The Commanders

by Robert M. Utley

  On September 5, while advancing in sweltering heat across the broad Spokane Plain, Wright’s troops fought a seven-hour battle with aggressive parties of mounted warriors. Ord’s company joined with his own battalion as skirmishers in front of the main column, at one point dashing through flames where the Indians had fired the dry grass. Again the troops were victorious. Indian casualties are unknown, but the Battle of Spokane Plain forced the tribes to sue for peace. Wright’s heavy hand singled out the men who were judged to have committed depredations and led in the Steptoe affair and hanged fifteen. For Captain Ord, the Yakima War marked the close of his service in the Pacific Northwest. In November 1858 his company was dissolved and the officers transferred to the artillery school at Fort Monroe, Virginia.

  Captain Ord was now an experienced Indian fighter. At both Four Lakes and Spokane Plain he had distinguished himself, his battalion being cited for gallantry. In earlier operations, especially the Rogue River War, he had also conducted himself creditably. He was now a mature man of forty with a growing family, of average build and military posture, with a head of bushy white hair and a neat white mustache. Ord was dedicated to his profession, aggressive, outspoken, and competent to follow it to its conclusion.

  At Fort Monroe’s artillery school Ord held the post of superintendent of practical instruction, which in both the field and the classroom was almost the equivalent of school superintendent. School duties were interrupted in October 1859 when John Brown’s raid on the Harper’s Ferry Arsenal brought orders to march the Fort Monroe troops to the aid of Colonel Robert E. Lee in suppressing the raiders. Lee, however, achieved that before Ord arrived, so Ord returned to Fort Monroe.

  CIVIL WAR

  The secession crisis following the election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency in November 1860 plunged Captain Ord into the controversies torturing the country. As a native of Maryland, he considered himself a Southerner: his sentiments rested with the South. Abolitionists angered him, and he regarded black people as fitted for little beyond slavery. As the Fort Sumter crisis evolved, he made his views on proper strategy known in high places. In March 1861, however, orders to take command of his company sent him back to the Pacific. Far from the action in California, he was anxious to be at its center. He mobilized all his influential friends, in the army and out, to seek a promotion. The crucial figure turned out to be an old friend in the Adjutant General’s office, Major Julius P. Garesché. Garesché’s manipulation led in September 1861 to a commission as brigadier general of Volunteers. He at once gathered his family and headed east.

  As a Democrat and an avowed Southerner, whose wife Molly came from a slave-holding family and had relatives in the Confederate Army, General Ord had to endure doubts about his loyalty to the Union. Throughout the Civil War, as he rose in prominence, newspaper articles, hostile officers, and rumor forced him to defend his loyalty. That proved more aggravating than difficult, because his strong Union record, both in words and in deeds, belied the doubts.

  Brigadier General Ord was assigned a brigade in a division holding the right flank of the Union line protecting Washington. On December 21, 1861, he led his men in a probing march west toward the Confederate lines. At Dranesville, Virginia, he collided with a force under Confederate cavalry general J. E. B. Stuart. In the resulting battle Ord’s infantry (and especially his artillery) drove the Confederates from the field. The clash was strategically insignificant, but it was the first Union victory in the East. It brought Ord a brevet of lieutenant colonel in the Regular Army (he was already a major) and promotion to major general of Volunteers on May 2, 1862.4

  Despite his new rank, Ord clashed with his next commander, General Irvin McDowell. McDowell was to march south from Manassas to cooperate with General George B. McClellan in the Peninsular Campaign. Ord commanded a newly organized division and at once came under hostile scrutiny due to McDowell’s irascible temperament. When Stonewall Jackson marched down the Shenandoah Valley en route to threaten Washington, Ord’s division was diverted to the valley. Ord’s feud with McDowell escalated, and Ord asked to be transferred or relieved. When this was denied, he claimed illness and relinquished command of his division. Ord’s petulant unmilitary behavior at last led to his transfer in June 1862 to the western theater at Corinth, Mississippi.

