v1.1.3 / chapter 80 of 93 / 01 sep 11 / greg goebel / public domain
* Although Phil Sheridan had believed he had dealt Jubal Early out of the game in September, Early wasn't so quick to give up the Shenandoah Valley, and jumped Sheridan's army near Cedar Creek on 19 October 1864. The rebels made good progress at first, until Sheridan rallied his troops and completely crushed the Confederates. The victory was the final end of serious Confederate resistance in the Valley and another great boost to Lincoln's reelection prospects.
In the meantime, Sherman was considering where to go from Atlanta. Hood went north of the city to threaten Sherman's supply line, forcing Sherman to follow. After an extended session of cat and mouse, Sherman decided to simply give up his supply line and march to the Atlantic coast, leaving Hood behind while trashing a swath through Georgia. That left Hood free to move into Tennessee, but Pap Thomas had plenty of troops there and Sherman didn't think Hood could make much of the opportunity. Hood still jumped at it and called Bedford Forrest, then on another profitable raid into Tennessee, to assist.
Sterling Price's own raid into Missouri had been proving anything but profitable. The rebels managed to escape with Union forces hot on their trail. They had created a lot of confusion for the Yankees, but failed to obtain any advantage from it; the raid was the last major military action in the trans-Mississippi.
The Union scored two other victories in October. A Navy lieutenant named William Cushing led a daring raid that destroyed the Confederate ironclad ALBEMARLE, which had been blocking Federal operations in the North Carolina tidewater region. Farther south, in Brazil, a US Navy vessel seized the Confederate raider FLORIDA in a neutral port, creating an international incident but getting rid of the annoyance for good.
* By the beginning of October 1864, Phil Sheridan had completed his march to the end of the Shenandoah Valley. Grant wanted him to break out of the southern end and threaten Richmond, but Sheridan wasn't enthusiastic about the idea. Nobody had done well before taking the route from the west to Richmond, and it would leave Sheridan with a long supply line through guerrilla-infested territory with winter coming. Sheridan suggested instead that he withdraw back north, with his troops completing their work of destruction to render the Valley useless to the Confederacy. Part of Sheridan's army would then remain at the northern end of the Valley to block any further Confederate incursions into the North, while Wright's VI Corps could be returned to Petersburg to increase the pressure on Lee. Grant was agreeable, and Sheridan began his withdrawal on 6 October.
While the Federals had been generous enough with the torch on the way south, on the way back north they were determined to leave absolutely nothing but scorched earth behind them. A newspaper correspondent wrote: "The atmosphere, from horizon to horizon, has been black with the smoke of a hundred conflagrations, and at night a gleam brighter and more lurid than sunset has shot from every verge." There was some attempt to spare houses, but if they were next to the barn they often burned too, and the Yankees had plenty of bummers who liked to destroy things for the fun of it. The newspaper correspondent added: "The completeness of the devastation is awful. Hundreds of nearly starving people are going north. Our trains are crowded with them. They line the wayside. Hundreds more are coming; not half the inhabitants of the Valley can subsist on it in its present condition."
The refugees trailed behind the military columns, sometimes obtaining food from sympathetic Union soldiers. Many of the Dunkers and Mennonites were leaving to join relatives in Pennsylvania. The hordes of contrabands were simply leaving and hoping they could find someplace else where they could survive. A year later an Englishman would pass through the region and describe as "one vast moor". The residents would remember the fall of 1864 for the rest of their lives as simply "The Burning".
* As the Federals went north, Early's cavalry harassed their rear guard. However, the rebel horses were increasingly broken down, and the ashen landscape provided little sustenance for man or beast. In addition, Yankee cavalry had truly come of age, and now rebel troopers had to admit that their opposite numbers "were more to be feared than their infantry -- better soldiers all through." Bummers and shirkers generally didn't go into the cavalry.
The sole result of Early's harassment was to annoy Sheridan. Sheridan called in his chief of cavalry, General Alfred Torbert, and told him: "Whip or get whipped." Torbert ordered Generals Custer and Wesley Merritt to deal with the rebels, and on 9 October Federal cavalry descended on the Confederates. The fighting went back and forth for two hours, and then the rebel troopers broke. Sheridan wrote: "The result was a general smash-up of the entire Confederate line, degenerating into a rout the likes of which was never before seen." The Yankees chased the rebels for over 20 miles (32 kilometers) past the town of Woodstock, back onto their infantry support. The Federals called the adventure the "Woodstock races". One rebel called it "the greatest disaster that ever befell our cavalry during the whole war."
The Federals believed they had seen the last of Jubal Early and his men. The rebels had been thrashed three times in a row, and there was nothing for a Confederate force to live on in the Valley but cinders. This was underestimating Early. He couldn't stay where he was in the blackened land; he could either fight or withdraw, and despite the fact that he was outnumbered about two to one by an enemy that wasn't easily intimidated and had repeatedly beaten him severely, he still wanted to fight.
A few days later, on 10 October, Sheridan's troops went into camp at Cedar Creek, a little north of the town of Strasburg. Wright's VI Corps split off from the main body on 12 October on a march to pass over the mountains and return to Petersburg. They had only been on the road for a day, however, when Sheridan recalled them. That same day, 13 October, two brigades of Crook's command had gone out from camp in reaction to Confederate shelling and run into a substantial rebel force that chewed up the Yankees badly. Much to Sheridan's surprise, the Confederates were obviously still around in force. Sheridan felt it might be proper to have the VI Corps on hand until Early clearly wasn't a threat any more.
