[Doug64]

April 4, Monday

General Grant has made remarkably few changes at the top of the Army of the Potomac’s command. but he does select a new leader for its Cavalry Corps, replacing D. McM. Gregg, who had temporarily supplanted Pleasonton: Philip H. Sheridan, a cocky and aggressive 33-year-old major general who distinguished himself out west at Stones River and in the storming of Missionary Ridge. Almost all of Sheridan’s experience has been with infantry, and he certainly doesn’t look the part of a cavalry commander. Bandy-legged and wiry, he stands but five feet six inches tall; hard months in the field have reduced him to a shadow at 115 pounds. When Sheridan arrives in Washington today, Halleck introduces him around at the War Department and a headquarters man later remarks snidely to Grant, “That officer you brought in from the West is rather a little fellow to handle your cavalry.” But Grant, who saw Sheridan in action at Chattanooga, replies, “You will find him big enough for the purpose before we get through with him.”

Grant is counting on using his Cavalry Corps as a concentrated striking force. Even more clearly, he sees that numbers can be the key to a Union victory. Through Halleck, Grant instructs the Union’s farflung departmental commanders to pare their garrisons and dispatch the extra men to Virginia. Closer to home, he evicts thousands of troops from their comfortable postings within the elaborate fortifications of Washington. Most of these so-called paper-collar soldiers are Heavy Artillerymen—drilled in the use of the big guns but also able to function as infantry. They have had an easy war so far, spending each night in a barracks bed with a full belly. Such assignments are coveted, and the duty roster of the Heavy Artillery regiments have become outlandishly swollen. Now many of these regiments are marched through the mud to the camp on the Rapidan, where the veterans greet the newcomers with derision. Grant also sets about converting Washington’s excess cavalrymen into infantry. Many of these troopers have been languishing in the capital, waiting for remounts—but not all. One colonel who rides into Washington this spring at the head of 1,200 handsomely mounted Pennsylvanians is abruptly relieaved of his horses. His men are furnished with muskets and are soon on their way to the Rapidan, on foot. Grant also reduces the number of headquarters wagons. From now on there will be only one per regiment, one per brigade, and perhaps two for a division headquarters. This move throws scores of teamsters and muleskinners into the ranks.

General Steele has wasted three days at Arkadelphia, Arkansas, waiting for Brigadier General John M. Thayer and his Army of the Frontier—5,000 men coming from their base at Fort Smith, Arkansas—who are supposed to join Steele for the next move to the Little Missouri River in their part of the Red River Campgain. Giving up on Thayer, Steele marches southwest towards the crossroads town of Washington.

The US House of Representatives passes a joint resolution saying that the nation will not permit the establishment of a monarchy in Mexico. This is intended to thwart the plans of Napoleon III of France to place Maximilian of Hapsburg on the throne of Mexico.

Several changes in Federal corps commanders helps set the stage for renewed operations.

Skirmishing occurs at Charlestown and Roseville, Arkansas, and at Campti, Louisiana, on the Red River.

The New York Sanitary Commission Fair opens with eventual receipts of $1,200,000 (current $20,411,771) used for the needs of the soldiers.

President Lincoln puts in writing some thoughts upon slavery that he framed orally only a few days ago: “I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.... And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling.”

[Doug64]

April 5, Tuesday

Up the Red River, General Banks’ Federal expedition slows down. The low river is hindering their advance and Confederate forces, refusing to be engaged in quantity, fall away before the Yankees. Banks’ main force fights a slight skirmish at Natchitoches, Louisiana. Elsewhere, skirmishing occurs at Marks’ Mills and Whiteley’s Mills, Arkansas; Quicksand Creek, Kentucky; and in the swamps of the Little River near New Madrid, Missouri, through the 9th. There is also an affair at Blount’s Creek, North Carolina.

[Doug64]

April 6, Wednesday

The stage road on which General Banks has chosen to move his army in its advance on Shreveport, Louisiana, has two salient drawbacks. Unlike the little country roads that run along the river, the stage route strikes off westward away from the Red. This means that the army marching along it will no longer be protected by the guns of Porter’s fleet. Also, as it turns out, the stage road provides neither a wide nor a swift route of march. But ignoring the first drawback and ignorant of the second, Banks leads his army west from Grand Ecore. The men turn their backs on the gunboats and supply vessels, which steam and toot reassuringly on the rust-colored river, and they plunge down the forest-hemmed turnpike. If all goes well, Banks and his troops will reestablish contact with Porter and the fleet in less than a week’s time at Loggy Bayou, about 110 miles farther up the winding Red—and only thirty miles from Shreveport.

For an army that is intending to move swiftly, Banks’s force is encumbered with a huge supply train—1,000 wagons that creak and rattle over the rutted and increasingly hilly stage road. The country itself becomes more and more forbidding—a “howling wilderness,” as one Massachusetts trooper calls it, of red-clay and sand hills covered by gloomy pine forests. The narrow trace, closely bordered by trees, threads over hillocks and through ravines. Clouded with dust when it is dry, the road turns to gumbo when it rains—“a broad, deep, red-colored ditch.” Drinking water is almost nonexistent. Banks’s order of march adds to the army’s difficulties. At the head of the long column, properly enough, rides Brigadier General Albert Lee’s cavalry division. But following immediately behind the cavalry and crowding the road is Lee’s lumbering supply train of 300 wagons. Then comes three divisions of infantry of XIII and XIX Corps and a brigade of 1,500 Black infantrymen recruited in Louisiana and led by Colonel William H. Dickey. Following the infantry are 700 more wagons. Far behind, chafing at the slow pace of the supply trains, march the two divisions of A.J. Smith’s XVI Corps. On the confined road, the Federal column is soon strung out for more than twenty miles, with Smith’s experienced troops a day’s march from the vanguard.

