53. Lee to Davis, Aug. 8, 1863, in Dowdey and Manarin, eds., Wartime Papers of R. E. Lee, 589–90.
54. Jones, War Clerk's Diary (Miers), 238, 239; Betty L. Mitchell, Edmund Ruffin: A Biography (Bloomington, 1981), 231; Vandiver, ed., Diary of Gorgas, 55.
22
Johnny Reb's Chattanooga Blues
I
Lincoln also believed that the victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg had set the Confederacy tottering. One more push might topple it. "If General Meade can complete his work . . . by the literal or substantial destruction of Lee's army," said the president on July 7, "the rebellion will be over."1 But Lincoln was doomed to disappointment. Although Lee was in a tight spot after Gettysburg, the old Gray Fox once again gave the blue hounds the slip.
It was a near thing, however. A Union cavalry raid wrecked the Confederate pontoon bridge across the Potomac, and days of heavy rain that began July 4 made the swollen river unfordable. The rebels were compelled to stand at bay with their backs to the Potomac while engineers tore down warehouses to build a new bridge. The tired soldiers fortified a defensive perimeter at Williamsport and awaited Yankee attack. But no attack came. Having given Lee a two-day head start from Gettysburg, Meade did not get his reinforced army into line facing the Confederates at Williamsport until July 12. In Washington an "anxious and impatient" Lincoln awaited word of Lee's destruction. As the days passed and no word arrived, the president grew angry. When Meade finally telegraphed on July 12 that he intended "to attack them tomorrow, unless
1. CWL, VI, 319.
something intervenes," Lincoln commented acidly: "They will be ready to fight a magnificent battle when there is no enemy there to fight."2 Events proved him right. A pretended deserter (a favorite southern ruse) had entered Union lines and reported Lee's army in fine fettle, eager for another fight. This reinforced Meade's wariness. He allowed a majority of his corps commanders to talk him out of attacking on the 13th. When the Army of the Potomac finally groped forward on July 14, it found nothing but a rear guard. The slippery rebels had vanished across a patched-together bridge during the night.
"Great God!" cried Lincoln when he heard this news. "What does it mean? . . . There is bad faith somewhere. . . . Our Army held the war in the hollow of their hand & they would not close it." Lincoln's estimate of the situation at Williamsport was not quite accurate. An attack on the strong Confederate position might have succeeded—with heavy casualties—or it might not. In either case, the destruction of Lee's veteran army was scarcely a sure thing. When word of Lincoln's dissatisfaction reached Meade, the testy general offered his resignation. But Lincoln could hardly afford to sack the victor of Gettysburg, so he refused to accept it. On July 14 he sat down to write Meade a soothing letter. "I am very—very—grateful to you for the magnificent success you gave the cause of the country at Gettysburg," said the president. But as his pen scratched on, Lincoln's distress at the presumed lost opportunity took over. "My dear general, I do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune involved in Lee's escape. He was within your easy grasp, and to have closed upon him would, in connection with our other late successes, have ended the war. As it is, the war will be prolonged indefinitely." Upon reflection, Lincoln concluded that this letter was unlikely to mollify Meade, so he did not send it. And the war continued.3
Lincoln's temper soon recovered. In early August his secretary John Hay wrote that "the Tycoon is in fine whack. I have seldom seen him more serene."4 The president's spirits had been buoyed by the "other late successes" he noted in the unsent letter to Meade. These successes included victories west of the Mississippi and Rosecrans's expulsion of
2. Dennett, Lincoln/Hay, 66; O.R., Ser. I, Vol. 22, pt. 1, p. 91; David Homer Bates, Lincoln in the Telegraph Office (New York, 1907), 157.
3. The Diary of Gideon Welles, ed. Howard K. Beale, 3 vols. (New York, 1960), I, 370; Dennett, Lincoln/Hay, 69, 67; CWL, VI, 327–28.
4. Dennett, Lincoln/Hay, 76.
Bragg's army from middle Tennessee as well as the capture of Vicksburg and Port Hudson.
