Never Call Retreat, page 57
Chapter Four: IN LETTERS OF BLOOD 1. All or Nothing
1. Letter of Grant to his father dated June 15, 1863, in the Philip H. and A. S. W. Rosenbach Foundation, Philadelphia. In this letter Grant said that if his May 22 assault had succeeded, "I could by this time have made a campaign that would have made this state of Mississippi almost safe for a solitary horseman to ride over."
2. For a glimpse of Grant's plans in the early stages, see his letter to Banks, dated March 22, in O.R., Vol. XXIV, Part Three, 125; his April 12 message to Halleck, in the Illinois State Historical Library; message from Charles A. Dana to Secretary Stanton dated April 12, in the ChaTles A. Dana Papers, Library of Congress; and an incomplete letter by Grant to his father dated April 21, in the Civil War Collection, G. A. R. Room, Chicago Public Library.
3. N.O.R., Vol. XXIV, 610-12, 632-33. The intensity of the fire is indicated by the Confederate estimate that Porter's ships got off more than 3000 rounds in this engagement.
4. Letter of Banks to Mrs. Banks dated April 29, in the N. P. Banks Papers, Essex Institute Library: letter to Burnside, same date, B. & L., extra-illustrated, Vol. XI, Huntington Library; O.R., Vol. XXVI, Part One, 12.
5. Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Vol. I, 480-81.
6. O.R., Vol. XVII, Part One, 252-53, 521-29; study of the Vicksburg campaign in the J. C. Pemberton Letters, New York Public Library. For an excellent account of the cavalry exploit see D. Alexander Brown, Grierson's Raid.
7. Memoirs of W. T. Sherman, Vol. I, 319; letter of Grant to Sherman dated May 7, in the Illinois State Historical Library, Springfield; O.R., Vol. XXIV, Part One, 576-78. For a recital of Pemberton's problems see his report, ibid., 257-59.
8. Letter of Grant to McPherson dated May 11, in the Rutgers University Library.
9. O.R., Vol. XXIV, Part Three, 815, 842, 859-60.
10.Adam Badeau, Military History of U. S. Grant, Vol. I, 249. Edwin C. Bearss, Research Historian at the Vicksburg National Military Park, and one of the most thorough students of the Vicksburg campaign, has argued (in the Vicksburg Sunday Post for April 7, 1957) that Pemberton's only is*! chance was to attack McClernand's corps vigorously on May 13. Grant's army was divided at that time, and Bearss suggests that if Pemberton had been alert and aggressive, "Grant probably would have suffered a humiliating defeat."
11.Grant Moves South, 443-45; letter of Maj. William Augustus Drennan, 27th Mississippi infantry, to his wife, dated May 30, in the Mississippi State Department of Archives and History, Jackson; diary of Joseph Dill Alison, in the Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina Library; O.R., Vol. XXIV, Part One, 268-69.
12. O.R., Vol. XXIV, Part One, 241.
13.Ibid., 272-73. Pemberton's sick list, and the number of detailed men, must have been high. When Vicksburg finally surrendered more than 31,000 Confederates were paroled.
14.Letter of Gen. Johnston to Gen. W. W. Mackall dated June 7, from the Mackall Papers, Southern Historical Collection.
15.Peter F. Walker, Vicksburg: A People at War, 156; letter of Sgt. Thomas Hogan, 5th Missouri infantry, dated July 5, in the Civil War Papers of the Missouri Historical Society; letters of Maj. William Augustus Drennan dated May 30 and June 2, as cited in Note 11, above.
16.Maj. J. T. Hogane, Reminiscences of the Siege of Vicksburg, SHSP, Vol. XI, 296; Edward S. Gregory, Vicksburg During the Siege, in Annals of the War, 116; diary of Rowland Chambers, entries for June 9 and June 14, in the Department of Archives,
Louisiana State University; diary of "Miss Balfour," owned by Mrs. J. W. Collier of Vicksburg, copy in the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.
