In the pre-dawn darkness of December 11, Union engineers began laying three pontoon bridges at Fredericksburg and three more a couple of miles downstream. Covered by artillery, the downstream bridge-builders did their job without trouble. But in Fredericksburg a brigade of Mississippians firing from buildings and rifle-pits picked off the engineers as soon as it became light enough to see. Federal artillery shelled the buildings (most civilians had been evacuated) but the rebel snipers continued to fire from the rubble. Three blue regiments finally crossed in boats and drove them away in house-to-house fighting. After the rest of the army crossed, northern soldiers looted the town, smashing "rebel" furniture, pianos, glassware, and anything else they could find in the abandoned houses.
For many of the looters it was the last night of their lives. The battle of Fredericksburg on December 13 once again pitted great valor in the Union ranks and mismanagement by their commanders against stout fighting and effective generalship on the Confederate side. Burnside's tactics called for the left wing under General William B. Franklin to assault the Confederate right commanded by Jackson while the Union right tapped Longstreet's defenses on Marye's Heights behind the town. If Franklin managed to roll up Jackson's flank, the Union probe on the right could be converted into a real attack. Whatever slim prospects this plan had were marred by Burnside's confusing written orders to Franklin and the latter's failure to push ahead with his 50,000 infantrymen when opportunity offered.
The fog lifted at mid-morning on December 13 to reveal the panoply of Franklin's men advancing across the plain south of Lee's hilltop
8. James Longstreet, "The Battle of Fredericksburg," Battles and Leaders, III, 79.
headquarters. These Federals soon assaulted Jackson's position on Prospect Hill. A division of Pennsylvanians commanded by George Gordon Meade found a seam in Jackson's line along a wooded ravine and penetrated the Confederate defenses. Here was a potential breakthrough if supporting troops were thrown in—but Franklin failed to throw them in. Southern reserves double-timed forward and counterattacked, driving the Pennsylvanians out of the woods and into the open until halted by Union artillery. Watching anxiously from his command post, Lee sighed with relief as his men repaired the breach, and said to Longstreet: "It is well that war is so terrible—we should grow too fond of it!"9
Franklin never got more than half of his men into action and did not renew the attack despite orders from Burnside to do so. Meanwhile the initial probe by the Union right had turned into a series of brigade-size attacks as courageous and hopeless as anything in the war. Wave after wave of blue soldiers poured out of the town toward Marye's Heights. Channeled by ravines, a marsh, and a drainage ditch toward a sunken road fronted by a half-mile long stone fence at the base of the hill, these waves broke fifty yards short of the fence, each one leaving hundreds of dead and dying men as it receded. Behind the fence stood four ranks of Georgians and North Carolinians loading and shooting so fast that their firing achieved the effect of machine guns. Still the Yankees surged forward through the short but endless December afternoon, fourteen brigades in all. "It can hardly be in human nature for men to show more valor," wrote a newspaper reporter, "or generals to manifest less judgment."10
When the early twilight finally turned to darkness the Union army had suffered one of its worst defeats of the war. Nearly 13,000 Federals were casualties—about the same number as at Antietam—most of them in front of the stone wall at the base of Marye's Heights. Fighting on the defensive behind good cover, the Confederates suffered fewer than 5,000 casualties. Distraught by the disaster, Burnside wanted personally to lead a desperation charge by his old 9th Corps next day but came to his senses and withdrew the army unmolested across the river on the stormy night of December 15.
Yet another drive "on to Richmond" had come to grief. Fredericks-burg brought home the horrors of war to northerners more vividly, perhaps,
9. Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee: A Biography, 4 vols. (New York, 1934–35), II, 462.
