Lincoln Directs Coöperation--Halleck and Buell--Ulysses S.
Grant--Grant's Demonstration--Victory at Mill River--Fort Henry--Fort
Donelson--Buell's Tardiness--Halleck's Activity--Victory of Pea
Ridge--Halleck Receives General Command--Pittsburg Landing--Island No.
10--Halleck's Corinth Campaign--Halleck's Mistakes
Toward the end of December, 1861, the prospects of the administration
became very gloomy. McClellan had indeed organized a formidable army at
Washington, but it had done nothing to efface the memory of the Bull Run
defeat. On the contrary, a practical blockade of the Potomac by rebel
batteries on the Virginia shore, and another small but irritating defeat
at Ball's Bluff, greatly heightened public impatience. The necessary
surrender of Mason and Slidell to England was exceedingly unpalatable.
Government expenditures had risen to $2,000,000 a day, and a financial
crisis was imminent. Buell would not move into East Tennessee, and
Halleck seemed powerless in Missouri. Added to this, McClellan's illness
completed a stagnation of military affairs both east and west. Congress
was clamoring for results, and its joint Committee on the Conduct of the
War was pushing a searching inquiry into the causes of previous defeats.
To remove this inertia, President Lincoln directed specific questions to
the Western commanders. "Are General Buell and yourself in concert?" he
telegraphed Halleck on December 31. And next day he wrote:
"I am very anxious that, in case of General Buell's moving toward
Nashville, the enemy shall not be greatly reinforced, and I think there
is danger he will be from Columbus. It seems to me that a real or
feigned attack on Columbus from up-river at the same time would either
prevent this, or compensate for it by throwing Columbus into our hands."
Similar questions also went to Buell, and their replies showed that no
concert, arrangement, or plans existed, and that Halleck was not ready
to coöperate. The correspondence started by the President's inquiry for
the first time clearly brought out an estimate of the Confederate
strength opposed to a southward movement in the West. Since the
Confederate invasion of Kentucky on September 4, the rebels had so
strongly fortified Columbus on the Mississippi River that it came to be
called the "Gibraltar of the West," and now had a garrison of twenty
thousand to hold it; while General Buckner was supposed to have a force
of forty thousand at Bowling Green on the railroad between Louisville
and Nashville. For more than a month Buell and Halleck had been aware
that a joint river and land expedition southward up the Tennessee or the
Cumberland River, which would outflank both positions and cause their
evacuation, was practicable with but little opposition. Yet neither
Buell nor Halleck had exchanged a word about it, or made the slightest
preparation to begin it; each being busy in his own field, and with his
own plans. Even now, when the President had started the subject, Halleck
replied that it would be bad strategy for himself to move against
Columbus, or Buell against Bowling Green; but he had nothing to say
about a Tennessee River expedition, or coöperation with Buell to effect
it, except by indirectly complaining that to withdraw troops from
Missouri would risk the loss of that State.
The President, however, was no longer satisfied with indecision and
excuses, and telegraphed to Buell on January 7:
"Please name as early a day as you safely can on or before which you can
be ready to move southward in concert with Major-General Halleck. Delay
is ruining us, and it is indispensable for me to have something
definite. I send a like despatch to Major-General Halleck."
To this Buell made no direct reply, while Halleck answered that he had
asked Buell to designate a date for a demonstration, and explained two
days later: "I can make, with the gunboats and available troops, a
pretty formidable demonstration, but no real attack." In point of fact,
Halleck had on the previous day, January 6, written to Brigadier-General
U.S. Grant: "I wish you to make a demonstration in force": and he added
full details, to which Grant responded on January 8: "Your instructions
of the sixth were received this morning, and immediate preparations made
for carrying them out"; also adding details on his part.
Ulysses S. Grant was born on April 27, 1822, was graduated from West
Point in 1843, and brevetted captain for gallant conduct in the Mexican
War; but resigned from the army and was engaged with his father in a
leather store at Galena, Illinois, when the Civil War broke out.
