by Bruce Catton
On November 3 Grant ordered Colonel Oglesby to take the 8th, 18th and 29th Illinois infantry, four companies of the 11th Illinois, three companies of cavalry and a section of artillery, head for Sikeston, Missouri, thirty miles west of Bird’s Point, and take after Jeff Thompson in conjunction with the force that was believed to be coming down from Ironton. Oglesby was ordered to pursue Thompson no matter where he might go; “The object of the expedition is to destroy this force and the manner of doing it is left largely at your discretion.” (Grant had amplified his instructions here, in a wholly characteristic manner: St. Louis had said that Thompson’s force was to be driven into Arkansas; Grant wanted it destroyed.) Oglesby’s troops moved on the evening of November 3, and at the same time a small force was ordered to march down from Cape Girardeau in such a way as to distract the enemy’s attention.10
But this expedition had no sooner taken off than the word came down to make a demonstration against Columbus, and Grant felt that the two moves ought to be tied together. He sent fresh orders to Oglesby, telling him to swing south toward New Madrid; and when Oglesby reached a point from which there was a handy road leading toward Columbus, “communicate with me at Belmont.” He ordered Colonel W. H. L. Wallace, at Bird’s Point, to get up an expedition and start out to join Oglesby, and he himself prepared to move on Belmont with all the forces he could spare.
These forces would consist of five infantry regiments and two companies of cavalry—3114 men in all—organized in two brigades, one commanded by Brigadier General John A. McClernand—a fiery, ambitious war Democrat from Illinois, who had fought in the Mexican War, who had spoken powerfully for the Union cause earlier in the year and who now commanded the post of Cairo—and one by Colonel Henry Dougherty. Grant put them on transports, got gunboats Tyler and Lexington for convoy, and dropped down the river on the night of November 6, anchoring for the night near the Kentucky shore nine miles from Cairo to wait for daylight.
Here, at two o’clock in the morning, Grant got a message from Colonel Wallace, who was on the move: Rebel forces were crossing the river from Columbus to Belmont, apparently heading west to cut off Oglesby. It seemed to Grant that this was exactly what the Rebels were likely to be doing, and he wrote that this gave “a two-fold importance to my demonstration against the enemy—namely, the prevention of reinforcements to General Price, and the cutting off of the two small columns I had sent, in pursuance of directions, from this place and Cape Girardeau, in pursuit of Jeff Thompson.” All of this, he said, convinced him that he must make a vigorous attack on Confederate forces at Belmont; if the attack failed, the gunboats would cover the retreat, which would have to be by steamer—there were no roads going north from Belmont to Bird’s Point.11
It happened that all information the Federals had been getting was wrong. Jeff Thompson had heard about the move down from Ironton and had been getting ready to go north and offer a fight, but had changed his mind when he heard about Oglesby’s sortie from Bird’s Point, and he was now preparing to retreat. Polk had ordered no troops to go to Price, and had no intention of doing so; he was having troubles of his own, and it seemed to him just now that his command was in a bad way. Albert Sidney Johnston had ordered him to send five thousand men east, to Clarksville on the Cumberland River, and Polk had protested vigorously but without effect. Polk was preparing to obey—when he sent the troops he would send Pillow with them, which would be a relief, Pillow being a subordinate who would try any commander’s spirit—but on the day Grant left Cairo, Polk was writing to Jefferson Davis to offer his resignation. Davis, said Polk, had finally got “a distinguished military commander, our mutual friend,” for the Western area; the fortifications at Columbus were about completed; and if Davis was willing, Polk would like to go back to civilian life and become a bishop again. This request Davis would refuse, and Polk would remain a general to the end of his life; but at the moment he felt none too secure—he had recently notified Johnston that “I have my hands full with what is immediately before and around me”—and the idea of sending troops to Price, to Thompson or to anyone else west of the Mississippi was very far from his mind. Price knew this as well as anyone, and while Grant’s move was beginning Price was begging the Governor of Arkansas to send him some help so that he might stave off Frémont’s advance.12
But Grant had to go by the news he had—by that, and by his own instinct to hit the enemy instead of playing a waiting game—and so he was going to Belmont. There would be a fight, and the fight would have none of the effect Grant had hoped for, but Belmont by now was fated. At dawn on November 7 Grant’s little flotilla got under way, dropping down the river and mooring on the Missouri side a little above Belmont, just out of range of the heavy Confederate guns on the bluffs at Columbus. Gunboats Tyler and Lexington moved on to open fire on these batteries, and the infantry began swarming ashore, to climb a low, steep bank and take position in a cornfield. Ahead and all around there seemed to be intermittent marshes, farm clearings and dense growths of timber. Grant left a regiment to guard the transports, sent skirmishers forward, and got the men moving.