10. Foote, Civil War, II, 44.
than any previous battle. The carpet of bodies in front of the stone wall left an indelible mark in the memory of one soldier who helped bury the dead during a truce on December 15. The corpses were "swollen to twice their natural size, black as Negroes in most cases." Here lay "one without a head, there one without legs, yonder a head and legs without a trunk . . . with fragments of shell sticking in oozing brain, with bullet holes all over the puffed limbs."11 This terrible cost with nothing accomplished created a morale crisis in the army and on the homefront. Soldiers wrote home that "my loyalty is growing weak. . . . I am sick and tired of disaster and the fools that bring disaster upon us. . . . All think Virginia is not worth such a loss of life. . . . Why not confess we are worsted, and come to an agreement?" The people "have borne, silently and grimly, imbecility, treachery, failure, privation, loss of friends," declared the normally staunch Harper's Weekly," but they cannot be expected to suffer that such massacres as this at Fredericksburg shall be repeated."12 Burnside manfully took the blame, but Lincoln himself became the target for much of the criticism: "He is ignorant, self-willed . . . incompetent." "If there is a worse place than Hell," said the president upon learning of the disaster at Fredericksburg, "I am in it."13
These were dark days in Washington. Strange rumors swept the capital: the whole cabinet would resign, to be replaced by War Democrats; or Lincoln himself would resign in favor of Hannibal Hamlin; or McClellan would be recalled to head a military government; or radical Republicans were plotting a coup to reorganize the cabinet. This last rumor contained some truth. On December 16 and 17, Republican senators met in caucus and with but one dissenting vote decided to urge a reorganization of the cabinet. Seward was the intended victim of this move, which reflected the conflict between conservative and radical Republicans symbolized by a cabinet rivalry between Seward and Chase. Playing a deep game that he hoped might land him a future presidential
11. Ibid., 43.
12. Soldiers quoted in Bruce Catton, Glory Road: The Bloody Route from Fredericksburg to Gettysburg (Garden City, N.Y., 1952), 95, and in Randall Clair Jimerson, "A People Divided: The Civil War Interpreted by Participants," Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1977, p. 339; Harper's Weekly, Dec. 27, 1862.
13. George Bancroft quoted in Bruce Catton, Never Call Retreat: Centennial History of the Civil War, vol. 3 (Pocket Books ed., New York, 1967), 24; Lincoln quoted in William H. Wadsworth to Samuel L. M. Barlow, Dec. 16, 1862, Barlow Papers, Henry E. Huntington Library.
nomination, Chase had helped create an impression that Seward exercised undue influence over the president. This influence was said to have inhibited the prosecution of vigorous war measures including emancipation, black soldiers, and the appointment of antislavery generals.
Lincoln was "more distressed" by news of the senatorial caucus "than by any event of my life." "What do these men want?" he asked a friend. "They wish to get rid of me, and sometimes I am more than half disposed to gratify them. . . . We are now on the brink of destruction. It appears to me that the Almighty is against us."14 But the president pulled himself together and handled the affair in a manner that ultimately strengthened his leadership. On December 19 he met with a delegation of Republican senators and listened to speeches "attributing to Mr. Seward a lukewarmness in the conduct of the war." Seward had already offered to resign, but Lincoln did not reveal this. Instead he invited the delegation back next day, when they were surprised to find the whole cabinet (except Seward) on hand. Lincoln defended the absent secretary of state and asserted that all members of the cabinet had supported major policy decisions, for which he as president was solely responsible. Lincoln turned to the cabinet for confirmation. Put on the spot, Chase could only mumble assent. Deflated and embarrassed, the senators departed. Next day a chagrined Chase offered his resignation. Lincoln was now master of the situation. The senators could not get rid of Seward without losing Chase as well. The president refused both resigna
tions. The stormy political atmosphere in Washington began to clear. Though military prospects remained bleak, Lincoln had warded off a threat to his political right flank—for the time being.15
II
Jefferson Davis also encountered vexing problems during the winter of 1862–63. While Lincoln faced down senators in Washington, Davis traveled to Tennessee and Mississippi to confront generals about military contretemps in those theaters. In November, Joseph E. Johnston
14. Theodore C. Pease and James G. Randall, eds., The Diary of Orville Hickman Browning, 2 vols. (Springfield, Ill., 1927–33), I, 600–601.
