The Confederate Union War

by Alan Sewell

  The offensive in Indiana had gained some ground too, but at an even higher cost. The gains had come during the early stage of the battle when McDowell had been precipitate in pulling his divisions on the southeastern flank back toward Indianapolis.

  Phil Sheridan’s division, left alone to defend against the attacks of Confederate generals John and George Crittenden, had been forced to give ground to prevent being outflanked. Sheridan had fallen back across the line of the Indianapolis and Cincinnati Railroad, breaking the direct link between the cities, and losing the county seat towns of Shelbyville, Greensburg, Vernon, and Madison. The loss of the rail junction at Shelbyville undermined the defense of Indianapolis, while the loss of the busy river port at Madison uncovered Cincinnati’s western approaches.

  But the counterattack by Mitchel’s Army of Ohio to the north had inflicted a shattering blow on the Confederates in the final days of the battle. Kirby Smith’s big division had been blocked from advancing any further to the east by John Schofield’s improvised defense. It had then been caught in the Free State vise by Mitchell’s men relieving Terre Haute and wheeling north up the east bank of the Wabash. Pemberton’s division, smashed by the unexpected attack into its rear as Mitchel fought his way into Terre Haute, also lost two of its four brigades.

  Although details were hard to come by, it appeared that the devastating Rebel counterattack had been organized by none other than William Tecumseh Sherman, whom Lee had asked to command the Confederate Union’s field armies in the Northwest.

  Has it only been four months since I met Sherman at the Louisiana Military Institute and offered him command of this army? At the time he declined my offer he said that he could not bear to fight for either side, but obviously something has caused him to change his mind on that score.

  The ferocity of Sherman’s counterattack had nearly unhinged Lee for the first time in his illustrious career. He had been in a state of near depression, estimating from the first panicky reports by his division commanders that the losses on his and Harney’s fronts had exceeded seventy thousand. The casualty he had been most concerned about was Stoneballs Jackson. Stoneballs and his men had gone missing behind the Rebel lines for most of the battle. This morning a messenger from Stoneballs’ command had arrived to report that they had crashed through the Rebel lines at Springfield after dark, but that in the running fight that followed, Stoneballs had been shot several times. He was laid up in a hospital in Carlinville.

  Lee was immensely relieved to have his “right arm” back safe within his lines. He was also relieved by updated reports showing that the initial casualty counts had come down considerably as dog-tired and lightly wounded men picked themselves up out of the mud and made their way back to their units. He estimated that the return of the fatigued stragglers and lightly wounded would lower the final casualty count to around forty thousand. Of those, between four and five thousand had been killed outright, and about twice as many mortally wounded or wounded so severely that they would have to be discharged from service.

  The most serious losses were the twenty-four thousand men captured in Kirby Smith’s and Pemberton’s divisions by the Rebel counterattack through Terre Haute and then north up the Wabash. Perhaps he would eventually get these men back in prisoner exchanges, but that had not been discussed with the Rebels. He could not count on those men until the specifics of prisoner exchanges were negotiated.

  Lee added in the ten thousand men who had died of camp disease and accidents on his front during the past ninety days and concluded that he had lost about twenty five percent of his men. However, he realized that even these severe losses would be made good by the continuous mobilization of men throughout the Confederate Union that McClellan had planned at the outset of the war. He calculated that his losses were about equal to the number of men being inducted into the state militias and the National Army every month by McClellan’s mobilization plan. Incredibly, the Confederate armies would soon be stronger numerically than they had been before the battle commenced!

  Our manpower is not unlimited, but we can stand to fight many more battles as severe as this one without diminishing the number of men we can keep in the field. McClellan’s genius has been to recognize the augmentation that a well planned mobilization adds to our effort.

  Of course we will have to show much better results if we expect to maintain the people’s morale sufficiently to encourage them to voluntarily enlist. Another defeat might dampen their enthusiasm for volunteering and force the President to call upon conscription to fill the depleted ranks. We must not let it come to that. Forced conscription ordered by the national government would put us on the short road to defeat. It would cause as much of a rebellion by our own States Rights people as the rebellion of the Free Staters.

  Lee estimated that the Rebels, despite their small losses of territory, were going to claim, with justification, tactical and strategic victories. The Confederates had come nowhere near destroying any significant portion of the Free State armies, while losing heavily of their own. The Free Staters had also replaced their losses with the reserve armies coming in from Chicago and Ohio. More importantly, they had gained the experience and the confidence that comes from waging a successful defensive battle.

  Grant has out-generalled me, and he knows it. He will not be afraid to fight me in the future and neither will his men. The Rebels have learned many important lessons. In the future they are not likely to leave any portion of their front unguarded. They have demoted their poorly performing officers and promoted those who fought well. They will only become tougher as this war progresses. That does not mean that opportunities to exploit their weaknesses will not be found in the future. But I have lost my opportunity to close out the Rebellion in the Northwest with a quick, decisive victory. Perhaps McClellan will fare better in New England.

  And now I have to guard the small gains I have made. A salient is difficult to defend, especially so since there are no railroads or hard surface roads to keep the men supplied. I will have to set the men to work building them before the late autumn rains and early winter snows make it an endless sea of mud. And I must fortify this salient strongly enough to hold it against attacks from all sides.