Smith’s men will soon be needed desperately because up ahead, near the town of Mansfield, Richard Taylor has decided that at last he is strong enough to make a stand. A Louisianan and an impatient man at the best of times, Taylor is frustrated by his 200-mile retreat and angry at his supervisor, Kirby Smith, for not sending reinforcements quickly enough. “Had I conceived for an instant that such astonishing delay would ensue before reinforcements reached me,” Taylor has written to Smith’s headquarters in Shreveport, “I would have fought a battle even against the heavy odds. It would have been better to lose the State after a defeat than to surrender it without a fight.” Kirby Smith, for his part, has been watching both Banks and Steele, trying to decide which one is the more dangerous. When Pap Price’s Missouri and Arkansas infantry divisions reached Shreveport, Smith still hesitated to commit them to attacking either Federal army. Only today, during a visit to Taylor’s camp at Mansfield, does the Department commander, finding that Banks is rapidly approaching, at last agree to send along Price’s troops. Even then, he tells Taylor to be careful about risking a battle. But Taylor, with substantial reinforcements now at hand or nearby, is in no mood for caution. Walker’s Texans and a division of infantry under a Louisiana brigadier general named Jean Jacque Alexandre Alfred Mouton are already with him. Units of Texas cavalry led by Thomas Green have come riding in, giving Taylor a fighting force of about 8,800 men. In addition, the Missouri and Arkansas infantry, 4,400 troops under Brigadier Generals Mosby M. Parsons and Thomas J. Churchill are now at Keatchie, only twenty miles away. The Confederate commander is ready to fight.

The Constitutional Convention of Louisiana meets at New Orleans and adopts a new state constitution, abolishing slavery.

The Federal Department of the Monongahela is merged into the Department of the Susquehanna.

Affairs take place at Prairie du Rocher, Illinois; at Piney Mt., on the Little Missouri; and on the Arkansas River near Prairie Grove, Arkansas.

[Doug64]

April 7, Thursday

During General Banks’s advance up the Red River, Louisiana, Alfred Lee’s cavalry have grown used to light encounters with small groups of Taylor’s men, who have skirmished briefly as they fall back. But today Lee runs into something different: Three miles beyond Pleasant Hill, on the road to Mansfield, four regiments of General Green’s cavalry suddenly attack, yelling as they charge. Reinforcements drive the Texans away, but Lee is worried by the Confederates’ abrupt show of strength. Answering Lee’s appeal, Banks orders General Franklin to send a brigade of infantry forward, bypassing Lee’s long line of supply wagons, to support the infantry’s advance.

Other skirmishing is at Woodall’s Bridge, Alabama; Brushy Creek and Rhea’s Mills, Arkansas; near Port Hudson, Louisiana; and at the foot of the Sierra Bonito, New Mexico Territory.

The Confederacy orders Longstreet’s corps, which spent the winter and spring in east Tennessee, to return to Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Longstreet has been detached since early last September, before the Battle of Chickamauga. Across the river from Lee’s army, the sutlers (private merchants that sell provisions, alcohol, etc., to the troops) are beginning to follow the officers’ wives out of the camp of the Army of the Potomac.

[Doug64]

April 8, Friday

Soon after sunrise, Banks’s Union army is again on the road toward Mansfield, Louisiana, moving slowly. Three miles southeast of Mansfield at Sabine Crossroads, named for an intersecting road that leads to the Sabine River, the Federals suddenly run head on into Taylor’s main force. Taylor has selected the best site he can find for a battle, a clearing about 1,200 yards long and 800 yards wide, into which the forested stage road emerges. His men can sweep the clearing from the woods at the far end. He is outnumberd by more than two to one, but he is counting for success on the sort of furious attack he learned from Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah. He is counting, too, on Banks to make a mistake—or perhaps a number of them. Taylor’s troops are in high spirits, eager to stand and shoot after their long, humiliating retreat.

Shortly after noon, Albert Lee’s Federal cavalry emerge into the clearing in hot pursuit of Taylor’s skirmishers. After trying to push back Taylor’s left, held by Moulton’s division, Lee realizes that the Confederates have decided to make a strong stand. Withdrawing to a low hill in the center of the clearing, he continues to skirmish and sends for reinforcements. Franklin dispatches Brigadier General Thomas E.G. Ransom, commander of XIII Corps, with a second brigade of infantry to help Lee, and Banks goes forward to see what is happening. Though Banks calls for more troops to clear away the Confederates, he underestimates the situation, telling Franklin, “We shall be able to rest here.” Lee’s long supply train clogs the stage road and Ransom’s brigade has difficulty getting to the clearing, but by 3:30 pm about 4,800 Union troops are lined up facing Taylor. In the center, with their artillery, are the two infantry brigades Franklin has sent forward—eight regiments of Ransom’s corps. Covering their flanks are Lee’s cavalry brigades. The rest of Banks’s infantry units are still on the road, threading their way through the wagons.

Across the clearing, Taylor, whose troops outnumber the men Banks has gotten to the field, waits impatiently for the Federals to attack. Then at 4 o’clock, when Banks’s men don’t move, Taylor orders an assault with Mouton’s men moving forward on the left. Emerging from the woods, the Confederates charge across the open ground toward Landram’s line. As they come within range, they meet a hail of musketry and cannon fire that tear great holes in their ranks. The Louisianans and Texans fall back, then go forward again. In the murderous fire, General Mouton and many of his officers are killed. In half an hour, the division loses more than 700 men, one third of its strength. Camille Polignac—inevitably called “General Pole Cat” by his men—takes command and leads the survivors forward again and again, but Landram’s men continue to fend them off. Then in the late afternoon, Taylor orders the rest of his troops forward. On Polignac’s left, some of Green’s dismounted cavalry advance and begin to turn Landram’s right. At the same time Walker’s infantry and units of Green’s cavalry strike at Landram’s left. Gradually, they flank the Federal line. Faced with encirclement, Landram’s regiments become confused. When Walker’s Texans capture three Union guns and turn them on Landram’s men, the Federal withdrawal becomes a rout.