The transfer of Van Dorn's Confederate army to Mississippi in the spring of 1862 had left northern Arkansas shorn of defenders. Samuel R. Curtis's small Union force began advancing toward Little Rock, slowed only by skittish militia and harassing guerrillas. Into the Confederate breach stepped Thomas C. Hindman, a political general five feet tall who made up in energy what he lacked in size. Hindman enforced conscription with a will that created a 20,000-man army of lukewarm Arkansans, hardened Texans, and Missouri guerrillas. This force deflected the enemy campaign against Little Rock and went over to the offensive in the fall, driving the Federals northward almost to Missouri. But then the initiative went over to the Yankees. Their leader was General James G. Blunt, a Maine-born Kansas abolitionist who had learned his fighting with John Brown. While Blunt and Hindman were sparring in northwest Arkansas during the first week of December, two small Union divisions marched no miles in three days from Missouri to help Blunt. Turning to attack this force at Prairie Grove on December 7, Hindman suddenly found himself attacked in front and flank by three converging Yankee divisions. Forced to retreat in freezing weather, the diminutive Arkansan watched helplessly as his conscript army melted away.
In the spring of 1863 Jefferson Davis reorganized the trans-Mississippi Department by assigning overall command to Edmund Kirby Smith and sending Sterling Price to Little Rock. Both generals did well with their small resources. Kirby Smith turned the trans-Mississippi into a virtually autonomous region after it was cut off from the rest of the Confederacy by the loss of Vicksburg. But Price could not stop the blue invaders who advanced toward Little Rock from two directions in midsummer. Blunt led a multiracial force of white, black, and Indian regiments down the Arkansas River from Honey Springs in Indian Territory, where they had defeated a Confederate army of white and Indian regiments on July 17. In early September Blunt occupied Fort Smith, while another Union army approached Little Rock from the east and captured it on September 10. The rebels fled to the southwest corner of the state, yielding three-quarters of Arkansas to Union control—though southern guerrillas and the small number of occupation troops made that control tenuous in large areas.
Gratifying to Lincoln as these results were, they took second place to events in Tennessee. Northern progress in that theater had been exasperatingly slow. All through the spring of 1863 the administration had been urging Rosecrans to advance in concert with Grant's movements in Mississippi and Hooker's in Virginia. This would achieve Lincoln's strategy of concurrent pressure on all main Confederate armies to prevent one of them from reinforcing another. But Rosecrans balked like a sulky mule. The memory of the New Year's Eve bloodbath at Stones River convinced him that he must not attack without sufficient resources to insure success. His delays enabled Bragg to send reinforcements to Mississippi, an action that increased Lincoln's exasperation. But when Rosecrans finally made his move on June 24, his careful planning produced a swift and almost bloodless success. Each of the four northern infantry corps and one cavalry corps burst through a different gap in the Cumberland foothills south of Murfreesboro. Having confused Bragg with feints, Rosecrans got strong forces on both Confederate flanks in the Duck River Valley. Despite constant rain that turned roads to gluten, the Yankees kept moving. One blue brigade of mounted infantry armed with seven-shot Spencer carbines got in the rebel rear and threatened to cut their rail lifeline. At the beginning of July, Bragg decided to fall back all the way to Chattanooga rather than risk a battle.
In little more than a week of marching and maneuvering, the Army of the Cumberland had driven its adversary eighty miles at the cost of only 570 casualties. Rosecrans was annoyed by Washington's apparent lack of appreciation. On July 7 Secretary of War Stanton sent Rosecrans a message informing him of "Lee's army overthrown; Grant victorious. You and your noble army now have the chance to give the finishing blow to the rebellion. Will you neglect the chance?" Rosecrans shot back: "You do not
appear to observe the fact that this noble army has driven the rebels from Middle Tennessee. . . . I beg in behalf of this army that the War Department may not overlook so great an event because it is not written in letters of blood."5
Southern newspapers agreed that Rosecrans's brief campaign was "masterful." Bragg confessed it "a great disaster" for the Confederates.6 His retreat offered two rich prizes to the Federals if they could keep up the momentum: Knoxville and Chattanooga. The former was the center
5. O.R., Ser. I, Vol. 23, pt. 2, p. 518.
6. Foote, Civil War, II, 674, 675.
of east Tennessee unionism, which Lincoln had been trying to redeem for two years. Chattanooga had great strategic value, for the only railroads linking the eastern and western parts of the Confederacy converged there in the gap carved through the Cumberlands by the Tennessee River. Having already cut the Confederacy in two by the capture of Vicksburg, Union forces could slice up the eastern portion by penetrating into Georgia via Chattanooga.
