BRAGG'S CAMPAIGN AGAINST LOUISVILLE
Strategically considered there was no point in the middle South
so important to either side at that time as Chattanooga. Either
side having possession of that place could hold it against a force
outnumbering its garrison many times. More important still, its
possession by the Confederates opened to them three or four different
routes of advance into Kentucky, which no enemy with anything like an
equal force could effectually guard or defend. To hold one of these
routes was to open another. Confederate possession of Chattanooga at
that period of the war meant therefore the possible and even probable
conquest of all eastern Kentucky, the isolation and fall of Nashville,
the reconquest of the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, and the enforced
retirement of Grant's advanced army to the line of the Ohio river.
All these consequences, as General Grant has said, were the probable
results of a Confederate occupation of Chattanooga in force, and had
Bragg succeeded in the campaign he directed from that point all these
consequences would have been morally certain to befall the Union arms,
as General Grant saw at the time and afterwards set forth in his
"Memoirs."
On the other hand the seizure of Chattanooga by a Federal force of
consequence, would have closed and barred the gate to all further
advances of the Confederates into Tennessee and Kentucky. It would have
made the southern boundary of Tennessee permanently the most northerly
military line of division between North and South, making of Kentucky a
state completely saved to the Union and of Tennessee a state completely
recovered to it.
General Halleck had sagacity enough to see, at least in some degree,
the strategic necessity of seizing upon Chattanooga. Accordingly he
ordered Buell to march upon and occupy that place. But he seems to have
forgotten that there were energetic men in command of Southern armies,
men quite as capable as he was of recognizing an opportunity. Instead
of sending Buell post haste to occupy the place, as General Grant
has pointed out that he should have done, leaving the repair of the
Memphis and Charleston railroad to details of troops to be made after
the main point was gained, he threw away the advantage of a seventeen
days' start and a shorter line than that of his enemy, and kept Buell
for many weary weeks repairing bridges and culverts while Bragg was
hurrying with all possible speed to throw a commanding force into
Chattanooga.
The result was that Bragg captured the commanding strategic position
and Buell was left "in the air," as military men say, not knowing where
to concentrate or in what direction his enemy was to be expected. The
story of his haltings, his hesitations, his confusion of mind, his
orders and counter orders, as given in General Van Horne's "History of
the Army of the Cumberland," and in the accompanying documents, is
pitiful in its revelation of the perplexities of an earnest, sincere
and very capable officer who had been made the victim of "orders" from
an incapable but relentlessly exacting "superior."
It would be an idle and wearisome waste of space to recount here all
of Buell's marchings and counter-marchings, all the orders given and
countermanded, and given again only to be again rescinded, which
marked the progress of that campaign. For the purposes of history
it is enough to say that Bragg, with his Confederates, in the end
succeeded in maneuvering Buell out of Tennessee and across Kentucky
to the neighborhood of Louisville, while sending a dangerously strong
detachment into eastern Kentucky to threaten Covington and Cincinnati.
The purpose of this detachment was to compel Buell to divide his force
and send a part of it up the river to defend Cincinnati, thus weakening
the defense of Louisville, which city Bragg intended to assail and
confidently hoped to capture.
That purpose failed. The moment that Cincinnati was threatened, men in
multitudes, who had not before thought of enlisting, swarmed to the
point of danger and freely offered themselves for its defense. It was
not necessary for Buell to spare a single regiment for Cincinnati's
protection, beyond those already holding eastern Kentucky, and
even these, when Bragg's campaign developed its purpose against
Louisville, were able to spare considerable detachments to aid Buell in
Louisville's defense. But all this is an anticipation of events. Let us
tell the story as it occurred.
During the spring and summer of 1862, and after Buell's main army
had marched westward to reinforce Grant at Pittsburg Landing, there
had been almost ceaseless campaigning and fighting along the upper
Tennessee river, in Alabama, and around Cumberland Gap. Generals O.