A half mile to the rear, 1,300 men of Brigadier General Robert A. Cameron’s 3rd Division have come up and established a line in the woods. Landram’s beaten regiments flee through it, and in about an hour that line, too, collapses before Taylor’s superior numbers. Throwing away their arms and equipment, Banks’s soldiers retreat in disorder back up the forested road. The mob quickly collides with Lee’s supply train and spreads panic among the teamsters, who abandon their wagons and join the flight. With Taylor’s troops pressing them and capturing wagons, guns, and prisoners, the frightened Federals scramble past the supply train for two miles, finally coming upon Brigadier General William Emory’s 1st Division of XIX Corps, which has been heading to the front. The fugitives pour through Emory’s ranks. Emeroy, a tall, unruffled West Pointer and a veteran of several campaigns, quickly forms a line near a stream on the side of a wooded ridge called Pleasant Grove. In a fierce twenty-minute fight he finally checks the Confederates. Excited by their victory, Taylor’s men have become disorganized in their long pursuit through the woods. Charging Emory’s fresh troops piecemeal, they are thrown back with heavy losses. As darkness descends, the battle ends with the weary, parched Confederates in possession of the stream, from which they can drink.

Banks has behaved bravely under fire, several times trying to rally his panicked troops. He wants to maintain his position. Reinforced by A.J. Smith’s XVI Corps, which is still well to the rear, he is sure that he can overwhelm Taylor tomorrow and continue to Shreveport. But his army has been severely mauled. He has lost 113 killed, 581 wounded, and 1,451 missing and captured for 2,235—high casualties for an engaged force of about 12,000. Confederate losses will be estimated at 1,000 killed and wounded out of some 8,800. At a night council, Banks’s officers persuade him to withdraw fourteen miles to the village of Pleasant Hill, where he can join A.J. Smith, find water for his men, and regroup. The army retreats during the night.

Other fighting includes skirmishes at Pain Rock Bridge, Alabama; Winchester, Virginia; Bayou De Paul or Carroll’s Mill near Pleasant Hill, Louisiana; and on James Island, South Carolina.

The US Senate passes a joint resolution 38 to 6 abolishing slavery and approving the 13th Amendment. The resolution reflects the change in the attitude of Congress since the beginning of the war, and there is little real opposition to it.

[Doug64]

April 9, Saturday

Early this morning, General Banks’ retreating army reaches Pleasant Hill, Louisiana, and meets A.J. Smith’s command. Taylor discovers Banks’s withdrawal at dawn and immediately starts after him. He sends Price’s Missouri and Arkansas infantry divisions, which have arrived after a night march, off on the road to Pleasant Hill, following Green’s cavalry. Behind them march Walker’s Texans and Mouton’s division, now commanded by Polignac. The pursuit is so swift that by 9 am Taylor’s cavalry arrive on a plateau a mile short of Pleasant Hill—and there find Banks prepared to renew the fight. The Federal lines extend across open land from a wooded height on their right to a hill on their left. In front of their position is a deep, dry slough, bordered by pines and fallen timber and occupied by advance units. The dozen buildings of the village lie in their rear. The Arkansas and Missouri troops, who have marched 45 miles in two days, begin to arrive shortly after noon. All the Confederate infantry are tired and thirsty, and as they come in Taylor gives them two hours to rest. At 3 pm he begins organizing them for the attack.

An hour and a half later the Confederates open fire with twelve guns—including the brass howitzers captured at Valverde in the New Mexico fighting of 1862—against a New York battery atop a hill on the right side of the Union line. The Federal artillerymen return the fire, but soon they have to withdraw. Under cover of the bombardment, Missourians and Arkansans led by Thomas Churchill move through the pine woods on the Union left, intending to flank Banks’s line. They never get far enough to the right, however; when they emerge from the woods, they find one of Emory’s brigades under Colonel Lewis Benedict ahead of them. With a roar, the Confederate divisions charge Benedict’s outnumbered men. The noise of Churchill’s attack is the signal for Walker’s Texans to assault Banks’s center. At the same time, General Thomas Green orders Bee’s cavalry to cross open ground and charge the Union right. Bee’s horsemen are caught in a deadly flanking fire from a hidden unit of Federal troops, and the regiment led by Colonel August Buchel, a former Prussian Army officer with a flowing white mustache, draws back. A courier from Green brings an order to charge again, and, over his objections, Buchel does so. The charge is easily repulsed, with half of the men falling—among them Colonel Buchel, who will die of his wounds in three days. On the right, Thomas Churchill and his Arkansas and Missouri troops are having a better time of it. Their attack manages at last to flank and cut up Benedict’s brigade, forcing it to retreat toward Pleasant Hill village. Benedict himself is killed and his unit’s collapse uncovers Banks’s left center. Walker’s Texans, supported by Polignac and some of Green’s dismounted cavalry, pour through the gap.

With his center crumbling and Churchill’s troops entering the village in his rear, Banks is facing disaster. But Churchill, in his rush forward, has failed to notice the long blue lines of A.J. Smith’s veterans of the Army of the Tennessee hidden in the woods on his right. Smith orders his entire line to charge. Pivoting on Brigander General James McMillan’s brigade, which holds the village, the Federals fall hard on Churchill’s flank and drive the Confederates into Walker’s brigades at the center of the line. The Southerners resist stubbornly, but by dusk panic has seized some of them. As the Union line continues to advance, mnany Confederates flee into the woods at their rear. Some of the troops become confused and begin firing at each other. To avoid a rout, Taylor orders his entire force to withdraw. Most of his units retreat six miles through the forest to a small stream. Others remain with Taylor close to the battlefield, throwing themselves down under the trees in utter exhaustion. The Confederates have lost around another 1,200 killed and wounded and 426 missing out of 12,500 engaged, bringing their two-day losses to over 2,600.

