Born to Battle

by Jack Hurst

  31 Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 3:1174–1175.

  32 For Lincoln’s initial and later views regarding arming slaves, see McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 565.

  33 Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 3:1174; O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 2, 448–449, 447–448.

  34 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 2, 448, 467.

  35 Ibid., pt. 1, 102; Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 3:1180.

  36 Joseph Glatthaar, Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers (New York: Free Press, 1990), 201; McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 565–566.

  37 Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 3:1183; O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 3, 425–426.

  38 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 2, 446; ibid., pt. 3, 425–426, 443–444.

  39 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 8:327n; O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 2, 466, 459; Glatthaar, Forged in Battle, 325n; David Williams, A People’s History of the Civil War: Struggles for the Meaning of Freedom (New York: The New Press, 2005), 366.

  40 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 8:468.

  41 Grant, Personal Memoirs, 307.

  42 Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 3:1286–1287.

  43 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 1, 115; Grant, Personal Memoirs, 309; Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 3:1289.

  44 O. R. (1), vol. 24, pt. 3, 1000; David D. Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1885), 201, quoted in Smith, Grant, 256; Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 8:464, 461n.

  45 Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes; Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 8:479; Faust, Historical Times Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Civil War, 392–393.

  46 Smith, Grant, 257; T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and His Generals (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952), 272, quoted in Smith, Grant, 259.

  CHAPTER 26

  1 Jeffry D. Wert, General James Longstreet: The Confederacy’s Most Controversial Soldier (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), 300, quoting Longstreet to Confederate senator Louis T. Wigfall of Texas, August 18, 1863.

  2 O. R. (1), vol. 30, pt. 4, 508–509.

  3 Ibid., 509; Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns of Lieutenant General Forrest, 281.

  4 O. R. (1), vol. 30, pt. 4, 508–510.

  5 Ibid., 589.

  6 Powell, Failure in the Saddle, xxv–xxvii, xxix, xxxv–xxxvii.

  7 Adam R. Johnson, The Partisan Rangers of the Confederate States Army (Austin, TX: State House Press [reissue], 1995), 150–160. It is unknown whether Johnson is referring to a more general order that Bragg issued around this time. On September 16, 1863, the Army of Tennessee commander directed that all cavalry found to have been absent from their commands without authority be dismounted and sent to headquarters for assignment to the infantry, O. R. (1), vol. 30, pt. 4, 656. This seems particularly wrongheaded because it punishes men returning from unauthorized trips home to see and aid their families, while encouraging those who have returned to leave again—for good. For Morgan’s slave trafficking and card playing, see Ramage, Rebel Raider, 33–38.

  8 Peter Cozzens, This Terrible Sound: The Battle of Chickamauga (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996), 48–49, 37, 55; Powell, Failure in the Saddle, 40–41.

  9 Powell, Failure in the Saddle, 68–69.

  10 O. R. (1), vol. 30, pt. 4, 610–611; Cozzens, This Terrible Sound, 56–57.

  11 Powell, Failure in the Saddle, 69–70; Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns of Lieutenant General Forrest, 306–308, 308n.

  12 Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns of Lieutenant General Forrest, 307, 308; Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 240.

  13 Cozzens, This Terrible Sound, 65–74.

  14 Ibid., 81–85.

  15 Ibid., 85–87.

  16 Cozzens, This Terrible Sound, 90; O. R. (1), vol. 30, pt. 2, 524.

  17 Cozzens, This Terrible Sound, 102.

  18 Ibid., 59–60, 90.

  19 Ibid., 102.

  20 O. R. (1), vol. 30, pt. 2, 451–452.

  21 Ibid., 31.

  22 Ibid., pt. 2, 488, 472, 452.

  23 Ibid., 524. Powell, Failure in the Saddle (see, for example, 124, 120, 104) notes that this, bivouacking in the rear of the infantry, is one of several instances during the Chickamauga campaign in which Forrest neglected the cavalry responsibility to provide reconnaissance for the infantry; instead, he frequently dismounted his men and joined the foot troops. This illustrates a downside of a Forrest trait that also had its upsides: he never considered himself “just cavalry”; he was a fighter first and a cavalryman second.

  24 Cozzens, This Terrible Sound, 128.

  25 O. R. (1), vol. 30, pt. 2, 524, 248; Cozzens, This Terrible Sound, 128.

  26 Cozzens, This Terrible Sound, 129–131.

  27 O. R. (1), vol. 30, pt. 2, 524, 95, 525.

  28 O. R. (1), vol. 30, pt. 2, 95, 525; Cozzens, This Terrible Sound, 186.

  29 Cozzens, This Terrible Sound, 299, 301.

  30 Ibid., 299–300; O. R. (1), vol. 30, pt. 2, 141, 47.

  31 Ibid., 141, 198, 525.

  32 Ibid., pt. 1, 261.

  33 Ibid., pt. 2, 141–142, 241, 246.

  34 Glenn Tucker, Chickamauga: Bloody Battle in the West (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1961), 237, quoting Confederate Veteran, September 1895, 279.