M. Mitchell, G. W. Morgan and Negley were the active agents in this
campaigning on the Federal side; Kirby Smith was the Confederate
chieftain with John Morgan and N. B. Forrest for his enterprising
cavalry raiders. The fighting was often severe and the maneuvers
brilliant on both sides, but in the absence of strong armies it was
after all scarcely more than skirmishing, involving no battle of
importance and no movement of strategic consequence enough to require
mention in a general history of the war. The struggle was the outcome
of a purpose on either side to maintain the strategic status quo, or
if possible to improve it here and there where opportunity offered.
Substantially the result was to leave matters about as they had been,
except that the continual activity and the frequent encounters of arms
served to discipline and steady the raw recruits who were coming in on
both sides. The operations of that spring and summer served to make
soldiers of the new men North and South.
It was not until after Halleck sent Buell to seize upon the strategic
position at Chattanooga, and Bragg, seventeen days later, withdrew
his main body from Grant's front and set out by the roundabout way of
Mobile to anticipate Buell, that the war in that part of the country
again assumed strategic and historical importance.
Buell's march eastward was necessarily very slow and halting, and
during its continuance he was compelled to scatter his forces in a very
dangerous fashion. There had been two blunders made at the outset--both
of them made by General Halleck against General Buell's protest. One of
them was in making Corinth the base of supplies for Buell's army and
depending for communication upon a long east and west line of badly
broken railroad which was exposed at almost every point to frequent and
destructive incursions of the enemy. Buell had asked to make Nashville
his base instead. That point was connected with Louisville by rail and
still more securely by river, and the river route was at all points
adequately guarded against interruption by an effective gunboat fleet.
From Nashville south and east there were railroads which Buell could
have guarded effectually with one fifth the force necessary to the very
ineffectual protection of the east and west line of the Memphis and
Charleston road.
But Halleck was imperative in his orders and Buell had to submit, with
the ultimate result of having to scatter his forces widely in order to
guard both lines and repair both, on pain of bringing actual starvation
upon his army.
The second mistake was in ordering Buell to repair the very badly
damaged Memphis and Charleston railroad as he advanced. This, as we
have already seen, resulted in so delaying his advance that Bragg
reached Chattanooga first and was from that hour master of the
situation.
In the meanwhile Forrest and Morgan were ceaselessly active in Buell's
rear--towards Louisville--harassing his detachments, threatening and
at times destroying his communications, burning bridges, tearing up
railroads, gathering recruits from the youth of Kentucky and Tennessee,
throwing the people into panic and grave uncertainty of mind, and
now and then defeating and capturing important forces. Thus at
Tompkinsville, Kentucky, Morgan routed the Federal garrison under Major
Jordan, and proceeding, destroyed the railroad at Lebanon Junction,
and at Lebanon compelled the surrender of the force there with a large
amount of supplies which Buell badly needed. Thence he raided all over
central Kentucky, destroying railroads of the utmost importance to
Buell and finally escaping with rich booty into the Confederate lines
again.
Forrest pushed out from Chattanooga and undertook even larger
operations. He assailed Murfreesborough on the thirteenth of July,
carried the place by storm, captured the whole garrison, including
its commander, General Crittenden, and, turning about, overcame and
captured Colonel Lester on the Stone river, with his entire force of
nine full companies.
These actions were not battles of any special consequence, of course.
They are mentioned here merely as illustrations of the perplexities
that beset General Buell in his march upon Chattanooga, and ultimately
made a complete failure of the attempt. Such actions as those described
were of daily occurrence, and they compelled General Buell not only to
weaken his column by detachments sent to strengthen exposed positions,
but still further to cripple himself by sending columns of some
importance to try conclusions with the very enterprising enemy.
Bragg, at the head of a strong Confederate army, established himself in
Chattanooga on the twenty-ninth of July, some weeks before Buell could
finish the reconstruction of the Memphis and Charleston railroad and
advance to the point the occupation of which was the sole object of his
campaign.
