* * *
The Federals were on the road early on October 7, and Rosecrans drove them hard. The day was hot and dry. South of Ripley the army entered the Mississippi pine barrens, a sparsely settled, poorly watered wilderness. Rebels kept coming in, “exhausted and half-starved,” but the Yankees were suffering now, too. Rations gave out, with no sign of the commissary wagons. Water was scarce; General Hamilton pushed his division twenty-three miles without finding a single well. Hundreds of men sneaked off in search of food and, with no enemy to threaten them, easy plunder. Efforts to prevent looting were mixed. General Stanley mandated stern punishment, but enforcement in his division was lax. “The field officers of the regiments all seconded my efforts to keep order and prevent straggling, but I am pained to say I find too many company commanders who are totally unconcerned as to whether their men march in ranks or go along the road like a flock of geese.” By midday the roads were thronged with hungry and thirsty blue-clad stragglers.29
That afternoon Rosecrans made a serious tactical blunder—not on the field but in his communications with Grant. He suggested supply shortages might slow him and added he was sending rations from his own limited stock to Hurlbut to enable him to join in the chase. Grant answered promptly: “General Hurlbut took with him three days rations and I forwarded him three days more by wagons. If they are out now they must have wasted them. . . . You need not send him supplies as he will be back in Bolivar tonight. . . . We can do nothing with our weak forces but fall back to our old places. Order the pursuit to cease.”
Rosecrans was incredulous. Nothing had prepared him for Grant’s volte-face. He was handed the message at midnight in the field near Jonesborough, and he answered it angrily. Under the uncertain shelter of a huge oak tree, with a warm rain falling, Rosecrans held a candle and dictated to Colonel Ducat his response:
I most deeply dissent from your views as to the manner of pursuing. We have defeated, routed, and demoralized the army which holds the lower Mississippi Valley. We have the two railroads leading down toward the Gulf through the most productive parts of the State, into which we can now pursue them with safety. The effect of our return to old position will be to pen them up in the only corn country they have west of Alabama, including the Tuscumbia Valley, and to permit them to recruit their forces, advance and occupy their old ground, reducing us to the occupation of a defensive position, barren and worthless, with a long front, over which they can harass us until bad weather prevents an effectual advance except on the railroads, when time, fortifications, and rolling stock will again render them superior to us. Our force, including what you have with Hurlbut, will garrison Corinth and Jackson and enable us to push them. Our advance will cover even Holly Springs, which would be ours when we want it. All that is needed is to continue pursuing and whip them. We have whipped, and should now push to the wall and capture all the rolling stock of their railroads. Bragg’s army alone west of Alabama River and occupying Mobile could repair the damage we have it in our power to do them. If, after considering these matters, you still consider the order for my return to Corinth expedient, I will obey it and abandon the chief fruits of a victory, but I beseech you to bend everything to push them while they are broken and hungry, weary and ill-supplied. Draw everything possible from Memphis to help move on Holly Springs and let us concentrate. Appeal to the Governors of the States to rush down some twenty or thirty new regiments to hold our rear and we can make a triumph of our start.30
Rosecrans probably was pleased with his answer, a missive of great strategic sweep that would compel cooperation by the soundness of its logic. But Grant thought otherwise. To him Rosecrans’s telegram was poorly reasoned, presumptuous, and more than a little insubordinate. Grant had his reasons for recalling Rosecrans: “When I ascertained that the enemy had succeeded] in crossing the Hatchie I ordered a discontinuance of the pursuit. . . . This I regarded, and yet regard, as absolutely necessary to the safety of our army. They could not have possibly caught the enemy before reaching his fortifications at Holly Springs, where a garrison of several thousand troops were left that were not engaged in the Batde of Corinth. Our troops would have suffered for food and from fatigue.”
