The American Civil War, day by day - Page 83 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15212878
February 19, Friday

A trooper captured by the enemy confirms W. Sooy Smith’s fears of an attack when he manages to escape his captors and rejoins his outfit south of Okolona, with information that “Forrest’s whole force was reported to be in the vicinity of West Point,” barely a dozen miles ahead, and is “said to be 8000 or 9000 strong.”

Meanwhile it has become obvious that Smith intends to follow the Mobile & Ohio Railroad all the way to Meridian, wrecking it as he goes, so Forrest is free to develop a specific plan to stop him. Which he does. Sending one brigade, commanded by his twenty-six-year-old brother Colonel Jeffrey Forrest, to West Point as a bait to lure the bluecoats on, he orders the others to take up a position three miles below, in a swampy pocket enclosed on the west and south by Sakatonchee and Oktibbeha creeks and on the east by the Tombigbee. That is the trap.

Fighting occurs about Brown’s Ferry, Alabama; near Houston, at Egypt Station, and near Meridian, Mississippi; Grossetete, Louisiana; near Independence, Missouri; and at Waugh’s Farm near Batesville, Arkansas.

President Davis asks Admiral Franklin Buchanan what plans he has for defeating a reported naval demonstration on Mobile.
#15213068
February 20, Saturday

Two weeks after landing his 7,000-man division at Jacksonville, Florida, and marching west into the interior, Brigadier General Truman Seymour and some 5,500 of his men are near Olustee or Ocean Pond on a march from Barber’s Plantation toward Lake City, Florida. Seymoor’s force advances against Confederates under Irish-born Brigadier General Joseph Finegan. Two Union regiments, one from New Hampshire and a Black regiment (one of three with Seymour’s force), give way in confusion at the opening of the battle. The approximately 5,000 Confederates renew the attack from strong fieldworks and fight vigorously until dark, when Seymour withdraws. The cavalry ineffectively pursues the retreating Federals. While the Northerners fall back to Jacksonville, Confederates rapidly repair the damaged railroads. Casualties for the Federals are heavy, with 203 killed, 1,152 wounded, and 506 missing for a total of 1,861. The Confederates suffer 93 killed and 841 wounded for 934 casualties. The Federal campaign is an unmitigated failure.

Sherman, at Meridian, Mississippi, while anxious about W. Sooy Smith’s operations to the north, withdraws in leisurely fashion toward Vicksburg with no fighting. The march has totaled between 360 and 450 miles, with 21 killed, 86 wounded, and 81 missing for a total of 170. Sherman is satisfied with the efforts of his army over the past five days, pronouncing that “Meridian, with its depots, storehouses, arsenal, hospitals, offices, hotels, and cantonments, no longer exists.” Confederates immediately go to work repairing the railroads and other damage.

Meanwhile, Smith’s lead elements run into stiffer resistance in the direction the escaped prisoner reported yesterday that Forrest is positioned, Colonel Forrest’s bait brigade falling back as ordered to draw the Federals through West Point and into the pocket prepared for their destruction. They follow him cautiously, into and just beyond the town; but there they stop, apparently for the night. Smith has paused for thought. It seems to him that his adversary, with the unexpected advantage of (illusory) superior numbers, is laying a trap for him down the line. He thinks about this long and hard, and this evening his adjutant replies to a dispatch from one of his brigade commanders, “The general is very sick tonight.” Meanwhile, believing that the Federals will come on in the morning, Forrest continues his preparations to receive them with a double envelopment.

At Atlanta, Georgia, General Johnston begins the ordered transfer of General Hardee’s corps to General Polk to protect Mobile, Alabama, from Sherman; the three divisions board the cars at Dalton for the long ride to Demopolis.

Elsewhere, fighting breaks out on the Sevierville Road near Knoxville, at Flat Creek, and Strawberry Plains, Tennessee; West Point, Mississippi; Upperville and Front Royal, Virginia; near Hurricane Bridge, West Virginia; and Pease Creek, Florida. For a week a Union expedition operates from Helena up the White River of Arkansas.
#15213230
February 21, Sunday

General Forrest’s attempt to set a trap for the Federal cavalry led by W. Sooy Smith is frustrated by Smith’s failure to cooperate. Although there is a Federal advance, which brings on a brief engagement, it soom becomes evident that this is a mere feint—a rearguard action, designed to cover a withdrawal. Nearly two thirds of the way to Meridian, Smith has given up trying to reach it; has decided, instead, to backtrack. Ahead are swamps and the enemy force reported to be larger than his own, while he is already ten full days behind schedule, still with eighty-odd miles to go and some 3,000 homeless Blacks on his hands. Forrest, having gained what he calls the “bulge,” reacts fast. If the Yankees won’t come to him, then he will go to them. And this he does, with a vengeance. Being “unwilling they should leave the country without a fight,” he orders his entire command to take up the pursuit of the retreationg bluecoats. Moreover, the rearguard skirmish has no sooner begun than he attends to another matter of grave concern: namely, the behavior of his “raw, undrilled, and undisciplined” troopers in their reaction to being shot at, many of them for the first time. As he approaches the firing line he meets a panic-stricken Confederate stumbling rearward, hatless and gunless, in full flight from his first taste of combat. Forrest dismounts to intercept him, flings him facedown by the roadside, then takes a piece of brush and administers what a startled witness describes as “one of the worst thrashings I have ever seen a human being get.” This done, he jerks the unfortunate soldier to his feet, faces him about, and gives him a shove that sends him stumbling in the direction of the uproar he has fled from. “Now, God damn you, go back to the front and fight!” Forrest shouts after him. “You might as well be killed there as here, for if you ever run away again you’ll not get off so easy.” Still raw and undrilled, but by no means undisciplined, the man rejoins his comrades on the firing line. The story will quickly spread, not only through the division—as the general no doubt intends—but also through both armies, until finally it will be made the subject of a Harper’s Weekly illustration titled “Forrest Breaking in a Conscript.”