Employed by the governor of Illinois a few weeks at Springfield to
assist in organizing militia regiments under the President's first call,
Grant wrote a letter to the War Department at Washington tendering his
services, and saying: "I feel myself competent to command a regiment, if
the President in his judgment should see fit to intrust one to me." For
some reason, never explained, this letter remained unanswered, though
the department was then and afterward in constant need of educated and
experienced officers. A few weeks later, however, Governor Yates
commissioned him colonel of one of the Illinois three years' regiments.
From that time until the end of 1861, Grant, by constant and specially
meritorious service, rose in rank to brigadier-general and to the
command of the important post of Cairo, Illinois, having meanwhile, on
November 7, won the battle of Belmont on the Missouri shore opposite
Columbus.
The "demonstration'" ordered by Halleck was probably intended only as a
passing show of activity; but it was executed by Grant, though under
strict orders to "avoid a battle," with a degree of promptness and
earnestness that drew after it momentous consequences. He pushed a
strong reconnaissance by eight thousand men within a mile or two of
Columbus, and sent three gunboats up the Tennessee River, which drew the
fire of Fort Henry. The results of the combined expedition convinced
Grant that a real movement in that direction was practicable, and he
hastened to St. Louis to lay his plan personally before Halleck. At
first that general would scarcely listen to it; but, returning to Cairo,
Grant urged it again and again, and the rapidly changing military
conditions soon caused Halleck to realize its importance.
Within a few days, several items of interesting information reached
Halleck: that General Thomas, in eastern Kentucky, had won a victory
over the rebel General Zollicoffer, capturing his fortified camp on
Cumberland River, annihilating his army of over ten regiments, and fully
exposing Cumberland Gap; that the Confederates were about to throw
strong reinforcements into Columbus; that seven formidable Union
ironclad river gunboats were ready for service; and that a rise of
fourteen feet had taken place in the Tennessee River, greatly weakening
the rebel batteries on that stream and the Cumberland. The advantages on
the one hand, and the dangers on the other, which these reports
indicated, moved Halleck to a sudden decision. When Grant, on January
28, telegraphed him: "With permission, I will take Fort Henry on the
Tennessee, and establish and hold a large camp there," Halleck responded
on the thirtieth: "Make your preparations to take and hold Fort Henry."
It would appear that Grant's preparations were already quite complete
when he received written instructions by mail on February 1, for on the
next day he started fifteen thousand men on transports, and on February
4 himself followed with seven gunboats under command of Commodore Foote.
Two days later, Grant had the satisfaction of sending a double message
in return: "Fort Henry is ours.... I shall take and destroy Fort
Donelson on the eighth."
Fort Henry had been an easy victory. The rebel commander, convinced that
he could not defend the place, had early that morning sent away his
garrison of three thousand on a retreat to Fort Donelson, and simply
held out during a two hours' bombardment until they could escape
capture. To take Fort Donelson was a more serious enterprise. That
stronghold, lying twelve miles away on the Cumberland River, was a much
larger work, with a garrison of six thousand, and armed with seventeen
heavy and forty-eight field guns. If Grant could have marched
immediately to an attack of the combined garrisons, there would have
been a chance of quick success. But the high water presented
unlooked-for obstacles, and nearly a week elapsed before his army began
stretching itself cautiously around the three miles of Donelson's
intrenchments. During this delay, the conditions became greatly changed.
When the Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston received news that
Fort Henry had fallen, he held a council at Bowling Green with his
subordinate generals Hardee and Beauregard, and seeing that the Union
success would, if not immediately counteracted, render both Nashville
and Columbus untenable, resolved, to use his own language, "To defend
Nashville at Donelson."
An immediate retreat was begun from Bowling Green to Nashville, and
heavy reinforcements were ordered to the garrison of Fort Donelson. It
happened, therefore, that when Grant was ready to begin his assault the
Confederate garrison with its reinforcements outnumbered his entire
army. To increase the discouragement, the attack by gunboats on the
Cumberland River on the afternoon of February 14 was repulsed, seriously
damaging two of them, and a heavy sortie from the fort threw the right
of Grant's investing line into disorder. Fortunately, General Halleck at
St. Louis strained all his energies to send reinforcements, and these
arrived in time to restore Grant's advantage in numbers.