  My most urgent need of all is to clear the southbound return loop of my railroad supply route. Unless I get these stalled trains moving my men will succumb to malnutrition as surely as they would fall from enemy bullets. Bragg has convinced me to authorize the removal of fifteen miles of track between Mattoon and Urbana so that his engineers can re-lay it as the bypass route around the west side of Terre Haute. Removing that track is an admission that a northward advance against Grant’s line is no longer possible. Bragg’s railroad bypass must succeed as our alternate route of communications.

  “Is Bragg really going to be able to deliver on that railroad bypass around Terre Haute?” asked Lee.

  Taylor laughed uproariously at Lee’s unabashed skepticism. “Yes, sir, I think he’ll do it. He’s dragooned what’s left of Pemberton’s division to build the approach on the east bank, and he’s got all of Van Dorn’s and Hardee’s divisions working on the west bank. Our men don’t like that. They think the Rebels we captured from Pope’s division should be doing the work.”

  Lee smiled for the first time. “Ah, well, I don’t think we’d better try to put the Rebels to work right away. They’d treat our men the same and I doubt that we’d get a lick of work out of them anyways. The sooner we can exchange them and get them off our hands the better. How are our men doing? Are they making a stable roadbed? How about that bridge over the Wabash?”

  “The roadbed’s coming along fine,” Taylor assured him. “Bragg tried corduroying it with tree trunks a couple different ways. He’s developed a method that supports the rails without giving them a lot of wiggle room. As for the bridge over the Wabash, he really doesn’t want me to tell you….”

  Lee raised his eyebrows. “Go ahead. As long as he gets me a bridge that can carry a train I don’t care how he
does it!”

  “What he did, was, he laid the track all the way to the river. Then he took a couple of locomotives, ran up the boilers to full pressure, and told the engineer to jam the throttle valve open and jump out. He sent the locomotives careening down the track and into the river. They’re breaking up the current and collecting the drifting sand around them. When they’re settled, which should be tomorrow, Bragg’s going to run the new track on top of them and then connect it on across to the railroad running down to Vincennes. Bragg’s promised that he’ll court martial himself for destroying railroad property.”

  Lee threw his head back and laughed louder than he had in years --- both in relief that the bypass railroad was being built successfully and at the spectacle of Bragg conducting his own court martial. He slapped Taylor on the shoulder.

  “Dick, I am going to have to go lie down and rest for a while. If I hear any more good news today it might just kill me!”

  Lee walked out of his railcar and across the station to the inn. Taylor noted that he walked with a jaunty sprint, the likes of which he had not seen in Lee since the offensive stalled.

  For the first time in a week that seemed more like seven years Lee felt as if he could enjoy a real rest without being burdened with the cares of a battle in progress. He stretched out on the bed and fell into a deep sleep as soon as he closed his eyes. He was still sleeping five hours later when there came a knock on his door. It was Dick Taylor.

  “Get down here and look what the cat drug in!” shouted Taylor. Lee groggily followed Taylor downstairs. Sure enough, there in the common area was Stoneballs Jackson! He was sipping a coffee with his left hand while standing up with crutches under his arms to support him.

  Lee rushed forward and clasped Stoneballs’ outstretched right hand. “You might of let me known you were coming!”

  “I didn’t let the surgeon know I was leaving,” replied Stoneballs. “I left the field hospital before Old Doc Sawbones got any more ideas about cutting on me.”

  “Where were you hit?”

  “Our men shot me in the legs when I was coming in to the lines. Can’t blame them for that though --- they had to assume that anybody galloping toward them in the dark was a Rebel. They hit me once in each leg, but the bullets ricocheted off my sword and my Lefaucheux. Left a devil of a bruise on my hip and my thigh.”

  “But it was the Damnrebels who really hurt me. One of them shot me in the ‘blind cheeks’ while I was bolting across their lines. They must be short of military rifles because I got shot with a seat full of buckshot while I was standing up in the saddle.” Stoneballs patted his swollen backside and winced. Old Doc Sawbones kept wanting to keep cutting on me to get every little piece of buckshot out. He was doing more damage than the buckshot was.”

  “Old Doc Sawbones wouldn’t have been able to find a cannonball inside you,” said Dick Taylor. “Good thing you left when you did or you could forget about sitting down for the rest of your days!”

  Lee laughed even louder than he had over Taylor’s joke about Bragg court martialing himself. “What grand fortune I am having today! Even my ‘strong right arm’ has returned to me!”

  Dick Taylor cupped his hand to his mouth so that only Lee could hear. “You have your ‘strong right arm’ back, General Lee, while Old Stone Balls has received a weak rear end.”

  23

  Cleveland, Ohio, October 15, 1861

  President Lincoln was still reading the telegraphed reports of the Battle of the Wabash when John Hay ushered Cump Sherman into the parlor of the Hargreaves Mansion.

  Lincoln stood up to greet Cump. “Welcome back, Sherman. I and the nation are grateful for your contributions to what is looking like a victory of sorts. Our papers have taken to calling it ‘The Battle of the Wabash.’ The Confederates are calling it ‘The Battle of the Salient.’ I think I like their name better.”