After driving the rearguard Federals through West Point, Forrest comes upon them again, three miles beyond the town, stoutly posted along a timbered ridge approachable only by a narrow causeway. His solution is to send one regiment galloping wide around the enemy flank, with orders to strike the rear, while the others dismount to attack in front. Admittedly, this is a lot to ask of green troops, but Forrest eomploys a method of persuasion quite different from the one he used a while ago on the panicked conscript. “Come on, boys!” he roars, and leads the way, this setting an example which inspires his men. So led, they drive the bluecoats from the ridge, then remount and continue the pursuit until nightfall, when their commander calls a halt, midway between West Point and Okolona, in a hastily abandoned Union bivouac area, stocked not only with rations and forage, but also with wood for the still-burning campfires. While the graybacks bed down and sleep beside the cozy warmth provided by their foes, Smith keeps his main body plodding northward and doesn’t stop until well past midnight, within four miles of Okolona.

General Hardee’s corps arrives at Demopolis, only to find they aren’t needed; Sherman has withdrawn. General Polk promptly puts them back aboard the cars to rejoin Johnston, who by now is sending up distress signals of his own.

Elsewhere, fighting is light, with skirmishes near Circleville and Dranesville, Virginia, and a Union scout from New Creek to Moorefield, West Virginia.

President Davis is worried about the pressure on the inner bastion of the Confederacy: in Mississippi; against Johnston in north Georgia; at Charleston, South Carolina; and against Longstreet in east Tennessee; and, of course, the front in Virginia.
#15213342
February 22, Monday

At Okolona, Mississippi, burdened with captured stock and runaway slaves, and weary as they are from yesterday’s long march—since that morning’s sunup, they’d covered better than twice the distance they had managed on any one of the other nine days since they left Colliersville—Smith’s men get a late start. By this time Forrest, who gets his troops up and on the go at dawn, well rested and unencumbered, has closed the ten-mile gap and is snapping again at the tail and flanks of the blue column. Smith is learning, as Streight learned before him, that it can be even more dangerous to run from the Tennessean than it is to stand and fight him. However, instead of turning on him with all he has, Smith drops off a couple of regiments just beyond Okolona and a full brigade at Ivey’s Hill, five miles further along on the road to Pontonoc, still intent on saving his train and protecting the Blacks in his charge.

After a running fight through the town, hard on the heels of the rearguard, the gray pursuers come upon the first of the two prepared positions and are brought to a halt by fire from the superior Federal weapons. At this point Forrest arrives. “Where is the enemy’s whole position?” he asks Colonel Tyree Bell, whose brigade has the lead this morning. “You see it, General,” Bell replies, and adds: “They are preparing to charge.” “Then we will charge them,” Forrest says, and does. The result is a blue rout. Five guns are abandoned shortly thereafter by an artillery lieutenant who complains hotly in his report that his battery had been forced off the road and into a ditch by Union soldiers who overtook him “in perfect confusion,” hallooing: “Go ahead, or we’ll be killed!”

The chase continues to Ivey’s Hill, where the defenders, allowed more time to get set, give a considerably better account of themselves. Opening ranks to let the fugitives through, they take under well-aimed fire the two brigades advancing toward them across the prairie. At the first volley the commanders of both are shot, one in the hand, the other through the throat. The second of these is Jeffrey Forrest, and though the general reaches him immediately after he falls—this youngest of his five brothers, whom he had raised as a son and made into a soldier—he finds him dead. He remains bent over him for a minute or two, then rises and orders his bugler to sound the charge. The fighting that follows is savage and hand-to-hand. Within the next hour, Forrest has two horses killed under him and accounts in person for three enemy soldiers, shot or sabered.

Thus assailed, the Federals once more fall back to try another stand in a position ten miles from Pontonoc; which is also lost, along with another gun, but which at any rate ends the relentless chase that began two days ago, nearly fifty miles away, below West Point. “Owing to the broken down and exhausted condition of men and horses, and being almost out of ammunition,” Forrest will presently report, “I was compelled to stop pursuit.” Smith is unaware of this, however, and keeps going even harder than before. Judging the rebel strength by Forrest’s aggressiveness, he believes that Stephen Lee has arrived to join the chase, though in point of fact he now has nothing on his trail but the “rabble of state troops” he had brushed aside last week, headed in the opposite direction. He is in Pontonoc by midnight.