Serious disagreement among the Confederate commanders also hastened the
fall of the place. On February 16, General Buckner, to whom the senior
officers had turned over the command, proposed an armistice, and the
appointment of commissioners to agree on terms of capitulation. To this
Grant responded with a characteristic spirit of determination: "No terms
except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose
to move immediately upon your works." Buckner complained that the terms
were ungenerous and unchivalric, but that necessity compelled him to
accept them; and Grant telegraphed Halleck on February 16: "We have
taken Fort Donelson, and from twelve to fifteen thousand prisoners." The
senior Confederate generals, Pillow and Floyd, and a portion of the
garrison had escaped by the Cumberland River during the preceding night.
Since the fall of Fort Henry on February 6, a lively correspondence had
been going on, in which General Halleck besought Buell to come with his
available forces, assist in capturing Donelson, and command the column
up the Cumberland to cut off both Columbus and Nashville. President
Lincoln, scanning the news with intense solicitude, and losing no
opportunity to urge effective coöperation, telegraphed Halleck:
"You have Fort Donelson safe, unless Grant shall be overwhelmed from
outside: to prevent which latter will, I think, require all the
vigilance, energy, and skill of yourself and Buell, acting in full
coöperation. Columbus will not get at Grant, but the force from Bowling
Green will. They hold the railroad from Bowling Green to within a few
miles of Fort Donelson, with the bridge at Clarksville undisturbed. It
is unsafe to rely that they will not dare to expose Nashville to Buell.
A small part of their force can retire slowly toward Nashville, breaking
up the railroad as they go, and keep Buell out of that city twenty days.
Meantime, Nashville will be abundantly defended by forces from all south
and perhaps from here at Manassas. Could not a cavalry force from
General Thomas on the upper Cumberland dash across, almost unresisted,
and cut the railroad at or near Knoxville, Tennessee? In the midst of a
bombardment at Fort Donelson, why could not a gunboat run up and destroy
the bridge at Clarksville? Our success or failure at Fort Donelson is
vastly important, and I beg you to put your soul in the effort. I send a
copy of this to Buell."
This telegram abundantly shows with what minute understanding and
accurate judgment the President comprehended military conditions and
results in the West. Buell, however, was too intent upon his own
separate movement to seize the brilliant opportunity offered him. As he
only in a feeble advance followed up the retreating Confederate column
from Bowling Green to Nashville, Halleck naturally appropriated to
himself the merit of the campaign, and telegraphed to Washington on the
day after the surrender:
"Make Buell, Grant, and Pope major-generals of volunteers, and give me
command in the West. I ask this in return for Forts Henry and Donelson."
The eagerness of General Halleck for superior command in the West was,
to say the least, very pardonable. A vast horizon of possibilities was
opening up to his view. Two other campaigns under his direction were
exciting his liveliest hopes. Late in December he had collected an army
of ten thousand at the railroad terminus at Rolla, Missouri, under
command of Brigadier-General Curtis, for the purpose of scattering the
rebel forces under General Price at Springfield or driving them out of
the State. Despite the hard winter weather, Halleck urged on the
movement with almost peremptory orders, and Curtis executed the
intentions of his chief with such alacrity that Price was forced into a
rapid and damaging retreat from Springfield toward Arkansas. While
forcing this enterprise in the southwest, Halleck had also determined on
an important campaign in southeast Missouri.
Next to Columbus, which the enemy evacuated on March 2, the strongest
Confederate fortifications on the Mississippi River were at Island No.
10, about forty miles farther to the south. To operate against these, he
planned an expedition under Brigadier-General Pope to capture the town
of New Madrid as a preliminary step. Columbus and Nashville were almost
sure to fall as the result of Donelson. If now he could bring his two
Missouri campaigns into a combination with two swift and strong
Tennessee expeditions, while the enemy was in scattered retreat, he
could look forward to the speedy capture of Memphis. But to the
realization of such a project, the hesitation and slowness of Buell were
a serious hindrance. That general had indeed started a division under
Nelson to Grant's assistance, but it was not yet in the Cumberland when
Donelson surrendered. Halleck's demand for enlarged power, therefore,
became almost imperative. He pleaded earnestly with Buell:
"I have asked the President to make you a major-general. Come down to
the Cumberland and take command. The battle of the West is to be fought
in that vicinity.... There will be no battle at Nashville." His
telegrams to McClellan were more urgent. "Give it [the Western Division]
to me, and I will split secession in twain in one month." And again: "I
must have command of the armies in the West. Hesitation and delay are
losing us the golden opportunity. Lay this before the President and
Secretary of War. May I assume the command? Answer quickly."