A little before midnight Kirby Smith, who has ridden from Shreveport, joins Taylor in the woods. “Our repulse was so complete,” he will later write, “and our command was so disorganized that had Banks followed up his success vigorously he would have met but feeble opposition to his advance on Shreveport.” There is no need for the Confederates to worry. Immediately after the battle, Banks holds a council of war with Franklin and two of his brigadiers. These officers, all West Pointers, unanimously oppose resuming the offensive. The army, they note, has lost 1,400 men (later determined to be 150 killed, 844 wounded, and 375 missing out of 12,000 engaged)—3.600 in all. Much of the Federal supply train has been destroyed, and they have little water. The indecisive Banks abruptly decides to abandon the battlefield with its uncollected dead and wounded and retreat to Grand Ecore. A.J. Smith objects angrily. To him the Battle of Pleasant Hill is a victory despite what he considers Banks’s incompetent troop deployments. In his fury, he goes to Franklin, nominally second in command, proposing that Franklin arrest Banks and take command of the army. When Franklin points out that he is proposing mutiny, the thought sobers Smith and the subject is dropped. This night Banks’s army begins its withdrawal.

On the march in Arkansas, General Steele’s situation momentarily improves. Steele’s troops beat off attacks by elements of Price’s Confederate cavalry led by the dashing Brigadier General John Marmaduke and crosses the Little Missouri on a pontoon bridge. There, General Thayer’s 5,000-strong Army of the Frontier belatedly joins up. But the newcomers arrive without supplies, and Steele is forced to send back to Little Rock for more rations. Then, as the Federals are crossing the undulating grasslands of Prairie D’Ane, they are attacked again by Confederate cavalry, led this time by the flamboyant Kentucky-born Brigadier General Joseph Shelby and by another able commander, Brigadier General Thomas P. Dockery.

Forrest, still operating dangerously close to Federal communications in western Tennessee, skirmishes near Raleigh.

General U.S. Grant issues campaign orders: Meade and the Army of the Potomac will make Lee’s army the objective; “Wherever Lee goes, there you will go also.” Banks is to move on Mobile, Alabama; Sherman is to head into Georgia against Joe Johnston; Sigel is to march south in the Shenandoah; Benjamin Butler is to move against Richmond from the south side of the James River. The armies of the Union will be on the march in one grand, overall operation designed to put simultaneous pressure on all major armies of the Confederacy.

Confederate torpedo boat Squib damages USS Minnesota off Newport News, Virginia, by exploding a torpedo and escaping.

Heavy spring rains fall on northern Virginia, washing out or damaging a number of bridges.

[Doug64]

April 10, Sunday

General Sherman receives the letter from Grant formalizing the plan for the joint spring offensive they discussed when Grant left for Washington: “I will stay with the Army of the Potomac and operate directly against Lee’s army, wherever it may be found. You I propose to move against Johnston’s army, to break it up, and to get into the interior of the enemy’s country as far as you can, inflicting all the damage you can against their war resources.”

Grant doesn’t give Sherman a specific objective, but Sherman interprets his ultimate target to be Atlanta, more than 100 miles southeast of Chattanooga, site of the resounding Federal victories last November. Atlanta has become the hub of the Confederate war machine. Sherman had last been in the area when he was a young artillery lieutenant in 1844. The town was then a mere rail hamlet of fewer than 2,000 people and was called Marthasville. Now, swollen to a wartime population of close to 20,000, it is exceeded in importance to the Confederacy only by the capital, Richmond. Proclaiming itself to be the “Gate City of the South,” Atlanta is considered the strategic back door to the seacoast states of the Confederacy. It also serves as a vital arsenal and rail center. Atlanta’s factories and foundries turn out war matériel of all kinds, from cannon and rifles to rails and armor plate and even uniform buttons and wooden coffins. The four railroads radiating from the city carry these supplies, together with grain and other sustenance from the rich farmlands of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, to the principal Confederate armies. In order to get to Atlanta, Sherman will first have to deal with Joseph Johnston’s army, which is entrenched behind a mountain at Dalton, Georgia. And Dalton stands about thirty miles southeast of Chattanooga, squarely athwart the Western & Atlantic Railroad, which is the most direct route to the coveted Gate City.

Banks pulls back his force on the Red River toward Grand Ecore, Louisiana, and in Arkansas Steele’s Union expedition heads back toward Little Rock, with a skirmish at Prairie D’Ane. E. Kirby Smith orders Taylor to take his Southern force back from Pleasant Hill to Mansfield. The only other action is a Federal scout to Dedmon’s Trace, Georgia, and a skirmish at Cypress Swamp, Tennessee.

[Doug64]

April 11, Monday

By evening Banks’ Red River army streams into Grand Ecore after its failure at Mansfield and Pleasant Hill, Louisiana. The men are weary and disconsolate, but most of all they are contemptuous of their commander, whose grandiose campaign now seems to make little sense. Banks is badly in need of provisions and fresh troops. He sends a message to Porter, whose gunboats, farther up the Red River at Loggy Bayou and Springfield Landing with XVII Corps, to turn around and come back. Then he establishes a semicircular line of entrenchments and breastworks at Grand Ecore to protect his position and settles down along the river to await the fleet. That fleet encounters steadily lowering water and there is concern that they will be caught in the shallow river. They pull back, bedeviled by shore batteries and small-arm’s fire.

