For the Common Defense

by Allan R. Millett, Peter Maslowski

  Halleck and Buell also failed to make progress. Lincoln wanted Halleck to open the Mississippi line, Buell to invade east Tennessee. Considering the logistical problems in east Tennessee insurmountable, Buell eyed Nashville and asked Halleck to cooperate in an advance on the city. Preoccupied with the chaos in Missouri, Halleck declined. Nor would Buell assist Halleck. Refusing to cooperate with each other, neither achieved Lincoln’s objectives, though Halleck made major strides in pacifying Missouri. As in the East, only one minor battle occurred. On November 7 Grant led a 3,100-man force down the Mississippi in transports to attack Belmont, Missouri, across the river from Columbus. In a repetition of Bull Run and Wilson’s Creek, Union retreat followed initial success, the Federals barely escaping to their transports. While other Union forces were immobile, Grant had fought hard, demonstrating remarkable poise despite his army’s perilous escape.

  Still, Belmont was a loss, reinforcing the North’s sense of failure as the South won every battle. Yet the northern situation was promising. Although its successes were less spectacular, they had greater long-term potential. Along with holding the border states, the Union began to benefit from its sea power, blockading the South and, in cooperation with the Army, cleaving coastal enclaves out of enemy territory. Lincoln proclaimed the blockade in April, but the Navy had only forty-two ships in commission, and all but fourteen were on foreign stations. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles undertook an expansion program, recalling the distant ships, refitting old vessels, building new ones, and buying or chartering merchantmen for conversion to warships. Welles also appointed a Strategy Board that considered ways to make the blockade more effective. It recommended the capture of advanced bases to supplement the Navy’s existing southern bases at Hampton Roads and Key West. In late August a joint Army-Navy expedition captured Hatteras Inlet, two weeks later the Navy took Ship Island in the Gulf, and in early November another combined operation captured Port Royal between Charleston and Savannah. By December the blockade still leaked, but with more ships becoming available and the southern coast proving vulnerable, it promised to become much tighter. As 1861 ended, the war had already lasted longer than most people expected, and it showed signs of becoming much larger and longer. Neither side was winning, and neither was quitting.

  A Year of Indecisive Battles

  Frequent and generally inconclusive battles, several of monstrous proportions, characterized 1862. From January to June dramatic Union victories occurred in all four theaters, and Confederate defeat appeared certain. But inept Union generalship and better southern leadership halted the Federal advances. The Confederacy launched late-summer counteroffensives that the North blunted during September and October. Then late in the year the South smashed renewed Union offensives on three fronts.

  As the year began, gloom pervaded the Confederate high command. In Virginia a few small forces guarded the Shenandoah Valley and Joseph E. Johnston, wondering if he could stop an offensive by McClellan’s 150,000-man army, commanded 50,000 men at Centerville. Equally anxious was Albert S. Johnston, who commanded all forces from the Appalachians to Indian Territory, a vast domain containing only a few widely dispersed troops over whom Johnston exercised only nominal control. His subordinate in the trans-Mississippi, Earl Van Dorn, had 20,000 men to oppose 30,000 Federals. In the western theater Johnston had troops at four positions. Polk held the Mississippi line with 17,000 men at Columbus, confronting Grant’s 20,000 at Cairo. Anchoring the right flank, Felix K. Zollicoffer commanded 4,000 men in front of Cumberland Gap, watching Thomas’s 8,000 at Barbourville. In the center the North could invade along the Louisville & Nashville Railroad or up the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers. William J. Hardee at Bowling Green with 25,000 troops sat astride the railroad, facing Buell’s 60,000 soldiers stationed southwest of Louisville. Perhaps 5,000 men garrisoned Fort Henry on the Tennessee and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland.

  Confederate defenses in the middle and east Tennessee subtheater collapsed first. Prodded by McClellan, Buell ordered Thomas to attack Zollicoffer. At the Battle of Mill Springs (or Fishing Creek) on January 19, the South suffered its first significant battlefield defeat. In late January Grant suggested that he could capture Fort Henry, and Halleck consented to the expedition. The next day Grant was underway with 15,000 troops and the Western Flotilla, which consisted of river steamers covered with heavy wooden planking (timberclads) and ironclad gunboats. A Navy captain, Andrew H. Foote, commanded the flotilla, although it was under Army control until transferred to the Navy Department in October. When Foote’s gunboats attacked on February 6, the Confederates surrendered even before Grant’s infantry arrived. With Foote’s gunboats roaming up the Tennessee, the Federals had cut Johnston’s army in half and outflanked both wings. Johnston retreated from Bowling Green, sending half his men to Donelson and the rest to Nashville. He also dispatched Beauregard to Columbus to withdraw that wing of the army, leaving only enough men to garrison New Madrid, Island No. 10, and Fort Pillow.