15. For contemporary accounts of this crisis, see ibid., 596–604, and Howard K. Beale, ed., The Diary of Gideon Welles, 3 vols. (New York, 1960), I, 194–204. For secondary accounts, see Nevins, War, II, 350–65, and James G. Randall, Lincoln the President, 4 vols. (New York, 1945–55), II, 241–49.
had reported himself ready for duty after recovering from his Seven Pines wounds. Because of his earlier differences with Davis, Johnston had become a rallying point for some of the president's critics. Perhaps to confound these critics, Davis on November 24 named Johnston "plenary commander" of a newly formed Department of the West embracing everything between the Mississippi and the Appalachians. Although this new department appeared impressive on paper, Johnston glumly appraised the appointment as an attempt to put him on the shelf with a "nominal and useless" command.16 This was unfair, because Davis really did want someone to take charge of the strategic problem in the West. Johnston regarded the task as thankless, in part because the Army of Tennessee at Murfreesboro was still riven by dissension between Bragg and his corps commanders, while the new head of the Army of Mississippi at Vicksburg was unpopular because of his nativity. He was John C. Pemberton, an artillery expert whom Davis had transferred in October from command of the defenses of Charleston to those of Vicksburg. A native of Philadelphia who had become an adoptive southerner by marrying a Virginian, the curt and crusty Pemberton had compiled no combat record that justified to Mississippians the assignment of this "Yankee" to defend their state. Indeed, it is hard to understand why Davis appointed him (instead, for example, of sending Johnston to Vicksburg) except as a way of making room for another problem general, Beauregard. The colorful Creole took Pemberton's place at Charleston, where he had become a hero by firing on Fort Sumter and starting the war.
This kettle of catfish in the West prompted Davis to rise from a sickbed to make a December journey to the afflicted theaters. Instead of straightening matters out, however, this trip in some respects made them worse. Without consulting Johnston, Davis ordered a 7,500-man division in Bragg's army transferred to Pemberton. When Bragg and Johnston protested that this would encourage Rosecrans's army at Nashville to attack the weakened Army of Tennessee, Davis responded that Pemberton faced even longer odds and that holding Vicksburg was more vital than defending middle Tennessee. Accompanying Davis to Vicksburg, Johnston disapproved of Pemberton's defensive arrangements and urged a
16. Joseph E. Johnston, "Jefferson Davis and the Mississippi Campaign," Battles and Leaders, II, 475. See also James Lee McDonough, Stones River: Bloody Winter in Tennessee (Knoxville, 1980), 33–38.
shorter fortified line that could be held by a skeleton force to free most of the army for mobile operations. Johnston also believed that the main Confederate army in Mississippi was too small for success, and urged its reinforcement from across the river even if this meant the temporary loss of Arkansas. Though Davis suggested that the Arkansas commander send troops to Vicksburg, he did not order it—and it was not done. Johnston tried to resign his nugatory post. The president persuaded him to stay on, but their lack of mutual confidence and their differing concepts of strategy boded ill for the future.
For the short term, however, Confederate prospects in the West suddenly took a turn for the better. Applying the previous summer's successful formula, rebel cavalry raids on Union supply lines disrupted Grant's first Vicksburg campaign and came close to wrecking Rosecrans's drive against Bragg.
After the battle of Corinth in October, Grant had launched an invasion southward along the Mississippi Central Railroad to capture Vicksburg. Establishing a forward base at Holly Springs, Grant with 40,000 men had advanced to Oxford by early December. But one enemy in front and two in the rear threatened his further progress. In front, Pemberton entrenched 20,000 men along the Yalabusha River at Grenada. Behind Grant, 150 miles of railroad offered a tempting target to enemy cavalry. Deep in his rear—all the way back to Illinois, in fact—Grant faced a potential threat from his former subordinate John A. McClernand, a political general who was organizing a separate army to proceed down the Mississippi for its own attack on Vicksburg. A War Democrat from Lincoln's home state, McClernand had managed to persuade the president that he could rekindle the patriotism of Democrats in the Old Northwest if given an independent command. Without informing Grant, Lincoln told McClernand to go ahead. With great energy fueled by dreams of military glory, McClernand recruited and forwarded to Memphis dozens of new regiments during the fall. Grant got wind of this activity and requested clarification of his authority. General-in-Chief Halleck, who shared Grant's reservations about McClernand, wired Grant that he had full control of all troops in his department. Halleck also ordered the divisions organized by McClernand formed into two corps to be commanded by McClernand and Sherman. When McClernand learned of this, he protested bitterly to Lincoln that a West Point conspiracy had defrauded him of his army. Lincoln upheld Grant and Halleck, however, and advised McClernand for his own good and the good of the country to obey orders and get on with the war.17
McClernand's greatest humiliation occurred when he arrived at Memphis on December 28 to find his troops gone. Grant had again outwitted the political general in the game of army politics, with an unwitting assist from none other than Nathan Bedford Forrest. When Grant learned of the new troops arriving at Memphis he sent Sherman to prepare them for a downriver expedition against Vicksburg in tandem with Grant's overland invasion. This two-pronged drive, if successful, would force Pemberton to divide his outnumbered forces and enable the Federal pincers to close on Vicksburg by land and by river. If McClernand reached Memphis before the river expedition left, he would take command by reason of seniority. Sherman therefore sped his preparations and got off on December 20. Meanwhile Grant's telegram to Illinois informing McClernand of the expedition's imminent departure was delayed because a raid by Forrest had cut Grant's communications.
