Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 by Jacob Dolson Cox

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The bitterness of the feud between the loyalists and disunionists in
the Holston valley can hardly be imagined by those who did not
witness it. The persecutions of the loyal mountaineers had been such
that when their turn of ruling came they would have been more than
human if they had not retaliated. The organization of home-guards
gave to these armed bodies of men the power, and with it came the
temptation to abuse it. The memory of the men who had been hanged
for bridge-burning, and of those who had languished and died in
prison charged with no crime but disloyalty to the Confederacy, was
a constant stimulus to severity. Their blood seemed to cry from the
ground. We found a constant necessity for moderating their passions,
and it was not always possible to keep them within the bounds of
civilized warfare. My experience in West Virginia was repeated with
some phases of still greater intensity. When we got these loyal men
away from home, campaigning on distant fields, there was no trouble
in enforcing discipline, and they showed no more fierceness of
personal retaliation than other troops. I suspect this will
everywhere be true, in greater or less measure, and that in all wars
it will be found for the interest of humanity not to allow local
troops to garrison their own homes.

The scouts and irregular organizations were, as usual, the most
likely to fall into excesses. I had an example of this, falling
under my own eye at the time I am speaking of, and showing how,
under this intense exasperation, the "bush-whacking" degenerated
into guerilla war in which no quarter was given on either side. I
had sent out a reconnoissance of a party of Indiana cavalry
accompanied by some thirty of the Tennessee scouts, the whole force
about a hundred in number. They had encountered a hostile party of
"irregulars" some thirty strong, and had routed them. They brought
in fifteen prisoners, and reported ten of the enemy killed. Those
who were captured had all surrendered to the Indiana men, and the
Tennesseeans were disposed to complain that quarter had been given.
True, the party which had been attacked was said to have committed
great outrages, and to have been engaged in forcing loyal men into
the Confederate Army under their conscription laws. The chief of the
scouts came to my quarters, and I put to him the ordinary question
as to the luck of his last expedition. "Oh," said he, in a dejected
nasal tone; "some pretty good luck and some bad luck." "What bad
luck?" said I, thinking some of his men had got hurt. "Oh, them
Indiana cavalry fellows let the captain of the gang and fourteen of
his men surrender to 'em." "And what became of the rest?" "_We_ had
to deal with them," said he, significantly; "and they didn't
surrender." Such is civil war when it becomes a deadly feud between
old neighbors and acquaintances.

The month of April ran on with continued activity of reconnoitring
parties, but no larger movements. The spring was unusually backward.
There was a flurry of snow on the 16th, but it did not lie on the
ground, and about the 20th lovely spring weather began in earnest.
The best evidence we had that our lines of communication were
getting in more efficient condition, was the arrival of an agent of
the Sanitary Commission with a large shipment of fresh vegetables
for gratuitous distribution. We were sorely in need of them. There
was a good deal of incipient scurvy in camp, and scarce any one was
wholly free from disorders caused by too restricted diet. Our
regular rations were bacon and flour, varied occasionally by a small
issue of dried white beans or rice. This was nutritious enough, but
after some months' steady use, nature pretty imperatively demanded a
change. The noble organization of the Commission had been watching
for the opportunity, and the arrival of a generous supply of
potatoes, onions, and pickled cabbage made feast days for everybody
from the general down. At my headquarters we had been confined to
the soldiers' rations, and it was impossible to get anything else.
The only ferment to raise our bread was saleratus, and we had become
very tired of saleratus biscuit. No luxuries ever tasted so well as
these plain vegetables. Our physical condition craved them, and they
were food and medicine at once. The sauerkraut was finely shaved
cabbage laid down in brine, and a steaming platter of it made the
_piece de resistance_ of our camp dinner as long as it lasted. The
onions we sliced and ate raw with a dressing of vinegar. The gusto
with which we enjoyed this change of diet remains a vivid
remembrance after a quarter of a century, and is the best proof of
our need of it. The health of the whole camp was restored, and we
were "hard as nails" during the year of rough campaigning that was
to follow.