For these reasons Lincoln urged Rosecrans to push on to Chattanooga while he had the enemy off balance. From Kentucky General Burnside, now commanding the small Army of the Ohio, would move forward on Rosecrans's left flank against the 10,000 Confederate troops defending Knoxville. But once again Rosecrans dug in his heels. He could not advance until he had repaired the railroad and bridges in his rear, established a forward base, and accumulated supplies. July passed as General-in-Chief Halleck sent repeated messages asking and finally ordering Rosecrans to get moving. On August 16, after more delays, he did.
Rosecrans repeated the deceptive strategy of his earlier advance, feinting a crossing of the Tennessee above Chattanooga (where Bragg expected it) but sending most of his army across the river at three virtually undefended points below the city. Rosecrans's objective was the railroad from Atlanta. His 60,000 men struck toward it in three columns through gaps in the mountain ranges south of Chattanooga. At the same time, a hundred miles to the north Burnside's army of 24,000 also moved through mountain passes in four columns like the fingers of a hand reaching to grasp Knoxville. The outnumbered defenders, confronted by Yankees soldiers in front and unionist partisans in the rear, abandoned the city without firing a shot. Burnside rode into town on September 3 to the cheers of most citizens. His troops pushed patrols toward the North Carolina and Virginia borders to consolidate their hold on east Tennessee, while the rebel division that had evacuated Knoxville moved south to join Bragg just in time to participate in the evacuation of Chattanooga on September 8. With Rosecrans on his southern flank, Bragg had decided to pull back to northern Georgia before he could be trapped in this city enfolded by river and mountains.
"When will this year's calamities end?" asked a despairing Confederate official on September 13. Desertions from southern armies rose alarmingly. "There is no use fighting any longer no how," wrote a Georgia deserter after the evacuation of Chattanooga, "for we are done gon up the Spout." Jefferson Davis confessed himself to be "in the depths of gloom. . . . We are now in the darkest hour of our political existence."7
But it had been almost as dark after Union victories in early 1862, until Jackson and Lee had rekindled southern hopes. Davis was determined to make history repeat itself. Lee had turned the war around by attacking McClellan; Davis instructed Bragg to try the same strategy against Rosecrans. To aid that effort, two divisions had already joined Bragg from Joseph Johnston's idle army in Mississippi. This brought Bragg's numbers almost equal to Rosecrans's. In view of the low morale in the Army of Tennessee, though, Davis knew this was not enough. Having once before called on Lee to command at the point of greatest crisis, the president tried to do so again. But Lee demurred at Davis's request that he go south in person to take over Bragg's augmented army. The Virginian also objected at first to Longstreet's renewed proposal to reinforce Bragg with his corps. Instead, Lee wanted to take the offensive against Meade on the Rappahannock, where the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac had been shadow-boxing warily since Gettysburg. But this time Davis overruled Lee and ordered Long-street to Georgia with two of his divisions (the third, Pickett's, had not yet recovered from Gettysburg). The first of Longstreet's 12,000 veterans entrained on September 9. Because of Burnside's occupation of east Tennessee, the direct route of 550 miles was closed off. Instead, the soldiers had to make a roundabout 900-mile excursion through both Carolinas and Georgia over eight or ten different lines. Only half of Longstreet's men got to Chickamauga Creek in time for the ensuing battle—but they helped win a stunning victory over Longstreet's old West Point roommate Rosecrans.
With help on the way, Bragg went over to the offensive. To lure Rosecrans's three separated columns through the mountains where he could pounce on them individually in the valley south of Chattanooga, Bragg sent sham deserters into Union lines bearing tales of Confederate retreat. Rosecrans took the bait and pushed forward too eagerly. But Bragg's subordinates failed to spring the traps. Three times from September 10 to 13 Bragg ordered attacks by two or more divisions against outnumbered and isolated fragments of the enemy. But each time the general assigned to make the attack, considering his orders discretionary, found reasons for not doing so. Warned by these maneuvers, Rosecrans
7. Jones, War Clerk's Diary (Swiggett), II, 43; Wiley, Johnny Reb, 131; Rowland, Davis, V, 548, 554.
concentrated his army in the valley of West Chickamauga Creek during the third week of September.