It was a fresh autumn morning, and as the march began the dull concussion of the big guns jarred the air. The troops themselves were full of enthusiasm. Camp life had begun to bore them, and one Illinois soldier remembered that the men had been complaining about it, indulging in “wild and vigorous criticism of the conduct of the war, foolishly threatening to desert” if they were not soon put into action. When they had been ordered, the evening before, to pack their knapsacks, take extra rations, and board the steamers for an expedition down the river, they had cheered wildly; and now as they formed line in the cornfield they frisked and capered like schoolboys beginning a holiday. Rebel shells were coming over but the range was bad and no one was being hurt; when a big shell buried itself in the mud and failed to explode, soldiers ran to the place and dug the thing up, chattering about its great size. Grant came riding up from the river bank, ordered the skirmishers forward, and then got the whole force in motion. After the 22nd Illinois had moved a matter of a hundred yards or so the Colonel halted it briefly and made a speech, reminding his men that “today the eyes of Illinois are upon us,” and saying sternly, “If I should show the white feather shoot me dead in my tracks and my family will feel that I died for my country.” The day began to grow warm, and some of the men took off their coats. Then the whole line moved on.13
Ordinarily the Confederates kept no more than a regiment of infantry, one battery and a squadron of cavalry at Belmont, but when Polk saw Grant’s flotilla coming down the river he hastily sent Pillow and four more regiments over to Belmont, dispatching another regiment a few moments later. When the two forces came in contact they were of approximately equal size—twenty-seven hundred men, perhaps, in action on each side. Polk later explained that he would have sent more men, but he believed that Grant’s attack on Belmont was only a feint. C. F. Smith’s troops were moving south from Paducah, word of this move had reached Polk, and the Confederate believed that the real attack was to be made on Columbus itself. The business at Belmont, he thought, was meant only to divert his attention.14
The green Federal troops had not gone far before they ran into Confederate infantry fire. Pillow was a most distressingly eccentric general but there was nothing wrong with his personal courage, and he was sending his equally green troops forward to attack the invader with spirit. The 7th Iowa ran into a headlong Rebel charge, and Illinois soldiers who watched said that the regiment “swung back like the opening of a double gate,” but the repulse was only temporary. The Iowans re-formed and went forward again, the other regiments plowed on ahead, and in a short time Grant’s men were driving everything before them. Woods and cornfields were cleared and before noon the advancing Federals reached the Confederate camp, which was enclosed by low earthworks. Pillow’s men were badly scattered by now, and suddenly all resistance ceased. Disorganized Confederates ran to the river and huddled behind the low banks for protection, wh
ile jubilant Northerners went romping through the captured camp, seized some cannon, began to pick up abandoned odds and ends of Rebel property—and then, cheering and dancing with joy, got completely out of hand and entered into a premature and wholly disorganized celebration of their victory.
Victory it was, to be sure; they had driven equal numbers in complete rout, taking losses but inflicting worse ones, seizing camp and flags and guns; but the day was not ended, the heavy guns on the far side of the river were beginning to drop shells into the captured camp, and Polk was preparing to send over reinforcements. Grant was riding about trying to restore order—as a soldier he knew perfectly well that the battle was not over—but for the moment there was nothing he could do. From somewhere a regimental band appeared, playing “Yankee Doodle,” “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and “Dixie”; an Illinois officer got astride a captured cannon and led an informal chorus in song, other officers rode madly about from one cluster of men to another, halting before each group to make speeches about the virtues of the Union cause and the extreme valor of Grant’s army.15
Polk was keeping his wits about him. He put more regiments on steamboats and ordered them to cross the river, landing upstream so as to cut the Federals off from their own transports, and he himself was ready to go with them. (The Federal gunboats had withdrawn to their landing place, their wooden bulwarks being altogether too flimsy to stand up against the 64-pound shot the Confederates were firing.) Grant’s jubilant men were about to find that victor) could turn into disaster very rapidly.
Dr. Brinton, Grant’s medical officer, seems to have noticed it first. He had followed Grant to the captured camp, and, while Grant was ordering officers to set fire to the Confederate tents in the hope that this would call the men to their senses, Brinton looked across the river and saw two steamboats loaded with troops leaving the Columbus side and heading upstream. He called Grant’s attention to the sight, and Grant got some regimental officers in hand and began at last to succeed in bringing the Federal troops into line. He said later that there were hundreds and hundreds of beaten Confederates huddled just out of sight along the river-banks, ready to surrender if anyone had demanded it, but these rallied as reinforcements appeared and by the time the Federals had broken off their celebration and had got into military formation again there was a solid line of Confederates between them and the place where their transports were moored two miles up the river.
Senseless elation immediately gave way to equally senseless panic. Men began to cry that they were surrounded, and some of the officers concluded that there was nothing to do but surrender and get it over with. But Grant remarked that they had cut their way in and could cut their way out just as easily, and finally the Union Army turned about and began to fight its way back to the boats.16
It was not easy. A good many Federals had been wounded, and many of these had to be left behind. Of the six guns that had been captured, only two could be taken away; the rest had to be spiked and abandoned, and only two of the captured horses could be removed. In the hurry, Brinton lost most of his medical instruments when the orderly who was carrying them took fright and galloped away, and he noticed that even after the men had been formed in line and were moving back toward their boats there seemed to be a great deal of confusion and a disinclination to do any more fighting than was absolutely necessary. This, it seemed to him, reflected the spirit of the unmilitary Volunteers: “They had done their day’s work and wanted to go home.” Men remembered hearing the dry pat-pat of bullets cutting through the dead leaves overhead as they took up their march. Dr. Brinton tried to do what he could for the wounded men, but Grant came up to him and told him that when the fire was as hot as it was here a doctor had no business at the front line, and the doctor went along with the rest.