Bragg at once called to his aid all the troops that could be spared to
him from points of less importance, and very soon he was at the head of
a strong force which threatened a serious and dangerous invasion.
But while he was thus concentrating his forces for a vigorous
aggressive movement, Bragg adroitly concealed his purposes. He so
disposed his divisions as to leave Buell in utter uncertainty as to his
intentions. It might be that he intended a reconquest of Nashville. It
might be that his purpose was to march into eastern Kentucky. It might
be that he intended to move northward, take Buell in flank and rear,
destroy his communications, cut him off from assistance or retreat, and
perhaps compel his surrender. His dispositions equally threatened each
of these possible enterprises, without in the least degree impairing
his ability instantly to concentrate his entire force for the execution
of any one of them.
And what his force was Buell did not know and could not conjecture with
any degree of confidence. East Tennessee was full of Union men eager to
give helpful information to the Federal commander, but Bragg, with an
adroitness that had not before been brought to bear upon campaigning
in the west, managed to conceal the strength of his army even from
the citizens of Chattanooga, at the same time moving troops about in
such fashion as to suggest half a dozen different and irreconcilable
purposes. It thus happened that the more and the more positive
information Buell received with regard to his enemy's operations
and intentions, the more hopelessly was he bewildered. He dared not
concentrate upon any line, lest his adversary should move at once by
some other and put him in peril. No one can read General Buell's orders
and dispatches written at that time without being strongly impressed
with the hopeless confusion and uncertainty of his mind due to a
situation that was perplexing in the extreme.
It was obvious that he must draw his widely scattered forces together
at some point; but where? He could not concentrate them at any point
upon the line or in the region he was supposed to be occupying without
weakening all other points at grave risk of having his enemy turn his
position and bring him to destruction. There was only one course that
he could pursue with even tolerable prudence. That was to abandon his
aggressive campaign, fall back, concentrate for defense and give battle
at some point of his own selection much farther north.
Bragg's army consisted of five divisions of infantry with artillery
and cavalry. Buell had five divisions in front and three others within
almost instant call, while he could depend upon being still further
reinforced from Louisville, whither a still further part of Grant's
army had been sent. But the nature of the country in which Bragg lay,
and the uncertainty of his intentions forbade an attack upon him there.
Buell decided at last that his adversary's objective was Nashville,
and on the thirtieth of August he gave orders for a retreat toward
that place by way of Murfreesboro. At Murfreesboro he made no pause,
as by that time Bragg's movement had developed his purpose to go into
Kentucky and make a hurried advance upon Louisville, striking that
city before Buell could come to its defense. Buell therefore abandoned
his march towards Nashville and pushed his column northward by hurried
marches, in the hope that he might beat Bragg in the race for the
Ohio river, or failing in that, might be in time to fall upon his
adversary's rear before he could establish himself in Louisville's
defenses. He left a small garrison to hold Nashville but pushed forward
in all haste with his main army, in retreat upon Louisville.
His retreat was embarrassed at every step. Bragg had forces ahead
of him who destroyed bridges, tore up tracks, captured important
supply depots, and in one case, at Mumfordsville, compelled the
surrender--September 17--of a fortified town with its garrison, upon
which Buell had somewhat depended for a reinforcement.
At first Buell had left Thomas at Nashville, to defend that city, but
his own need of strength became so pressing that he called upon that
able officer to join him with the greater part of the troops that had
been left at Nashville.
What Bragg's campaign really meant, and what he hoped to accomplish
by it may best be shown by his own orders and dispatches. On August
eleventh, soon after he had established himself at Chattanooga, he sent
instructions to General Van Dorn who was confronting Grant at Corinth
in which he said: "It is very desirable to press the enemy closely in
West Tennessee. We learn their forces there are being rapidly reduced,
and when our movements become known, it is certain they must throw
forces into middle Tennessee and Kentucky, or lose those regions. If
you hold them in check, we are sure of success here; but should they
reinforce here so as to defy us, then you may redeem west Tennessee and
probably aid us by crushing the enemy's rear."