17. Letter of Banks to Mrs. Banks dated July 8, in the N. P. Banks Papers, Essex Institute Library.
2. The Notion of Equality
1. Sallie A. Putnam, In Richmond During the Confederacy,
242-43; letter of F. Sorrel, Jr., to Col. Henry Innes Thornton
dated July 8, 1863, in the Henry Innes Thornton Papers, Cali-
fornia Historical Society, San Francisco; Kean, Inside the Con-
federate Government, 79-81, quoting Robert Garlick Hill Kean's
diary entry for July 12.
2. Rowland, Vol. V, 548-49, 552-54.
3. Letter of Jefferson Davis to Judge James H. Howry dated Aug. 27, 1863, in the Howry Family Papers, Library of Congress, the Davis letter having been presented to the Library by Mary Harris Howry and Elizabeth Butler Howry; Rowland, Vol. V, 578-80.
4. O.R., Vol. XXVIII, Part Two,. 173. On June 25 Davis had written to Beauregard urging him to send more troops west if he could do so without losing Charleston, adding: "I need not state to you that the issue is vital to the Confederacy." Ibid., 162.
5. Inside the Confederate Government, 100; A Rebel War Clerk's Diary, 246. Col. Northrop, a Job's comforter if ever there was one, brightly pointed out that even if people had to go without meat they might remember that European peasants rarely ate meat and that peasants in Hindustan never had any.
6. Letter of Bragg to Mrs. Bragg dated June 20; photostat in the Library of Congress.
7. O.R., Vol. XXIII, Part One, 8; Part Two, 420-24; CCJ*' Report, 1865, Vol. Ill, 27; letter of Garfield to his brother dated June 11, in the James A. Garfield Papers, Library of Congress; letter of Garfield to Secretary Chase dated July 27, reprinted after the war in the New York Sun, clipping in the Garfield Papers.
8. Stanton to Rosecrans, in the Rosecrans Papers, Library of the University of California at Los Angeles; O.R., Vol. XXIII, Part Two, 518. Rosecrans' losses for the Tullahoma campaign are listed at 570. OR., Vol. XXIII, Part One, 424.
9. O.R., Vol. XXVn, Part One, 83, 92-94; Nicolay & Hay, Vol. VII, 278; Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and Letters of John Hay, 66-67; Noah Brooks, Washington in Lincoln's Time, 91-92, 94; Basler, Vol. VI, 327-28.
10.Letter of Rufus Dawes to Mary Gates dated July 14, in the Rufus Dawes Papers, courtesy of Rufus D. Beach and Ralph G. Newman; letter of Frank Haskell dated July 17, in the Frank Haskell Papers, State Historical Society of Wisconsin; letters of Meade to Mrs. Meade dated July 8, July 12 and July 14, in the George G. Meade Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. It should be noted that Meade did not carry his complaints to the press or Congress, but confined them to letters to his wife.
11.Letter of Edward Burrus dated July 27, in the Department of Archives, Louisiana State University.
12.Letters of Lee to Mrs. Lee dated July 12 and July 15, in the R. E. Lee Papers, Library of Congress; Clifford Dowdey, ed., The Wartime Papers of R. E. Lee, 560, 564-65.
13. Supra, 188-89.
14.Basler, Vol. VI, 319-20. This short, rambling speech is worth looking at as a first approach to the line of thought that ultimately found expression in the Gettysburg address.
15.American Annual Cyclopaedia for 1863, 811-16; Morgan Dix, Memoirs of John Adams Dix, Vol. II, 72-75; O.R., Vol. XXVII, Part Two, 878-81, 886-89; diary of Mrs. Gustavus V. Fox, entries for July 13-15, in the Blair Family Papers, Library of Congress.
16.George Templeton Strong, Diary of the Civil War, 1860-1865, edited by Allan Nevins, 335-39; editorial in Harper's Weekly for July 25, 1863.