Although certain of his own judgment, Grant submitted Rosecrans’s objections to the War Department. No doubt he presumed Henry Halleck, whose pursuit of Beauregard after Shiloh was the epitome of extreme caution, would support him. Grant told Rosecrans to remain at Ripley until Halleck replied.31
While he awaited Halleck’s answer, Grant received intelligence that disproved the premise of his order halting the pursuit of Van Dorn: far from being heavily fortified, Holly Springs had been abandoned. Ironically, it was Hurlbut who communicated the news to Grant. “I have just heard from Holly Springs,” he wrote on the evening of October 8. “There are no forces there; all left on Sunday . . . . I am of opinion that the rout of Van Dorn’s army is complete, and that Pillow’s force, late at Holly Springs, has caught the panic.”
Here was reason to go on. But Grant refused to budge. Not only did he not change his mind, but he also reneged on his promise to wait for Halleck’s guidance and instead ordered Rosecrans to return to Corinth. Rosecrans ignored the order; he would take his chances with Halleck.
Grant had misread the general in chief. While he left the decision to Grant, Halleck wondered, “Why order a return of your troops? Why not reinforce Rosecrans and pursue the enemy into Mississippi, supporting your army on the country?”
Grant remained adamant, merely inventing new reasons to call off the pursuit. “An army cannot subsist itself on the country except in forage. They did not start out to follow but a few days and are much worn out,” Grant told Halleck. Moreover, scouts reported the enemy had “reserves that are on the way to join the retreating column. . . . Although partial success might result from further pursuit, disaster would follow in the end.” Nevertheless, if the War Department wished, Grant would press forward. “If you say so, however, it is not too late yet to go on, and I will join the moving column and go to the farthest extent possible.”
Venturing an opinion was all Halleck dared do. A positive order to a commander in the field to undertake a vigorous pursuit—something Halleck himself never contemplated after Shiloh—was beyond him. Grant correctly took Halleck’s silence as assent, and he told Rosecrans a third and final time to desist.32
Rosecrans obeyed grudgingly. He then believed, and would ever afterward maintain, that one of the best opportunities of the war had been sacrificed to undue caution. His troops were tired, but rations had arrived— eighty wagonloads met the army at Ripley. An autumn rainstorm promised cooler weather. The land southwest of Ripley was prime corn country, and the corn was ripe. Everything favored an advance; all that wanted was the will at department headquarters and the reinforcements that Rosecrans had implored Grant to send him. “If Grant had not stopped us, we could have gone to Vicksburg. My judgment was to go on, and with the help suggested we could have done so. Under the pressure of a victorious force, the enemy were experiencing all the weakening effects of a retreating army, whose means of supplies and munitions are always difficult to keep in order,” argued Rosecrans. “We had Sherman at Memphis with two divisions, and we had Hurlbut at Bolivar with one division and John A. Logan at Jackson with six regiments. With these there was nothing to save Mississippi from our grasp. We were about six days' march from Vicksburg, and Grant could have put his force through to it with my column as the center one of pursuit. Confederate officers told me afterward that they never were so scared in their lives as they were after the defeat before Corinth.”33
25. The Best We Had in the Ranch
Before slumping beneath a tree on the afternoon of October 4, General Rosecrans rode along the lines proclaiming victory, then wandered over the ground in front of Battery Powell. Dead and dying Confederates lay everywhere, shrouded with a quilt of gun smoke. An Arkansas lieutenant with a mangled foot caught his eye, and Rosecrans bent down to offer him water. “Thank y
ou, General,” the Arkansan politely declined, “one of your men just gave me some.” “Whose troops are you?” Rosecrans asked. “Cabell’s.” Rosecrans kept up the conversation: “It was pretty hot fighting here.” “Yes, General, you licked us good, but we gave you the best we had in the ranch.”1
Many of the best had been lost. Federal casualties totaled 355 killed, 1,841 wounded, and 324 missing of some 22,000 engaged, or one man in ten. Another 570 were lost at Davis Bridge. Southern casualties were far worse; indeed, for the numbers engaged, they were staggering. Price contributed 13,863 troops to the battles, 10,498 of whom were infantry. He lost 428 killed, 1,865 wounded, and 1,449 missing. All but 71 of the 3,742 casualties sustained were infantrymen. In other words, nearly 35 percent of those who charged the Federal works at Corinth or defended Davis Bridge became casualties. More than half of Price’s line officers fell. Maury’s division existed in name only. The Virginian took some 3,900 men into the battles and lost 2,500. Another 600 melted away during the retreat. John C. Moore’s brigade was obliterated, losing 1,295 men engaged.