The first week in May was the time of rendezvous for Sherman's grand
army in northern Georgia, and with the opening of the last week in
April the signal was given to destroy the railroad between Bull's
Gap and the Watauga River, or further if the enemy should leave the
crossing of that stream unharmed. Our position at the gap was high
in the cleft of Bays Mountain through which the railway passes and
then turns southeastward to the Nolachucky. The road then goes up
the valley of that stream and over a ridge to the Watauga, which
runs to the northwest, joining the Holston again by a route which is
nearly at right angles to the general trend of the valley. The
Watauga is not easily fordable at an ordinary stage of water, and
thus the triangle between the Holston on the left, the Watauga in
front, and the Nolachucky on the right, made the debatable ground of
the upper valley. Whilst we held the barrier at Bull's Gap the enemy
could not stay on the hither side of the Watauga, nor could we pass
the river and stop short of a strong position an equal distance
beyond.

We made a strong demonstration of cavalry supported by infantry, as
if we were determined to cross the Watauga and push on into
Virginia. The Confederate cavalry set fire to the bridge, as we
expected them to do. One brigade was ordered to Jonesboro, to march
back destroying all the railway bridges and tearing up and twisting
the iron rails as far as possible. [Footnote: Official Records, vol.
xxxii. pt. iii. pp. 477, 492.] With another force I began in person
a similar work of destruction on the section nearest Bull's Gap.
Time could only be given us for this work till the 27th of April,
but on the evening of that day my division was reunited at the gap,
having torn up and twisted about one third of the track over a space
of fifty miles, and thoroughly destroyed all the wooden bridges.
[Footnote: _Id_., pp. 500, 512.]

The footsore and sick were put on a railway train, and with the rest
I began the march for Knoxville. As General Sherman was urgent for
speed in our movement, the columns were kept near the railway and
the trains were run to meet them, taking the men in detachments. The
first day of May found us at Charleston, the crossing of the
Hiwassee River, with two divisions of the Twenty-third corps and
with General Schofield in our midst. A new division from Indiana was
on its way, by rail, to join us at Cleveland, and it was certain
that we could be in our place as left wing, before the 5th, the day
assigned by Sherman. Two days were given to getting up and
organizing our trains, and on Tuesday, the 3d, we marched at
daybreak, with our field organization complete. The Atlanta campaign
was begun. General Schofield went over to Chattanooga to meet
Sherman, and the command of the corps on the march was committed to
me. [Footnote: _Id_., xxxviii. pt. iv. pp. 5, 22, 32, 48.] On the
4th, leaving Cleveland, we crossed the Georgia line and advanced to
Red Clay, where, with the Army of the Cumberland on our right, the
union of Sherman's forces in the field was completed.

At the Hiwassee we were a hundred and forty miles from Bull's Gap,
and had made the distance in three days, marching half the way and
being carried the other half by rail. In going south we seemed to
meet the advancing spring. In the upper valley we could only see a
suspicion of green, here and there, on an early tree, but at our
Sunday camp at Charleston in a fine bend of the Hiwassee, a fresh
green robe covered all the hills, and the sun was so bright and warm
that the shade of my clean new tent was very comfortable. It would
be hard to find a scene better making a romance of campaigning than
that about us. Chilhowee and the great Smoky Mountains piled their
deep blue masses against the eastern horizon, whilst at our feet
rolled as beautiful a river as ever bore a musical Indian name. The
grassy banks rise about a hundred feet above the water, and then the
hills roll and rise around us in charming variety. Near the water's
edge a great spring pours out from the bank in a swift steady stream
two yards wide and six inches deep, giving sweet and pure water
enough for a whole army, and the zigzag paths to it are filled with
picturesque groups of soldiers loaded with camp kettles or canteens.
We should have been dull indeed if we had not felt the exhilaration
of the scene.