On August 27, just as his army was got into vigorous motion, General
Bragg wrote to Van Dorn again as follows: "We move from here
immediately--later by some days than expected; but in time, we hope,
for a successful campaign. Buell has certainly fallen back from the
Memphis and Charleston railroad, and will probably not make a stand
this side of Nashville, if there. He is now fortifying that place.
General E. K. Smith, reinforced by two brigades from this army, has
turned Cumberland Gap and is now marching on Lexington, Kentucky.
General Morgan (Yankee) is thus cut off from all supplies. General
Humphrey Marshall is to enter eastern Kentucky from western Virginia.
We shall thus have Buell pretty well disposed of. Sherman and
Rosecrans, we leave to you and Price, satisfied you can dispose of
them, and we confidently hope to meet you upon the Ohio."
Two days later, on August 29, Bragg telegraphed Price, saying:
"Buell's force is in full retreat upon Nashville, destroying their
stores. Watch Rosecrans and prevent a junction. Or, if he escapes, you
follow him closely."
It will be seen from these dispatches that Bragg had no real thought of
advancing upon Nashville, as Buell at first believed that he intended
to do. His campaign was boldly planned for a larger conquest farther
north, which, if he had been successful, would have left Nashville an
easy prey to a strong detachment, if indeed it had failed to succumb to
isolation and fall by its own weight.
In these brief communications we have a complete revelation of Bragg's
plans and purposes--a complete setting forth of his hopes. Stripped
of military technicalities his purpose was to push his army towards
Louisville in advance of Buell's retreat; to strike and destroy the
Federal general's line of railroad communication between Nashville
and Louisville, at points north of Buell's march, thus impeding and
delaying the Federal retreat and in Forrest's phrase "getting there
first with the most men"--_there_ meaning Louisville on the Ohio river.
In aid of this plan he had cut off the Federal general, Morgan,
at Cumberland Gap, rendering his force useless for any aggressive
purpose and incapable of joining Buell anywhere. He had ordered strong
forces into eastern Kentucky, to hold there all the Federals in that
quarter, to threaten Cincinnati and perhaps to compel the detachment
of a considerable force from the garrison at Louisville for the
defense of the Ohio city. He depended upon Price and Van Dorn so to
occupy Grant's badly depleted army in western Tennessee and northern
Mississippi as to prevent it from moving to Buell's assistance, or
should it so move, he expected his very energetic lieutenants to
cripple it by a prompt pursuit and by vigorous blows struck upon its
rear, in the meanwhile overrunning and reconquering the region lost in
western Tennessee and Kentucky.
This was without doubt one of the most brilliantly planned operations
of the entire war on either side. It looked to no less an achievement
than the undoing of all that had been done by Grant and Buell and
Thomas, the reconquest of all the region lost and the establishment
of the Confederate lines upon the Ohio river for both offensive and
defensive operations during the next year and the years to follow.
The one defect of the plan was that the Confederates had not force
enough to carry it to success, except by some happy accident, and happy
accidents were far less likely to happen in the autumn of 1862 than
they had been a year earlier when troops were raw, generals totally
inexperienced and the problems of war wholly unsolved even in their
primary processes.
Bragg's force was considerably less than that which Buell had under
his immediate command. Lee was at that time carrying on his tremendous
campaigns in Virginia and Maryland so that no troops could be spared
from that quarter to reinforce Bragg's undertaking. Price and Van Dorn
had quite all they could do to hold their own against Grant at Corinth
and Sherman at Memphis. It is true that Grant had been "stripped to the
skin," as he expressed it, by calls upon him to reinforce Buell and to
spare division after division for the army that was contending against
Lee and doubtfully defending the Federal capital. But on the other hand
Price and Van Dorn had been stripped equally bare to furnish Bragg with
the troops with whom he was invading Kentucky.