Angered by the intractability of his generals—who in turn distrusted his judgment—Bragg nevertheless devised a new plan to turn Rose-crans's left, cut him off from Chattanooga, and drive him southward up a dead-end valley. With the arrival on September 18 of the first of Longstreet's troops under the fighting Texan John Bell Hood with his arm in a sling from a Gettysburg wound, Bragg was assured of numerical superiority. If he had been able to launch his attack that day, he might have succeeded in rolling up Rosecrans's flank, for only one Union corps stood in his way. But Yankee cavalry with repeating carbines blunted the rebels' sluggish advance. That night Virginia-born George Thomas's large Union corps made a forced march to strengthen the Union left. Soon after dawn on September 19, enemy patrols bumped into each other just west of Chickamauga Creek, setting off what became the bloodiest battle in the western theater.
Bragg persisted in trying to turn the Union left. All through the day the rebels made savage division-size attacks mostly against Thomas's corps through woods and undergrowth so thick that units could not see or cooperate with each other. Rosecrans fed reinforcements to Thomas who held the enemy to minimal gains, at harsh cost to both sides. That evening Longstreet arrived personally with two more of his brigades. Bragg organized his army into two wings, gave Longstreet command of the left and Leonidas Polk of the right, and ordered them to make an echelon attack next morning from right to left. Polk's assault started several hours late—a failing that had become a habit—and made little headway against Thomas's stubborn defenders fighting behind breastworks they had built overnight. Exasperated, Bragg canceled the echelon order of attack and told Longstreet to go forward with everything he had. At 11:30 a.m. Longstreet complied, and charged into one of the greatest pieces of luck in the war.
Over on the Union side, Rosecrans had been shifting reinforcements to his hard-pressed left. During this confusing process a staff officer, failing to see a blue division concealed in the woods on the right, reported a quarter-mile gap in the line at that point. To fill this supposedly dangerous hole, Rosecrans ordered another division to move over, thus creating a real gap in an effort to remedy a nonexistent one. Into this breach unwittingly marched Longstreet's veterans from the Army of Northern Virginia, catching the Yankees on either side in the flank and spreading a growing panic. More gray soldiers poured into the break,
rolling up Rosecrans's right and sending one-third of the blue army—along with four division commanders, two corps commanders, and a traumatized Rosecrans whose headquarters had been overrun—streaming northward towar
d Chattanooga eight miles away. Here were the makings of the decisive victory that had eluded western Confederate armies for more than two years.
Recognizing the opportunity, Longstreet sent in his reserves and called on Bragg for reinforcements. But the commander said he could not spare a man from his fought-out right, so a disgusted Longstreet had to make the final push with what he had. By this time, however, the Federals had formed a new line along a ridge at right angles to their old one. George Thomas took charge of what was left of the army and organized it for a last-ditch stand. For his leadership this day he won fame as the Rock of Chickamauga. Thomas got timely help from another northern battle hero, Gordon Granger, commander of the Union reserve division posted several miles to the rear. On his own initiative Granger marched toward the sound of the guns and arrived just in time for his men to help stem Longstreet's repeated onslaughts. As the sun went down, Thomas finally disengaged his exhausted troops for a nighttime retreat to Chattanooga. There the two parts of the army—those who had fled and those who had stood—were reunited to face an experience unique for Union forces, the defense of a besieged city.
Longstreet and Forrest wanted to push on next morning to complete the destruction of Rosecrans's army before it could reorganize behind the Chattanooga fortifications. But Bragg was more appalled by the wastage of his own army than impressed by the magnitude of its victory. In two days he had lost 20,000 killed, wounded, and missing—more than 30 percent of his effectives. Ten Confederate generals had been killed or wounded, including Hood who narrowly survived amputation of a leg. Although the rebels had made a rich haul in captured guns and equipment, Bragg's immediate concern was the ghastly spectacle of dead and wounded lying thick on the ground. Half of his artillery horses had also been killed. Thus he refused to heed the pleas of his lieutenants for a rapid pursuit—a refusal that laid the groundwork for bitter recriminations that swelled into an uproar during the coming weeks. "What does he fight battles for?" asked an angry Forrest, and soon many others in the South were asking the same question. The tactical triumph at Chickamauga seemed barren of strategic results so long as the enemy held Chattanooga.8
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