CHAPTER XXXV

GRANT, HALLECK AND SHERMAN--JOHNSTON AND MR. DAVIS

Grant's desire for activity in the winter--Scattering to
live--Subordinate movements--The Meridian expedition--Use of the
Mississippi--Sherman's estimate of it--Concentration to be made in
the spring--Grant joins the Potomac Army--Motives in doing so--Meade
as an army commander--Halleck on concentration--North Carolina
expedition given up--Burnside to join Grant--Old relations of
Sherman and Halleck--Present cordial friendship--Frank
correspondence--The supply question--Railway administration--Bridge
defences--Reduction of baggage--Tents--Sherman on spies and
deserters--Changes in Confederate army--Bragg
relieved--Hardee--Beauregard--Johnston--Davis's suggestion of
plans--Correspondence with Johnston--Polk's
mediation--Characteristics--Bragg's letters--Lee writes
Longstreet--Johnston's dilatory discussion--No results--Longstreet
joins Lee--Grant and Sherman have the initiative--Prices in the
Confederacy.

The threshold of the new campaign is a fit place to pick up the
threads of the relations of Sherman to his superiors and his
subordinates, and to notice the manner in which he laid out the
responsible work before him.

Grant had no thought of suspending operations in winter, further
than circumstances should make it imperative. As soon as the siege
of Knoxville was raised, he applied himself earnestly to the
question, What next? His first choice would have been to start from
Chattanooga as a base, and make the Confederate Army his object. The
insuperable obstacle to this was the impossibility, at the time, of
supplying the forces already collected on the upper Tennessee.
[Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxi. pt. iii. p. 503.] The
railroad to Nashville must be practically rebuilt and made much more
efficient than it was, or both Thomas's and Foster's armies would be
tied fast without the possibility of advancing. To make it possible
to feed Sherman's auxiliary force, he sent it down the river to
Bellefonte, some thirty miles below Bridgeport, opened steamboat
communication with it, and set it at work repairing the railway from
Nashville to Decatur and from Decatur to Stevenson. This would
furnish an additional line to Chattanooga when completed, and would
make an accumulation of stores there a possibility. He saw the risks
involved in this scattering of forces, but he had no choice; they
must scatter to live. He did not mean that the army should be
inactive, however; as early as the 7th of December, 1863, he wrote
quite fully to Halleck suggesting a movement from the lower
Mississippi on Mobile, using for this purpose the forces that would
be relieved from guarding the lines about Chattanooga. [Footnote:
Official Records, vol. xxxi. pt. iii. p. 349.]

By the middle of the month he had begun to organize a cavalry force
under Gen. W. Sooy Smith, to move against Forrest in West Tennessee,
and was giving shape to other plans of activity. [Footnote: _Id._,
pp. 429, 431, 473.] Sherman had taken a short leave of absence to
visit his family upon the death of one of his sons, a bright lad,
whose loss was a severe bereavement. On his return to duty, he was
directed to go down the Mississippi, visit the important posts of
his department, and take steps to suppress guerilla interference
with the navigation of the Mississippi. Before leaving his command,
he had suggested an active movement of part of his army in northern
Alabama, to break up the railroad in the neighborhood of Corinth,
whilst he himself led a force up the Yazoo River to attack Granada
from the south, with a similar purpose. He thought he could do this
and get back in time to take part in the "plan of grand campaign"
which Grant was studying. In the same letter he said he deemed Sooy
Smith "too mistrustful of himself for a leader against Forrest," and
suggested Brigadier-General Joseph A. Mower, of whose energy and
courage he had a high opinion. [Footnote: Official Records, vol.
xxxi. pt. iii. p. 445.]