Having taken over a week to prepare to carry out his orders to move against General Johnston, General Thomas starts forward today from Ringgold, Georgia. Grant’s hope is that Thomas will catch his adversary off balance and thus be able to drive him back from Rocky Face Ridge and beyond Dalton, in order to “get possession of the place and hold it as a step toward a spring campaign.” With three of his seven divisions 350 roundabout miles away, Johnston is something more than merely off balance when Thomas moves against him.

Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, again enmeshed in political intrigue, once more offers to resign. (Eventually Lincoln refuses this resignation.) The crisis arises from the so-called “Pomeroy Circular,” a document indicative of the machinations of a few Redical Republicans and violent abolitionists opposed to Lincoln’s reelection. Signed by Senator Samuel C. Pomeroy of Kansas, the paper advocates Chase for President. Chase, in a letter to the President, denies knowledge of the cicular, but admits consultation with those urging him to run. Other evidence suggests that Chase is cognizant of and approves the publication.

Meanwhile, qualified voters in the restored Union government of Louisiana elect Michael Hahn governor of the army-occupied state.

Skirmishes erupt at Luna Landing, Arkansas; Lexington and Warrensburg, Missouri; Indianola, Texas; Whitemarch Island, Georgia; Gibson’s and Wyerman’s mills on Indian Creek, Virginia; and Powell’s Bridge and Calfkiller Creek, Tennessee. Confederates raid Mayfield, Kentucky.
#15213458
February 23, Tuesday

Major General J.M. Palmer’s corps makes the opening thrust of General Thomas’s move against General Johnston at Dalton, Georgia, with his target today being Tunnel Hill. Formerly occupied by Cleburne, this western spur of Rocky Facy Ridge is now held only by Wheeler, whose horse artillery raises such a clatter that the bluecoats are discouraged from attacking until tomorrow. President Davis, trying to reinforce Johnston in Georgia and Polk in Mississippi, queries Johnston as to whether “the demonstration in your front is probably a mask.”

General Smith’s cavalry retreating from their defeat at the hands of Forrest’s men yesterday at Okolona rise at 3 am and continue the retreat from Pontonoc, clearing New Albany by the afternoon, destroying the bridges across the Tallahatchie.

A skirmish occurs near New Albany, Mississippi. Through March 9th Federals scout from Springfield, Missouri, into northern Arkansas, and fight several skirmishes.

President Lincoln writes Secretary Chase that he will comment more fully later about the Pomeroy Cicular, in which Chase is advocated as a Republican presidential candidate to replace Lincoln. The Cabinet meets without Chase in attendance.

Richmond sees a buyer’s panic, with food and whisky jumping rapidly in price.
#15213618
February 24, Wednesday

General Braxton Bragg is charged with the conduct of military operations in the Armies of the Confederacy, thus becoming in effect chief of staff. Bragg, still very controversial, enjoys President Davis’ trust, but his reputation has suffered from his defeat at Missionary Ridge and the constant conflicts with his generals.

The US Senate passes a measure to revive the rank of lieutenant general, with Grant clearly in mind. President Lincoln approves an act of Congress to compensate every Union master whose slaves enlist in the Army, the sum not to exceed $300; the volunteer is to become free. The act also increases bounties for volunteers, redefines quota credits, increases penalties for draft resistance, subjects Blacks to the draft, provide that those who oppose bearing arms for religious reasons should be assigned noncombatant tasks with freedmen or in hospitals, and gives the President authority to call for such men as required. Debate begins on recognizing the restored state government of Louisiana.

In Mississippi, General Smith continues his retreat all through the day, unwilling to risk another stand. In northern Georgia, fighting continues at Tunnel Hill, Buzzard Roost Gap, and Rocky Face Ridge or Crow’s Valley during the Federal demonstration on Dalton, as the rebel troopers fall back through the gap to cover the flanks of the infantry disposed along the ridge. Elsewhere, skirmishing takes place at Tippah River and near Canton, Mississippi; and until the 29th there is a Federal scout from Camp Mibres, New Mexico Territory.
#15214106
February 25, Thursday

General Smith’s retreating cavalry reach Colliersville, having covered in five days the same distance they’d required ten days to cover while going south.

General Thomas probes the passes along Rocky Face Ridge, making some progress against the widespread defenders—especially at Dug Gap, immediately southwest of Dalton. Federals under Major General J.M. Palmer make their main effort at Buzzard Roost. Johnston’s Confederate positions prove too strong for the limited probing attack.

An affair occurs near Hudson, Mississippi; and a Union scout from Whiteside’s, Tennessee, to Stevens’ and Frick’s Gaps, Georgia, will last two days.

Major General John C. Breckinridge is assigned to command the Confederate Trans-Allegheny Department or Western Department of Virginia, relieving Major General Samuel Jones.
#15214107
February 26, Friday

Sherman’s troops skirmish near Canton, Mississippi, north of Jackson, as their withdrawal after the successful Meridian Campaign ends with their crossing the Pearl and going into bivouac at Canton. Sherman still has no knowledge of what, if anything, happened to Smith’s mounted column. Not that he considers his own part in the campaign anything less than “successful in the highest degree,” both on the outward march and the return, which he made along a different route, twenty-odd miles to the north, so as to avoide the grainless, cowless, hogless trail his twelve brigades of infantry had blazed while slogging eastward.