  Ord reported to Major General Ulysses S. Grant in Corinth and was assigned to command the Second Division of the Army of the Tennessee. In September Ord held the center of Grant’s extended line, with his old California friend William T. Sherman on his right at Memphis and General William S. Rosecrans on the left at Corinth. On September 19, 1862, in a complex maneuver designed to trap the army of General Sterling Price, Ord was left out of the fight due to Rosecrans’s mistakes. Even so, Grant highly commended Ord for his behavior in the Battle of Iuka, and he received a brevet of colonel.

  Absent in Kentucky in early October, Ord learned of vicious fighting swirling around Corinth, with his division fighting under his second-in command, Major General Stephen A. Hurlbut. Ord rushed to join his troops and found them falling back before the retreat of the defeated General Earl Van Dorn. Ord turned the division around and confronted the Confederates at a bridge across the Hatchie River, where they made a stand. Ord prevailed in a hard-fought contest, driving the Confederates away from the bridge. He was on horseback in full uniform, strangely cloaked in a long white coat and low-cut shoes showing white socks. During the fight a bullet struck Ord’s leg, and he was borne from the field. A fellow officer offered his home in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, as a place to recuperate. A belated brevet of brigadier general in the Regular Army on March 13, 1865, recognized his service in the Battle of Hatchie.

  Ord’s leg had been shattered at Hatchie, and he could not get off crutches until late November. He wanted to return to Grant’s command, and Grant and Sherman had both asked for him, but make-work duties detained him until Ord forced the issue. On May 25, 1863, he received orders to report to Grant at Vicksburg.

  When Ord arrived at Grant’s headquarters on June 18, the Union fight for Vicksburg had progressed to the east side of the Mississippi River; driven Joseph E. Johnston out of the capital at Jackson, although without taking the city; and curled siege lines around Vicksburg’s eastern margins. Grant’s army numbered about fifty thousand men in three corps, commanded by Generals Sherman, John A. McClernand, and James B. McPherson. McClernand, a political general, had caused Grant serious trouble and failed to keep his siege lines at the same quality and level as those of Sherman on his right and McPherson on his left. On June 18, the very day Ord reported for duty, Grant relieved McClernand of command of Thirteenth Corps and replaced him with Ord. The Thirteenth Corps contained five divisions with fifteen thousand men—infantry, cavalry, and artillery.

  Ord pushed his corps to rectify McClernand’s failures, advancing his entrenchments to align with the other two corps, preparing proper field works, and mounting an occasional foray in front of his lines. By early July the siege lines had grown close enough, and the debility of the Vicksburg defenses and the hunger of its population had grown so obvious, that Grant planned a major assault on July 6. On June 3, however, Confederate general John C. Pemberton, after tedious negotiations in which Ord took part, surrendered Vicksburg.

  Jackson remained in Confederate hands, and General Johnston was still in the field. So Grant assigned Sherman to take three corps and operate against Johnston and the capital. Ord’s was one of the three corps. Skirmishing with Johnston’s men, the Union formation pushed to the outskirts of Jackson by July 10. Six days of bitter fighting finally drove Johnston from Jackson, with Ord’s corps playing a key role in the battle. One of his division commanders, however, disobeyed orders, blundered into an overwhelming defensive position, and got cut to pieces. Furious, Ord extricated the division from its predicament and relieved its commander.

  With the Vicksburg campaign triumphantly concluded, Grant’s army was broken up. Ord’s corps drew assignment to General Nathaniel Banks (anoth
er political general) in Louisiana. In October 1863, as Banks opened his ill-fated Red River campaign, Ord fell sick with a respiratory infection and had to yield his command. Returning to duty on February 16, 1864, he learned that General McClernand had been restored to command of the Thirteenth Corps, a severe blow both to the corps and to Ord.

  Grant, now lieutenant general commanding the army, brought Ord east and had him operate in the Shenandoah Valley. It went badly, due to incompetent generals, bad weather, and Ord’s own dissatisfaction. He asked to be relieved, which did his cause no good. Moreover, Ord was enduring another spate of questions about his loyalty, with Molly’s Southern ties thrown into the mix. General Jubal Early’s advance down the Shenandoah and into Maryland, however, saved Ord. Almost within sight of the capital, Early halted to fight a weak Union army under General Lew Wallace at Monacacy, Maryland. When President Lincoln lost confidence in Wallace, Grant substituted Ord in early July 1864. When Ord’s lines held, Early turned back to the Shenandoah.