On the subject of the necessity of protecting the river navigation
by every means, Sherman expressed himself in superlatives, as he was
apt to do, but his meaning was plain and sensible. He said to Logan,
to secure its safety "I would slay millions. On that point I am not
only insane, but mad," and will convince the natives that "though to
stand behind a big cotton-wood and shoot at a passing boat is good
sport and safe, it may still reach and kill their friends and
families hundreds of miles off." [Footnote: _Id._ vol. xxx. pt. iii.
p. 459.] Out of this discussion came finally his suggestion of an
extensive movement from Vicksburg upon Meridian for the purpose of
destroying the railway lines, especially in the vicinity of the
latter place, and of isolating the region bordering on the
Mississippi, so that a small force could garrison it and protect
commerce. The suggestion was adopted by Grant. With Sherman's column
the cavalry under Sooy Smith was to co-operate. [Footnote: _Id._,
pp. 473, 527.]

Meridian was made the objective point of this movement, though Grant
intimated to Halleck that if Sherman found it would not too greatly
prolong the subordinate campaign, he might march on Mobile.
[Footnote: _Id._, vol. xxxii. pt. ii. p. 100.] When the march began,
Sherman allowed it to be given out that he would attack Mobile, but
this was to deceive the enemy. In his correspondence with General
Banks he limited his task to that which has been stated, though he
asked Banks to help him keep up the notion that Mobile was aimed at,
as it would deter the enemy from heavily reinforcing General Polk by
the garrison there and by troops sent from Atlanta. "I must return
to the army in the field in Alabama in February," said he, "but
propose to avail myself of the short time allowed me here in the
department, to strike a blow at Meridian and Demopolis." [Footnote:
Official Records, vol. xxxii. pt. ii. p. 114.] In this view the
movement was a success, notwithstanding the failure of the cavalry
column to co-operate. [Footnote: _Id._, p. 498.] The biographer of
General Polk disputes the importance and the permanence of the
interruption of railway communication in Mississippi; [Footnote:
Leonidas Polk, Bishop and General, vol. ii. p. 309.] but it is
certain that no important hostile movement from that region was made
again till Hood's campaign against Thomas a year later, and that was
seriously if not fatally delayed by the want of railway
communication between Florence or Tuscumbia and the interior of the
Gulf States.

On his first visit to Washington after he became lieutenant-general,
Grant found that it was the general expectation of members of
Congress that he should infuse his personal energy into the next
campaign of the army in Virginia. He learned also that the
President, the Cabinet, and General Halleck despaired of the
accomplishment of this by any stringency of orders from a distance,
and thought it could be done only when he should be near enough to
solve questions as they arose by his personal presence and
influence. As a subordinate, few men could do better service than
General Meade; but he seemed to develop a caution amounting almost
to inaction in the presence of the Confederate Army under General
Lee. This had allowed the Richmond government to send Longstreet's
corps to reinforce Bragg at the west; and it was because the grand
opportunity was not improved by Meade that it became necessary to
send Hooker a thousand miles with the Eleventh and Twelfth Corps to
reinforce Rosecrans. Halleck expressed the sentiment of the
administration and of the country when he wrote to Grant on December
13th, "As General Meade's operations have failed to produce any
results, Lee may send by rail reinforcements to Longstreet without
our knowing it. This contingency must also be considered."
[Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxi. pt. iii. p. 396.] It was, in
fact, what Longstreet strenuously urged his government to do. As
late as February 17th, when it was certain that Grant would soon be
in command of all the National armies, Halleck, in a long letter of
which the burden was that Lee's army must be made the objective in
the Eastern campaign, plainly intimated that Meade could not give
the Army of the Potomac the necessary aggressive energy. "Meade
retreated before Lee with a very much larger force," he said, "and
he does not now deem himself strong enough to attack Lee's present
army." [Footnote: _Id_., vol. xxxii. pt. ii. pt. ii. p. 411] After
mentioning the opportunities to break or defeat the enemy which had
been lost or not improved at Antietam and Chancellorsville, he adds
that of Meade after Gettysburg, and continues: "I am also of opinion
that General Meade could have succeeded recently at Mine Run had he
persevered in his attack." [Footnote: _Id_., p. 412.] Pointing out
that McClellan had operated by exterior lines, and Burnside, Hooker,
and Meade by interior ones, and that all had alike failed, he argues
that this does not prove anything against either line of operation,
whether by the James River or by Culpepper; but the sound military
principle still is to avoid scattering the eastern army by North
Carolina expeditions and the like, which were then mooted, and to
concentrate the forces in the east against Lee's army and fight it
out to a finish. [Footnote: _Id_. p. 413.] The letter is an able
one, but the reference to it is now made for the sole purpose of
showing how the problem was placed before General Grant when the
supreme responsibility was cast upon him. He accepted the view so
ably presented. He did not allow the proposed expedition to be made
by Burnside, though he had himself favored it before; but united his
troops to the army on the Rapidan. [Footnote: Official Records, vol.
xxxii. pt. ii. p. 143.] He kept up for a time a nominal duality of
organization, not putting Burnside under Meade or Meade under
Burnside. This made an ostensible reason for the next step, which
was to take the field there in person and try what effect his own
inflexible will might have in giving an aggressive impetus to that
army. It seemed to him to be a choice between that and a continued
dead-lock to the end of the chapter. Thus it was that Grant gave up
his own desire to continue at the head of the western armies which
he had led to successive and glorious victories. Thus it was that
Sherman was right in saying to him, "Like yourself, you take the
biggest load." [Footnote: _Id_., pt. iii. p. 313.] The decision was
not prompted by egotism. There was no vanity in Grant's composition.
He simply saw, as he thought, that in that way decisive progress
might be made, and so he quietly went that way.