To the north, W. Sooy Smith chooses not to stop his retreat at Colliersville, and his wing of the expedition straggles into Memphis after severe harassmen by Forrest, ending there at last what one brigade commander describes as “a weary, disheartened, almost panic-stricken flight, in the greatest disorder and confusion.” During the whole campaign Smith has lost 54 killed, 179 wounded, and 155 missing for 388 out of 7,000. Forrest will claim he had 2,500 men at Okolona, losing 25 killed, 75 wounded, and 8 or 10 captured for a total of 108 or 110—a disparity that Forrest, as the attacker, can only account for by “the fact that we kept so close to them that the enemy overshot our men.” But the cost in horseflesh has been cruel. Smith returns with no more than 2,200 riders who can be described as adequately mounted; the other 4,800 are either on foot or astride horses no longer fit for service in the field. A corresponding loss in cavalry morale, so lately on the rise in all the Union armies, is indicated by an unhappy colonel’s remark that “the expedition filled every man connected with it with a burning shame.” Nor is that by any means the worst of it from the Northern point of view. The worst is still to come, resulting not so much from Federal losses as Confederate gains. Practically overnight, by this victory over twice their number—and the capture, in the process, of six guns and several stands of colors—Forrest’s green recruits have acquired a considerable measure of that fierce pride their commander desired. Already he is preparing to go over to the offensive, beginning with a return to west Tennessee and the accomplishment there of a great deal more than the mere enlargement of his now vetern division.

When Federals under Major General J.M. Palmer launch a coordinated assault against Johnston’s Confederates near Dalton, Georgia, he finds that Hardee’s three divisions, having completed their round trip journey to Demopolis, are in position on the ridge; Cleburne, in fact, is on the flank of the flankers. Accordingly, General Thomas withdraws his Union forces as they came, returning to Ringgold. His “formidable reconnaissance” has cost him 345 casualties and has failed in its larger purpose of seizing Dalton “as a step doward a spring campaign”; but he, like Farragut on the waters outside Mobile, Alabama, has learned much that will be useful when he returns in earnest. As for Johnston, he is agreeably surprised. He had expected to be thrown into precipitate retreat; whereas his men have not only maintained the integrity of a position which he had declared has “little to recommend it,” but have inflicted better than twice the 167 casualties they suffered. Even more heartening than the bare tactical result is the contrast between the army’s present frame of mind, here on Rocky Face Ridge, and the one that had been evidenced a dozen weeks ago on Missionary Ridge. Unquestionably its spirit has been lifted; perhaps indeed a bit too much, at least in one respect, to suit Old Joe. For in congratulating his troops on thei work, he is critical of the artillery officers for having “exhibited a childish eagerness to discharge their pieces.”

By now the Confederates have returned to Meridian, or at any rate to the desolation Sherman has erected in its place. Speaking in Jackson on his first western visit just over a year ago, Jefferson Davis had warned that the invaders had it in mind to handle Mississippi “without gloves,” and now his words have been borne out; Meridian is an example of what the men he referred to as “worse than vandal hordes” can accomplish when their commander turns them loose with the admonition that “vigorous war ... means universal destruction.” In addition to the damage inflicted on the town itself, a total of twenty-four miles of railroad track, extending an average half dozen miles in all four directions, has been demolished, the crossties burned, the rails heated and twisted into what will come to be known as “Sherman neckties.” Beyond this circumference of utter destruction, for a distance of nearly fifty miles north and south, not a bridge or a trestle has been left unwrecked on the Mobile & Ohio. Already, in the course of the march from Jackson, the raiders had disposed of fifty-one bridges and culverts, and they have extended their work eastward, nine miles beyond the junction, to add three more bridges and five trestles to the talley. Yet sad as it is to survey the charred remains of what once passed for prosperity in this nonindustrial region, sadder by far are the people of those counties through which the blue column slogged on its way to and from the town that now is little more than a scar on the earth. They have the stunned, unbelieving look of survivors of some terrible natural disaster, with the underlying difference that their grief has been inflicted by human design and is a deliberate product of a new kind of war, quite unlike the one for which they bargained three years ago, back in that first glad springtime of secession. They are faced with the aftermath of the war before the finish.

Other fighting flares at Washington and Sulphur Springs, Tennessee. A Confederate navy picket boat off Fort Sumter captures a small Union boat in Charleston Harbor.

A memorandum from President Lincoln confirms his confidence in General Benjamin Butler and asks that the controversial general be sustained in his efforts. Lincoln also orders that the death sentence of all deserters be commuted to imprisonment during the war, thus continuing his policy of leniency. The US Senate completes passage of the bill reviving the rank of lieutenant general.
#15214336
February 27, Saturday

Near Americus, Georgia, Federal prisoners of war begin arriving at an unfinished prison camp, officially named Camp Sumter but to be known as Andersonville. Insufficient food, shelter, clothing, and accommodation will soon make the prison notorious.