In the meantime, Sheridan had political business to deal with. Grant was still interested in having Sheridan and his force move out of the southern end of the Valley and exploit the back-door route to Richmond, and on mentioning the notion to Halleck, Halleck passed it on to Sheridan as an order. Sheridan refused to go along; then War Secretary Stanton came in on Halleck's side, turning matters into such a fuss that Halleck called a strategy session in Washington to straighten it out.
Sheridan was thoroughly disgusted with the whole thing, but it wouldn't go
away unless he made it go away, so he left for Washington on 15 October. He
was accompanied as far as Front Royal by his cavalry corps, which was to use
the town as a staging area for a raid over the mountains toward
Charlottesville. Wright was left in charge, with Wright assuring Sheridan
that everything would be kept under control. However, when Sheridan got to
Front Royal, he was given a intercepted telegram, supposedly from Longstreet
to Early, that read:
BE READY TO MOVE AS SOON AS MY FORCES JOIN
YOU AND WE WILL CRUSH SHERIDAN.
It was nothing but a silly trick, written by Early in order to stampede
Sheridan out of the Valley so fast that he wouldn't have time to continue the
burning, leaving resources that would allow the rebels to hang onto their old
hunting grounds. Apparently Early was still clinging to the delusion that
Sheridan was timid, despite all the painful evidence to the contrary. The
trick backfired: Sheridan saw right through it, and realized that Early
still wanted to fight it out. Sheridan called off the Charlottesville raid
and sent Merritt's and Custer's cavalry divisions back to Cedar Creek, with a
message to Wright to prepare for a possible attack. The remaining cavalry
remained in Front Royal to guard against a march by Longstreet through the
mountains into the Union rear. Sheridan then continued on to Washington.
The Federals were camped out to the north of Cedar Creek, which flowed roughly down from the northwest. Crook's VIII Corps held the western end of the Union position, to the west of the Valley Turnpike, with Emory's XIX in the center, to the west of the turnpike, and Wright's VI Corps to the northwest. There was a gap about a mile wide between the VIII Corps and the North Fork of the Shenandoah River to the west, but the terrain consisted of a very rugged gorge that was a major obstacle to an assault. Despite Sheridan's warning, little was done to strengthen the camp's defenses. The open flank of VIII Corps gave the rebels an opportunity. If Early could sneak a force through the gorge in the darkness, he would be able to strike a smashing blow at VIII Corps. It was dangerous, since the gorge would be difficult to traverse in the dark, and if his men were detected in their move they would be shot down like fish in a barrel.
However, there were those in his ranks who were from the area and knew the gorge very well, and the Moon was close to full. On the night of 18 October, General John B. Gordon led his corps into the area, with the men leaving behind canteens and other gear that could make noise and give them away. In the meantime, Early had moved up smaller forces to the east of the Valley Turnpike to distract the Federals, and set up a third force to advance rapidly north along the Turnpike to assist.
* Just as light began to break on 19 October, Gordon's men came pouring into the flank of VIII Corps. The rebels achieved complete surprise and sent Crook's men running away in their night clothes. The Confederates captured seven Yankee guns, turning them around to pour fire into the broken Federals. VIII Corps had been taken decisively out of the battle.
Gordon then moved onto the hill where Sheridan's headquarters was sited, which put the rebels in the rear of XIX and VI Corps. This led to an immediate Federal retreat all up the line. General Wright had been gouged under the chin by a rebel bullet but was still up and about, trying to restore order. It was almost hopeless; a Union soldier described VIII Corps as reduced to "a disorganized, routed, demoralized, terrified mob of fugitives" and verbally painted the scene in detail:
BEGIN QUOTE:
Wagons and ambulances lumbering hither and thither in disorder; pack horses led by frightened bummers, or wandering at their own free will; crowds of officers and men, some shod and some barefoot, many of them coatless and hatless, with and without their rifles, but all rushing wildly to the rear; oaths and blows alike powerless to stop them; a cavalry regiment stretched across the field, unable to stem the torrent.
END QUOTE
Wright brought up the 2nd Connecticut Heavies, but they were firing into the fog and sunrise, blinding them while the rebels were able to see them very clearly. The 2nd Connecticut ended up joining the rout. Emory then brought up a brigade to see if he could buy some time and allow the rest of the army to re-form. The brigade fought very hard, but they were finally forced to pull back as well, having lost two-thirds of its strength.
* Despite the chaos, by midmorning the Federals had managed to form a tenuous line about 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) north of their original position. Early's men had taken 1,300 Union prisoners and captured 18 Yankee guns. As far as Early was concerned, he had won the battle. The Federals were broken and he expected them to stay broken, just as they had in such defeats in the Valley in the past. He believed there was no good reason to push his troops, who had been up all night moving into place, and "were much jaded" as he later put it.
Early believed the battle line in front of him was nothing more than a rear guard that would soon evaporate along with the rest of the whipped Yankees. John Gordon, a cool and aggressive fighter, wasn't so certain, not sharing Early's belief that Sheridan and his army were that easy to push around. He told Early: "That is the VI Corps, General. It will not go unless we drive it from the field." Early disagreed: "Yes, it will go directly." Gordon wrote later: "My heart went into my boots."