Mansfield Lovell’s losses were scandalously light, a fact not lost on Price’s survivors. Lovell had gone into action with 7,000 troops. He reported 77 killed, 285 wounded, and 208 missing—almost all in the fight for Oliver’s hill.2
Everyone but Van Dorn recognized the campaign for the fiasco it was. To his wife, Lt. Wright Schaumburg of Maury’s staff lamented, “The Confederacy wakes today to the realization of its darkest hour. . . . The never before conquered Army of the West has been most signally defeated and routed in this expedition against Corinth. All is dark and gloomy now.” The division inspector general, Capt. Edward Cummins, was equally downcast. At the first opportunity he wrote General Beauregard a “brief account of our recent expedition and disaster.” Battle losses and straggling had destroyed Price’s corps, said Cummins. He had no idea of the enemy’s strength, but “when we got into Corinth he swallowed up seven brigades of as good fighting men as I ever saw in about twenty minutes. . . . God bless you, my dear general, and send us better days.”3
Mansfield Lovell was the army’s near-unanimous scapegoat. “With but little dissent,” said Colonel Bevier, “the opinion of the participants . . . is that the loss of the battle of Corinth . . . was mainly owing to the misconduct of General Lovell and the inaction of the right wing.” A disgusted Col. Ras Stirman wrote, “This was another victory lost the Confederates by the inactivity and failure of one man.” Dabney Maury agreed. Had Lovell attacked vigorously, “it is altogether probable that. . . Van Dorn would have captured Corinth.”4
Incredibly, Lovell was oblivious to the army’s rancor. “If I am to believe all that I hear, my conduct throughout the operations has rebounded much to my credit all through the army,” he told his wife. “Hundreds of persons have come to me and said that although they began the campaign with prejudices against me, they would now rather serve under me than anyone else.” Lovell insisted his conscience was clean: darkness, rather than his indolence, had prevented the Confederates from taking Corinth on the first day. Neither did Lovell apologize for his actions on the second day.5
Unlike the army the Southern press spared Lovell. The culprit, most editorials agreed, was Van Dorn. He had been “terribly deceived” — lured into a trap and “made to fight against heavy odds without the hope of any advantage for this waste of blood and life,” said a Mobile editorial. “The future is dark in this part of the country. . . . Other reverses are in store for us, including the loss of much ground now held by us,” warned the Atlanta Southern Confederacy.6
Press comment was tame next to that of Van Dorn’s fellow Mississippians. Senator James Phelan excoriated the general. “I doubt not you have ascertained . . . the unhappy condition of affairs in this state,” he told President Davis. “The army is in a most deplorable state. . . . It is yet called ’Van Dorn’s Army;' and the universal opprobrium which covers that officer, and the ’lower than the lowest depth' to which he has fallen in the estimation of the community of all classes, you cannot be aware of.” Phelan played on the general’s reputation for womanizing to demand his removal: “He is regarded as the source of all our woes, and disaster, it is prophesied, will attend us so long as he is connected with this army. The atmosphere is dense with horrid narratives of his negligence, whoring, and drunkenness . . . so fastened in the public belief an acquittal by a court-martial of angels would not relieve him of the charge.”7
Van Dorn was too broken in spirit to confront the truth. He had not lost a battle, he assured his wife, Emily, but, rather, “was not entirely successful. . . . All that valor attempted was won but the enemy was too strong for us. . . . I have lost nothing. I will fight again soon, and if fighting will win. Do not be mortified at what they say. We cannot expect impossibilities.”8
Van Dorn was denied a chance to win back what he could not concede he had lost. Anticipating disaster, the president had sent Maj. Gen. John C. Pemberton to Jackson, Mississippi, to await the outcome of Van Dorn’s campaign. When he learned of the defeat at Corinth, Davis nominated Pemberton for promotion to lieutenant general and told him to take charge of the Department of Mississippi and East Louisiana, an area embracing both Van Dorn’s theater of operations and Vicksburg. The Confederate Senate confirmed the nomination three days later.
