The Camden Expedition of 1864

by Michael J Forsyth

  A more in depth look however, reveals that the reasons for launching such a campaign were not as compelling as they originally appeared. U. S. Grant received appointment to the rank of lieutenant general and command of the Union armies on March 12, 1864, based on his long series of successful campaigns in the west. Lincoln believed that Grant had the necessary qualities to finally provide the Union the strategic direction it had lacked the three previous years. Lincoln had at last made a wise choice in appointing a general-in-chief after a long period of trial and error. Grant indeed had an excellent plan in mind to bring the South to its knees.

  Throughout the early years of the war the Union conducted operations with no centralized direction in spite of the presence of a series of generals holding the top command. “For the first two years the Civil War on the Union side was largely an experiment; we were learning how to fight, …” one observer noted.18 The Union had pursued a territorial strategy somewhat similar to the southern strategy. Grant pointed out in his memoirs that the “Union armies were now divided into nineteen departments.” All had “acted separately and independently of each [other]…. I determined to stop this,” he stated emphatically.19

  Grant’s plan to end the war was simple yet brilliant in conception. It called for simultaneous offensives by all Federal armies directed at the principal Rebel armies. In his orders to George Meade, commander of the Army of the Potomac, he admonished that “Lee’s army will be your objective point. Wherever Lee goes, there you will go also.” In his order to Sherman he further stated that the armies will “work all parts … together and somewhat toward a common center.” In essence, he scrapped the territorial strategy in favor of a force-oriented framework. The Army of the Potomac would attack Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia in the east. At nearly the same moment, Sherman would advance against Joseph E. Johnston’s Army of Tennessee in the west. Additionally, Major General Benjamin Butler’s Army of the James would make a lunge at a nearly defenseless Richmond and Grant wanted Banks to mount a campaign to take the port of Mobile, Alabama. By attacking the Confederacy’s main armies with overwhelming force simultaneously, Grant meant to prevent the Rebels from using their interior lines to shift forces as they had so many times in the past. The plan would strangle the Confederacy and finally bring the war to an end.20

  Henry Halleck devised the plan for the Red River Campaign and Camden while he was still the Union general-in-chief, months before Grant rose to the command. Red River is vintage Halleck as it represents his habitual operating paradigm. On numerous occasions during the war, Halleck had dispersed Union armies ostensibly to tidy up the rear area. Now with the reduction of Vicksburg and the Franco-Confederate rapprochement it appeared that Halleck would follow the same pattern. In January 1864 he had written Banks badgering him to “restore the flag” to Texas suggesting “that the Red river [sic] is the shortest and best line … of operations against Texas.” Additionally, he enlisted the support of Generals Sherman and Schofield to convince Banks of the correctness of his proposal. Banks, faced with a wall of support from prominent officers, relented and agreed to conduct a campaign up the Red in March. Halleck now wrote to Steele expressing his “[hope] that you might cooperate with General Banks … and thus secure Arkansas.”21 This set the wheels in motion for a mid-March jump off for a combined army-navy operation up the Red River and overland from Little Rock to Shreveport.

  The problem with Halleck’s plan, in contrast to Grant’s comprehensive plan for 1864 is that Halleck did not aim “toward a common center.” In modern military parlance this common center is known as the enemy center of gravity, the hub of all power.22 Grant identified the Rebel center of gravity as her principal armies. Halleck’s plan diverted precious assets away from the common center. Even Kirby Smith realized the error of Halleck’s scheme while recognizing the strategic significance of what his own forces would do to frustrate the plan. He recorded, “I still think that the enemy cannot be so infatuated as to occupy a large force in this department when every man should be employed east of the river, where the result of the campaign this summer must be decisive of our future.…”23 Though Grant disagreed with Halleck’s plan, he did not call it off. There were two reasons for this. First, Grant did not want to embarrass Halleck, his former superior, and further the Red River Campaign was already well under way when he assumed command.24 This provided the Confederacy with an opportunity to upset the Federal program for 1864 with a workable counter-strategy.