And while Bragg was thus marching into his enemy's country with a
force only about three fifths as numerous as that of his adversary
and with no prospect of important reinforcement from any quarter,
Buell was retreating upon a city strongly held, whose garrison would
furnish an instant and a very strong reinforcement, while the mere
threat of Bragg's advance was inducing the hurrying of multitudes of
fresh troops from all the northwestern states, to the menaced cities of
Cincinnati and Louisville. For it was clearly seen in Ohio, Indiana and
Illinois, and even in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, that should
Bragg succeed in establishing himself on the Ohio river the states
north of that stream must become the ravaged and trampled theater of
the next year's campaign, with a Confederate invading force swelled
by enlistments from Kentucky and Tennessee to enormous proportions
and reinforced by the fifty or sixty thousand Southern veterans
whom the conquest of the Ohio by Bragg would instantly release from
defensive work farther south. In brief, if Bragg could have captured
and held Louisville by defeating Buell, it was morally certain that
the Confederates would have been able, during the following spring,
to invade the Northwest with an effective force of tremendous
proportions. For Kentucky and Tennessee would in that case have become
wholly Confederate, and the whole South would have joined in an effort
to make decisive use of such an opportunity to end the war in triumph.
Tens of thousands of seasoned troops employed during the summer of
1862 in garrisoning towns and protecting railroad lines would in that
case have been set free to aid in an aggressive movement north of the
Ohio. With the Confederates established at Louisville and holding the
Ohio river as their line, there would have been no choice but for
Grant to withdraw from Mississippi, West Tennessee and Kentucky, thus
setting free not only the 30,000 or 50,000 men confronting his present
position, but also the garrisons and armies about Vicksburg and along
the several railroads in Mississippi and in northern Georgia and
Alabama. It is certainly not an exaggeration to estimate that had Bragg
succeeded, as he hoped, in seizing Louisville and meeting Van Dorn and
Price "on the Ohio" as he said, the Confederates could and would have
mustered at least 150,000 men for the invasion of the Northwest at the
opening of the spring of 1863--an army greater than the South ever put
into the field at any point during the entire continuance of the war.
And all this was a not impossible--indeed a not
improbable--contingency. It is true that Bragg's force was in numbers
inferior to Buell's in about the proportion of three to five. But it
was massed at the outset and remained completely coöperating from
beginning to end of the campaign. It had besides, the advantage of
knowing what it intended and whither it was going, while Buell must
vaguely guess its intentions and hold himself ready during a retreat,
to meet his enemy wherever that enemy might see fit to strike.
In war these things offset superiority of numbers in a degree which it
is difficult for the civilian reader to understand. He who can give
battle or refuse it where he pleases, has a very great advantage over
his adversary who must accept whatever is offered or else retreat at
disadvantage.
Moreover Bragg had managed to get the start of Buell in their race
for Louisville, and this advantage had been greatly increased by his
success in breaking Buell's lines of march by burning bridges, tearing
up railroads and capturing supply depots. For a time it seemed more
than probable that Bragg would reach Louisville and occupy it before
Buell could by any possibility get there. In that event Buell would
have been cut off from all supplies, and only ordinary vigilance on the
part of the Confederates would have been necessary to starve him into
surrender--for if thus cut off, his stores could not have supported his
army for more than three or four days at the utmost.
Still again, Bragg had another ground of hope. It often happens in
war, that a smaller force, skilfully handled, masters a larger force.
To go no further back than the Seven Days' battles around Richmond,
and the campaign following, Lee had succeeded by the skilful handling
of a comparatively small force in overcoming one army which greatly
outnumbered his own, while paralyzing the purpose of other forces as
great as his own, that had been sent to reinforce his enemy. With this
and many other familiar illustrations of the possibility of achieving
conspicuous military success against superior numbers present to his
mind, it was not vainglorious on the part of Bragg, who believed in
his own skill, to hope that if he could reach Louisville in advance of
Buell, his army, inspirited by repeated successes on the march, and
holding the vantage ground of possession, might successfully meet and
defeat Buell's way-weary force, cut off, as in that case it would have
been, from its objective, from all hope of assistance and even from
very badly needed supplies.
