PLAYING THE DEEP GAME
I have, before this, said that Lincoln is a better General than Halleck, but I don’t think that this is saying much.
—NOAH BROOKS, Journalist, January 1, 1854
THE UNION LEFT GRANT to go to seed not long after his great victory at Vicksburg. For nearly three months he did not exercise a major command, particularly one in the field, and saw his army broken up and scattered from Chattanooga to Arkansas to Louisiana. “I am anxiously waiting for some general plan of operations from Washington,” he complained in late July. “It is important that the troops of different departments should act in concert; hence the necessity of general instructions coming from one head.”1
Halleck decided that the Mississippi River would provide a base for future Union operations. Vicksburg and Port Hudson would be held by garrisons, freeing troops for the field. Halleck intended these garrisons to consist of black troops, and told Grant to recruit as many as possible. But the bigger problem remained: what next? Halleck worried that if Johnston joined Bragg, more of Grant’s forces than just those Grant had borrowed from Burnside would have to go to Rosecrans’s aid. Halleck also mulled over the possibility of driving the Confederates from Louisiana, or clearing Arkansas. If they could be forced from these states, he believed, Texas would follow “almost of its own accord.” But Halleck sent no orders, only options. He closed a note to Grant: “Wherever the enemy concentrates we must concentrate to oppose him.”2
Grant, as always, looked forward. He wrote Halleck asking whether he should send troops to support a move Banks planned against Texas. Halleck rejected the idea, insisting that the first order of business was to “clean out” the other states. The first place he ordered action was in Arkansas.3
Major General John Schofield, commander of the Department of the Missouri, a New Yorker, 1853 West Point graduate, and veteran of numerous western operations, had Arkansas as his responsibility. Much of his force had been stripped away to support Rosecrans and Grant. He could do little until the Union cleared the Mississippi and his men had returned. After this, however, Schofield immediately launched a two-pronged drive into the state, one led predominantly by Major General Frederick Steele. It was hardly a blitzkrieg. Steele jumped off on August 10. His forces took Little Rock on September 10, driving off the Confederate forces commanded by Sterling Price. After a brutal August 19 Confederate raid on Lawrence, Kansas, which included Jesse James and in which the Confederates murdered nearly 200 unarmed men, Schofield had adopted a system of establishing local militia to keep guerrillas in check in Missouri. This, coupled with a strategy of expelling relatives of known guerrillas and anyone supporting them, plus their slaves, helped secure most of Arkansas for the Union, though they did suffer some subsequent Rebel raids.4
Grant continued to wait for Halleck to decide his fate. Meanwhile, he launched raids against surrounding areas of the countryside aimed at destroying mills, railroads, and anything else useful to the Confederate war effort. One, against Grenada in north-central Mississippi, proved particularly successful. Moreover, when he pulled Sherman’s troops back from Jackson, he told him to “leave nothing of value for the enemy to carry on war with.”5 With Sherman’s eager assistance, Grant inaugurated a Union raiding strategy that would become an element of the evolving Union strategy of exhaustion. By 1864, some Union armies in the West would forage to their target destination, eating up the countryside on the way there and on the way back, while destroying resources and industrial capabilities useful to the Confederates. These expeditions would also recruit slaves to the Union army, sometimes even forcing them into the ranks.6
Grant agreed to send the necessary troops to support the Arkansas expedition, but he had a different idea about what his next target should be: Mobile. Halleck disagreed. He still wanted to focus on “cleaning up,” and wanted Johnston “disposed of.” Once they could withdraw troops from Vicksburg, Missouri, and Port Hudson, they could turn their focus to Mobile or Texas. Before receiving this note, Grant had again recommended a drive on Mobile to Halleck, but by this time things were even more out of Halleck’s hands than usual.7
LEE’S DEFEAT AT GETTYSBURG, and the disaster he nearly met during the retreat, did not temper his aggressiveness. As his army withdrew deeper into Virginia, he looked, unsuccessfully, for opportunities to fight Meade. But he had to fall back farther and farther, slowly giving up his gains of the summer.8 In early August, taking advice from Davis about assuming a position in close cooperation with the forces defending Richmond, Lee camped on the south bank of the Rapidan River at Culpeper Courthouse.9 The end of August found him still eager to try Meade again. He told Longstreet, “I can see nothing better to be done than to endeavor to bring General Meade out and use our efforts to crush his army while in its present condition.”10
Meade had followed Lee, harassing him with cavalry and keeping in close contact with the ever-watchful administration. Near the end of July, when he inquired whether he should enter the Shenandoah Valley, Halleck made sure to remind the general of his true mission: “Lee’s army is the objective point.”11
But Lincoln, at least for a moment, had changed his mind. After years of pleading with the various commanders of the Army of the Potomac to fight the eastern Confederates, Lincoln changed his tune, or at least some of his notes. He wrote Halleck that though Meade was under the impression that they were demanding he “bring on a general engagement with Lee as soon as possible,” that was not the case. “If he could not safely engage Lee at Williamsport, it seems absurd to suppose he can safely engage him now, when he has scarcely more than two thirds of the force he had at Williamsport, while it must be, that Lee has been re-inforced.” He admitted that he had wanted Meade to pursue Lee across the Potomac but that moment had passed and he was now against pressing him to attack.12 Lincoln had not regained much faith in his new commander.