The demonstration of Federals on Dalton, Georgia, ends with a skirmish at the Stone Church near Catoosa Platform or Station. Skirmishing takes place in the Sequatchie Valley, Tennessee; at Madisonville and Sharon, Mississippi; near Poplar Bluff, Missouri; and at Pinos Altos, Arizona Territory. Federals destroy a large Confederate salt works on Goos Creek near St. Marks, Florida.
#15214649
February 28, Sunday

Brigadier General Judson Kilpatrick, a swashbuckling, ambitious 28-year-old cavalry division commander, has managed to get President Lincoln’s ear with a scheme to raid Richmond. Kilpatrick’s purpose is to liberate the nearly 15,000 Federal prisoners incarcerated there. He also has promised to distribute thousands of copies of the President’s recent proclamation offering amnesty to any Confederate citizen who will pledge allegiance to the Union as he rides through enemy country. Lincoln admires the plan’s boldness.

General Meade has been issued orders to cover Kilpatrick with a diversion. Grumbling but obedient, Meade sends Major General John Sedgwick’s VI Corps marching ostentationsly to the Federal right, in the direction of Gordonsville. Brigadier General George Custer’s cavalry brigade also spurs off to the west on a raid into Albemarle County, Virginia, which will last until the 1st of March. Lee’s army looks to its left. This night, Kilpatrick’s 3,500 troopers cross the Rapidan on the Confederate right at Ely’s Ford, scatter the pickets they encounter, and set out under a clear, starry sky for Richmond. They move with six field pieces and five days’ rations, intending to strike and be back nehind Union lines before the Confederate know what has hit them. At the crossroads settlement of Spotsylvania Court House, Kilpatrick splits his force. He sents 500 men riding west under Colonel Ulric Dahlgren. Dahlgren is the dashing son of Rear Admiral John Dahlgren, inventor of the bottle-shaped Dahlgren gun much admired by the US Navy. At 21, Ulric Dahlgren is one of the youngest Colonels in the Federal Army. He is in the saddle despite an artificial leg, the result of a wound suffered just after Gettysburg. His mission now is to circle southward, cross the James River, and penetrate Richmond from the south, freeing prisoners and scattering the amnesty proclamations. At the same time, Kilpatrick and the main body of troopers will approach the city from the north and draw the brunt of Richmond’s defense. The city is known to be well fortified, but its earthworks are accurately believed to be manned mostly by militia.

Other skirmishing occurs at Dukedom, Tennessee; on Pearl River and near Yazoo City, Mississippi; and Federals scout in Gloucester County, Virginia.

President Lincoln orders Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas to proceeed west to resolve the pressing predicament of contraband along the Mississippi. the plight of Blacks, the need to restore plantations to usefulness, the problems of cotton and other trading are becoming increasingly urgent and troublesome.
#15214939
February 29, Monday

Informing General Halleck of the outcome of the Meridian Campaign, Sherman states: “My movement to Meridian stampeded all Alabama. Polk retreated across the Tombigbee and left me to smash things at pleasure, and I think it is well done.... We broke absolutely and effectually a full hundred miles of railroad ... and made a swath of desolation fifty miles broad across the State of Mississippi which the present generation will not forget.” After listing his spoils, which include “some 500 prisoners, a good many refugee families, and about ten miles of negroes,” he announces that the destruction he has wrought “makes it simply impossible for the enemy to risk anything but light cavalry this side of Pearl River; consequently, I can reduce the garrisons of Memphis, Vicksburg, and Natchez to mere guards, and, in fact, it will set free 15,000 men for other duty. I could have gone on to Mobile or over to Selma,” he adds, “but without other concurrent operations it would have been unwise.” Privately, however, in a companion letter to his wife, he confesses his regret that Smith’s nonarrival has prevented him from applying what his foes are calling “the Sherman touch” to Alabama.

Polk takes no such gloomy view of the prospect in Mississippi. Though he can scarcely deny the all-too-evident validity of Sherman’s boast of having “made a swath of desolation fifty miles wide across the State of Mississippi which the present generation will not forget,” he doesn’t agree with his adversary’s further assertion that the east-central portion of the state can be written off as a factor in the conflict. The bishop has already notified Richmond that “I have already taken measures to have all the roads broken by him repaired and shall press that work virgorously.” Press it he will. Summoning to his Demopolis headquarters President Samuel Tate of the Memphis & Charleston Railroad, he puts him in general charge of the restoration, with full authority to requisition both property and labor. Tate is a driver. Despite a crippling shortage of rails and spikes—not to mention the inevitable objections of planters to the impressment of such of their slaves as haven’t gone off with Smith and Sherman—within twenty-six days he will have the Mobile & Ohio back in operation, from Tupelo south to Mobile Bay, along with the Alabama & Mississippi, from Meridian to the Tombigbee. The Southern will take longer, mainly because of administrative complications, but within another five weeks it too will be open, all the way to the Pearl.

