grant, he commented: "Mr. Davis has not made it quite plain who is to furnish the snow for this Moscow retreat."
Davis went to Montgomery, Alabama, to deliver much the same speech the next day, and also confer with Richard Taylor, the department commander and his brother-in-law. Taylor was pleased with Hood's plans, but told Davis that given the odds against the Confederacy, at best all that could be accomplished would be to stall Federal plans until spring. That might have been obvious to Taylor and many other prominent Confederate officers, but Davis wouldn't hear of it.
Davis left Montgomery the following morning, picking up Hardee on 2 October, with the two traveling to Augusta to talk with Beauregard on 3 October about the proposed command shuffle. Beauregard had already been sounded out on a transfer West and had reacted enthusiastically, since he had been chafing in Petersburg, playing second fiddle to Robert E. Lee. However, he had thought the transfer would mean that he would replace Hood, and was disappointed at learning the details to find his elevated position would be more than less symbolic in nature.
Beauregard was never inclined to be discouraged for long, and he quickly regained his enthusiasm, since his new assignment would allow him to help construct yet another of his grand strategies to reverse the course of the war. After joining Davis and Hardee in a morale-boosting speech to the citizens of Augusta, Beauregard headed west the next day, while Davis went north to Columbia, South Carolina, to give yet another speech, defiantly promising that the Confederacy would march north to "plant our banners on the banks of the Ohio" and teach the Yankees another lesson. Davis then return wearily to Richmond on 6 October.
* Between the victories at Atlanta and Mobile Bay, and Federal success in the Shenandoah Valley, the prospects for the Democrats in November had become extremely faint. They had staked their campaign on the current administration's failures, and when the failures ended the Democrats had no other card to play. They had also been hobbled by the fact that their candidate, McClellan, made no secret of the fact that he was for continuing the war, publicly writing: "I could not look in the face of my gallant comrades ... who have survived so many bloody battles, and tell them that their labors and the sacrifice of so many of our slain and wounded brothers had been in vain -- that we had abandoned the Union for which we have so often imperiled our lives."
It was at times like these that McClellan demonstrated those parts in him that had made him so admired by his men. However, it did not make him admired by Clement Vallandigham, who angrily announced that the Democratic platform was for cessation of hostilities, and that the platform bound everyone in the party. This just made the barking more shrill and the Democrats fell into confusion.
In the meantime, the Republics were resolving their differences. There had been a quiet movement to dump Lincoln as the party's candidate. Some wanted Grant, but on hearing this, the normally undemonstrative general pounded the arms of his camp chair with his fists and said: "They can't do it! They can't compel me to do it!"
Ben Butler was another choice, and he was by no means as reluctant as Grant. In fact, Butler had been discreetly pulling strings to line himself up for the presidency. Although he was a Democrat, he was a hard-war man, and the Radicals thought he was sound on ideology. Since a Butler campaign would also be attractive to Unionist Democrats, he could be a powerful candidate.
The Union's military successes put a stop to such intrigues. On 22 September, John Charles Fremont announced that in the interest of party harmony that he was withdrawing from the race. There was a condition for Fremont's withdrawal, however. The next day Lincoln asked for and got the resignation of Montgomery Blair, who the Radicals regarded as intolerable. Blair understood that his dismissal as a peace offering; the President did everything he could to praise Blair and soften the sting, and Blair managed to swallow his bitterness over the matter.
There was now harmony in the party and in the administration. The Radicals, and even Montgomery Blair and Salmon Chase, went out and stumped for Lincoln. Sherman helped with the campaign at the urging of the President, sending Black Jack Logan and Frank Blair back to their home states where they could promote the Lincoln cause, and granting mass furloughs to troops from critical states so they could go home and vote. Soldiers returning to towns in the Midwest also sometimes took the opportunity to look up local Copperheads and kick them around: men in Union blue had little tolerance for the traitors in the rear who were working against the war.
* Sterling Price had been considering a cavalry raid into Missouri as a diversion to mask Richard Taylor's planned movement of rebel troops across the Mississippi, but with the collapse of that scheme Price decided to scale up the operation considerably, contemplating a push all the way north to Saint Louis. There the Confederates would raid the massive Federal supply depots, then arc west through Jefferson City and back down through Kansas and Indian Territory to Arkansas again. The big raid might provide badly-needed supplies and new recruits, as well as prevent the Federals from sending reinforcements of their own across the Mississippi to help Sherman.