  Meanwhile, Halleck ordered Grant to move against Fort Donelson, a more formidable position than Fort Henry. The Confederates repulsed attacks by Grant’s infantry on February 13 and Foote’s flotilla on the 14th, and the next day attempted a breakout, tearing a gap in Grant’s right flank. With the door to Nashville wide open, Gideon Pillow, who commanded the attack, inexplicably ordered the troops back to their original positions. With sure instinct Grant counterattacked, breaching the enemy lines. The next day the fort surrendered. Grant’s victories were a disaster for the South. The loss of men and material in the forts was serious, and Donelson’s capitulation made Nashville untenable, forcing Johnston to retreat again. He established a new defensive line from Memphis through Corinth to Chattanooga that, like his original positions, lacked natural defensive barriers. Worse, it left the region drained by the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers in Union hands, crippling Confederate logistics.

  Southern woes increased when Van Dorn lost the Battle of Pea Ridge. During a winter campaign Samuel Curtis’s 12,000-man Union army pushed Price into Arkansas, where he received reinforcements. Before he could attempt another Missouri invasion, all Confederates in the trans-Mississippi came under Van Dorn’s command. Leading 20,000 men northward, Van Dorn attacked Curtis at Pea Ridge. The Confederates mauled the Federals on March 7, but Curtis counterattacked the next morning, shattering Van Dorn’s army. The battle secured the North’s hold on Missouri and made Arkansas vulnerable to invasion.

  The southern situation was desperate, but the Union was unable to exploit its successes, giving Johnston time to rally his demoralized forces and to receive reinforcements. Halleck, whom Lincoln promoted to overall western commander on March 11, had ordered Grant up the Tennessee River but warned him not to fight a battle until Buell joined him. With his 40,000 men concentrated near Shiloh, Grant waited as Buell advanced from Nashville with 35,000 soldiers. While the Federals wasted most of March, Johnston benefited from the South’s first great strategic concentration in the west. Braxton Bragg brought 10,000 men from Mobile and Pensacola, and Daniel Ruggles came from New Orleans with 5,000 more. Combining the reinforcements with the troops from Columbus and Bowling Green, Johnston had 45,000 men. He had also ordered Van Dorn to cross the Mississippi, but he could not wait for him since the Confederates had to strike Grant before Buell arrived. The twenty-mile march to Shiloh was mass confusion, and although the Confederate plan depended on surprise, troops test-fired their rifles and buglers practiced their calls. Yet when the rebels came screaming out of the woodlands on April 6, they achieved surprise. Grant’s overall assessment of the situation was so deeply flawed that on the previous day he assured Halleck no attack was imminent.

  The attack smashed into divisions commanded by Sherman, McClernand, and Prentiss, driving them back. However, Prentiss’s men reformed along a sunken country lane, where the Union line held temporarily. Absent when the attack began, Grant reached the scene to find his army apparently wrecked. Coolly he organized ammunition trains, o
rdered Lew Wallace, whose division was camped five miles away, to come immediately, and requested Buell’s advance elements to hurry. Recognizing the importance of Prentiss’s position, dubbed the Hornets’ Nest, he ordered the former militia colonel to hold at all costs. Prentiss did so, aided by a serious tactical error by the Confederate generals: Instead of outflanking the Hornets’ Nest, they sent repeated frontal charges against it, in effect killing off their own men. Not until early evening did they force Prentiss to surrender, and the Confederate advance soon halted due to darkness, ammunition shortages, and disorganization. That night Beauregard, who succeeded the fatally wounded Johnston, telegraphed Richmond that the South had won “a complete victory.” It had—almost. But Grant used the time bought with blood to organize a new line closer to the river. During the night Wallace arrived, and 20,000 of Buell’s men crossed the Tennessee. Grant had more men at dawn on April 7 than when the battle began, and after a morning of hard fighting the southern forces retreated. Like the Confederates after Bull Run, Grant’s victorious soldiers, as disorganized and exhausted by the fighting as the vanquished, were unable to pursue. The inability to follow tactical success with effective pursuit characterized almost every Civil War battle.