  35 Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 252; Henry, 183.

  36 O. R. (1), vol. 30, pt. 2, 144, 210, 241, 200; ibid. pt. 1, 862.

  37 O. R. (1), vol. 30, pt. 1, 860, 862, 877; Cozzens, This Terrible Sound, 453.

  38 O. R. (1), vol. 30, pt. 1, 288; Cozzens, This Terrible Sound, 316.

  39 Cozzens, This Terrible Sound, 311–313, 326–327, 362–363.

  40 Ibid., 369, 389, 451, 453; O. R. (1), vol. 30, pt. 1, 876, 874; ibid. pt. 2, 576.

  41 O. R. (1), vol. 30, pt. 2, 525; pt. 1, 280.

  42 For more on the howl, see Cozzens, This Terrible Sound, 501.

  43 Cozzens, This Terrible Sound, 470, 517.

  44 Tucker, Chickamauga, 378.

  45 O. R. (1), vol. 30, pt. 2, 525.

  46 Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 259; O. R. (1), vol. 30, pt. 4, 681. Powell, Failure in the Saddle, 178–179, says this dispatch was misleading because Forrest, if he could indeed see all he said he saw, did not mention a strong Federal line drawn up west of Missionary Ridge to hold off Confederate pursuit. But the Federal line seems to have been a fluid, stopgap measure. The wagon trains rounding Lookout Mountain and the “pontoons” that the deserters said had been thrown across the Tennessee indicated exactly what Forrest said he thought: “They are evacuating as hard as they can go.” Thomas had held his part of Rosecrans’s army together, but even that part was low on ammunition, O. R. (1), vol. 30, pt. 1, 145, and the rest were spooked and scattered, as indicated by the dispatches of the fleeing Rosecrans and the War Department’s Dana in Chattanooga, Cozzens, This Terrible Sound, 470, 479. Longstreet would claim after the war that Forrest’s initial dispatch from the Union lookout post caused Bragg to dawdle. If the Federals were “evacuating as hard as they can go,” why detain them? That may have been how Bragg took it, but it was not how Forrest meant it. He urged pursuit “as rapidly as possible.” And he was correct about the Federal evacuation. At that time, Rosecrans considered abandoning Chattanooga—as indicated by the pontoons mentioned by Forrest’s Federal captive.

  47 O. R. (1), vol. 30, pt. 2, 525; Cozzens, This Terrible Sound, 519, 517–518, 528–532.

  48 Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 267. Forrest’s instinct—as well as the military precepts he had never studied—dictated giving all-out pursuit to a fleeing foe. He plainly believed that the “skeer,” as he often called it, was on, and a significant fraction of Bragg’s army could have been pushed forward to keep Rosecrans running beyond Chattanooga while its trains could be brought along by the balance of the force. Powell, Failure in the Saddle, 179, argues that because Forrest was unable to get past the Federal blockage, he should have assumed that a large infantry force also could not; for Forrest’s soliloquy, see Henry, “First With the Most” Forre
st, 193, quoting the manuscript, found in the Tennessee State Library and Archives, of a lecture by Tully Brown, a lieutenant in Morton’s artillery and later adjutant general of Tennessee.

  49 O. R. (1), vol. 30, pt. 2, 526; Morton, The Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry, 128. Either man, Forrest two years after the war or McLaws decades later, may be correct in claiming to have been the most bellicose on this day, but by the time they met, it hardly mattered. As Powell, Failure in the Saddle , 195, notes, Forrest by this point had himself tried several times to penetrate the rear guard; he also notes McLaws said Forrest, in arguing against an attack, cited the Confederate army’s location seven miles behind them. Forrest no doubt decried the fact that no more of the army had been sent forward. By now, he may well have thought the opportunity lost.

  50 O. R. (1), vol. 30, pt. 2, 526. For Wheeler’s raid, see ibid., 722–728.

  51 Judith Lee Hallock, Braxton Bragg and Confederate Defeat, Volume II (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1991), 89–105.

  52 Hallock, Braxton Bragg, 100.

  53 Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 264; O. R. (1), vol. 30, pt. 2, 723.

  54 Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns of Lieutenant General Forrest, 357.

  55 Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 265–266.