Sherman's relations to Halleck had always been close and most
friendly. Outside of official communications they had kept up a
personal correspondence, part of which is found in the Official
Records. From the day when it became apparent that Grant was to
become lieutenant-general, Sherman yielded to his impulse to comfort
and reassure his older friend on what must necessarily involve
disappointment if not humiliation. In a long letter from the
Mississippi in January, he takes pleasure in telling how he had
spoken in public of Halleck's good qualities and talents. "I spoke
of your indomitable industry and called to mind how, when Ord,
Loeser, Spotts, and I were shut up in our stateroom, trying to keep
warm with lighted candles and playing cards on the old Lexington,
off Cape Horn, you were lashed to your berth studying, boning harder
than you ever did at West Point." [Footnote: _Id_., pt. ii. p. 261.]
This was on their voyage out to California during the Mexican War.
In a cordial answer (February 16th), Halleck said he expected Grant
to receive the promotion, and should most cordially welcome him to
the chief command, glad himself to be relieved from so thankless and
disagreeable a position. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxii.
pt. ii. p. 408.] He enlarged upon its difficulties, though he did
not see, apparently, that it had been in his power to take the field
as Grant afterward did, and that it was by his own act that he had
become "simply a military adviser of the Secretary of War and the
President." He bore witness to the fact that there was more harmony
in the western army than in the eastern, saying, "There is less
jealousy and backbiting and a greater disposition to assist each
other." [Footnote: _Ibid_.] In reply Sherman assured Halleck of his
own belief that Grant would prefer to command the "army of the
centre" which was to advance from Chattanooga, and did not want the
position of general-in-chief at Washington. [Footnote: _Id_., p.
498.]

At the beginning of April Sherman wrote again to Halleck, expressing
his belief that he could make his army a unit in action and feeling.
"We have never had," he said, "and God grant we never may have the
dissensions which have so marred the usefulness of our fellows whom
a common cause and common interests alone ought to unite as
brothers." [Footnote: _Id_., pt. iii. p. 222.] It was in this letter
that he asked Halleck to say to the President that he would prefer
not to be nominated to the vacant major-generalship in the regular
army. "I have now all the rank necessary to command, and I believe
all here concede to me the ability, yet accidents may happen, and I
don't care about increasing the distance of my fall. The moment
another appears on the arena better than me, I will cheerfully
subside. Indeed, now, my preference would be to have my Fifteenth
Corps, which was as large a family as I feel willing to provide for;
yet I know Grant has a mammoth load to carry. He wants here some one
who will fulfil his plans, whole and entire and at the time
appointed, and he believes I will do it. I hope he is not mistaken.
I know my weak points, and thank you from the bottom of my heart for
past favors and advice, and will in the future heed all you may
offer, with the deepest confidence in your ability and sincerity."