Early usually liked to fight, but every now and then he would simply balk. He'd done it at Gettysburg and the Wilderness. Now the momentum was draining out of his assault, aggravated by the fact that many of the rebels, who could barely remember when they had last had a decent meal, dropped out of the fight to feast on rations left behind by the Federals and pick up loot from the abandoned Yankee camps. At least Early sent out orders that the men scavenging through the Federal camp be rounded up for action.
Sheridan had returned from Washington the evening before, having successfully made his case for his strategy with Halleck and Stanton, and spent the night in Winchester. He was on the road south on his big black horse Rienzi in the company of a few aides at about 9:00 AM, enjoying the sunny morning, meeting the 17th Pennsylvania as an escort a few miles out of town. The cavalrymen had been camped out there and heard firing that morning, but thought it was merely some minor skirmish in progress.
The local women came out to jeer at them as they rode south, as if they knew something Sheridan didn't. As the group went farther south, the firing got louder. Sheridan, puzzled, got off his horse and pressed his ear to the ground. He got back on Rienzi and continued on, visibly tense. Then they came on a wagon train that was in a traffic jam on the road. An officer rode off to investigate and came back in a lather, telling Sheridan that the teamsters had heard that the army to the south had taken a beating. Sheridan immediately took 50 men to accompany him and gave orders that the rest spread out, forming a straggler line to collect those headed towards the rear. Then Sheridan and his 50 riders set off down the turnpike, going south at a fast pace, though not an outright gallop.
Sheridan originally thought that he would have his army fall back and regroup, but as he went on, he became more confident. There were groups of men scattered all along the turnpike, and he quickly saw that few were really buffaloed. The only problem was that their leadership was in confusion; if they had someone to get them organized, they were perfectly willing to go back and fight. They cheered Sheridan, and he shouted back at them: "God DAMN you, don't cheer me! If you love your country, come up to the front! God DAMN you, don't cheer me! There's lots of fight in you men yet! Come up, God damn you! Come up!"
He galloped south, calling at men: "Turn back, men! Turn back!" He stopped every now and then to get information. One unnerved straggler on a mule told him: "Oh, everything is lost and gone, but it will be all right once you get there." Sheridan and his escort continued south; the man on the mule kept on going north, but he was an exception. Nearly everyone who saw Sheridan shouldered their rifle and started back south. Sheridan himself glowered with determination. He shouted at a group of fainthearts: "Turn about, you damned cowardly curs, or I'll cut you down! I don't expect you to fight, but come and see men who like to!"
Wright's VI Corps men were still in line, bitter with the frustration of once again seeing their ranks sent packing by a smaller force of rebels. They grumbled about the runaways, but then, astonishingly, they heard cheering from the rear. And then Sheridan rode up to the line, and the cheering went to a roar all up and down the ranks. One soldier wrote later:
BEGIN QUOTE:
Such a scene as his presence produced and such emotions as it awoke cannot be realized once in a century. All outward manifestations were as enthusiastic as men are capable of exhibiting; cheers seemed to come from throats of brass, and caps were thrown to the tops of the scattering oaks; but beneath and yet superior to these noisy demonstrations there was in every heart a revulsion of feeling, and a pressure of emotion, beyond description. No more doubt of chance for doubt existed; we were safe, perfectly and unconditionally safe, and every man knew it.
END QUOTE
They were all confident because Sheridan was confident. One officer who was still rattled from the battle in the morning told Sheridan that Early intended to drive them all the way out of the Shenandoah Valley. Sheridan roared back in his face: "WHAT?! THREE CORPS of infantry and ALL of my cavalry?! Jubal Early drive ME out of the Valley?! I'll LICK HIM like BLAZES before night! I'll give him the WORST licking HE EVER HAD!"
And that was what happened. Early remained bafflingly indifferent while the Federals massed up into a force that looked much less beaten than downright menacing. Gordon led his men in a probe to test the Yankee lines at about 3:00 PM and found them painfully solid, with the attackers thrown back immediately.
Now Early finally woke up and prepared to withdraw. He wasn't fast enough. At 4:00 PM, Sheridan's men hit Early and his men like a thunderclap. Emory's troops opened up the center of the Confederate line, and Custer and his cavalry division charged through, causing the entire rebel defense to disintegrate in panic. Later Early reported to Lee: "I found it impossible to rally the troops, they would not listen to entreaties, threats, or appeals of any kind. A terror of the enemy's cavalry had seized them. The rout was as thorough and disgraceful as ever happened to our army."
Union infantry advanced so fast that General Custer had to shout to his troopers: "Are you going to let infantry get ahead of you?!" The Federals recaptured their camps, all the cannon they had lost, and took 25 rebel guns for good measure. They also hauled in scores of prisoners. A Connecticut soldier wrote that they were smart, spirited, healthy men who were surprisingly cheerful and joking despite their circumstances. However, all of them, "from officers down to privates, said they were tired of the war and that peace was worth more than the C.S.A."