But that is later. At the moment, Sherman’s pronouncement: “My movement cleared Mississippi at one swoop, and with the railroad thus destroyed the Confederacy cannot maintain an army save cavalry west of the Tombigbee,” seems to him irrefutable. He is back in Vicksburg, having come ahead of his infantry, which he has left marking time in Canton, “with orders to remain till about the 3d of March”—he is still hoping W. Sooy Smith will turn up—“and then come into Vicksburg leisurely.” Pleased by the added destruction of several miles of Mississippi Central, north of Jackson—together with 19 locomotives, 28 cars, and 724 carwheels, which helps to ease his disappointment that Polk managed to save the rolling stock on the other roads within his reach—he proudly announces: “Everything with my command was successful in the highest degree.” That this is hardly an overstatement is evidenced by the anguished protests of his opponents and victims, soldiers and civilians, some of whom report that damage at a larger figure than his own. South Carolinian Stephen Lee, for one, charges the raiders with “burning 10,000 bales of cotton and 2,000,000 bushels of corn and carrying off 8,000 slaves, many mounted on stolen mules.” He estimates the overall loss at five million dollars, of which “three fourths was private property,” and asks rhetorically: “Was this the warfare of the nineteenth century?” Sherman isn’t inclined to dispute the statistics, and he has already given his answer to Lee’s question. This is indeed the warfare of the nineteenth century, at any rate as he intends to practice it, and he is not only proud of what has been accomplished by this first large-scale application of the methods that have aroused Lee’s moral indignation; he is also looking forward to the time when he can apply those methods elsewhere, perhaps even in the angry young cavalryman’s native state, where the provocation had begun. First though will come Georgia; Mississippi has been something of a warm-up, a practice operation in this regard, just as perhaps Georgia in turn will be a warm-up for the Carolinas.

Lincoln approves the congressional act reviving the grade of lieutenant general. It is clear that Congress and the President have Major General Ulysses S. Grant in mind for this promotion, highest rank in the Army since Washington. Retired General Winfield Scott was lieutenant general by brevet only.

In Virginia, Kilpatrick’s cavalry pushes south from the Rapidan, riding through last night and all this day, skirmishing at Beaver Dam Station near Taylorsville. The weather deteriorates and the sky rains ice, chilling the cavalry’s fervor. With night comes absolute darkness; the sleet falls harder and low branches stiffened by ice torment the troopers. They ride down blind paths, running into trees or one another. Some of the horses go down, not to rise again, and the men begin to understand why their commander’s nickname is “Kill Cavalry.”

Riding west after separating from Kilpatrick, Colonel Dahlgren’s party picks up a Black youth named Martin Robinson, who says he can lead the raiders to a ford on the James River. But when the Federals reach the chosen place, they find the river too swollen to cross. Young Dahlgren, in a burst of anger, orders the guide hanged on the spot. Unable to cross, the troopers continue eastward down the James on the wrong side, now far behind schedule.

Elsewhere fighting breaks out on Redwood Creek, California; near Canton, Mississippi; and at Ballahock on Bear Quarter Road and at Deep Creek, Virginia. In West Virginia Federal troops operate until March 5th against Petersburg and destroy saltpeter works near Franklin. Cavalry under Custer fight skirmishes at Stanardsville and Charlottesville on their raid into Albemarle County, Virginia. In Missouri a two-week Federal expedition moves from Rolla to Batesville, Arkansas. In a prelude to the Red River expedition, a Union naval reconnaissance operates until March 5th on the Black and Ouachita rivers of Louisiana.
#15215217
March 1864

As spring approaches in many of the battle areas, major military movements are still postponed. In Virginia Lee and Meade mark time, although Richmond is agitated by Kilpatrick’s approaching cavalry raid. Now that the US Congress has created the rank of lieutenant general, the people await Grant’s ascendancy to overall command. Confederates in north Georgia know a Union drive southeastward is certain, but don’t know when or exactly how it will be launched. In the Confederacy the grim perseverance shows some signs of weakening. In the North there is awareness of the approaching presidential election and there are sanguine hopes for a victorious summer. Yet there is dissension in some quarters, and a queasy uncertainty as to the meaning of the war.

March 1, Tuesday

By midmorning in Virginia, Kilpatrick has reined up five miles outside Richmond, deployed a skirmish line, and positioned his field guns. The troopers can see Richmond’s fortifications, but there is no sign of Dahlgren, who is supposed to be in the city by now. Kilpatrick touches off his guns, expecting to hear an answering volley from Dahlgren. Instead, he draws brisk fire from Confederate cannon. The defenders of Richmond have been alerted, and 500 men with six guns block any approach from the north while the city’s Local Defense Brigade guards the south and west. Through the cold day, Kilpatrick’s worn-out cavalry spar with the Confederates at long range. At dark, with still no sign of Dahlgren, Kilpatrick wheels his troopers back a few miles and goes into bivouac. No one has slept for two days, but few of the men are able to sleep this night, either. “A more dreary, dismal night it would be difficult to imagine,” one cavalryman will remember, “with rain, snow, sleet, mud, cold and wet to the skin, rain and snow falling rapidly, the roads a puddle of mud and the night as dark as pitch.” Before the night is over, an attack by Confederate cavalry add to the Federals’ discomfort. No militia these, but some of Lee’s finest. Commanded by Major General Wade Hampton, the Confederates have been pursuing the Union band ever since it crossed the Rapidan. Hampton has brought with him two field pieces, and their fire sparks the inky night, slinging case shot into the Federals at close range. Kilpatrick’s men manage to withstand the attack, but they are forced to fall back even farther from Richmond, sniped at by Hampton’s troopers, before they can rest.

As for Colonel Dahlgren, he also reaches Richmond today, pressing to within three miles of the city despite prickly resistance by the Local Defense Brigade. But any hope of surprise has vanished, and Kilpatrick has already pulled back. Dahlgren, too, gives up the venture and orders a withdrawal. It is a desperate ride, through driving sleet, with unseen Confederates sniping from behind every barn and bush. In the dark, the Federal column breaks in two.