A single reference more will complete this sketch of the relations
of those prominent men. The week before the opening of his campaign
(April 24th) Sherman wrote again: "I see a mischievous paragraph
that you are dissatisfied and will resign; of course I don't believe
it. If I did, I would enter my protest. You possess a knowledge of
law and of the principles of war far beyond that of any other
officer in our service. You remember that I regretted your going to
Washington for your own sake, but now that you are there you should
not leave." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxii. pt. iii. p.
469.] This hearty friendship and cordial comradeship lasted unbroken
till Halleck's too famous advice to Mr. Stanton after Lincoln was
assassinated, to direct Sherman's subordinates in the Gulf States
and in the West not to obey the orders he might issue in pursuance
of his convention with the Confederate General Johnston. That was a
sore blow which shattered this lifelong friendship, though it now
seems probable that had Halleck's dispatch to Stanton not been
published without the rest of the correspondence, Sherman might have
found possible a more innocent meaning for his words than they
seemed to have when they were read by themselves. This, however, is
not the place to discuss that subject. [Footnote: See Chap. L.,
_post_.]

In considering Sherman's means of supplying his army in the field,
we must note the situation and connections of Nashville, which made
it naturally the principal depot for operations in Alabama and
Georgia. A hundred and eighty-six miles by rail south of the Ohio
River, centrally situated as the capital of Tennessee, it was
directly connected with Chattanooga by a hundred and fifty miles of
railroad, and indirectly by way of Decatur, Alabama, and Stevenson,
a line thirty-five miles longer. These railway connections would of
themselves make Nashville an important post, but it had also the
advantage of water communication with the Ohio. It lies at the
southern bend of the Cumberland River, the course of which is nearly
due north from the city to its mouth, and the stream is navigable
for steamboats the greater part of the year. The Tennessee, a much
larger river, is nearly parallel to the Cumberland in this part of
its course, and a partially constructed railroad from its banks at
Johnsonville to Nashville, seventy-odd miles, was completed during
the winter. With these three lines of communication, there was very
little danger that the great Nashville depot could run short of
munitions or rations, or be seriously isolated by raids of the
enemy. It was to communication between Chattanooga and Nashville
that Sherman had to give his best thought and will. The War
Department had sent out Colonel McCallum, the General Superintendent
of Military Railways in January, and improvements had then been
begun, which under Sherman's energetic command made a brilliant
success of this part of the military administration through the
whole campaign. [Footnote: See "Sherman" (Great Commanders Series),
pp. 199 _et seq_. Also letter of McCallum to Stanton, Official
Records, vol. xxxii. pt. ii. pp. 143-145: Order appointing Adna
Anderson general superintendent of transportation and W. W. Wright
chief engineer of construction, _Id_., p. 365: Sherman's order
organizing the military use of the railways, _Id_., pt. iii. p.
279.] The management of the railways in use was given to Adna
Anderson, and the engineering and bridge-construction to W. W.
Wright. These gentlemen were both civil engineers and experts in
railroad building and management. Military rank was given them later
in order to enable them to control officers and men of the army on
proper occasions. Their skill and energy were of inestimable value
to the army, and gave them brilliant reputations which they fully
earned. They remained in their military railway duties to the end of
the war, and were distinguished in the same profession in civil life
to the end of their lives. When Sherman assumed command of the
Division of the Mississippi, about eighty carloads a day was the
limit of the capacity of the road and the delivery at Chattanooga.
It was only half of what was needed to insure rapid progress of the
campaign. By the 1st of May it had increased to a hundred and thirty
cars a day, with exceptional days on which the delivery ran higher;
but a steady average of a hundred and fifty (the needed quantity)
had not been reached, and every day's advance into Georgia would
increase the length of the line. [Footnote: Official Records, vol.
xxxii. pt. iii. pp. 466, 490.]