3. Servants of the Guns
1. The reader who enjoys drawing historical parallels might reflect on the odd similarity between the Federal operation at Charleston in 1863 and the British attack on the Dardanelles in 1915. In each case, extensive and unsuccessful trench warfare grew out of a simple attempt to open a way for warships. A key feature in each case was naval inability to remove floating mines until the guns which protected the mine fields were silenced; the army came in to help the navy and presently found itself bearing most of the load with the navy in support.
2. Alfred P. Rockwell, The Operations Against Charleston, MHSM Papers, Vol. IX, 167-75; Col. Charles H. Olmstead, Reminiscences of Service in Charleston Harbor in 1863, SHSP, Vol. XI, 120-21; Maj. Gen. Q. A. Gillmore, The Army Before Charleston in 1863, B. & L., Vol. IV, 58-60; Lieut. Iredell Jones, Letters from Fort Sumter in 1862 and 1863, SHSP, Vol. XII, 137-39; Gen. W. W. H. Davis, The Siege of Morris Island, in Annals of the War, 95-99; dispatch in the New York Tribune dated July 19, 1863, reprinted in Moore's Rebellion Record, Vol. VII, Documents, 211-14.
3. Journal of Admiral Dahlgren, entries for Aug. 9 and Aug. 13, quoted in Memoir of John A. Dahlgren, by Madeleine Vinton Dahlgren, 407; Charles H. Olmstead, op. cit., 164-65.
4. Gen. W. W. H. Davis, op. cit, 104-5; Olmstead, 158-59; O.R., Vol. XXVIII, Part One, 210.
5. Capt. Justus Scheibert, Seven Months in the Rebel States During the North American War, 135-36; Maj. Gen. Samuel Jones, The Siege of Charleston, 255-59, 278-84; Brig. Gen. George H. Gordon, A War Diary of Events in the War of the Great Rebellion, 183-92.
6. William H. Stryker, The Swamp Angel, B. & L., Vol. IV, 72-74.
7. Gordon, War Diary, 194; C. F. Adams, Charles Francis Adams, by His Son, 342.
4. The Road to Zion
1. American Annual Cyclopaedia for 1863, 332-33. Crittenden, a Senator in 1860, was a Representative in 1863. His 1860 compromise plan involved chiefly a permanent restoration of the old Missouri Compromise line, with slavery forever prohibited north of it and permitted, at the option of the inhabitants, south of it. This was to be written into the Constitution, with a specific proviso that Congress lacked power to interfere with slavery where it then existed.
2. Letter of James Roberts Gilmore to Rosecrans on May 28, 1863, in the Rosecrans Papers, Library of the University of California at Los Angeles. Gilmore had talked to Lincoln and said his peace terms "will be something as follows." See also Lincoln's telegrams to Rosecrans dated May 21 and May 28, in Basler, Vol. VI, 225, 236.
3. Letter of T. J. Barnett to Barlow dated July 9, in the Barlow Papers, Huntington Library; letter of Attorney General Bates to Francis Lieber dated Oct. 8, in the Lieber Collection, also at the Huntington Library.
4. Basler, Vol. VI, 406-10.
5. Lincoln to Schofield dated Oct. 28, in John Hay, Lincoln
and the Civil War, 108.
6. N.O.R., Vol. II, 322-25, 655-57.
7. Banks discusses his general plan, his orders to Franklin and
the failure of the expedition in O.R., Vol. XXVI, Part One, 18-20.
8. Col. O. M. Roberts in Confederate Military History, Vol. XI, Texas, 106-7, 111.
9. Montague Bernard, Neutrality of Great Britain During the American Civil War, 471-72; Messages and Papers of the Confederacy, Vol. II, 539-40. Benjamin's lettter was dated Aug. 4, 1863.
10. Frederick W. Seward, Seward at Washington as Senator and
Secretary of State, Vol. Ill, 180.
11. C. F. Adams, Charles Francis Adams, by His Son, iA2-43.
12. Spencer Walpole, The Life of Lord John Russell, Vol. II,
359; Rhodes, VoL VI, 381-83; Herbert C. F. Bell, Lord Palmer-
ston, Vol. II, 354-55.