Henry Halleck, in Washington, has been far from satisfied with General Banks’ modest successes on the Texas coast. The only sensible way to approach Texas, he has insisted, is to send a large expedition up the Red River to Shreveport, the current Confederate state capital of Louisian. Such a campaign would clear the Confederates from the state and position Banks’s army for a full-scale invasion of the more important parts of Texas. Once again Banks demurred—and he was strongly backed by U.S. Grant, who still wants Banks to move on Mobile, Alabama. But Halleck is adamant. An invasion of Texas, he says, is “a matter of political or State policy”—which means Lincoln is still concerned about the French presence in Mexico. There is little that even Grant can do in the face of the President’s wishes, and so in January Banks began planning the venture up the Red River.

As Banks issued orders from his headquarters in New Orleans, he began to look upon the expedition with more optimism than he would have dreamed possible in November or December. One reason for his sanguine view: Grant has promised him reinforcements—10,000 or more veteran troops to be drawn from William Tecumseh Sherman’s armies in Tennessee. Grant has also assured Banks that he can count on help from the 15,000-man Federal army in Arkansas commanded by Major General Frederick Steele, who has chased the Confederates from Little Rock. And there is also a political lure. The wharves and warehouses on the upper Red, Banks has been told, are piled high with cotton bales that he can seize and ship to the starved mills of his native Massachusetts, where the voters will surely be grateful. Suspending further operations in Texas, Banks has recalled most of his troops to the lower Teche. Then today General Sherman arrives in New Orleans to confer on the upcoming campaign. Sherman will indeed furnish troops and Rear Admiral David Porter will send his fleet of ironclads, which have been instrumental in the Union victories on the Mississippi. Sherman has one proviso: His troops will have to be returned east of the Mississippi by Apiril 15th for his planned spring operations in Georgia. But this hardly seems a problem to Banks. He plans to be ensconsed in Shreveport by then.

In Florida skirmishing flares at Cedar and McGirt’s creeks.

As expected, President Lincoln nominates Major General Ulysses S. Grant for the newly created rank of lieutenant general.
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March 2, Wednesday

Kilpatrick and his survivors manage to scramble back to a junction with Butler’s Federals near New Kent Court House, along with one of the two halves of Colonel Dahlgren’s column that finds him late in the day on the way. Dahlgren, at the head of perhaps 200 men, is not so fortunate, opposed by Confederate cavalry from Hanovertown on. He makes a dash for the northeast and crosses the Mattaponi River, but the Confederates of Fitzhugh Lee’s cavalry division under Captain E.C. Fox and Lieutenant James Pollard get ahead of Dahlgren’s men and prepare an ambush at Mantapike Hill between King and Queen Court House and King William Court House. During the night Dahlgren falls into the trap. Revolver in hand, Dahlgren challenges the encircling enemy: “Surrender, you damned Rebels, or I’ll shoot you!” Four bullets from the responding volley take the Federal’s life. In the next few minutes, all but a few of his men are run down—some killed, but most captured. In the aftermath, papers are said to be found on Dahlgren which indicate a plot to assassinate President Davis. Historians now and later will be uncertain of their authenticity. However, the threat to Richmond ends dramatically and conclusively, at the cost of 340 Federal casualties as well as 1,000 horses killed, captured, or rendered unfit for service. Like discarded newspapers, Lincoln’s amnesty proclamations blow unheeded across the land.

There is a skirmish recorded for Canton, Mississippi, and a two-day Federal expedition from Larkin’s Landing to Gourd Neck and Guntersville, Alabama. Having acted as decoy for Kilpatrick’s raid, George A. Custer returns to Union lines from his own fairly successful raid in the Albemarle area of Virginia.

The US Senate confirms the nomination of U.S. Grant as lieutenant general.
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March 3, Thursday

In a day of minor fighting, skirmishes occur at Liverpool and Brownsville, Mississippi; Petersburg, West Virginia; and at Jackson and near Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

The Federal Treasury is authorized by Congress to issue $200,000,000 (today $3,350,496,815) in ten-year bonds.

Major General U.S. Grant is at his winter headquarters in Nashville when he receives word from Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War, that he is ordered to Washington to receive his commission as lieutenant general and assume command of all the Union armies.
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March 4, Friday

The US Senate confirms Andrew Johnson as Federal Military Governor of Tennessee.

In New Orleans the new pro-Union Louisiana government of Governor Michael Hahn takes office.

The bulk of General Sherman’s forces return to Vicksburg after the campaign to Meridian, Mississippi. Confederates demonstrate against Portsmouth, Virginia; a skirmish breaks out near Murfreesboro, Tennessee; and another at Rodney, Mississippi. minor operations continue until May in Florida.

Admiral John A. Dahlgren calls on President Lincoln to learn the fate of his son, Colonel Ulric Dahlgren, whose death near Richmond is not yet known in Washington.
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March 5, Saturday

The Confederate government orders every vessel to give one half of its freight capacity to government shipments. This is an effort to cut down on private profit from blockade running and to aid the government in obtaining badly needed supplies.