  As Grant fought his way south and drew siege lines around Petersburg, Virginia, he summoned Ord and on July 21 placed him in command of the Eighteenth Corps. This unit was part of the Army of the James, which formed the extreme right wing of Grant’s siege lines, with the right of Ord’s corps resting on the Appomattox River. The unfortunate Army of the James was commanded by Benjamin F. Butler, the archetype political general, who had repeatedly demonstrated incompetence. He had built his own loyal command and staff and did not welcome outsider Edward Ord.

  On September 29, 1864, Ord’s corps, together with Tenth Corps, launched an attack to the northwest in a drive on Richmond. Grant had authorized Butler to undertake this mission, and the assault occurred under his orders. Ord’s corps attacked on the left of Tenth Corps and the cavalry and at once confronted Fort Harrison, the strongest bastion on Richmond’s front. Ord attacked with a rapid charge that brought his lead elements to the base of the earthwork. Officers, including Ord, mingled with the troops, urging them on up the base of the fort and over the parapet. As fighting raged inside the fort, a mini-ball hit Ord in the leg, inflicting another serious wound. He continued to fight until the fort fell to him, with three hundred prisoners and twenty cannon. Then an ambulance bore him from the fort.

  Fort Harrison had been a major victory, pleasing Grant and advancing the Union lines closer to Richmond. Ord was breveted major general in the Regular Army for “gallant and meritorious” service in the Battle of Fort Harrison. Accompanied by his aide, he traveled to Bellaire, Ohio, to convalesce with Molly and the children. His leave extended to December 1.

  Returning from a brief trip to Washington, D.C., on January 8, 1865, Ord learned that Butler had been removed from command of the Army of the James and Ord had been substituted. He now commanded a full army of fifty thousand men. Butler had left behind a civil and military mess, replete with financial irregularities, and a staff still loyal to their political mentor. Ord faced a daunting task in cleaning up the mess and ridding himself of scheming subordinates.

  In late January, while acting for Grant on the Petersburg line, Ord tried to act as peacemaker between North and South, a serious indiscretion. One move was to ease the way through the lines of three Confederate commissioners seeking an interview with President Lincoln. Worse was a meeting in late February with Lieutenant General James Longstreet in which he sought to arrange an armistice. Ord’s sally into high state affairs embarrassed Grant and the administration in Washington and once more illustrated his potential for bad judgment. He was fortunate to escape adverse consequences.

  Ord’s most significant Civil War service lay in Grant’s spring campaign of 1865: the lunge at Petersburg and Richmond and the pursuit of Lee’s army up the Appomattox River. Mobilizing for the assault on Lee’s right flank, Grant ordered Ord to send three divisions from his position facing the Confederate left flank to join in the assault on the right. The remainder of his army would continue to menace Richmond.

  Ord’s divisions, under Major General John Gibbon, were in place when Grant opened the offensive on March 29. General Philip Sheridan commanded in the critical Battle of Five Forks on the following day. Ord’s infantry remained in place to Sheridan’s right. On April 2, however, Gibbon’s infantry joined with those of General Horatio Wright to storm two Confederate bastions, Forts Gregg and Baldwin, which they carried with heavy casualties. Grant’s entire line had moved against the Confederate lines, prompting Lee to order the evacuation of both Petersburg and Richmond. The first Union formations to enter both Petersburg and Richmond were black infantrymen of Ord’s Army of the James.

  As Lee led his army up the Appomattox River in hopes of finding badly needed supplies at Amelia Courthouse, Grant followed the Southside Railway south of the river, riding with Ord’s troops. Lee found no supplies at Amelia Courthouse and continued upriver. Sheridan’s cavalry rode in advance of his infantry and entrenched in front of Lee. Ord made a forced march in an effort to strengthen Sheridan and on April 6 found the head of Lee’s column, under General Longstreet. Ord prepared to attack, but nightfall prevented a battle. Still, Ord had halted Lee’s retreat. Lee’s army had fought Meade’s army vigorously that day and sustained severe losses.