Forrest and his Confederate cavalry are at Columbus, Kentucky, on the Mississippi and there is a skirmish nearby. Affairs are recorded at Greenwich, Virginia; near Kelly’s Plantation on Sulphur Springs Road, Alabama; and in Chariton County, Missouri. A skirmish breaks out at Richland, Arkansas. Federal scouts and reconnaissance operate from Stevenson to Caperton’s Ferry, Alabama; and from Roseville to La Fayette, Georgia.

At Little Rock, Arkansas, a pro-Union state government is inaugurated, with Dr. Isaac Murphy as governor. Thus two seceded states—Arkansas and Louisiana—are back in the fold, at least in part. Pro-Union Virginians vote to accept a constitution for the “Restored State of Virginia” which includes abolishing slavery. A convention had deliberated in February in Alexandria, drawing up the constitution. The government headed by F.H. Pierpoint represents only a few northern and coastal areas of Virginia firmly held by the Union army.

[Doug64]

April 12, Tuesday

On the grasslands of Prairie D’Ane, Arkansas, after much feinting and maneuvering followed by a night attack, the Confederate cavalry withdraws, but the fight has cost General Steele three more days as well as about 100 men killed and wounded. The chance of reaching the Shreveport area in time to draw off any defenders fighting Banks seems increasingly remote. Still more time will be lost as Steel, desperate for supplies, detours southeast toward the sizable town of Camden on the Ouachita River. Heavy rains turn the road to Camden into a morass that has to be laboriously corduroyed, and the troops have to wade rain-swollen streams and swamps. By now the wiley Pap Price is on Steele’s trail and striking at his rearguard with five brigades of cavalry reinforced by Brigadier General Samuel B. Maxey’s division of horsemen, made up of Texans and Choctaw Amerinds.

On the Red River, Admiral Porter, having received Banks’s urgent message, turns his ships around at once and heads downstream; but the narrow river, full of snags and torturous bends, is falling fast, and the rushing current makes navigation doubly difficult. Ships hit submerged stumps, run aground, and collide with each other. Worse, the high banks overlooking the river swarm with Confederate cavalrymen, whose muskets and artillery rake the boats every time they get stuck. At Blair’s Landing, one of the attacks cost the Southerners dearly when a Federal shell decapitates Thomas Green. “His death was a public calamity,” Taylor will write, “and mourned as such by the people of Texas and Louisiana.” But it is the Federals who generally get the worst of it as the Confederate harassment continues unabated.

The threat posed by General Forrest to Sherman’s single ribbon of a supply line becomes reality today even as Sherman begins bolstering the railroads for the Atlanta Campaign. Out in western Tennessee, a minor Federal outpost called Fort Pillow becomes a byword for senseless slaughter. Situated atop a bluff guarding the Mississippi River about 75 miles north of Memphis, the fort is garrisoned by about 550 Federal troops, almost half of them recently recruited Blacks. Now around 1,500 of General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Confederate cavalrymen storm the fort as part of a campaign to cut Union lines of communication. The yelling troopers swarm over the fort’s parapets and swiftly drive many of the defenders down the bluff toward the Mississippi. What happens next will soon be the subject of rancorous debate. Forrest’s men will maintain that the Federals, although fleeing, keep their weapons and frequently turn to shoot, forcing the Confederates to keep firing. Surviving members of the garrison, on the other hand, will say that most of their men surrender and throw down their arms—only to be shot or bayoneted in cold blood by the attackers, who repreatedly shout, “No quarter! No quarter!” doubtless some of the Federals do continue to fight. But it will seem clear from the casualty figures alone that a post-surrender massacre took place. Only fourteen of Forrest’s men are killed, but the Federals lose about 230 dead and 100 more seriously wounded, a huge number considering the fact that the Confederate assault is so swiftly victorious. Further, a large majority of the Federal dead are Black troops—an indication that the Confederate soldiers have taken vengeance on former slaves fighting in the Union’s cause.

The Fort Pillow affair dwarfs all the other fighting: an engagement at Blair’s Landing, Louisiana, on the Red River; skirmishes at Florence, Alabama; Pleasant Hill Landing, Tennessee; Van Buren, Arkansas; Fort Bisland, Louisiana; and Fremont’s Orchard, Colorado Territory. Expeditions by Federals move up Matagorda Bay, Texas, and from Point Lookout, Maryland. A Federal reconnaissance probes for a couple days from Bridgeport down the Tennessee River to Triana, Alabama.

Major General Simon Bolivar Buckner assumes command of the Confederate Department of East Tennessee.

General Robert E. Lee tells his President, “I cannot see how we can operate with our present supplies. Any derangement in their arrival, or disaster to the R.R. would render it impossible for me to keep the army together....” But what Lee needs most urgently now is more men to feed. Longstreet is returning from Tennessee, but a brigade commanded by Brigadier General Robert Hoke has been detached from Lee for service on the coast of North Carolina. And Major General George Pickett’s division—the remnants of his charge at Gettysburg last July—is south of Richmond, containing the Federal coastal garrisons and searching for food. Diplomatically, Lee implores Davis to make his Army of Northern Virginia whole again. “We shall have to glean troops from every quarter, to oppose the apparent combination of the enemy.” But an ostensible build-up of Union troops isn’t enough to sway Davis, who likes to say that his Administration possesses no “department of anticipation.” He will rearrange the Confederacy’s troop dispositions only when reality compels him to. Davis’ strategy for this fourth year of war is simple: to make the coming offensive so costly for the Union that, by November, the weary and grieving Northern electorate will turn out Lincoln and replace him with a man who will be willing to negotiate peace.