Major General John C. Breckinridge assumes command of the Confederate Department of Western Virginia.

Fighting centers at Leet’s Tanyard, Georgia; Panther Springs, Tennessee; and Yazoo City, Mississippi. A telegraph station and two small Federal steamers are seized in a daring raid by Confederates under Commander John Taylor Wood at Cherrystone Point, Virginia.
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March 6, Sunday

Federal forces, after being attacked the preceding day, pulls out of Yazoo City, Mississippi. Confederate torpedo boats fail in an attack on USS Memphis in North Edisto River, South Carolina. Confederate raiders attack Union pickets at Columbus, Kentucky, and there is an affair near Island No. 10 on the Mississippi. skirmishing occurs at Flint Creek, Arkansas, and Snickersville, Virginia.
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March 7, Monday

Anxious over the military situation in the West, President Davis writes General Longstreet, at Greeneville in east Tennessee, “It is needless to point out to you the value of a successful movement into Tennessee and Kentucky, and the importance—I may say necessity—of our taking the initiative.”

President Lincoln writes to Representative John A.J. Creswell of Maryland that while he has preferred gradual emancipation in Maryland, he would have no objection to immediate emancipation. The President issues an order designating the starting point of the Union Pacific Railroad on the western boundary of Iowa.

An advance cavalry division opens General Banks’ Red River Campaign by starting up the Teche.

Fighting is limited to skirmishes at Decatur, Alabama; and Brownsville, Mississippi.

Richmond newspapers report the first arrival of Black prisoners of war in the Confederate capital.
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March 8, Tuesday

General Grant reaches Washington with his eldest son, Fred, in tow. Through a mixup, no one meets their train, and when the rumpled officer and the 13-yeard-old boy present themselves at the desk of Willard’s Hotel, the clerk is less than impressed. The conqueror of Vicksburg and Chattanooga signs the register simply “U. S. Grant and Son, Galena, Illinois.” The name works instant magic. Grant’s victories in the West have made him the most talked about man in the Union. Indeed, the New York Herald for months has been promoting him as a grassroots candidate for President in this year’s election. The desk clerk, recovering nicely, immediately assigns Grant the best suite in the house—the one where Lincoln stayed before his inauguration. the clientele in the lobby of Willard’s, a room of “heat, noise, dust, smoke and expectoration” according to a visitor, quickly get word of Grant’s presence and begin to measure the man. At five feet eight inches tall and 135 pounds, there isn’t much on the outside to measure. The distinguished writer Richard Henry Dana Jr., encountering Grant at the Willard a bit later, will describe him as an “ordinary, scrubby looking man with a slightly seedy look, as if he was out of office on half pay; he had no gait, no station, no manner.” Even Dana will have to concede, however, that the 41-year-old general has a certain “look of resolution, as if he could not be trifled with.”

For Grant, the intense public scrutiny is only beginning. Later today he learns that he is expected at the White House this evening, when the President and Mrs. Lincoln hold their weekly reception. Grant walks the two blocks to the White House, where the President is greeting guests in the Blue Room. The two men from Illinois have never met, but Lincoln recognizes his visitor from across the room and steps forward to pump his hand. “Why, here is General Grant!” exclaims the Presiden, who towers eight inches above his guest. “Well, this is a great pleasure, I assure you.” His pleasure is much more than social. After three years of searching and many disappointments—McClellan, Burnside, Hooker, and now Meade—Lincoln suspects he has found a general. Grant is ushered into the East Room, where most of official Washington, it seems, is straining for a glimpse of the heralded newcomer. At Grant’s entrance, the crowd’s enthusiasm boils over. Men and women surge forward to cheer him and shake his hand. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, looking on with distaste, thinks the scene “rowdy and unseemly.” A reporter present will write that “it was the only real mob I ever saw at the White House.” When someone in the crowd cries out, “Stand up, so we can all see you!” Grant obliges by climbing onto a sofa. He remains there, accepting the adulation, for almost an hour.

Fighting occurs near Baton Rouge and at Cypress Creek, Louisiana; and at Courtland and Moulton, Alabama.
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March 9, Wednesday

This afternoon General Grant returns to the White House to receive the commission of lieutenant general in a formal ceremony. It is the loftiest rank the government has to bestow; the Union has major generals by the score, but before Grant, only George Washington and Winfield Scott had risen to lieutenant general, and Scott’s rank was by brevet, or honorary. Grant reads his acceptance in a loud, clear voice. “I feel the full weight of the responsibilities now devolving on me, and it will be my earnest endeavor not to disappoint your expectations.” When his speech is over, Grant accepts the evidently sincere congratulations of the man he is replacing as general in chief, Henry Halleck. Grant wisely agrees with Sherman, who told him bluntly, “Halleck is better qualified than you to stand the buffets of intrigue and policy.” Halleck will assume a new title, chief of staff—the “office man,” as one of Grant’s staff officers calls him. He will continue to shoulder the administrative chores of running the Army, thus sparing Grant that burden. Grant, already busy with plans, talks privately with the President about future operations.

Spasmodic skirmishing continues near Nickajack Gap, Georgia, and near Greenwich and Suffolk, Virginia. Expeditions lasting several days are carried out by Federals in King and Queen County and to Piankatank River, Virginia.
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