There was hard fighting that afternoon, and Federal losses were severe. In the end, the scorched column made its way to the landing, all units in hand except for the 27th Illinois, which got temporarily isolated, had to move farther up the river, and was taken off by the boats later in the evening. Earlier in the day, some Federal wounded had been put in farmhouses near the place where the transports had tied up; and, as the infantry went aboard the steamers, Grant rode out to see if these men could not be evacuated. While details carried some of them to the boats, Grant rode back to the regiment he had posted to guard the landing, fearing that the Confederates might come to close quarters and make a final attack while the embarkation was in process—but the guard had left. Returning to the boats, Grant found that the guard had already gone aboard; he prepared to bring the men back to their post, then concluded that this would take more time then he had to spare, and himself rode out again to satisfy himself that all stragglers and detached units had reached the landing.
He found nobody, except for a column of advancing Confederates who came within fifty yards of him without especially noticing him; he was riding through a cornfield where the dry stalks were still more than head high, and this apparently made him hard to see. He got back to the riverbank just as a whole line of Rebel infantry reached the fringe of the woods on the far side of the cornfield and began to open fire.
As far as personal peril goes, this was about as bad a spot as Grant got into in all the war; and as the bullets whined about his ears he gave way, suddenly, to a desperate thought of home: what would become of Julia and the children, if he should be killed here? For a moment the thought possessed him with power, and far away in their home in Galena Julia Grant, going to her bedroom to rest after some household task or other, suddenly saw a distinct but mysterious vision: Grant mounted and in the field, gazing at her with a peculiar intensity. When they met a few days later, they found that this odd experience had come to her at the moment when Grant, all alone on his horse, was the target for concentrated rifle fire, and was thinking of his wife and children; and they both felt that it was the depth of his feeling that projected this strange vision into the house in Galena.17
… All of the Federal steamers but one had cast off their moorings and were moving upstream. At the foot of the steep, muddy bank where this last vessel was tied up, a little knot of Union soldiers waited disconsolately, not knowing what they were supposed to do next.
One of these men remembered that, as they stood there, a man on horseback appeared at the top of the bank and called to them sharply: “Get aboard the boat—they are coming.” They looked up, saw that the rider was Grant, and hastened to obey. They heard Grant shout to the boat’s captain: “Chop your lines and back out”; then, after the lines had been cut, members of the boat’s crew laid a plank from the deck to the shore, Grant’s horse settled down on its haunches and slid down the bank, and then Grant calmly rode aboard on the swaying plank, the last Federal soldier to leave Belmont.18
Grant dismounted, went to the texas deck, and entered the captain’s stateroom just behind the pilot house, lying down on a sofa to catch his breath. After a moment he arose, to go out on deck and see what was going on; Rebel musketry fire was getting heavy, by now, and Grant had no more than stood up when a bullet ripped through the bulkhead and struck the head of the sofa where he had been lying.
All things considered, the men were in fairly good spirits. A man in the 8th Illinois admitted that the whole retreat had been little better than a rout, but he said that most of the soldiers were laughing and joking as they came aboard the steamers; they felt that they had somehow won a victory and done a great thing even though it had been a tight squeeze at the end, and they were proud that they had at last been through a real battle. Yet the trip back to Cairo was pretty solemn, and once the excitement of getting away died down the men were rather subdued. An officer who sat at dinner in the ladies’ cabin noted that all of the officers were briskly discussing the day’s events except for Grant himself, who sat at the head of the table and said not a word except for an occasional order to the waiter. “We thought he was hard-hearted, cold and indifferent,” this officer wrote, “but it was only the difference between
a real soldier and amateur soldiers.”19
The battle of Belmont was over. It had been somewhat costly. Of the 2700 men he had put into action, Grant had lost 607, of whom 120 had been killed. Of nearly 400 wounded, many remained on the field for such care as Confederate surgeons could give them. Confederate losses had been about equal;20 but if the Confederates had lost their camp they had unquestionably regained it, and had had the satisfaction of seeing the Yankee invader take to his heels and retreat in vast haste. Apparently nothing whatever had been accomplished. The move had not kept Polk from sending troops to Price because no such movement had been contemplated, and Oglesby had been in no real danger; learning of the outcome of the fight at Belmont he turned about and took his command back to Bird’s Point without difficulty. All that had happened was that a Federal force had gone down the river, had fought a hard, pointless battle with the Confederates, and then had returned to its base. Old C. F. Smith, coming down cross-country from the northeast, had never departed from his instructions to conduct a demonstration and nothing more; when his subordinate, General Paine, hearing the sound of firing, had enthusiastically started marching his men farther than he had been told to march them, thinking to get in on the fight, Smith sternly denounced him, reporting that the action indicated on Paine’s part “a fixed purpose from the start to gain notoriety without reference to the public service or his plain duty as a soldier.” Smith was so angry about this that he demanded a court of inquiry to sift Paine’s disobedience.21