Meade responded that he indeed thought the administration expected him to fight Lee at the first chance and that Lincoln had been misinformed about Meade’s numbers; he possessed nearly as many troops as he had had at Williamsport. But the same day that Halleck forwarded Lincoln’s note, he sent another telling Meade that the government might have to take some of his troops to help enforce the draft (there had been riots in New York and a few other places) and that therefore Meade should leave off chasing Lee and stop at the Rappahannock.13 Needless to say, this left Meade confused as to what exactly his superiors wanted him to do. He asked for clarification. “Keep up a threatening attitude,” Halleck told him, “but do not advance.”14
Part of what motivated Lincoln was undoubtedly a desire to avoid forcing Meade into an action in which the general saw little hope of success. But bigger concerns, domestic as well as international, afflicted the president. These would begin occupying his time and in the process exert a negative influence on the course of Union strategy. The New York draft riots were quickly put down, resolving the domestic problem. Mexico furnished the stickier international one.
Mexico’s default on its foreign loans, and the subsequent French intervention, lit a fire that the Lincoln administration determined had to be put out. They feared French ambitions in Mexico and against Texas, and also saw a chance at strengthening the blockade, which remained porous via the Mexican frontier. The day before Halleck issued the halt order to Meade, Lincoln had already revived with Stanton the idea of a Texas expedition, telling him, “I believe no local object is now more desirable.”15
Two days later, Halleck instructed the Union commander in New Orleans, Nathaniel Banks, to prepare to mount an operation against Texas; they hadn’t yet decided whether it would be by land or sea. He suggested Indianola and Galveston as points of attack. Just a week before, Halleck had wired Banks that “Texas and Mobile will present themselves to your attention.” Halleck much preferred the Texas option and ordered Banks to prepare for such a move while clearing the Rebels from Louisiana’s southwestern reaches.16
Banks, like Grant, had already decided where he wanted to go next, and it certainly wasn’t Texas. Both preferred to take Mobile, one of the few remaining significant Confederate ports, as well as a key rail junction. Banks’s original orders from Halleck had actually included a command to seize Mobile Bay, something he came to deem critical, and for good reason. “The possession of Mobile gives the Government the control of the Alabama River and the line of railways east and west from Charleston and Savannah to Vicksburg, via Montgomery,” Banks argued, “and places the whole of Mississippi and Southern Alabama in position to resume at will their place in the Union.” Should the Confederacy lose Mobile, it would lose its only port on the Gulf, aside from Galveston, which was not connected to the Rebel railroad net. “The operation need not last more than thirty days, and can scarcely interfere with any other movements east or west.”17
Lincoln soon seconded Halleck’s note to Banks, favoring Texas. He also sent a letter to Grant explaining the demands of state that forced the cancellation of their preferred move. Halleck, at least, did not waste the chance of deceiving the Rebels into thinking that Mobile was the next target.18
Halleck now clarified what the administration wanted of Banks: the U.S. flag planted somewhere on Texas soil. Halleck provided few specifics and left Banks to decide whether he should mount an overland campaign or an amphibious one. He disparaged the earlier idea of landing at Galveston or Indianola, preferring a course Banks had previously suggested: moving up the Red River, crossing northern Louisiana, and entering north Texas along this route. Halleck saw advantages here. “In the first place,” Halleck wired, “by adopting the line of the Red River, you retain your connection with your own base, and separate still more the two points of the rebel Confederacy.” This would also sever northern Louisiana and southern Arkansas entirely from supplies and reinforcements from Texas; “they are already cut off from the rebel States east of the Mississippi.” As always, Halleck suggested; he did not order.19
Banks, having not yet received clear direction from Washington, continued discussing the Mobile operation with Grant, providing, as a side note, an incisive analysis of the strategic situation. He believed the position of Joe Johnston’s army in Morton, Mississippi (35 miles east of Jackson), untenable because of pressure from Rosecrans. Moreover, considering “the present shattered conditions of the rebel armies, the right, center, and left having all been disastrously defeated,” if Rosecrans was pushed southward and Charleston fell to the army and navy and became the base for an interior thrust, it would trap the forces of Bragg and Johnston between Rosecrans in Tennessee, Grant in northern Mississippi, and Banks in New Orleans. “I do not believe that that condition of things can be maintained,” he concluded.20 In other words, pressure from different points exerted upon the South would cause it to collapse—an idea rooted in McClellan’s original strategic plan, then pushed by Lincoln, and now including variations from other pens. The Union leadership had failed to make this happen in the spring of 1862 when they had the chance; this occasion would prove no different.