Grant had little reason to feel thankful to Forrest, however, because this action and another simultaneous cavalry raid by Van Dorn brought Grant's first Vicksburg campaign to grief. Forrest rode westward from central Tennessee in mid-December with 2,000 men. Picking up local guerrillas along the way, Forrest outfought, outmaneuvered, or out-bluffed several Union garrisons and cavalry detachments while tearing up fifty miles of railroad and telegraph line, capturing or destroying great quantities of equipment, and inflicting 2,000 Union casualties. The rebels lost only 500 men, who were more than replaced with new recruits attracted by Forrest's hell-for-leather tactics and inspiring leadership. While this was going on, Earl Van Dorn with another cavalry force of 3,500 rode northward from Grenada, circled behind Grant's army, and wrecked the poorly-defended supply depot at Holly Springs on December 20. For good measure Van Dorn tore up several sections of the railroad and returned to Confederate lines before Union horsemen could catch up with him.
Dangling deep in enemy territory without a supply line, Grant called off his advance on Vicksburg. During the retreat to Tennessee the army lived off food and forage seized along the way. Grant was "amazed at the quantity of supplies the country afforded. It showed that we could have subsisted off the country for two months. . . . This taught me a
17. CWL, VI, 70–71; Bruce Catton, Grant Moves South (Boston, 1960), 323–340.
lesson."18 Grant and Sherman would apply the lesson with spectacular results in the future, but just now Grant's retreat
left Sherman out on a limb. The latter had taken his (and McClernand's) corps up the Yazoo River a few miles north of Vicksburg for an assault on the Confederate defenses overlooking Chickasaw Bayou. This morass of swamps and waterways offered the only route to high and dry ground for an attack on the northside land defenses of Vicksburg itself. Sherman's plans were based on the assumption that Grant's simultaneous advance would occupy most of Pemberton's troops. The downed telegraph lines prevented Grant from informing Sherman of his withdrawal. On December 29 Sherman managed to get two-thirds of his 32,000 men across the narrow causeways and through the sloughs for an assault on the bluffs. The 14,000 dug-in defenders knocked them down like tenpins. After losing nearly 1,800 men (to the Confederates' 200), Sherman called it quits. The battered and water-logged bluecoats pulled back to the Mississippi a dozen miles above Vicksburg. News of this repulse added to the gloomy mood in the North.
But tidings soon arrived from Tennessee that relieved some of Lincoln's distress. Since taking over the Union Army of the Cumberland in late October, William S. Rosecrans had built up supplies and reorganized his troops for an advance. Rosecrans was a study in paradox: a man of bulldog courage, he seemed reluctant to get into a fight; slow and methodical in preparation, he moved quickly once he started; a convivial drinking man, he was a devout Catholic who loved to argue theology with his staff officers. Rosecrans had gotten his job because Buell was too cautious; Lincoln prodded Old Rosy to march against the rebels at Murfreesboro forthwith if he wanted to keep the job. After exasperating delays, Rosecrans's 42,000 men finally moved out from Nashville the day after Christmas for the showdown with Bragg's Army of Tennessee.
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