[Doug64]

April 13, Wednesday

To protect the railroads in the rear against the man General Sherman refers to as “that devil Forrest,” Sherman orders the construction of additional blockhouses at important bridges and tunnels. Between the strong points, at eight-mile intervals, sidings are built to expedite traffic, and each siding is manned by a telegraph operator to provide warning of enemy attacks. Anticipating that some disruption will be inevitable, Sherman institutes a training program for his rail-repair gangs. These teams of gandy dancers go through daily drills as rigorous as those required of riflemen and gun crews, practicing methods of replacing the rails as rapidly as the enemy rips them up.

Sherman’s best insurance against rail disruption in the rear is to stockpile munitions and rations as far forward as possible—at Chattanooga and at Nashville, where twelve new warehouses are under construction. In order to free enough rail cars to accumulate supplies at those cities, Sherman issues a series of orders drastically restricting traffic on the railroad. Troops returning from furloughs in the North, for example, are barred from taking trains. Instead, they are formed into detachments to march south, driving herds of cattle for Sherman’s armies as they go. These returning soldiers have no recourse, but when Sherman bans all civilian rail traffic south of Nashville, howls of protest go up. The loudest cries come from newspaper reporters, for the ban effectively prevents them from traveling to Chattanooga to cover the impending Federal advance—unless, of course, they want to walk. The prospect of campaigning without any newspaper coverage delights Sherman, who loaths all reporters except those few willing to volunteer for combat service with his armies. He believes that any reporting about his forces aids the enemy. In fact, at Vicksburg last year, he actually court-martialed a newspaper correspondent for publishing stories that allegedly revealed Federal troop movements to the enemy. Sherman is just as tough with most other civilians who dispute his ban on rail travel. When religious groups complain that his orders keep them from shipping Biblical tracts to the troops, he snaps: “These is more need for gunpowder and oats than any moral or religious instruction.” He even stands firm when the complaints of loyal residents in eastern Tennessee, who depend upon the railroad for food, draw a response from President Lincoln. To Lincoln’s request that he do something “for those suffering people,” Sherman replies that either those people or the army “must quit and the army don’t intend to unless Joe Jonston makes us. I will not change my order.”

Sherman proves willing to bend his orders, however, for at least one noncombatant. He has a soft spot for Mary Ann Bickerdyke, the renowned Mother Bickerdyke, who has been following the Western armies for almost three years as a volunteer nurse. When Mother Bickerdyke is told of Sherman’s ban, she sets out to subvert it. First, she manages to get her supply of food and bandages from Nashville to Chattanooga by concealing them in a wagon train of army ambulances. Then she goes to the Nashville station and bullies her way onto the next train to Chattanooga, where she hurries to Sherman’s new headquarters, bustles past his aides, and confronts the commanding general. Sherman will have to change his orders, she announces, so that the hospital supplies can reach the front on the railroad. Sherman attempts to jokingly pass it off, but at length she says, “Well, I can’t stand fooling here all day. Write an order for two cars a day.” Sherman does as she demands. Later, when some of his officers complain about Mother Bickerdyke, Sherman throws up his hands and says, “She outranks me. I can’t do a thing in the world.”

By standing tough against most complainers, Sherman quickly manages nearly to double the accumulation of stores at forward depots. But this isn’t good enough. The trains at his command—approximately sixty locomotives and 600 cars—are too few to meet his goal of bringing 130 carloads of supplies forward daily. His solution is patently Shermanesque. He instructs his transportation chief to seize and hold all trains arriving at Nashville from Louisville. In this manner he can amass the fleet of 100 engines and 1,000 cars he needs. Soon, supply-laden rolling stock is chugging into Chattanooga.

Sherman accomplishes all this with characteristic personal intensity. Sleeping only three or four hours a night, he seems to be everywhere, barking out orders, twisting his face as if in pain, tugging at scalp or beard, tapping his fingers restlessly, exhausting subordinates with his presence. He hounds his quartermaster relentlessly, demanding more of everything. The slow and the incompetent feel the lash of his tongue. “I’m going to move on Joe Johnston the day Grant telegraphs me he is going to hit Bobby Lee,” he rages at one quartermaster, “and if you don’t have my army supplied, and keep it supplied, we’ll eat your mules, sir—eat your mules up!”

At the same time, Sherman hedges his bets by preparing alternative plans for feeding his forces. He carefully studies the tax documents and census reports of every county in Georgia, looking for the best places to live off the land in case the rail supply line fails to keep pace with his advance. “Georgia has a million of inhabitants,” he writes to Grant. “If they can live, we should not starve.”

Admiral Porter, with his Federal gunboats, reaches Grand Ecore on the Red River despite the rapidly falling water level and enemy harassment. One of General Banks’s soldiers observes that “the sides of some of the transports are half shot away, and their smoke-stacks look like huge pepper boxes.” Action occurs at Moscow, as the Federal cooperating column intending to join Banks on the Red River further bogs down.

In Arkansas skirmishing breaks out at and near Richland Creek, and on Spring River near Smithville. Elsewhere, Forrest’s men skirmish again at Columbus, Kentucky, and there is skirmishing at Mink Springs, near Cleveland, Tennessee; near Decatur, Alabama; Paintsville, east Kentucky; and an affair at Nokesville, Virginia. In Virginia, also, expeditions by Federals of varying durations go out from Portsmouth to the Blackwater and from Norfolk to Isle of Wight County.

[Doug64]

April 14, Thursday

Forrest’s Confederate cavalry, still active up toward the Ohio, skirmishes again at Paducah, Kentucky. Small Union gunboats help repulse the Southerners. In Arkansas the skirmishing is at Bayou Saline, Dutch Mills, and White Oak Creek; in Georgia at Taylor’s Ridge; and in eastern Kentucky at Half Mountain on Licking River and near Booneville. At Charleston, Fort Moultrie fires during the night on the US tug Geranium. A five-day Union expedition operates from Camp Sanborn, Colorado Territory, to Beaver Creek, Kansas.