Indeed, had Bragg achieved his purpose of pushing his columns into
Louisville in advance of Buell's coming, it would have been almost a
miracle for him to have failed in his resistance to the outmarched
Federal commander's attempts to recapture the lost stronghold.
It was one of those fearful crises of the war,--like Sharpsburg
and Gettysburg--in which the whole outcome of the struggle hung
trembling in the balance, and the future alike of the Union and of the
Confederacy was risked, as it were, upon the hazard of a die.
For while Bragg was thus dragging Buell back from northern Alabama and
Georgia to the Ohio river and more than seriously threatening to make
of that river the fortified frontier of the Confederacy, Lee was in
Maryland, after having overthrown McClellan before Richmond and Pope
at Manassas, and the National capital itself seemed in sore danger of
capture. The year which had opened with the Union victories at Forts
Henry and Donelson, presently followed by Grant's success at Shiloh,
while McClellan's overwhelming divisions were near enough to Richmond
to see the spires of that city's churches, seemed about to draw to a
close so disastrous to the Federal cause as to leave it in worse case
than at the beginning of the war or indeed at any time since the first
defeat at Bull Run.
The National credit was impaired as it never had been before. The
Confederates were moved to make of the eighteenth of September a day
of Thanksgiving for a deliverance which they regarded as in effect
accomplished.
Enlistments at the North had so far fallen off that drafts must be made
in order to maintain that great superiority of numbers without which
the North, fighting aggressively, could not hope to make head against
Southern defense, as all the operations of the war up to that time had
shown, and as the later course of the contest additionally proved at
every point.
But Bragg's effort to seize Louisville before Buell could throw
himself into that city's defenses, failed of its purpose. By virtue
of a wonderful march Buell reached the city first, near the end of
September, the last of his forces arriving there on the twenty-ninth.
Bragg was at Bardstown, not far away and in a very threatening
position. In the meanwhile Grant held his own at Corinth in spite of
the dangerous depletion of his forces, and the whole of West Tennessee
remained in possession of the Federals.
Buell found heavy reinforcements awaiting him at Louisville, while
Bragg at Bardstown had not yet been joined, as he had expected to be,
by Kirby Smith's force from eastern Kentucky.
The conditions of the campaign were thus reversed. Buell, who had been
on the defensive and in enforced retreat, was able now to take the
offensive, while Bragg, who had been advancing with high hopes was now
in a position from which he must retreat promptly on pain of having his
army overwhelmed and destroyed.
Buell quickly reorganized his army into corps, welding the raw troops
into the seasoned force, and within a day or two he was ready to assail
the enemy who had driven him across two states.
Bragg retired to Perryville with a total force of about 35,000 men, and
Buell with 58,000 advanced upon him. On the eighth of October a severe
battle occurred which lasted from noonday to night and seemed undecided
when night fell. But when morning came Bragg had retired and was in
slow and orderly retreat southward. The Federal loss in the battle of
Perryville was reported at 4,348, including two brigadier generals
killed. The Confederate loss is unknown, but as Bragg began the battle
with only three divisions assailing eight, and as the fighting at times
was muzzle to muzzle, the slaughter among such troops as were actually
engaged on his side, must have been terrible.
Learning that Kirby Smith's command had on that evening joined Bragg,
General Buell did not press his enemy, but disposed his forces for a
defensive battle. It was not until the thirteenth that he discovered
that Bragg was indeed retreating and ordered a pursuit. This was
pressed, with some fighting now and then, as far as Crab Orchard, where
the Federals halted, leaving Bragg free to make his leisurely way to
East Tennessee with an enormous wagon train loaded with a rich booty of
supplies which he had gathered in Kentucky.