  For the Confederates, 1863 had been a serious blow to their cause. For all intents and purposes the Confederacy had little hope of winning the war in 1864 on the battlefield in the face of an ever-stronger Union. As already alluded to, the Rebel government had heretofore conducted a “territorial” strategy for defense of the young nation. Thus far the strategy had failed ignominiously and even Jefferson Davis stated in his Papers, “I acknowledge the error of my attempt to defend all the frontier.”25 By spring of ‘64 there was no longer a need to defend all Rebel territory for a good portion of it now came under Federal control. As a result, Jefferson Davis revised Confederate strategy to meet the changing situation.

  The foundation of the strategy for winning the war centered around influencing the presidential election in the North. By adopting a coherent strategy for 1864 it was still possible that events on the battlefield could convince war weary northern voters to cast ballots for a peace candidate. Davis reasoned that in order to win the war at the polls the Rebel armies could not lose on the battlefield. With the Trans-Mississippi cut off from the rest of the South, only the Rebel heartland remained. The heartland consisted of the area between Richmond, Savannah, and Mobile. The principal Confederate armies—the Armies of Northern Virginia and Tennessee—would focus on defending this axis in active operations. These armies would attempt to avoid decisive engagements, yet at the same time inflict maximum losses on the Union armies. Where opportunity offered, Confederate forces would launch limited counteroffensives to demonstrate their still potent capability. The design would maintain the heartland and present the image that the Federal armies could not beat the Confederates. The northern public’s confidence in Lincoln would finally shatter and they would reveal their disapproval by electing the peace candidate. In other words, the South could win by not losing.26

  In addition to military operations, Davis approved of efforts to elect an alternate candidate in the North itself. This would consist of secretly contributing cash to the Democratic Party and fomenting unrest in the north through subversive organizations. Covert agents operating out of Canada would funnel money into the Democratic coffers and peace movements operating in the Midwest. Other agents would help the Copperheads organize civil disturbances, as election day approached in hopes that the public would realize the Lincoln Administration could not even maintain peace at home.27 Altogether, military and covert operations were calculated to give the South a victory through the ballot box vice one on the battlefield.

  The Union decision to launch the Red River Campaign fit neatly into Confederate strategy for 1864. Here the Federals obliged the strapped Rebels by diverting a major force away from the main theaters of the war. This force consisted of several army corps from Banks’ and Sherman’s armies and a host of gunboats from Admiral Porter’s Mississippi Squadron. Rather than assaulting Mobile as Grant wished, Banks would move up the Red with his Army of the Gulf to Shreveport and thence to Texas. By not attacking Mobile, Polk’s Confederate army corps in Mississippi was now free to join Johnston around Atlanta providing a material increase in his manpower. Halleck added more weight to Banks’ force by coordinating with Sherman to detach two of his army corps—the XVI and XVII—to make the movement up the Red. This detachment from Sherman reduced his forces needed for the Atlanta campaign at a time when Johnston’s strength was increasing. Additionally, the ubiquitous Halleck wrote to Gideon Welles to enlist the “cooperation” of the navy to provide transport, logistics, and fire support. Finally, Halleck correspond
ed with Steele expressing his “hope that you [Steele] might cooperate with General Banks.”28 It is interesting to note that Halleck never gave any of the generals an order. He merely suggested or cajoled subordinates to do his bidding so that if an operation went sour he could sidestep responsibility.

  Nevertheless, Halleck’s plan and method of carrying out the Red River Campaign and Camden Expedition had several gaping holes. First, as previously noted, the whole operation diverted precious Union manpower away from Rebel centers of gravity at a critical juncture of the war. Second, while Halleck sought to create cooperation between the services in this joint venture, he failed to ensure that one of the principals in the operation had overall command. Third, he did not define how Banks and Steele would establish command and control to coordinate their simultaneous movements. Steele and Banks would have to move separately from Little Rock and New Orleans to affect a link up in the middle at Shreveport at a pre-appointed time. With the primitive communications of the day, this would prove a fantasy. On the whole, Halleck’s planning and preparations for the campaign looked amateurish rather than the scheme of a leading military professional.