  56 Hallock, Braxton Bragg, 101; Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 266. No historian has been able to date the confrontation. That fact, together with a Bragg aide’s seemingly nonchalant diary entry noting no more than that Forrest was “much dissatisfied” around this time, has led a few historians to conclude that an elderly Cowan concocted the incident. Cowan’s version is obviously polished, but at least two of its expressions—“slap your jaws” and “stood your meanness as long as I intend to”—sound authentic. That Bragg’s aides appear to have been ignorant of the incident fits both the circumstances and Bragg’s own personality. He was a brave soldier when acting on orders from higher up, but when he had to decide what action to take, he vacillated. And it seems likely he would have done so now, with an infuriated Forrest standing in his face; after all, when Forrest confronted Bragg about his reassignment of Forrest’s troops to Wheeler, Bragg seems to have hemmed and hawed. Now, if he had again vacillated, he would have been unlikely to humiliate himself by disclosing he did nothing.

  57 Cozzens, This Terrible Sound, 532; Davis, Jefferson Davis, 518–522.

  58 O. R. (1), vol. 31, pt. 3, 604.

  59 Hallock, Braxton Bragg, 101; Davis, Jefferson Davis, 522; Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns of Lieutenant General Forrest, 358; O. R. (1), vol. 31, pt. 3, 645–646.

  60 Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 634.

  CHAPTER 27

  1 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 9:18.

  2 Ibid., 45–46n. For the capture of the herd of cattle, see ibid., 70. For the railroad rolling stock, see ibid., 164, 165n.

  3 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 9:90n, 156n.

  4 Ibid., 36n, 63n, 70, 109.

  5 Ibid., 23, 24.

  6 National Archives, Record Group 393, Department of the Tennessee. I am greatly indebted to Washington-area scholar/researcher Gordon Berg for personally inspecting the Shepard records and providing their essentials.

  7 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 9:23–24, 26–27n.

  8 Ibid., 69, 69n, 97–98, 99n.

  9 Ibid., 196–197, 197n.

  10 Ibid., 146.

  11 For more on superstition, see Grant, Memoirs, 248–249.

  12 Ibid., 220, 210.

  13 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 9:200, 222n. Carrollton, Louisiana, no longer appears on maps, having become part of the city of New Orleans proper. It does, however, appear on some maps of the time, including plate 90-1 of The Official Military Atlas of the Civil War.

  14 Ibid., 222n.

  15 Grant, Memoirs, 320–321.

  16 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 9:223n; Grant, Memoirs, 321.

  17 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 9:223n, 221–222.

  18 For Halleck’s wish to put Grant in command of Rosecrans’s force on September 13, see O. R. (1), vol. 30, pt. 1, 37.

  19 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 9:229.

  20 Ibid., 274n; Marszalek, Sherman, 237–238.

  21 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 9, 297–298n.

  22 Grant, Memoirs, 326.

  23 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 9:302.

  24 Ibid., 303n.

  25 Grant, Memoirs, 329–330; Peter Cozzens, The Shipwreck of Their Hopes: The Battles for Chattanooga (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 45, quoting Rawlins to Mary E. Hurlbut, November 23, 1863.

  26 Cozzens, Shipwreck, 44.

  27 Grant, Memoirs, 326–328.

  28 Cozzens, Shipwreck, 32, 54–55.

  29 Ibid., 47, 42.

  30 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 9:334, 330, 335; Cozzens, Shipwreck, 50, 51.

  31 Cozzens, Shipwreck, 80–99.

  32 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 9:335.

  CHAPTER 28

  1 O. R. (1), vol. 31, pt. 3, 641.

  2 Ibid., 646.

  3 Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 201–202; O. R. (1), vol. 31, pt. 3, 618–619, 694.

  4 O. R. (1), vol. 31, pt. 3, 817, 829.

  5 Ibid., 789.

  6 Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns of Lieutenant General Forrest, 364; O. R. (1), vol. 31, pt. 3, 797.

  7 Ibid., 789, 797–798; Cozzens, Shipwreck, 397.

  8 O. R. (1), vol. 31, pt. 3, 817, 844; Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 206.

  9 Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 207–208; Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns of Lieutenant General Forrest, 366–369; Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 283–284.

  10 O. R. (1), vol. 31, pt. 1, 614–618, 620–621; Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns of Lieutenant General Forrest, 375–376.

  11 O. R. (1), vol. 32, pt. 2, 617.

  12 Ibid., pt. 3, 609, 610, 622, 644, 648.

  13 Andrew Ward, River Run Red: The Fort Pillow Massacre in the American Civil War (New York: Viking, 2005), 148.

  14 O. R. (1), vol. 32, pt. 2, 616, 662–663.

  15 Ibid., 673.

  16 Ibid., 617.

  17 Ibid., pt. 1, 181.

  18 Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 302–303.