The Confederates had actually hurt the Yankees worse in absolute terms than they had suffered themselves. Sheridan lost almost 5,700 men, while Early had lost under 3,000. It hardly mattered. The Federals could afford such losses, while Early's force had been all but wiped out. Among the Confederate casualties was General Dodson Ramseur, mortally wounded on the field with a bullet through both lungs and left to the Yankees. The Federals dosed him with opiates, and he lived long enough to have a few last words with old West Point classmates, including George Custer. John Gordon was almost captured, only escaping by riding his horse over a cliff; both horse and rider tumbled hard, but neither was injured, and Gordon managed to get away. After the war, he and Early would bicker over the handling of the battle.
Sheridan was the hero of the hour and quickly received a promotion to major general. His soldiers thought the world of him, and civilians wrote overblown poetry in his honor. Lincoln had reason to be doubly happy with Sheridan, since the enthusiasm meant even more Republican votes in the upcoming election.
Early was publicly humiliated by his final defeat in the Valley, with Southern newspapers bitterly attacking him. That was unjust, and likely the criticism was aggravated by Early's acid personality. He had given the Yankees one hell of a hard time with an inferior force and done much to save Richmond from attack through the back door. To expect more would have been to demand the impossible, but at this late date, the impossible was the only hope left.
* Grant ordered a salute to celebrate Sheridan's victory at Cedar Creek, with a hundred guns firing into the Petersburg defenses. Grant was by then planning another one-two push against Lee's defenses, with Butler to demonstrate in front of Richmond, while Hancock's II Corps, Warren's V Corps, and Parke's IX Corps made another drive against the Boyton Plank Road and Southside Railroad.
The operation jumped off on 27 October, but nothing went well. Longstreet had returned to Lee's command in mid-month, to be assigned to command the Richmond defenses. Lee recognized Butler's assault for the diversion it was, leaving Longstreet, always a terror on the defense, to throw it back with a minimum of effort and a maximum of injury. Lee focused on defeating the flanking attack to the south, sending A.P. Hill and Wade Hampton with about 12,000 troops to deal with the intruders. The rebels were greatly assisted by various uncoordinated fumblings in Federal movements, and by that night the Yankees were pretty much back to where they had started from, having suffered almost 3,000 casualties to about half that many Confederates.
Grant merely shrugged. He was well able to accept that level of casualties, and he knew that sooner or later he would get it right. Lee could only dodge the bullet so many times. When he failed, it would be for the last time.
* After receiving intelligence that Hood was leading the Confederate Army of the Tennessee on a clockwise arc around Atlanta whose terminal point appeared to be Marietta, to the north on the Western & Atlantic line, Sherman moved out of Atlanta with 65,000 men on 3 October, leaving Slocum and his corps behind to hold the city.
The next day, 4 October, Sherman realized that his forward supply base at Allatoona Pass, to the north of Marietta, was at risk: a number of rebel forces operating individually had cut the rail line between the two locations. Sherman had already sent a division from Howard's army, under the command of Brigadier General John M. Corse, to Rome, northwest of Allatoona Pass, to block a Confederate advance in that direction. The telegraph lines were still working and so Sherman ordered Corse to take his men back to Allatoona Pass and help defend the place until the rest of the army arrived.
Corse had managed to get about half of his division to Allatoona Pass on the morning of 5 October when a rebel division from Stewart's corps under Major General Sam French showed up. French sent a note to Corse demanding his unconditional surrender within five minutes to avoid "a needless effusion of blood." Sherman had told Corse to hold at all hazards. Although Corse only had a little less than 2,000 men and French more than 3,000, Allatoona Pass was a very strong defensive position, and it was a good bet that the Federals would hold out until Sherman arrived. Corse sent a reply back to French: "We are prepared for the 'needless effusion of blood' whenever it is a agreeable to you."
French threw his troops at the Federals, who fought back stubbornly, losing two of three strongpoints to the rebels and making a last-ditch stand in the third. At 4:00 PM, with Sherman's army about to make an entrance, French gave up the attack and skedaddled. He had got the worst of it, losing 799 men to Corse's 709, but made a clean escape. Corse reported to Sherman that he had lost "a cheekbone and an ear" in the fight, but when Sherman showed up a few days later, he found that Corse only had a minor wound, though it had bled heavily for a time. Sherman laughed: "Corse, they came damned near missing you, didn't they?" It was a good-natured poke, since Corse had done him a service, and in fact the Northern papers played up the heroic "Battle of Allatoona Pass" to the hilt.
It hadn't really been that much of a fight on the bigger scale of things, and Sherman was back to wondering what Hood might do next. The rebels had holed up in the tangle of woods around New Hope Church. Sherman, remembering what a nightmare it had been to fight there before, was content to sit tight and see which way the rebels jumped.
They were gone on the morning of 7 October. Sherman assumed they were going south for a surprise attack on Atlanta and warned Slocum, only to find on 8 October that Hood was going north instead. Sherman commented: "I cannot guess his movements as I could those of Johnston, who was a sensible man and only did sensible things."
Heavy rains kept Sherman in place on 8 October, but on the 9th he was at the head of his troops at Allatoona Pass. Hood sidled north around Sherman's army to probe at Resaca on 12 October, where the Union commander replied to Hood's demand for his surrender with: "If you want it, come and take it." Hood thought it over and decided he didn't want it. He shifted to Dalton the next day, 13 October, where the garrison surrendered without a fight. In the meantime, the rebels had been ripping up track and seizing isolated Federal garrisons. Sherman pursued, finally confronting Hood on 17 October at Lafayette, about 20 miles (32 miles) south of the old Chickamauga Creek battlefield.