  “Both names are descriptive,” replied Cump. “Counting the outlying skirmishes, the battle extended along a front of over five hundred miles --- from Jacksonville, Illinois to Madison, Indiana. But most of the fighting, and certainly most of the casualties, occurred on the salient within sight of the Wabash.”

  “What is your summary judgment of my field reports of the battle?” asked Cump asked after taking the seat the seat that Lincoln pointed to.

  “That the battle went as we had estimated before you went there --- that Grant fought superbly but that McDowell didn’t fight his men so well. I gathered that McDowell’s division commanders saved his army from a serious defeat and that General Mitchel’s intervention under your direction gave us what may fairly be called a victory. If I’m reading your reports correctly the two of you broke the back of the Confederate attack in Indiana when you captured the Confederate division that had crossed the Wabash north of Terre Haute.”

  “Yes, Mr. President, that is a fair assessment of what I wanted to convey. Grant did fight his side of the battle brilliantly. Pope’s freelancing left a hole in his lines at the outset. Grant plugged it by moving Curtis’ division eighty miles by rail by way of Bloomington. He sent Prentiss’ Division one hundred twenty miles by rail through Peoria to hit the Confederates on the flank. William Wallace --- may he rest in peace --- halted the Confederates at Urbana long enough for Grant to get Curtis and Prentiss up there.”

  Lincoln’s eyes moistened. “William Wallace….another old and dear friend lost to a war that is young. I am fearful to contemplate the losses that are still to be borne.”

  Sherman bowed in respect to Wallace. “Wallace died nobly, as military men wish to die if death in the line of duty cannot be avoided. He was indispensable to our victory.”

  Sherman raised his head. “Getting back to Grant, I must say that he also fought splendidly to hold off the Confederates at Jacksonville, Springfield, and Decatur. He divided his two divisions that he kept on that front into brigades and spread them out into the gaps that were left by the displacement of Curtis’ and Prentiss’ divisions. The Confederates never caught on that he had pulled half his men out of the line. He fought the classic defensive battle all the way around.”

  Lincoln nodded. “Let us give thanks for General Grant, then. But what happened with McDowell?”

  “He neglected to defend the Wabash,” said Sherman with disdain. “He left Jacob Loomis in charge of a seventy-mile river frontage from Terre Haute to Williamsport. Loomis isn’t a professional military man. He had no idea how to patrol a river. McDowell should have given him some help. I know he was short of men to cover such a long front, but he should at least have had observation points and cavalry patrols operating on both sides of the river. Patrols would have spotted the Confederate crossing at its earliest moment and alerted McDowell to send reinforcements to contest the crossing points.

  “The crossing took him by surprise. If Schofield hadn’t taken charge of the battle locally the Confederates would have captured McDowell’s headquarters in Indianapolis before he even knew an attack was in progress.

  “When he finally realized he was under attack he pulled McPherson and Rosecrans back into Indianapolis. Sheridan was left alone on the southern flank with a gap in the line between his division and the rest of McDowell’s army. The Confederates pushed him back across the Indianapolis and Cincinnati Railroad from Shelbyville to Madison. Those were needless losses furthest from the center of the attack. We need to take these towns back, by the way. Their loss complicates our defense of Indianapolis and Cincinnati.”

  “I suppose we first need to relieve McDowell of command of that army and designate his replacement,” replied Lincoln.

  “I’d suggest promoting Schofield to command that army,” Sherman advised. “His improvised defense saved the army from a serious defeat. Move McDowell back to division command. He’s an effective division commander, but no more than that.”

  “We will make that change, then,” said Lincoln. “Next question is what do we do with Ormsby Mitchel’s reserve army? Mitchel fought it well under your direction. Do
we need to keep that army together as a separate command, or should we amalgamate it into Schofield’s command?”

  “Ah!” said Sherman, raising his finger. “You’ve touched upon exactly the right point. Let’s use Mitchel’s army in the role to which it has become accustomed --- as a reserve army poised to strike the Confederates when and where they least expect! Let’s bring Mitchel’s army back through Cincinnati. Use one of its divisions to fortify Cincinnati and the heights on the Kentucky side of the river. Then advance the rest of the army westward from Cincinnati across southern Indiana.”

  Sherman got up and pointed the line of his proposed advance on the wall map.

  “That will force the Confederates to give up the ground they gained between Madison and Shelbyville,” he exclaimed. “It might even force them all the way back to New Albany and allow us to bring Louisville under our guns.”

  Lincoln perked up. “In other words, we should go full chisel in attacking the enemy before he has time to think about renewing his offensive against us.”

  “That’s it!” said Sherman. “I wouldn’t call the Confederates ‘slackers,’ but it is natural that they’ll want to sit back and lick their wounds after a campaign that failed to accomplish much. They’ll want to rest and re-equip their fought-out divisions. They’ll be furloughing their wounded and training new men to replace them. Believe me, it will disconcert them in the extreme to have to deal with a strong attack from us.”

  Sherman waved his hand over the bend in the front around Terre Haute held by Mitchel’s men.