  “War,” as Confederate cavalryman Nathan B. Forrest observed, “means fighting. And fighting means killing.” Shiloh proved it. The first massive battle, Shiloh dwarfed every previous engagement. Minimally trained citizen-soldiers fought with a savage tenacity befitting veteran regulars. Each side had more than 1,700 killed and 8,000 wounded, but Confederate losses were harder to bear. The South not only lost irreplaceable men but also failed to restore the balance of power in the middle and east Tennessee subtheater.

  Serious southern losses occurred almost simultaneously along the Mississippi, where John Pope captured the Confederate garrison at New Madrid on March 13 and, with help from Foote’s gunboats, Island No. 10 on April 7. Foote turned the Western Flotilla over to Captain Charles H. Davis in early May. A month later the gunboats caused the evacuation of Fort Pillow, and on June 6 Memphis fell. Southern defenders on the Mississippi were driven to Vicksburg, which in midsummer 1862 was vulnerable from both directions since the Union had also captured New Orleans.

  While Confederate defenses in the trans-Mississippi and western theaters crumbled, Federal operations along the coast achieved victories at Roanoke Island, Fort Pulaski, and New Orleans. On February 8 an expedition commanded by Ambrose Burnside and supported by the Navy overran Roanoke Island and, in the next few weeks, captured North Carolina’s inland seaports, depriving the South of blockade-running outlets. Two months later Fort Pulaski, guarding the entrance to Savannah, Georgia, surrendered, and the blockading fleet had one less port to watch. The North won an even greater triumph at New Orleans, the South’s most vital port. Forts Jackson and St. Philip, located seventy miles below New Orleans, protected the city. Just below the forts a submerged barrier of hulks and logs would supposedly stop approaching ships, giving the forts’ artillerymen stationary targets. Gunboats and fire rafts supplemented these defenses. The citizens of New Orleans believed they lived in the Confederacy’s safest city, but they did not reckon with David G. Farragut.

  Commanding eighteen warships and twenty mortar schooners and accompanied by Butler’s 18,000 soldiers aboard transports, Farragut sailed up the Mississippi. On April 18 the mortar schooners opened fire on Forts Jackson and St. Philip, but after six days of constant shelling the defenses remained virtually intact. Rather than admit failure, Farragut decided on a daring plan. Northern gunboats punched a hole in the barrier, and in the predawn hours of April 24 his warships steamed past the forts. The enemy bombardment was so fierce the water seemed ablaze and the Southern gunboats fought heroically, but the Union fleet endured the artillery fire, fought off the enemy gunboats, and dodged the fire rafts. About noon the next day Yankee warships arrived at New Orleans, which was defenseless since most of its garrison had joined Johnston. A naval landing party accepted the city’s surrender, and on May 1 Butler’s occupation troops arrived.

  The loss of New Orleans, with its factories, ordnance complex, and shipbuilding facilities, was worse than the loss of Nashville. Another entryway for blockade-runners was slammed shut, and the South lost control of the lower Mississippi, allowing Farragut to take Baton Rouge and Natchez without resistance and steam to Vicksburg before going back downriver. In June Farragut brought his saltwater fleet back upriver, meeting Davis’s freshwater ironclads a few miles above Vicksburg. The entire Mississippi was in Union hands, but only briefly. Although the combined naval forces pounded Vicksburg, the city could not be captured without a large land force. Farragut appealed in vain to Halleck for assistance, and the North lost an opportunity to gain permanent control of the river. Instead, Davis returned to Memphis, Farragut dropped downriver to New Orleans, the Confederates turned Vicksburg into a bastion and fortified Port Hudson further to the south, and the Yankees frittered away the summer.