The Confederates were in a strong position, but before Sherman could organize an assault the rebels pulled out, moving east into rugged terrain in northern Alabama. Hood had wanted to fight there, but he took a poll of his senior officers and found to his shock that they were all against it, since they judged the army's morale to be too poor to allow them to stand and fight against substantially superior forces. Hood concluded they had lost their nerve, but under the circumstances he had no choice but to cave in.
* Sherman judged Hood's actions "inexplicable by any common-sense theory", and commented: "Damn him. If he will go to the Ohio River I will give him rations ... my business is down south."
So far, however, Hood had been successfully able to lead Sherman on a merry chase. The rebels hadn't been able to do that much damage, and in fact the Western and Atlantic would be back in operation in ten days, but Sherman's patience with silly games was coming to an end. He had a better idea. Sherman decided to abandon both the rail line and Atlanta, wrecking both of them so they would not be of any value to the rebels. He would march to the sea, living off the land as Grant had done in the Vicksburg campaign, and capture Savannah to permit resupply. He would leave desolation in his path to crush the Confederate will to resist.
It was better reasoned than it sounded. The Confederates had no force in the region that could oppose Sherman. Hood could harass and annoy him, but in a stand-up fight Hood would lose everything. Sherman had no reason to believe he would encounter any effective opposition during his march to the sea. Hood was still powerful enough to move north into Tennessee and threaten Nashville, but what of it? George Thomas was already in middle Tennessee, having gone there to try to catch Bedford Forrest, and was accumulating a large force. Sherman could send reinforcements to Thomas to make sure Hood was dealt with. Sherman could fight Hood with one hand and wreck Georgia with the other.
* This idea had not magically appeared in Sherman's mind in a flash of insight. He had planned since the beginning of the north Georgia campaign to march to the sea and cut the Confederacy in half again, though he had originally set his sights south on Mobile. Farragut had neutralized Mobile, so Sherman turned his vision eastward. Sherman had suggested a "rough draft" of the idea to Grant on 20 September, at that time suggesting that an amphibious force be sent to capture Savannah or some other appropriate seacoast base so his army could be refitted after its march. Grant replied that organizing such an operation would take too long, and he was worried about the trouble Hood could make in Tennessee.
Sherman clarified his thinking in a response on 1 October, saying that there was actually no need for amphibious operation to capture a seacoast city, since his own army could deal with that issue. The Navy would simply need to arrange a resupply effort, to go into operation the instant an appropriate port was seized. As far as Hood and his army went, Thomas could provide insurance if it were needed, but Sherman believed that Hood would try to follow him and be forced into a fight on ruinous terms. The two generals went back and forth on the issue. On 9 October, Sherman pointed out to Grant that he had plenty of supplies and his men would forage liberally, concluding: "I can make this march, and make Georgia howl!"
Grant's answer came back on 12 October. He had come around to Sherman's way of thinking, unsurprising since it had much in common with the strategy that Grant himself had used to capture Vicksburg, though Sherman was thinking on a bigger scale. Grant replied: "On reflection I think better of your proposition. It will be much better to go south than to be forced to come north." However, Grant was still balancing matters in his mind, and had yet to give his full approval.
Between Hood's baffling movements and Grant's indecision, Sherman, never the most patient of men, became very short-tempered. When he got a report of guerrillas taking potshots at supply trains, he sent a bloody-minded message back to the officer in charge: "Cannot you send men over about Fairmont and Adairsville, burn ten or twelve houses of known secessionists, kill a few at random, and let them know that it will be repeated every time a train is fired on from Resaca to Kingston?"
* Hood had little or no idea of what was going on in Sherman's mind, and was concentrating on his own plans for a lunge north into Tennessee. Hood met with Beauregard at Gadsen in northern Alabama on 21 October to outline his thinking.
Hood believed he could cross the Tennessee and march on Nashville, smashing Federal forces in detail before Thomas had a chance to assemble them, and then resupply from the Union depots in the city. Such a bold move would in principle draw thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of secessionist-minded Tennessee men to his ranks. Seizing Nashville was only the first step. Hood would then cross Kentucky to the banks of Ohio, threatening Cincinnati and throwing all Union plans into confusion. Kentuckians would flock to the rebel banner as well, giving Hood an army strong enough to beat Sherman in a stand-up fight. That was assuming Sherman pursued him; if not, Hood would be free to either send reinforcements to Lee, or better yet, march east with his entire army and unhinge the Union war effort in Virginia.
It was the sort of plan that Beauregard himself would have thought of, though he found Hood's grasp of the logistical details weak, and the business of expecting to pick up reinforcements along the way was a bit more than even Beauregard would have rested any hopes on. Still, Forrest did that sort of thing on a regular if more modest basis, and if Hood's plan was risky, the only other option was to lose the war. Beauregard approved, though he stipulated that Wheeler and his cavalry should be left behind to keep an eye on Sherman and harass his communications. Hood would have the services of Forrest and his men, at the time on a raid to Johnsonville and in a good position to link up with Hood's army on a northern advance. Hood found this an agreeable trade.
Beauregard's approval was little more than a formality, since Hood had told Richmond on 19 October of his plan to march north, and had telegraphed Richard Taylor on the 20th to inform him that the Army of the Tennessee would be marching through his department. However, with the formalities done, Hood could announce to his men that they would be going north with the sunrise, news which was greeted with great enthusiasm by the many Tennesseans in his ranks.