Kirby Smith gave his blessing, and Price left Camden, Arkansas, on 28 August with his division. On 29 August he was joined by Fagan and Marmaduke with their own divisions. They all crossed the Arkansas River into Federal-occupied territory on 2 September. On 13 September, Jo Shelby added a fourth division to Price's command, giving him a total of 12,000 troopers. On the 19th, the rebels passed over the Missouri state line.
William Rosecrans, in command of the department, was sufficiently alarmed to call to Halleck for reinforcements. A.J. Smith's two divisions were then in Cairo, Illinois, in transit by steamboat to join Sherman in Georgia, and Rosecrans thought they might be put to better use in Missouri. Halleck agreed and Smith immediately took his men upriver to Saint Louis. That meant that Price had achieved the diversion of Federal resources from Georgia, but it also meant that he now had no chance of occupying Saint Louis. For the moment, he focused on his immediate objective, the capture of Fort Davidson, near the town of Pilot Knob and about halfway on the direct line from the Missouri border and Saint Louis. Price wanted to seize the fort to obtain supplies and the seven Yankee guns there.
He sent out a detachment to tear up railroad track and isolate the fort, and then surrounded it on the evening of 26 September. As luck would have it, the Union commander of forces in Missouri, Brigadier General Thomas Ewing, had been on an inspection trip to Fort Davidson and was stranded there when the railroad line was cut.
That was another piece of good and bad news. Ewing was the author of many of the harsh measures taken by Union authorities against Missouri civilians to suppress Confederate guerrillas, and Price and his troops would have greatly liked to get their hands on him. However, since Ewing knew perfectly well that he would be dancing at the end of a rope if the rebels did catch him, there was no prospect that Fort Davidson would be given up without a fight, even though Price outnumbered the defenders by about ten to one. Price sent over a demand for surrender that night, which was bluntly refused. He tried again later; Ewing not only repeated the refusal, but said he would fire on anyone else approaching with a white flag. The next morning, 27 September, Price tested the works and found them very stout. A six-hour fight yielded him about 1,500 casualties, while Ewing only lost 200.
The Confederates fell back and started building siege ladders that night. They were preparing for a more determined assault the following morning, 28 September, when Fort Davidson blew sky-high. Ewing and his troops had pulled out quietly and efficiently in the dark, spiking their guns and setting a powder train to the fort's magazine before they left, escaping right under the nose of the rebels. Marmaduke and Shelby wanted to pursue, but Price overruled them. He was on a raid and knew he couldn't stand and fight while the Federals brought in reinforcements. It was too late to make a serious assault on Saint Louis, so Price feinted in that direction and then turned west towards Jefferson City.
* Confederate guerrillas rose up in Missouri in sympathy with Price's raid. On 27 September, while Price's troops were smashing their heads against Fort Davidson, a band of 200 irregulars under William "Bloody Bill" Anderson, who had previously ridden under Quantrill, descended on Centralia, Missouri, a small town on the northern tip of a triangle whose base ran from Jefferson City to Saint Louis. This was more an exercise in robbery than warfare, and in fact two of Anderson's men, Frank and Jesse James, would find it good training for their postwar career in crime. The raiders robbed a stagecoach and a train at the station, and for good measure murdered 24 unarmed Union soldiers who were on furlough, as well as two civilians who weren't quick enough to hand over their valuables.
Anderson and his men rode out of town swiftly with their loot, to be surprised by 147 Union cavalry troopers. The Federals pursued, to find that they had grabbed onto something bigger and meaner than they were. Only 23 Yankees got away; Anderson's men took no prisoners and butchered all the Union wounded. The Federals would have their revenge, killing Bloody Bill a few weeks later.
* John Hunt Morgan's star had fallen steadily along with the Confederacy. Following his half-baked excursion into Kentucky in the spring, he had been more or less idle in southwest Virginia, lacking the resources to take the war to the Yankees.