  While Halleck’s plan left much to be desired, it did have one positive attribute. By designating two major assault columns—Steele in Arkansas and Banks in Louisiana—he confused the Confederate high command as to which force represented the primary threat. Had Halleck not pushed for Steele’s inclusion in the scheme for the Red River Campaign, the Confederates could have focused their entire efforts on Banks’ hapless army, very likely with disastrous results for the Union. The column from Arkansas in the end would have the major role in deciding the campaign.

  Edmund Kirby Smith found himself confronted by two armies converging from different directions and a large fleet all aimed at Shreveport. Shreveport by 1864 was the capital of the Trans-Mississippi and a substantial military-industrial complex. Loss of the city would deal the Confederate cause west of the Mississippi a serious, if not fatal blow. However, Smith had devised his Fabian strategy as a framework to deal with just such a crisis and had about 30,000 troops in his department to oppose the threat. When Union forces jumped off in mid-March, Smith immediately implemented his strategy ordering Taylor and Price to give ground. Simultaneously, he ordered forces scattered across Texas to begin assembling at Shreveport. Smith reasoned that as he drew his forces closer together he would have time to determine which threat constituted the main effort. “Our role must be a defensive policy,” he stated in a dispatch to Richard Taylor. Further, “where the enemy is largely our superior, and where our columns come within a practicable distance of each other, [we will] concentrate rapidly upon and crushing one or the other of the enemy’s column.”29 Once he identified the main effort, Smith would mass the preponderance of Trans-Mississippi forces against the supporting effort, defeat it, and then turn to dispose of the main.30 The plan made maximum use of the interior lines the Rebels enjoyed and took advantage of the inability of Banks and Steele to cooperate because of the nature of the geography. The plan was not only an admirable conception; it was also within the capability of the Trans-Mississippi Department’s limited manpower and material resources. Smith’s true challenge lay not in defeating the enemy, but within the army itself.

  Neither Richard Taylor nor Sterling Price liked the Fabian policy. Each believed that his own domain was the most important in the department and each had a history of openly expressing his views on the subject. Taylor’s distaste for Smith’s strategy began in 1863 during the Teche Campaign. In mid–1863 Banks had launched a limited effort along the Bayou Teche to clear away Rebel forces threatening New Orleans. To deal with Banks’ advance, Taylor employed his own paltry force and obtained a pledge from Kirby Smith to provide another division—Walker’s—of reinforcements. Smith reneged on his word shortly after consulting with Missouri Governor Thomas C. Reynolds and Sterling Price. Reynolds and Price convinced Smith that he should retain Walker’s Division in Arkansas in preparation for a move into Missouri. They jointly persuaded Smith that a failure to demonstrate an affinity for the citizens of Missouri would result in a corresponding loss of face by Confederate authorities in the state. Walker’s Division eventually became paralyzed in an abortive attempt to relieve Vicksburg from the Louisiana side of the Mississippi. Taylor became incensed by the decision and this marked the beginning of the Smith-Taylor feud that continued until Taylor’s relief following the Red River Campaign.31

  Price held a long track record of badgering military superiors and also the Confederate government with propositions for the liberation of Missouri. His latest offering to Smith had done much the same as his previous attempts to influence military policy. It had embarrassed Kirby Smith while angering President Davis. Keenly aware that his past efforts had been largely ineffective in winning support for a Missouri expedition, Price unnoticeably changed his tactics. Rather than boldly and arrogantly pressing his position with Smith he would engage in a “fly and honey” strategy. He would drop light hints of his aspiration for an advance into Missouri, but at the same time he would mix in a compliment of the commanding general’s efforts. Price even went further by providing unquestioning, cheerful support for the very strategy that he vehemently disagreed with.32 From the Confederate perspective the stage was set for a drama in a forgotten corner of Arkansas that would have far reaching effects on the outcome of the Civil War.