  Arriving at Shiloh after the battle, Halleck spent three weeks amassing a 120,000-man army. Intent on avoiding a Shiloh-like surprise, he moved toward Corinth at a snail’s pace, averaging about a mile a day. When the Federals reached Corinth in late May, Beauregard retreated to Tupelo without giving battle. Halleck had excellent possibilities for further action. He could pursue the Confederate army or, holding a vital railroad crossroads, he could strike toward Vicksburg, Mobile, or Chattanooga. “Old Brains” chose Chattanooga as the next target. He retained a substantial force at Corinth, used aggressive Grant to occupy territory northward to Memphis, and sent cautious Buell toward Chattanooga. Entrusted with Halleck’s sole offensive mission, Buell moved slowly, and enemy cavalry raids by John H. Morgan and Forrest caused further delays as they destroyed supply dumps and railroad bridges, tore up track, and captured Union outposts. Buell’s unhurried pace, rebel depredations against his communications lines, and Halleck’s passive strategy in west Tennessee forfeited the initiative to the South.

  Just as improbably, the Confederacy gained the initiative in the eastern theater after McClellan’s spring campaign carried his army to within sight of Richmond’s church spires. Throughout the fall and winter McClellan’s inactivity and reticence in divulging his plans strained the president’s patience. When McClellan finally explained his strategy, Lincoln did not like it. The general proposed a waterborne movement to Urbana, which would place his army behind Johnston’s. McClellan would defeat the enemy force as it retreated to protect Richmond and then occupy the city, ending the war. Lincoln preferred an overland advance to shield Washington with the army and more readily force Johnston to fight. But McClellan was a professional and Lincoln an amateur. Reluctantly, the president accepted McClellan’s plan.

  However, Lincoln issued several orders indicating his distrust of the general and his strategy. On March 8 he divided the Army of the Potomac into four corps, a reorganization McClellan opposed, and appointed the corps commanders. Three of them favored Lincoln’s overland approach, and as a group they leaned toward the Radicals in Congress, who despised McClellan. The president also ordered McClellan to leave Washington “entirely secure” and insisted that the movement down Chesapeake Bay begin by March 18. With bold action tearing open Confederate defenses in the west, Lincoln demanded a simultaneous advance in the eastern theater. On March 11 he demoted McClellan by removing him from the position of commanding general. The president named no replacement; he and Stanton would perform the commanding general’s duties. Finally, Lincoln created a Mountain Department embracing western Virginia and east Tennessee, commanded by Fremont. Since the Radicals supported Fremont, his resurrection after his Missouri fiasco indicated the prevailing political currents, especially when viewed in conjunction with McClellan’s demotion. During the upcoming campaign McClellan became convinced that he confronted two enemies: The gray army in his front and politicians to his rear. Lincoln and Stanton, he feared, had joined the Radicals in a conspiracy to engineer his downfall.

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bsp; While still reeling from Lincoln’s unsettling orders, the Union commander received more dismaying news. On March 9 McClellan learned the Confederates had fallen back to Culpeper, a move that dislocated his Urbana scheme, since a landing there would no longer be in Johnston’s rear. However, McClellan decided he could still go by sea, landing at Fort Monroe and marching toward Richmond up the Peninsula, the southeastern Virginia district formed by the York and James Rivers. As he examined this prospect, McClellan preferred it. Union troops already held Fort Monroe, and the Navy could protect both flanks. Lincoln did not like this amphibious operation any better than the Urbana plan, but he acceded to it.

  An armada of 400 vessels had barely started transporting troops to Fort Monroe when McClellan’s army began to shrink. As Banks’s army redeployed from the Valley to protect Washington, Stonewall Jackson’s 3,500-man army attacked Banks’s last remaining unit, James Shields’s 9,000-man division, at Kernstown. Although Shields defeated Jackson, who had underestimated enemy strength, the Confederacy won a strategic victory, for the attack deranged Union troop movements. Would Jackson have attacked Shields without an equal or larger force? Were the Confederates preparing a thrust at Harpers Ferry, or even Washington? The War Department ordered Banks back to the Valley and detached a division from McClellan’s command, sending it to Fremont. And what troops remained to protect Washington? In Lincoln’s estimation, not enough. Stanton ordered McDowell’s corps not to move to the Peninsula. Believing that Union forces were on the verge of winning the war, Stanton also closed the volunteer recruiting service. McClellan lost not only a third of his men but also the prospect of receiving replacements. Yet McClellan still outnumbered Johnston about two to one, though he refused to believe it.