But McClellan was in no mood to sacrifice the ambition of his intimate
friend and favorite, General Buell, and induced the President to
withhold his consent; and while the generals were debating by telegraph,
Nelson's division of the army of Buell moved up the Cumberland and
occupied Nashville under the orders of Grant. Halleck, however, held
tenaciously to his views and requests, explaining to McClellan that he
himself proposed going to Tennessee:
"That is now the great strategic line of the western campaign, and I am
surprised that General Buell should hesitate to reinforce me. He was too
late at Fort Donelson.... Believe me, General, you make a serious
mistake in having three independent commands in the West. There never
will and never can be any coöperation at the critical moment; all
military history proves it."
This insistence had greater point because of the news received that
Curtis, energetically following Price into Arkansas, had won a great
Union victory at Pea Ridge, between March 5 and 8, over the united
forces of Price and McCulloch, commanded by Van Dorn. At this juncture,
events at Washington, hereafter to be mentioned, caused a reorganization
of military commands and President Lincoln's Special War Order No. 3
consolidated the western departments of Hunter, Halleck, and Buell, as
far east as Knoxville, Tennessee, under the title of the Department of
the Mississippi, and placed General Halleck in command of the whole.
Meanwhile, Halleck had ordered the victorious Union army at Fort
Donelson to move forward to Savannah on the Tennessee River under the
command of Grant; and, now that he had superior command, directed Buell
to march all of his forces not required to defend Nashville "as rapidly
as possible" to the same point. Halleck was still at St. Louis; and
through the indecision of his further orders, through the slowness of
Buell's march, and through the unexplained inattention of Grant, the
Union armies narrowly escaped a serious disaster, which, however, the
determined courage of the troops and subordinate officers turned into a
most important victory.
The "golden opportunity" so earnestly pointed out by Halleck, while not
entirely lost, was nevertheless seriously diminished by the hesitation
and delay of the Union commanders to agree upon some plan of effective
coöperation. When, at the fall of Fort Donelson the Confederates
retreated from Nashville toward Chattanooga, and from Columbus toward
Jackson, a swift advance by the Tennessee River could have kept them
separated; but as that open highway was not promptly followed in force,
the flying Confederate detachments found abundant leisure to form a
junction.
Grant reached Savannah, on the east bank of the Tennessee River, about
the middle of March, and in a few days began massing troops at Pittsburg
Landing, six miles farther south, on the west bank of the Tennessee;
still keeping his headquarters at Savannah, to await the arrival of
Buell and his army. During the next two weeks he reported several times
that the enemy was concentrating at Corinth, Mississippi, an important
railroad crossing twenty miles from Pittsburg Landing, the estimate of
their number varying from forty to eighty thousand. All this time his
mind was so filled with an eager intention to begin a march upon
Corinth, and a confidence that he could win a victory by a prompt
attack, that he neglected the essential precaution of providing against
an attack by the enemy, which at the same time was occupying the
thoughts of the Confederate commander General Johnston.
General Grant was therefore greatly surprised on the morning of April 6,
when he proceeded from Savannah to Pittsburg Landing, to learn the cause
of a fierce cannonade. He found that the Confederate army, forty
thousand strong, was making an unexpected and determined attack in force
on the Union camp, whose five divisions numbered a total of about
thirty-three thousand. The Union generals had made no provision against
such an attack. No intrenchments had been thrown up, no plan or
understanding arranged. A few preliminary picket skirmishes had, indeed,
put the Union front on the alert, but the commanders of brigades and
regiments were not prepared for the impetuous rush with which the three
successive Confederate lines began the main battle. On their part, the
enemy did not realize their hope of effecting a complete surprise, and
the nature of the ground was so characterized by a network of local
roads, alternating patches of woods and open fields, miry hollows and
abrupt ravines, that the lines of conflict were quickly broken into
short, disjointed movements that admitted of little or no combined or
systematic direction. The effort of the Union officers was necessarily
limited to a continuous resistance to the advance of the enemy, from
whatever direction it came; that of the Confederate leaders to the
general purpose of forcing the Union lines away from Pittsburg Landing
so that they might destroy the Federal transports and thus cut off all
means of retreat. In this effort, although during the whole of Sunday,
April 6, the Union front had been forced back a mile and a half, the
enemy had not entirely succeeded. About sunset, General Beauregard, who,
by the death of General Johnston during the afternoon, succeeded to the
Confederate command, gave orders to suspend the attack, in the firm
expectation however, that he would be able to complete his victory the
next morning.