  Halleck planned to throw a total of 50,000 troops into the Red River Campaign. Banks with reinforcements from Sherman and Porter’s Mississippi Squadron in cooperation had about 35,000 troops to make the advance. Frederick Steele’s Department of Arkansas would bring approximately 15,000 soldiers in support of the campaign through the Camden Expedition.33 Initially, Steele expressed enthusiastic support for the campaign as he offered to launch a supporting effort in cooperation with Banks. However, his enthusiasm for carrying out the Camden part of the campaign gradually waned. His correspondence between January and March 1864 bears out his misgivings as he chronicles a host of challenges.34

  In February Steele penned a dispatch to Banks describing his intent “to advance with 10,000 well-appointed troops” in cooperation with his move up the Red. However, he also begins to exhibit his reasons for not moving. “The roads,” he states, “are now in such condition that an army could not move from here to the Ouachita with artillery or trains, and I am told that they will be impracticable for several months to come.” There is also evidence that Banks was becoming frustrated with an inability to communicate with Steele due to the long distance between the commanders. At one point Banks sarcastically asked Steele to “have the goodness … to inform me fully of your intentions.”35 Here is the initial inkling of the difficulty of coordinating the campaign and the possible outcome as a result.

  Three weeks later Steele informed Banks of his “apprehension” about the ability to move south. He once again identified the “severity of the weather” as a tormentor, but he now also states his deficiencies in logistics. Specifically, the “want of long forage [and] our loss in animals has been very heavy, but we shall make every effort to overcome these deficiencies.” Logistics would prove the Achilles’ heel of the Camden Expedition. Admiral Porter reinforced Steele’s assertions with an endorsement stating his belief that “I do not think General Steele will be able to move unless his quartermasters show more energy. At present half his supplies are blocked up in [the] Arkansas River.”36 As the evidence of Steele’s desperate supply situation mounted, so did his determination to avoid jumping off in mid-March to support Banks.

  Another reason for not moving also entered the equation as March drew near. In a February 28, 1864, letter to Banks, Steele declared that he could not “move at so early a day as that named in your dispatch” (March 5th). Among the reasons enumerated by Steele was President Lincoln’s desire to have the Ten Percent Plan implemented in Arkansas. “The President,” he stated, “is very anxious” to conduct the election. In order to carry out Lincoln’s wish
es Steele had to use troops at the various polling stations to maintain order and ensure the credibility of the process. The date set for the plebiscite was March 14—nine days after Banks proposed to initiate operations. The Rebels, he believed, would attempt to “break up the election” which required security. Due to the dispersion of his men protecting the election sites, Steele concluded that he “could not now concentrate anything like the force named in my former letter.” He did offer to “make a demonstration” in order to confuse the Rebels about which column represented the Federal main effort.37

  Steele routed his letter through General Sherman, newly appointed commander west of the Appalachians replacing the freshly promoted Grant. Sherman failed to appreciate the difficulties facing Steele in Arkansas in spite of Steele and Porter’s efforts to articulate the true nature of the situation in the state. In a dispatch to Banks three weeks earlier, Sherman discounted Steele’s assertions assuring Banks that Steele would make the expedition with 15,000 troops. Now, Sherman wrote an endorsement to Steele’s letter stating his misgivings about carrying out the Ten Percent Plan. “The civil election is as nothing compared with the fruits of military success,” he wrote to Banks. Further, “I will advise Steele to send you work … of his movement.”38 Sherman realized that Steele had to undertake a full-fledged operation in conjunction with Banks’ Red River movement to give it a reasonable prospect of success.

  Steele, however, did not intend to accept Sherman’s advice and conduct a full-scale advance without a direct order from the highest authority. Instead, Steele made plans for the demonstration he spoke of in his letter to Banks. Steele described in a letter to Sherman his belief that Banks’ force was more than sufficient to defeat Richard Taylor and that the Confederates would “run without giving battle.” Additionally, he made the grandiose assertion that “Price and some members of his staff have gone to Europe—deserted.”39 All this seems calculated to excuse Steele from making any effort, much less a demonstration. In fact, he wrote to Halleck and his old friend Grant to convince them of his views and request permission to back out of the campaign. In his letters Steele outlines his belief that “Smith will run” from the forces that Banks could bring to bear in the Red River Valley. In light of this opinion, Steele proposed to “move to threaten the enemy’s flank and rear with all my cavalry.” This would provide Banks with the cooperation he wanted and allow Steele to secure his own lines of communication from the wide-ranging Confederate cavalry.40