* Bedford Forrest's raid into middle Tennessee in September had proven to Richard Taylor that everything he had heard about Forrest's capabilities was based on solid fact. Taylor was as bold and aggressive as Forrest, and so Forrest and his command only got a week to rest and refit from their raid before they went north on another.
The target was the big Federal supply base at Johnsonville on the Duck River, 75 miles (120 kilometers) to the west of Nashville. Forrest set out on 21 October with 3,500 troopers, reaching the Tennessee River on the Kentucky state line on 28 October. With typical imaginativeness, he set up batteries to cordon off a section of the river and boxed in two Yankee vessels, including the gunboat UNDINE, carrying eight guns, and the transport VENUS. He took them under fire and their captains surrendered them undamaged. Two guns were put on the VENUS to turn it into a gunboat, and then Forrest put a detachment of his men, along with their horses, on board the riverboats to steam upriver and raise hell. He took the rest south down the west bank of the river towards Johnsonville while the Federals tried to hunt down Forrest's improvised navy.
The two vessels made a nuisance of themselves for three days, 1 November through 3 November, but the VENUS was finally recaptured by two Yankee gunboats, and the rebels abandoned and burned the UNDINE. The troopers rode hard to catch up with Forrest, who was closing in on Johnsonville. They were all together again on 4 November, facing the Johnsonville depot from across the river. The Federals were complacent, unaware of the mass of Confederates hiding in the brush across the river and the ten guns being set up there.
The depot was a busy place, with three gunboats, eleven transports, and 18 barges docked there, while two trains were being loaded from the many warehouses. At precisely 2:00 PM all ten rebel guns went off at once, with their fire initially concentrated on the gunboats. The guns kept firing away for two hours, leaving the depot a burning wreck. The Federals didn't put up a fight and the Confederates found it all great fun, though they were a little disappointed that they weren't in a position to take any of the loot with them. The damage amounted to millions of dollars, one Union man saying the destruction "beggared description".
As Forrest and his raiders moved south towards safety, they ran into couriers from Beauregard, with instructions for them to join up with Hood at Tuscumbia, in northern Alabama. Forrest tried to hurry, but the weather had been wet and progress was slow.
* Sterling Price's raid into Missouri hadn't got off to a good start, and things didn't go much better as the rebels pushed on towards Jefferson City. On 6 October, Price received intelligence that Union troops had been pulled in from outlying posts in substantial numbers to defend Jefferson City, while A.J. Smith had set out in pursuit from Saint Louis with his 8,000 infantry, accompanied by 7,000 cavalry under Major General Alfred Pleasonton.
The Union troops in Jefferson City might not be able to stop Price themselves, but they would certainly keep him busy enough for Smith and Pleasonton to catch up with him. Worse, Price received intelligence that his old Pea Ridge adversary, Major General Sam Curtis, the Kansas department commander, was assembling a force of 20,000 men near the Kansas-Missouri border to come after the rebels. Granted, most of this force was indifferent Kansas militia, but Price still didn't like the odds. He decided to give up his drive on Jefferson City and swing north. He reached Boonville on 9 October, then moved west towards Kansas City.
Jo Shelby and his troopers fanned out along the line of march to fall on small Federal garrisons and swallow them up, but this amusement came to a stop on 19 October, when Shelby made contact with Union cavalry under Major General James Blunt, who Curtis had sent east to slow down Price. Blunt's troopers were no match for Shelby's men, but they did succeed in keeping the rebels busy. The Yankees fell back through Lexington on 20 October and then Independence on 21 October, where they finally withdrew across the Blue River to take refuge in Curtis's defenses.
Curtis had about 4,000 regulars and 4,000 militia. He hoped to hold Price in check until Pleasonton could arrive with his cavalry, but while Marmaduke and Fagan distracted the Federals with fire across the river, Shelby took his division across the river and flanked the Yankees out of their defenses. The Federals ran off towards Westport, just south of Kansas City. When Pleasonton came up that evening, he found the rebels secure in the earthworks that had just been vacated by Curtis's men. This might have been satisfying to Price, but he knew it would only delay the Federals, not stop them, since they outnumbered him about three-to-one overall. Many of his staff suggested with plenty of justification that discretion would be the best option, but Price had come a long way, didn't want to go back to Arkansas empty-handed, and was feeling aggressive anyway.
Shelby managed to convince Price that he should exploit his central position among separated adversaries, falling on Curtis and smashing him while a holding force blocked Pleasonton, and then doubling back to deal with him as well. Price ordered Marmaduke to occupy the works with his two brigades and began a night movement with Fagan and Shelby's divisions for an assault on Curtis's position on Brush Creek, near Westport, on the morning of 23 October.
He wasn't the only one with plans for that morning. A.J. Smith and his infantry had been ordered south of the line of pursuit to block any rebel lunge in that direction, effectively taking them off the playing board for the rest of the campaign, but Pleasonton was feeling thoroughly aggressive and intended to send his four brigades of cavalry to assault Marmaduke in his works the same morning the rebels were planning an attack of their own. Things were certainly going to happen when the sun came up.