13.Charles Francis Adams, by His Son, 317.
14.Rowland, Vol. VI, 103-5.
5. A Mad Irregular Battle
1. O.R., Vol. XXX, Part One, 47-53. For a cogent defense of Rosecrans' delay, see W. M. Lamers, Edge of Glory, 292-300.
2. Freeman, R. E. Lee, Vol. HI, 163-67; O.R., Vol. XXIX, Part Two, 700-2.
3. George Edgar Turner, Victory Rode the Rails, 282-83; Robert C. Black, The Railroads of the Confederacy, 185-91; James Longstreet, From Manassas to Appomattox, 436-37; G. Moxley Sorrel, Recollections of a Staff Officer, 180-82; E. P. Alexander, Military Memoirs of a Confederate, 448-49.
4. O.R., Vol. XXIII, Part Two, 953.
5. The difficulty of getting a satisfactory count of Civil War numbers is especially acute in the Chickamauga campaign. The figures available do not necessarily mean what they seem to mean. Rosecrans' Aug. 10 return shows just under 80,000 men present for duty in his command. An undetermined number must be subtracted for duty in the rear, and it seems likely that the effective total for the field army was somewhere between 60,000 and 65,000. Bragg's present-for-duty total includes a much higher proportion of cavalry than Rosecrans' total includes, and ordinarily cavalry had only a very minor role in a major battle; but a good part of Bragg's cavalry belonged to Forrest and could fight dismounted, on equal terms, against any infantry in the land. The returns are in O.R., Vol. XXIII, Part Two, 607, 957.
6. O.R., Vol. XXX, Part Three, 479, 481; letter of Gen. W. B. Hazen to Benson H. Lossing dated Aug. 23, 1866, in the Palmer Collection, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland.
7. Original in the Braxton Bragg Papers, Manuscript Department, Duke University Library. Bragg's recital of all of this is in O.R., Vol. XXX, Part Two, 26-31; Hindman's defense is in the same volume, 292-96. See also D. H. Hill, Chickamauga, the Great Battle of the West, B. & L., Vol. Ill, 638-47; Capt. W. N. Polk, Leonidas Polk, Bishop and General, Vol. II, 240-44, and The Battle of Chickamauga, SHSP, Vol. X, 5-7. Careful study of all this material bears out the remark in the text; Bragg unquestionably was served by some very difficult generals. (One is tempted to add that although the Confederacy seemed to have more of these difficult generals the Federals had more who were not so much difficult as downright impossible.)
8. John B. Turchin, Chickamauga, 95; O.R., Vol. LI, Part Two, 760-61. Stanley Horn calls Bragg's plan "a masterpiece of strategy which, if successful, would have driven the whole Federal army into McLemore's cove, and never could they have scaled those precipitate walls in time to escape butchery or capture. ... If one overlooks the fact that Rosecrans had changed the position of his army from where Bragg thought it was, one can find no fault with Bragg's basic strategy." (The Army of Tennessee, 255.)
9. On the Federal side, Sheridan wrote: "Nearly all the superior officers of the army were at headquarters, and it struck me that much depression prevailed." (Personal Reminiscences, Vol. I, 279.) For the Confederates, Hood said that he met the principal officers of Bragg's army that night, "and to my surprise not one spoke in a sanguine tone regarding the result of the battle in which we were then engaged." (Advance and Retreat, 62-63.)
10.Charles A. Dana, Recollections of the Civil War, 113; L. W. Mulhane, Memorial of Major General William Stark Rosecrans, 68-70.
11.Letter of Rosecrans to George B. Pearson dated Nov. 1, 1863, in the Rosecrans Papers, UCLA Library; Dana, op. cit., 113-14.