Mortified, Van Dorn appealed to Secretary of War Randolph for relief: “I shall act for the best, but I am now an isolated body in the field in Mississippi, relieved of command of my department. I hope this will be corrected.” It was not, and Van Dorn became subordinate to a general whom he had recendy outranked. His despair grew. “I am weary, weary,” he wrote Emily. “I sigh for rest of mind and body. If my death would give pain to no one I should court it. . . . I have struggled for others and they abuse me.”9
As the abuse became more personal, Van Dorn sank deeper into self- pity. Mississippi had turned its back on him; he would turn his back on Mississippi. Schoolgirls from his hometown sent him a hundred pairs of socks to distribute to the Texans in his army. Van Dorn forward them to a Texas colonel with a sardonic note: “You will observe that these little angels identify me with Texas. They are right. I am a Texan. A Mississippian no longer except in my love for the pure hearted children of her evil who have not yet learned to make the name and fame of one of her sons the butt of malignant archery.” Van Dorn was relieved to learn that his wife, at least, discounted rumors of his philandering. “Your kind letter came to me like a ray of sunshine in my cloud,” he told Emily on October 30. “I was happy to learn that you have not believed all the villainous slander of my character. I scorn to answer the public accusations. . . . I live still and until it pleases God to take me from the vile race I shall continue to do so.”10
From an unexpected source came a new challenge. As discontent within the army grew, Van Dorn replaced Lovell as the object of ridicule and censure. Price and Maury stood by him, but Price’s staff schemed for Van Dorn’s removal. When their conspiratorial dealings floundered, General Bowen stepped forward to accuse Van Dorn of “neglect of duty” and of “cruel and improper treatment of officers and soldiers under his command.”11
Bowen’s seeming perfidy astounded Van Dorn. Only two weeks earlier he had promoted Bowen to command Hébert’s division. Van Dorn demanded a court of inquiry, which Pemberton granted.
The court convened on November 7. Pemberton selected Price, Maury, and Lloyd Tilghman to sit in judgment. The charges and specifications were read. Lacking a proper map of Corinth and having inadequate commissary stores, and “without due consideration or forethought,” Van Dorn had marched the troops “in a hastily and disorderly manner, [and hurled] them upon the enemy with an apparent attempt to take a command by surprise whose outposts had been engaged with his advance for thirty-six hours before the attack.” He failed to follow up the gains of the first day and had permitted the enemy to be reinforced during the night. And, Bowen concluded, during the retreat Van Dorn had subjected the army to “long
, tedious, and circuitous” marches and had neglected the wounded.12
A parade of witnesses testified for the prosecution, but not as Bowen hoped. General Rust repudiated most of the charges his fellow brigade commander had leveled. General Green said his men were adequately supplied and had marched in good order. While he thought the attack should have been pressed on the evening of October 3, Green was unable to see how Van Dorn could have prevented Federal reinforcements from entering Corinth. Col. Robert Lowrey said his men, while hungry, were “marched as troops generally would be.”13
Van Dorn called Sterling Price and Dabney Maury to the stand. Price thought that Van Dorn had acted prudently and with “great energy.” Maury said Van Dorn was as well informed of the country around Corinth as any officer in the army. He considered Van Dorn incapable of “cruelty or inhumanity or intentional injustice to anyone.”
Van Dorn closed the defense with a long and impassioned address, refuting each charge and specification and reaffirming his dedication to the cause: “Gendemen of the court, I am a Mississippian by birth. My blood has always been ready for her, yet in the midst of my struggles for her my name has been blighted by her people. My trust is that the investigation of this court will vindicate it from dishonor.”
It did. Sterling Price read the verdict: Every allegation made against General Van Dorn was “fully disproved.” No farther proceedings were warranted. Pemberton dissolved the court of inquiry on November 28. To celebrate his exoneration, Van Dorn had 1,000 pamphlets containing the court proceedings printed and distributed at his expense.14
The Darkest Days of the War- the Battles of Iuka and Corinth Page 37