* Although Curtis had such apprehensions about the green Kansas militiamen in his command that he had contemplated pulling back to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, Blunt and others had talked him into standing and fighting. When Fagan and Shelby attacked him that morning, as he had feared and Shelby had predicted the defenders fell back under moderate pressure to Westport and the Kansas state line. However, after having got over their initial case of jitters, the Federals then became increasingly resolute, as well they might, since they outnumbered their attackers by two-to-one. They not only held their ground under increasingly determined Confederate assaults, but began to mass for a counterstroke.
Price was considering this unpleasant turn of events in midmorning when he got frantic news from Marmaduke's troopers. Pleasonton had pushed hard that morning and quickly thrown Marmaduke and his men out of their works, then pushed his own cavalry after the Confederates as hard as he could, shouting at the troopers when they stopped to gawk: "REBELS! REBELS! REBELS! FIRE, YOU DAMNED ASSES!"
Price had gambled that he could fall on two separate forces and defeat them in parts, but he'd lost the bet and was now trapped between a rock and a hard place. It was time to get out. He managed to quickly organize a withdrawal, with Shelby and his division charged with blocking Federal pursuit. The rebels fought hard and skillfully, finally breaking contact that night after Price had managed to get the rest of his command on the road.
* Both sides had suffered about a thousand casualties, mild for the level of excitement and the numbers of troops involved. Curtis and Pleasonton followed the Confederates closely in hopes of inflicting much more decisive damage on them, while Price focused on escape.
Price crossed into Kansas to take advantage of better roads, since the weather had turned wet, bogging down the movements of both forces. On the morning of 25 October, Price ordered Marmaduke to perform a delaying action, which forced the Yankees to halt momentarily. Marmaduke then fell back a few miles to Mine Creek to join Fagan, who was set up with ten of the expedition's fourteen cannon to help make a stand.
They didn't stand for very long. The Federals had the initiative and sent the Confederates running, taking almost a thousand of them prisoner. One of the prisoners was Marmaduke, hit in the arm and captured by an Iowa private named James Dunlavy. When Dunlavy presented his catch to Curtis, Curtis ordered that Dunlavy be given a furlough for the rest of his term of service.
Price managed to collect the survivors and rescue them from being swallowed up whole, assisted by furious rear-guard actions by Shelby and his men, as well as by the fact that Curtis and Pleasonton got into a damnfool quarrel over who would take charge of the prisoners and take credit for the victory on Mine Creek. Price took advantage of the delay to get his men marching as fast as they could, and he burned much of his wagon train to ensure they weren't hindered by excess baggage. The Federals weren't delayed for long, though their numbers quickly dropped off. Pleasonton fell ill on 26 October and two of four cavalry brigades headed back to Missouri, while the Kansas militia under Curtis decided to go home.
Curtis still had plenty of men and the militia had been his least effective troops anyway. He pressed the pursuit as Price's column headed back into Missouri, with Blunt's cavalry getting into a fight with Shelby at Newtonia, not far north of the Arkansas border, on 28 October. The Yankees got much the worst of it, and the two forces then broke contact. Newtonia was the last real battle in the Trans-Mississippi, and in fact the war in the trans-Mississippi was effectively over.
Curtis had not given up the chase. He took his force due south into Arkansas to cut off what he presumed was Price's line of retreat. However, Price was in no condition for another fight and had veered far west into Indian Territory. When Curtis discovered that Price had given him the slip, he set off in pursuit on 4 November, only to be stymied on the banks of the Arkansas River on 8 November. The Confederates had already crossed and burned all the boats in the area. With nothing more to accomplish, Curtis had his men fire a 24-gun salute and marched back to Kansas.
The rebels continued their own march, finally reaching Laynesport, Arkansas, near the junction of Texas and Indian Territory, on 2 December. They were all hungry, cold, and in tatters. Although the raid had indeed tied up substantial Federal resources and done a large amount of damage, none of that had caused any real inconvenience to the overall Union war effort, and the raid itself had been a fiasco. Price had hoped to seize Federal stockpiles and gain recruits, but he came home threadbare and with only half the men he set out with, the survivors bitterly complaining as they had marched south in misery: "God damn old Pap!"
In fact, although the invasion had been troublesome to the Federals, they had reason to thank Price for it, since the uprising of Confederate guerrillas in parallel with the incursion had given the Yankees a splendid opportunity to clean the bushwhackers out of Missouri once and for all. The only shine in the campaign for the South had come from the keen fighting by Jo Shelby and his troopers, which had saved the raiders from total disaster. Price lavished praise on Shelby in his report, saying he was "the best cavalry officer I ever saw", and after the war even Pleasonton would say much the same thing.
The Confederates also helped inflict another casualty of sorts on the Union ranks. There was no great satisfaction in Washington DC for how Rosecrans was conducting the war in Missouri, and he would be relieved of command of the Department of the Missouri in early December by presidential order. He was replaced by Grenville Dodge, who had recovered from the wound to his forehead taken in front of Atlanta in July.
Sam Curtis left his command in January 1865. The War Department had shown little appreciation for his chase after Price, and the newspapers were so full of Sherman and his exploits that Curtis got no attention there either. Given that the war was really being won elsewhere that couldn't have been much of a surprise, but it still grated. He requested a transfer and it was promptly granted. Curtis ended up in Milwaukee in command of the Department of the Northwest. As if to add to add insult to injury, no replacement was sent to his old command; it was simply eliminated, the war there being all but over, and incorporated into Dodge's Department of the Missouri.