12. O.R., Vol. XXX, Part Two, 33.
13. Shortly after the battle Bragg told his wife that at seven
in the morning a member of his staff found Polk sitting in a rock-
ing chair on the porch at his headquarters, waiting for break-
fast and explaining that he really did not know why his attack had
not begun. A few days later Bragg wrote another letter, placing
the incident at eight o'clock and declaring: "I shall say candidly to
the President that he must relieve Genl. Polk or myself." (Letters
dated Sept. 22 and 27, in the Braxton Bragg Papers, Missouri His-
torical Society.) Polk issued orders for the attack before midnight
on Sept. 19; he asserted that in the morning, learning that the
order had not reached Hill, he rode to the front to get things moving. O.R., Vol. XXX, Part Two, 47.
14.The fatal element in the disaster was of course the withdrawal of Wood's division, and Rosecrans and Wood argued furiously afterward, each blaming the other. Inasmuch as Wood did precisely what Rosecrans' written order told him to do it is hard to feel that Rosecrans could blame anyone but himself. For details, see O.R., Vol. XXX, Part One, 58-59, 102-4, 634-37, 645-47. Excellent recent treatments are in Lamers' The Edge of Glory, 336-48, and in Glenn Tucker's Chickamauga, Bloody Battle in the West, 251-59.
15.That at least is the only conclusion this writer can draw. Rosecrans was an appealing character, and most of the time he was a first-rate general, but he does seem to have lost his grip— certainly on the battle, and probably on himself as well—once he left the field. The post-battle claim that Chickamauga actually was a Union triumph—expressed most strongly by H. V. Boyn-ton in the assertion: "It was not a forced withdrawal ... it was an advance toward Chattanooga"—is hardly worth serious consideration. (Boynton, The Chickamauga Campaign, MHSM Papers, Vol. VII, 362-63.)
16.Ambrose Bierce's Civil War, 37.
17.O.R., Vol. XXX, Part One, 142, 192.
6. 37,000 Plus One
1. Longstreet, From Manassas to Appomattox, 466; O.R., Vol. XXX, Part Two, 65-66; Part Four, 706. Bragg put Polk under arrest and prepared to file charges against him, but President Davis —who retained confidence in both men—talked him out of it. Ibid., 734-36; Rowland, Vol. VI, 54-56.
2. O.R., Vol. XXX, Part Four, 681, 691, 695, 701; Livermore, Numbers and Losses, 105-6; Alexander, Military Memoirs of a Confederate, 452.
3. Bragg's argument is in O.R., Vol. XXX, Part Two, 36-37. He said that nearly half of his army consisted of reinforcements that came in just before the battle, bringing no transportation whatever, and he added that nearly a third of his artillery horses were battle casualties.
4. Capt. Irving A. Buck, Cleburne and His Command, 158-59; From Manassas to Appomattox, 465-67; Armand Beauregard to his brother, Gen. Beauregard, in O.R., Vol. XXX, Part Four, 746; letter of Davis to Bragg dated June 29, 1872, reviewing the situation in respect to Pemberton, in the Lincoln National Life Foundation, Fort Wayne, Ind.
5. O.R., Vol. XXX, Part One, 197-98.
6. Thomas Weber, The Northern Railroads in the Civil War, 180-86; Nicolay & Hay, Vol. VIII, 236-37; George Turner, Victory Rode the Rails, 286-96; O.R., Vol. XXIX, Part One, 146-95, passim; David Homer Bates, Lincoln in the Telegraph Office, 174-79. Slocum's protest is in O.R., Vol. XXIX, Part One, 156. See also D.A.B., Vol. XVII, 217.
7. Memoirs of W. T. Sherman, Vol. I, 347-58; James R. Sullivan, Chickamauga and Chattanooga Battlefields, 27. Halleck ordered these reinforcements before the battle of Chickamauga, realizing that Rosecrans was going to need help, but the orders did not reach Grant until Sept. 22.
8. Thomas B. Van Home, History of the Army of the Cumberland, Vol. I, 386-88; O.R., Vol. XXX, Part One, 214-21, passim.