  During the night, Longstreet slipped away from Ord’s front, but Ord pushed forward on April 7. On this day Grant and Lee exchanged messages, probing the possibility of an armistice, but the fighting continued. Appomattox was the next place where Lee hoped to find trains loaded with rations. Sheridan’s cavalry got in front of the gray column but required infantry to bolster their lines. Grant left Ord on April 8 to join Meade, so that he could better control the dispatch riders between himself and Lee. Now the ranking general, Ord continued the march to Appomattox, gathering additional infantry formations as he went. Throughout the night Ord labored to push infantry up to Sheridan’s lines and had them in position by the morning of April 9. He had also established his headquarters near Appomattox Courthouse.

  Leading the Southern army, General John B. Gordon deployed to overwhelm Sheridan’s cavalry. The attack stalled, however, when Gordon glimpsed masses of infantry drawn up behind the cavalry. At 10:00 A.M. a Confederate officer appeared at Ord’s headquarters carrying a white flag. It was but one of several white flags borne into the Union lines, but it signified Lee’s willingness to meet with Grant. Neither had arrived, however, and as the senior Union general Ord assumed responsibility for agreeing with Longstreet to suspend hostilities. Not until after 2:00 P.M. did Grant and Lee meet in Wilmer McLean’s parlor. Ord was among the handful of Union generals present at the historic surrender of Lee’s army, after which he paid McLean forty dollars for the table on which Lee signed the document. General Sheridan bought the Grant table for twenty dollars and presented it to the wife of General George A. Custer. (Both tables are on display at Appomattox Courthouse National Historical Park today.)

  Despite his competence and valor, General Ord’s Civil War career failed to lift him to the top ranks of Union generals. Only in the Appomattox campaign did he rise to true distinction. His eccentricities and indiscretions harmed his relations with other generals, and his Southern sentiments and connections dogged him throughout the war. His first tour in the western theater was satisfactory but not outstanding; his second, the Vicksburg campaign, earned well-deserved plaudits. In the East his Shenandoah service revealed some of his worst traits and ended in failure. Commanding the Army of the James, he rose above mediocrity and played a significant part in the Petersburg and Appomattox campaigns, but his efforts to encourage a peace between North and South represented another instance of ignoring the chain of command. Nevertheless, Major General Ord emerges from the war one of the better-known Union generals.

  POSTWAR COMMANDS

  Still in the Volunteers, General Ord commanded the Department of Ohio, a relatively quiet assignment, from July 1865 to August 1866. Mustered out of the Volunteers on September 1, 1866, he had gained the regular rank of brigadier general at the same time as Co
ngress passed the army act of July 28, 1866. He had politicked heavily for the appointment, including a petition on his behalf bearing the signatures of twenty-six senators. After a year in Detroit, Ord drew assignments that sent him South into commands that were hardly routine: the Department of the Arkansas and after a year the Fourth Military District, a Reconstruction command that embraced the states of Arkansas and Mississippi and the Indian Territory. With his Southern sympathies, he related well to the leadership of Arkansas and Mississippi. But it was a hard job, serving both as a military commander and as an officer of the Freedmen’s Bureau. In April 1868 he finally drew a more conventional command: the Department of California.

  Ord knew California well from his prewar service on the Pacific Coast. The department consisted of California, Nevada, and the Territory of Arizona. Two years of hostilities both in the Department of California and in the Department of the Columbia preceded Ord’s arrival, but the vigorous campaigns of Lieutenant Colonel George Crook had ended in conquest of the warlike tribes. Ord’s big problems lay with the Apaches in Arizona. Aggressive campaigning by subordinate officers achieved some success, but not much. Like General Sherman, Ord believed that Arizona was not worth the cost and that the citizens were mostly rabble. He seems to have been content to let subordinate officers struggle with the Apaches.

  DEPARTMENT OF THE PLATTE