  19 O. R. (1), vol. 32, pt. 1, 257, 353; Morton, The Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry, 152–153; Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 314–317.

  20 O. R. (1), vol. 32, pt. 1, 354.

  CHAPTER 29

  1 Cozzens, Shipwreck, 103; Grant, Memoirs, 340–341.

  2 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 9:364n, 344n, 349, 359.

  3 Cozzens, Shipwreck, 106, 111.

  4 Ibid., 107; O. R. (1), vol. 31, pt. 3, 73.

  5 Cozzens, Shipwreck, 108.

  6 Cozzens, Shipwreck, 105, 107, 111, 113; Marszalek, Sherman, 242, quoting Oliver Otis Howard, The Autobiography of Oliver Otis Howard (New York, 1907), 473–474.

  7 Marszalek, Sherman, 242.

  8 Bobrick, Master of War, 15, 88.

  9 Lewis, Sherman, 310.

  10 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 9:396–397.

  11 Cozzens, Shipwreck, 121–122; Lewis, Sherman, 318.

  12 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 9:428. This communication is often cited as evidence of Grant’s enmity toward Thomas. Their tension was overt, but to this writer, this letter attributes the immobility of Thomas’s army much more to his starved animals than to Thomas himself. The letter’s defense of Sherman seems more obvious than an attempt to denigrate Thomas.

  13 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 9:421, 430–431. For distribution of ammunition and three days’rations, see Cozzens, Shipwreck, 128.

  14 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 9:427n; Cozzens, Shipwreck, 127–128.

  15 O. R. (1), vol. 31, pt. 2, 77.

  16 Cozzens, Shipwreck, 128–133; O. R. vol. 31, (1), pt. 2, 95.

  17 Grant, Memoirs, 342, 343, 346; Johnson and Buel, Battles and Leaders, 3:721.

  18 Jo
hnson and Buel, Battles and Leaders 3:722; Cozzens, Shipwreck, 144.

  19 Cozzens, Shipwreck, 145–146; O. R. (1), vol. 31, pt. 2, 94; Johnson and Buel, Battles and Leaders, 3:712.

  20 Cozzens, Shipwreck, 150.

  21 Ibid., 148, 150.

  22 Ibid., 148–149, 151.

  23 O. R. (1), vol. 31, pt. 2, 573.

  24 Cozzens, Shipwreck, 151.

  25 Ibid., 154.

  26 Ibid., 123.

  27 Ibid., 165, 168, 163–164, 190.

  28 Ibid., 190, 191. Johnson and Buel, Battles and Leaders, 3:723.

  29 Cozzens, Shipwreck, 191.

  30 Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 9:443n; Johnson and Buel, Battles and Leaders, 3:723.

  31 Cozzens, Shipwreck, 204–205; Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 9:443.

  32 Lewis, Sherman, 320.

  33 Cozzens, Shipwreck, 206; O. R. (1), vol. 31, pt. 2, 633.

  34 Cozzens, Shipwreck, 210.

  35 Ibid., 211; Simon, Papers of U. S. Grant, 9:446n.

  36 Cozzens, Shipwreck, 246–247.

  37 Cozzens, Shipwreck, 247, quoting Thomas J. Wood, “The Battle of Missionary Ridge,” in Sketches of War History, 1861–1865, vol. 4 of Papers Prepared for the Ohio Commander of the Loyal Legion of the United States, 1890–1896, 22–51 (Cincinnati: Robert Clarke, 1896), 34, and “A Thrilling War Chapter. The Battle of Missionary Ridge. Recollections of Gen. Thomas J. Wood,” New York Times, July 16, 1876, and William F. Smith, “An Historical Sketch of the Military Operations Around Chattanooga, Tennessee, September 22 to November 27, 1863,” in The Mississippi Valley, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, 1861–1864, vol. 3 of Papers of the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, 149–247 (Boston: Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, 1910), 216.

  38 Cozzens, Shipwreck, quoting Francis F. McKinney, Education in Violence: The Life of George H. Thomas and the History of the Army of the Cumberland (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1961), 294, and Smith, “An Historical Sketch,” 221.

  39 O. R. (1), vol. 31, pt. 2, 68; Cozzens, Shipwreck, quoting McKinney, Education in Violence, 294; “Correspondence Relating to Chickamauga and Chattanooga,” in The Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, 1861–1864, vol. 8 of Papers of the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, 247–272 (Boston: Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, 1910), 249; and James Harrison Wilson, Under the Old Flag: Recollections of Military Operations in the War for the Union, the Spanish War, the Boxer Rebellion, etc. (New York: D. Appleton, 1912), 1:297–298.