The increasingly aggressive Yankees brought the war to him. On receiving intelligence that the Federals had sent out a column from Knoxville to hit Saltville and the lead mines in southwest Virginia, Morgan saddled up with 2,000 men on 1 September and took them to Greenville, Tennessee, in hopes of blocking the intruders as they tried to emerge from a mountain pass.
Morgan was staying in the fine house of a local Confederate sympathizer when rifle fire woke him on the morning of 4 September 1864. He pulled on his clothes and went out to figure out what was going on. As it turned out, an advance party of Federals had ridden into town by a back road and was raising hell. A local woman, a Union sympathizer, spotted him and called out: "That's him! That's Morgan, over there among the grape vines!" The Federals raised their weapons. Morgan cried out: "Don't shoot! I surrender!" One of the Yankees replied: "Surrender and be goddamned! I know you!" -- and shot Morgan in the chest with a carbine. Morgan groaned, dropped, and died on the spot. He was 39 years old.
The trooper cried out triumphantly: "I've killed the damned horse thief!" The Federals threw the corpse over a horse, paraded it through town, and then dumped it, stripped to drawers, into a muddy ditch. Members of his staff, now prisoners, were allowed to pick up the body and clean it. After the Union troopers left, the body was sent to a vault in Richmond, where it would be kept until his widow had the opportunity to return it Kentucky.
* If Morgan's flame had flickered and faded out, by mid-month Forrest was proving he was as deadly hot as ever. As soon as Richard Taylor arrived at his new department command in Meridian, Mississippi, he sent for Forrest.
Taylor had never met Forrest but knew of him by his awesome reputation. When Forrest arrived on 5 September, Taylor found him a "tall, stalwart man, with grayish hair, mild countenance, and slow and homely of speech." When Taylor told Forrest that he was to take his command north into middle Tennessee and cut Sherman's lines of communications, Taylor was puzzled when Forrest seemed unexcited, answering with a long list of questions about practical details of directives and logistics. Taylor was wondering if this was the same Forrest he had heard so much about, but when Forrest reached the end of his list of questions, he digested Taylor's answers for a moment, then replied with a tidy string of requests for what he would require, and indicated that the raid would begin as soon as preparations were complete.
They were complete on 16 September, when Forrest left his camp near Tupelo with 3,500 troopers and eight guns. They moved east into Alabama, where Forrest met up by coincidence with Joe Wheeler's command, now on the return leg of the raid begun in August.
Although there was bad history between Forrest and Wheeler, it appears the meeting was cordial enough, and Forrest got a bonus out of it. Wheeler's command for the raid, which had started out with 4,500 men, was now down to about 2,000, mostly due to straggling since many of the mounts had broken down or died. Forrest decided to sweep up as many of these stragglers as possible to add to his own force. Of course, with Forrest running things, they were sure to get fresh mounts as soon as possible.
The next day, 21 September, Forrest was joined by a column of a thousand Alabama cavalry under William Johnson, bringing the total strength of the raiders to 4,500. They crossed the Tennessee on flatboats, camped that night on the north bank of the river a few miles outside of Florence, Alabama, and then headed east in the morning. Their objective was Athens, Alabama, northwest of Huntsville, which was astride the Tennessee & Alabama Railroad, one of Sherman's principal supply lines. They arrived on the evening of 23 September and in the morning, 24 September, surrounded the local Federal garrison.
There were 600 Yankees, holed up in a very strong fort. Forrest took them under fire and demanded their surrender. The Federal commander refused, but when he came out under the flag of truce, Forrest pulled his old trick of marching his troops around in circles to inflate their numbers. The Yankee officer swallowed the bait and surrendered. No sooner had the rebels absorbed this acquisition than a Federal relief column from nearby Decatur, Alabama, showed up, to be swallowed up in turn after a brief shootout. By the end of the day, after bagging a few outlying blockhouses, Forrest had seized 1,300 prisoners, two cannon, 300 horses, and large amounts of supplies and stores. Forrest sent the prisoners south and headed north towards the Tennessee line, burning and wrecking anything they could not carry off.