But in this hope he was disappointed. During the day the vanguard of
Buell's army had arrived on the opposite bank of the river. Before
nightfall one of his brigades was ferried across and deployed in front
of the exultant enemy. During the night and early Monday morning three
superb divisions of Buell's army, about twenty thousand fresh,
well-drilled troops, were advanced to the front under Buell's own
direction; and by three o'clock of that day the two wings of the Union
army were once more in possession of all the ground that had been lost
on the previous day, while the foiled and disorganized Confederates were
in full retreat upon Corinth. The severity of the battle may be judged
by the losses. In the Union army: killed, 1754; wounded, 8408; missing,
2885. In the Confederate army: killed, 1728; wounded, 8012; missing.
954.
Having comprehended the uncertainty of Buell's successful junction with
Grant, Halleck must have received tidings of the final victory at
Pittsburg Landing with emotions of deep satisfaction. To this was now
joined the further gratifying news that the enemy on that same momentous
April 7 had surrendered Island No. 10, together with six or seven
thousand Confederate troops, including three general officers, to the
combined operations of General Pope and Flag-Officer Foote. Full
particulars of these two important victories did not reach Halleck for
several days. Following previous suggestions, Pope and Foote promptly
moved their gunboats and troops down the river to the next Confederate
stronghold, Fort Pillow, where extensive fortifications, aided by an
overflow of the adjacent river banks, indicated strong resistance and
considerable delay. When all the conditions became more fully known,
Halleck at length adopted the resolution, to which he had been strongly
leaning for some time, to take the field himself. About April 10 he
proceeded from St. Louis to Pittsburg Landing, and on the fifteenth
ordered Pope with his army to join him there, which the latter, having
his troops already on transports succeeded in accomplishing by April 22.
Halleck immediately effected a new organization, combining the armies
of the Tennessee, of the Ohio, and of the Mississippi into respectively
his right wing, center, and left wing. He assumed command of the whole
himself, and nominally made Grant second in command. Practically,
however, he left Grant so little authority or work that the latter felt
himself slighted, and asked leave to proceed to another field of duty.
It required but a few weeks to demonstrate that however high were
Halleck's professional acquirements in other respects, he was totally
unfit for a commander in the field. Grant had undoubtedly been careless
in not providing against the enemy's attack at Pittsburg Landing.
Halleck, on the other extreme, was now doubly over-cautious in his march
upon Corinth. From first to last, his campaign resembled a siege. With
over one hundred thousand men under his hand, he moved at a snail's
pace, building roads and breastworks, and consuming more than a month in
advancing a distance of twenty miles; during which period Beauregard
managed to collect about fifty thousand effective Confederates and
construct defensive fortifications with equal industry around Corinth.
When, on May 29, Halleck was within assaulting distance of the rebel
intrenchments Beauregard had leisurely removed his sick and wounded,
destroyed or carried away his stores, and that night finally evacuated
the place, leaving Halleck to reap, practically, a barren victory.
Nor were the general's plans and actions any more fruitful during the
following six weeks. He wasted the time and energy of his soldiers
multiplying useless fortifications about Corinth. He despatched Buell's
wing of the army on a march toward eastern Tennessee but under such
instructions and limitations that long before reaching its objective it
was met by a Confederate army under General Bragg, and forced into a
retrograde movement which carried it back to Louisville. More
deplorable, however, than either of these errors of judgment was
Halleck's neglect to seize the opportune moment when, by a vigorous
movement in coöperation with the brilliant naval victories under
Flag-Officer Farragut, commanding a formidable fleet of Union war-ships,
he might have completed the over-shadowing military task of opening the
Mississippi River.