* The Confederate scrapheap ironclad ALBEMARLE had done a very good job of savaging Union gunboats in the North Carolina tidewater in the spring of 1864, and though the ALBEMARLE was no longer venturing far from her moorings up the Roanoke River, she still was a threat to Federal forces in the region. Various attempts were made to destroy the ironclad, but the vessel was heavily protected. When Rear Admiral Samuel P. Lee, in command of the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, heard that the rebels were working on two more scrapheap ironclads upriver from the ALBEMARLE, he decided that unorthodox measures were required.
He sent for 21-year-old Lieutenant William B. Cushing, who had conducted a number of daring raids behind enemy lines. Cushing was the younger brother of Army Lieutenant Alonso Cushing, killed in command of a battery at Gettysburg. William Cushing had not originally seemed such promising leadership material, having been forced to resign from the US Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1861 for "unruly conduct", but when war came, he signed up with the Navy as an enlisted and rose quickly. Cushing was too much of a man of action to have excelled in the in the structured environment of a military college; in modern terms, he would be described as a commando. He was supremely ambitious and all but fearless, determined to make a name for himself or die trying. He had a specific score to settle with the ALBEMARLE, since Captain Charles Flusser, killed during the rebel ironclad's foray on 5 May, had been a good friend.
Cushing considered several options for dealing with the ALBEMARLE, but he finally settled on a 30 foot (9.2 meter) long steam-powered launch, with shallow draft and a quiet engine, fitted with a spar torpedo. After a series of false starts, Cushing and a crew of 14 volunteers finally took the little torpedo boat up the Roanoke just before midnight on 27 October 1864.
The ALBEMARLE was eight miles (thirteen kilometers) upstream, heavily guarded and protected by a log boom. The raiders arrived there at about 3:00 AM. Challenged by sentries, the crew of the torpedo boat gave a flippant answer. The guards opened fire; Cushing drove the torpedo boat over the boom, shoved the spar torpedo into the side of the ironclad, and then yanked the lanyard cord to detonate the charge while bullets nicked his coat. There was a tremendous explosion that blew a huge hole in the ALBEMARLE beneath the waterline, swamping the launch at the same instant the ironclad fired a burst of grapeshot into it. The crew of the launch abandoned ship. A few were killed, most were taken prisoner, but Cushing and one of the other raiders managed to escape to safety.
With the ALBEMARLE sitting on the mud on the bottom of the river, the town of Plymouth was unprotected. The Federals retook the place on 31 October, when the rebels pulled out of their defenses after a bombardment by Union gunboats. The town of Washington fell a few days later. The rebels burned the other two ironclads they were building upriver to prevent their capture. However, the Federals did not press their advantage, returning to the old pattern of raids and vandalism.
Cushing was personally commended by the US Congress at the suggestion of the President, and received a promotion to lieutenant commander as well as a prize of $56,000. David Farragut described him as "the hero of the war". Cushing rose rapidly after that, becoming the youngest full commander in the Navy eight years later, but two years after that he died in a government asylum for the insane, leaving public commentators wondering what odd connection of circumstance and fortune could have brought a young man so high, and then cast him down so quickly and completely.
* After the raider FLORIDA had managed to slip the US Navy in early 1863 and taken to the seas, her new captain, Lieutenant Charles M. Morris, took 13 more Yankee vessels, adding to the 23 taken by his predecessor, John Maffitt. With the war clearly going against the Confederacy on land, rising Union naval strength was also making life hard for Confederate raiders at sea. The raiders were still a sufficient irritant to make Federal captains take extraordinary actions.
On 4 October 1864, the FLORIDA docked in Bahia, Brazil, to rest and refit. The Federal steam sloop WACHUSETT, of the same class as the KEARSARGE, had been in pursuit of the raider. Following intelligence that the FLORIDA was steaming to Bahia, the captain of the WACHUSETT, Commander Napoleon Collins, had managed to get there ahead of Morris and was already docked. Following the approach that Winslow had taken with Semmes at Cherbourg, Collins sent a message to Morris to challenge him to a duel in international waters. Morris refused to even accept the message, since it was addressed to "the sloop FLORIDA", as if the Confederacy didn't exist.
Collins decided to take other measures. Morris felt secure in Bahia harbor, letting most of the crew ashore on leave and taking no precautions for action, such as having any guns loaded or the steam up. Morris himself was ashore when, in the dark hours of the morning on 7 October 1864, the WACHUSETT rammed the FLORIDA. The raider was damaged, but not fatally, so Union sailors boarded it and overwhelmed the skeleton crew on board. The WACHUSETT towed the raider out to sea as Morris watched helplessly from shore. The FLORIDA was taken north to Hampton Roads, arriving on 12 November.
The action resulted in loud protests from Brazil and the major European nations. The US government apologized and promised to return the FLORIDA to Brazil, but before this could be arranged the raider suffered a collision with a transport vessel and sank -- or plausibly was made to sink, though unsurprisingly there are no records proving this. Collins was court-martialed and dismissed from the service. Gideon Welles, who had no liking for the old military tradition of "no good deed goes unpunished", then immediately overturned the verdict, restored him to command, and soon made him a captain. In 1866, the US sent a gunboat to Brazil to fire a 21-gun salute for the Brazilian Emperor's birthday, and all was cordial again.