The rebels thoroughly destroyed the rail line as they rode north. The next day, 25 September, they came on Federal works guarding a railroad trestle. The Yankee commander refused to surrender, and since he showed no inclination to be bluffed into doing so, Forrest took the fortifications under intense artillery fire for two hours, leaving "the dead lying thick among the works," as he reported later. The Federals then surrendered, yielding 973 prisoners, two more guns, 300 more horses, and another load of supplies.
Forrest sent the prisoners south, along with six of his own guns since the bombardment had left him short on artillery ammunition, then torched the fortifications and the trestle. Just south of the Tennessee line, on 26 September, the raiders found another trestle protected by blockhouses, though these had been wisely abandoned by their commander who had heard of what had happened to the last crew who tried to stand up to Forrest. The rebels burned the blockhouses and the trestle, and then burned another trestle north of the Tennessee line. The next day they were on the outskirts of Pulaski.
* This was good fun, but now the Federals were thoroughly aroused. On hearing that Forrest was on the rampage again, Sherman, who had been expecting something along such lines, immediately sent George Thomas with two divisions north, with instructions to take command of Union resources in the region and deal with Forrest once and for all. Now there were about 30,000 Federals converging on Forrest and his raiders, and the defenders of Pulaski outnumbered the rebels. Thomas was enthusiastic, stating: "I do not think that we shall ever have a better chance than this."
However, the result of any contest between Old Slow Trot and the Wizard of the Saddle was by no means obvious in advance. Forrest knew perfectly well that there were hordes of Yankees trying to close in on him, and even had the capability to make highly educated guesses as to where they were and what they were doing. Another commander might have decided to run for it then and there, but Forrest simply turned east to strike towards Sherman's primary lifeline, the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad, leaving campfires burning to deceive the Federals in Pulaski.
Forrest's scouts reported the Yankees thick around the sensitive railroad, and so all he was able to do was detach a detail of 50 men to inflict what damage they could in a short time. To bewilder the Federals, he split his force in two, sending two brigades under Abraham Buford south to return to Confederate territory, causing as much damage as possible on the way, while Forrest took the other two brigades on a loop to the northwest. Forrest and his troopers fell on the Tennessee & Alabama again on 1 October, north of Columbia, and then worked their way south, ripping up track and seizing blockhouses, mostly by intimidation since his artillery was gone. By 2 October, the enraged Yankees were getting too close for comfort, and it was finally time to clear out. The raiders were back across the Alabama line on 4 October.
* They weren't quite out of the woods yet, since Union columns were reported to be close behind, and the rebels still had to get over the Tennessee, which was swollen with rain and could not be forded. Forrest arrived back at Florence, Alabama, on 5 October. Buford was there, having crossed with his troopers the previous day on three dilapidated ferries.
Forrest began to shuttle his people across, a task that took all of the 5th and 6th, performed with much weariness and bad temper. Forrest was in the last ferry ride across, pushing a pole, and when he noticed a lieutenant standing idle, he suggested the young officer lend a hand. The lieutenant, apparently unaware that Forrest was being very mild to merely make a suggestion, replied that as an officer he saw no reason to "do that kind of work" as long as there were enlisteds present to get their hands dirty. Forrest, who never hesitated to get his own hands as dirty as needed to get a job done, immediately ceased being mild and slapped the lieutenant into the Tennessee. He pulled the young man back onto the ferry with his pole, saying: "Now, damn you, get hold of the oars and go to work! If I knock you out of the boat again, I'll let you drown!" Witnesses reported the lieutenant proved a hard worker from that time on.
Back in Mississippi, Forrest could report without bluster that he had killed or wounded a thousand Yankees, captured 2,360 more, while losing 340 men, only 47 of them killed. He had wrecked the Tennessee & Alabama so badly that it took even the skilled Federal work crews six weeks to get the line operational again, and had captured seven cannon, 800 horses, 2,000 rifles, and fifty wagons filled with loot.
Tactically, the raid was an outstanding success. Strategically, it was a failure. Sherman kept on receiving supplies without interruption, and so the raid did not weaken the Federal hold on Atlanta. That was only a partial comfort to Sherman, who told Grant on 9 October that it would be "a physical impossibility to protect the roads, now that Hood, Forrest, Wheeler, and the whole batch of devils are turned loose without home or habitation."