President Lincoln reviews 67 court-martial cases, and issues several pardons.

[Doug64]

April 15, Friday

Small affairs continue as spring weather improves, with considerable action in the Trans-Mississippi near Camden and Roseville, Arkansas; in the Indian Territory; and at Spenser’s Ranch near Presidio del Norte, New Mexico Territory. Other fighting flares near Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Greeneville, Tennessee; and Bristoe Station and Milford, Virginia. Federals demonstrate on Battery Island in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. On the Red River, USS Eastport strikes a torpedo or mine and is severely damaged. She is refloated and tries to escape in the 21st, only to go aground numerous times. The crew will finally destroy her on the 26th.

At Knoxville, Tennessee, Governor Andrew Johnson vociferously supports emancipation at a large pro-Union meeting.

The Richmond Examiner expresses concern over the forthcoming campaign in Virginia: “So far, we feel sure of the issue. All else is mystery and uncertainty. Where the first blow will fall, when the two armies of Northern Virginia will meet each other face to face; how Grant will try to hold his own against the master spirit of Lee, we cannot even surmise.”

[Doug64]

April 16, Saturday

At Mansfield, Louisiana, Taylor and Kirby Smith argue over what to do now that Banks’s army has fallen back to Grand Ecore. Taylor is sure that an aggressive pursuit by his entire force can trap Banks’s army, as well as Porter’s fleet, before either of them can get out of the Red River country. But Kirby Smith overrules him. Deciding that the time has come to stop Steele, Kirby Smith sends the infantry divisions of Walker, Churchill, and Parsons to join Pap Price in Arkansas, then today rides after them. This leaves the disgruntled Taylor with only the Texas cavalry and Polignac’s infantry—about 5,000 men—to harry Banks. A skirmish at Grand Ecor, Louisiana, marks the Red River Campaign.

Despite the weather and attacks on his rearguard, General Steele and his men reach Camden, Arkansas. Fighting breaks out about Camden and at Liberty Post Office, and an affair occurs on the Osage Branch of King’s River. Skirmishing erupts at Rheatown, Tennessee; Salyersville, Kentucky; and an affair takes place at Catlett’s Station, Virginia. US transport General Hunter is destroyed by a torpedo in S. John’s River, Florida.

A report on US prisoners since the beginning of the war shows that the Federals have captured 146,634 Confederates.

[Doug64]

April 17, Sunday

Another change in Northern policy, aimed at sustaining the North’s numerical superiority, is initiated by Secretary of War Stanton and approved by General Grant. For three years, the Union and the Confederacy have routinely exchanged prisoners. Now Grant orders no further exchange of prisoners until the Confederates balance Federal releases. Also, he pronounces “no distinction whatever will be made in the exchange between white and colored prisoners.” The move injures the South, with its shortage of manpower, far more than the North—the North can replace such losses from its larger population but the South cannot—but it brings Grant caustic criticism from both sides. The move provides Grant’s soldiers with a fresh incentive to avoid capture. They know that the Confederacy can barely feed itself, much less its prisoners of war. In the future, capture will mean nothing less than slow starvation.

Confederate land forces, soon to be joined by the newly finished ram Albemarle, begin an attack on Plymouth, North Carolina. The Confederates are under Brigadier General Robert Frederick Hoke. Skirmishes flare at Beaver Creek, North Carolina; Ellis’ Ford, Virginia; Holly Springs, Mississippi; limestone Valley and Red Mount, Arkansas.

Confederate women defy local troops in a demonstration demanding bread at Savannah, Georgia.

[Doug64]

April 18, Monday

At Camden, Arkansas, Steele sends a train of 198 Union wagons foraging through the countryside for corn and other food. The escort of 1,000 men, half of whom are Black troops from General John Thayer’s Kansas regiment, do a good job of filling the wagons with much-needed provisions. But while returning to Camden, the Federals are attacked by a force three times their number under Marmaduke and Maxey at a site called Poison Spring. The Confederates capture and burn all the wagons. They will later be accused of murdering some of the wounded Blacks, and Maxey’s Choctaws are charged with taking scalps.

Confederate attacks continue at Plymouth, North Carolina. Other action includes skirmishing near Decatur, Alabama; at Citrus Point, Virginia; an affair at Hunnewell, Missouri; and a Federal expedition from Burkesville, Kentucky, to Obey’s River, Tennessee.

In an important Confederate command change, General G.P.T. Beauregard is assigned to lead the Department of North Carolina and Southern Virginia. Leaving Charleston, he is to be in charge of defending Richmond, the southern part of Virginia, and the northern portion of North Carolina against threatened Federal invasion by Benjamin F. Butler from the coast.

In an address to the Baltimore, Maryland, Sanitary Fair, President Lincoln says, “We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.”

[Doug64]

April 19, Tuesday

CSS Albemarle joins in the Confederate attack on Plymouth, North Carolina, sinking by ramming USS Smithfield, damaging another wooden gunboat, and driving off still others. Confederate troops have surrounded the town and surrender is believed near. In other fighting there are affairs at Leesburg, Virginia; Marling’s Bottom, West Virginia; plus skirmishes at King’s River, Arkansas; Charleston, Missouri; and Waterhouse’s Mill and Boiling Springs, Tennessee. To the 23rd a Union expedition moves up the Yazoo River, Mississippi, with skirmishing and loss by capture of US gunboat Petrel on the 22nd. Confederate troops carry out operations against pro-unionists in Marion County, Alabama.

An enabling act permitting Nebraska Territory to join the Union is approved after passage by the US Congress.

[Doug64]

April 20, Wednesday

Confederate troops under Brigadier General R.F. Hoke, aided by CSS Albemarle, captures Plymouth, North Carolina, and the Federals lose about 2,800 men plus a large quantity of supplies. The capture marks the first major Confederate victory in the area for a long time and brings hope to the defenders of the Atlantic coast.

On the Red River there are skirmishes about Natchidoches, Louisiana; and in Arkansas more skirmishing occurs around Camden. Elsewhere, Confederates attack Jacksonport, Arkansas, and Waterproof, Louisiana. Until late October Federal troops move against Amerinds in expeditions from Fort Dalles, Oregon, and Fort Walla Walla, Washington Territory, to southeastern Oregon.

Major General Samuel Jones succeeds General P.G.T. Beauregard in command of the Confederate Department of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Beauregard moves to the heavily threatened post of southern Virginia and northern North Carolina.

President Lincoln orders death sentences exacted by court martial to be commuted to imprisonment on Dry Tortugas off Key West, Florida. The President also confers with General Grant, who is completing plans for a spring offensive in Virginia.

[Doug64]

April 21, Thursday

General Banks still dreams of capturing Shreveport, but Porter, watching the Red River grow shallower, is determined to extricate his Mississippi Squadron before the ships are shot to bits or stranded and captured. A message from Sherman, demanding the return of XVI and XVII Corps, forces a decision. Banks and Porter agree that they must abandon the campaign, and they notify Sherman that they will keep his troops a while longer to help withdraw the fleet. The bulk of the troops begin to withdraw along the road through Natchitoches. The defeats of the past weeks and the rumor, unfounded but frightening, that Taylor is in pursuit with 25,000 men, give wings to their heels—the advance guard marches twenty miles in the first ten hours. Confederate units pursue Banks with hit-and-run attacks, but mount no offensive. On the river, however, Admiral Porter soon has his hands full. The ironclad Eastport, barely afloat after colliding with a Confederate torpedo, finally springs an unstoppable leak and has to be scuttled. Then rear elements of the fleet run into a force of enemy sharpshooters and artillery. In a wild, two-day battle, in which boats hit snags, lose tiller ropes, and become unmanageable under the severe fire from the shore, Porter loses two transports and has three vessels badly damaged. At last he reaches the head of the rapids at Alexandria, only to find himself trapped: The river is too low for his ships to navigate, two ledges of jagged rock in the twin rapids laid bare.

Affairs take place at Tunica Bend, Louisiana; Cotton Plant, Arkansas; and Harrison’s Gap, Alabama. A skirmish reupts at Red Bone, Mississippi. Confederate salt works are destroyed at Masonborough Inlet, North Carolina, and at Cane Patch near Murrell’s Inlet, South Carolina.

President Lincoln confers with governors from Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, and also reviews seventy-two court martial cases.

[Doug64]

April 22, Friday

Confederate harassment on the Red River in Louisiana continues with attacks on transports, and skirmishes at and near Chloutierville, Louisiana. Other fighting includes a skirmish on Duck River, Tennessee; an affair near Cotton Plant, Arkansas; and a three-day Union expedition with skirmishing from Jacksonport to Augusta, Arkansas.

The motto “In God We Trust” is first stamped upon coins under an act of the Federal Congress.

President Davis writes Lieutenant General Polk in Alabama, “If the negro soldiers [captured] are escaped slaves, they should be held safely for recovery by their owners. If otherwise, inform me.”

[Doug64]

April 23, Saturday

In Arkansas, General Steele is reeling from the loss of men, wagons, and supplies five days ago, when he gets word that Banks has been repulsed in Louisiana and has withdrawn to Grand Ecore. Uncertain what to do, Steele remains in Camden—where, today, matters grow worse. The Confederate cavalry is threatening his supply depots and line of communications to Little Rock. Moreover, Churchill’s and Parson’s Confederate infantry divisions, sent north by Kirby Smith, have arrived outside Camden, with Walker’s division right behind them.

Banks’s army retreating toward Alexandria, Louisiana, soon has troubles to match Steele’s. A.J. Smith’s angry Westerners, in the rear, plunder and destroy everything around them, burning all the houses, cotton gins, and barns and other buildings on their route. This further destruction of his home state infuriates Richard Taylor, who makes a bold attempt to encircle the Federals at Monett’s Ferry, the only practicable crossing of the Cane River. Taylor has already sent cavalry and artillery well downriver below Banks, ordering them to hold some steep, wooded bluffs that command the Cane River crossing from the side opposite Banks’s approach. He also tells the rest of Green’s cavalry, now led by Major General John A. Wharton, to press the Federals from the rear while other Confederate units, including Polignac’s infantry, hurry to flank the Union left and right.

When General William Emory and his division, in the van of the Union column, reach the Cane at Monett’s Ferry, they find the Confederate position too strong to take by frontal assault. Searching for a solution, both Banks and Emory scout the canebrake to the left to find a crossing point. Failing at that, they send some of Emory’s troops reinforced by other units to miles to the right, where they wade waist-deep across the muddy, alligator-infested river. The Federals then double back through marshes, woods, and swampy thickets to hit the Confederate cavalry from the side. A sharp battle ensues among ravines and hills. But then the Confederate commander, Hamilton Bee, pressed hard on one side, takes a Federal feint at face value and thinks he is also being flanked on the opposite end of his line. Fearing that his 2,000-man force might be wiped out, Bee orders a retreat. This gives the Federal column the chance it needs. Despite continued attacks by Wharton’s cavalry on the Union rear, Banks’s army, much to Richard Taylor’s disgust, manages to get across the Cane River and slog on to Alexandria.

Elsewhere, fighting includes an affair near Hunter’s Mill, Virginia; a skirmish at Independence, Missouri; and a Confederate attack at Nichajack Trace, Georgia.