Grant also saw advantages in seizing Mobile. It would force Bragg to send troops to counter it, and if the Confederates failed “to meet this fire in his rear,” the Union forces, using Mobile as their base, could tear up much of the country that fed and supplied Lee’s army. Moreover, if the administration did want a foothold in Texas, Grant believed it would be better simply to put troops in Brownsville, which was on the coast as well as the Texas-Mexico border.21
Lincoln and Seward had other ideas. They had initiated the Texas expedition for raisons d’état, as well as to meet domestic political concerns. Clausewitz argued the merits of a relationship in which the political leaders set policy and the military leaders did what they could to enact it. Such are also the traditional roles of the civilian and military forces in American society. But the Union command, including Lincoln and Seward, had lost sight of the main goal. Texas certainly mattered, but winning the war against the Confederacy, and winning it as quickly as possible at the least cost, mattered far more. This would remove all domestic as well as foreign political difficulties. In August 1863, the Confederacy was in desperate need of a breather. The Union gave them one by diverting its attention to peripheral theaters. Lincoln halted Meade. Lincoln and Halleck ordered Banks west. Halleck detached forces from Grant to clean out Arkansas—“tidying up,” he called it. Clearing these areas did not noticeably impair the Confederacy’s ability to resist; a thrust at the heart would have. Nor did these moves strike at the Confederate center of gravity, which Lincoln identified at the same time he was ensuring that Banks went in the wrong direction: “The strength of the rebellion, is its military— its army.” He wrote this in August 1863.22 All of this meant that Lee would be left alone, which was never a good thing.
In early August, Meade received orders to stop pursuing Lee. “I am quite sure if I was to advance now,” Meade grumbled in a letter to his wife a few days later, “he [Lee] would fall back to Richmond.” He added, aptly, “As the question never will be settled till their military power is destroyed, I think it unfortunate we do not take advantage of their present depression.”23
By early September, Lee expressed some limited optimism regarding what he could do to Meade, even after Longstreet’s troops went west to support Bragg (about which we will hear more shortly). “If I was a little stronger,” he told Davis, “I think I could drive Meade’s army under cover of the fortifications of Washington before he gathers more reinforcements.” But Lee included a critical caveat: should Meade get all of his reinforcements, Lee might be forced to return to Richmond. “The blow at Rosecrans should be made promptly and Longstreet returned,” he wrote.24
However, as September lengthened, Lee grew increasingly convinced that the Union was concentrating against him. He was upset by the loss of his troops to the West, believing that he needed them and that they had “gone where they will do no good.” Moreover, since Burnside had unexpectedly gone to Knoxville, Lee believed that he would not join with Rosecrans but instead drive back Samuel Jones’s forces in Abingdon, Virginia (near the Virginia/North Carolina/Tennessee border), thereby helping Meade’s advance against Lee. A worried Lee agreed with Davis’s assessment that if Rosecrans and Burnside did unite at Chattanooga, the enemy would be so strong that the only way to dislodge them would be an attack on their communications.25
Lee was right to feel uneasy. On September 15, Halleck suddenly seemed to remember that the Union had an army in Virginia, an awakening fueled by events in Tennessee. Halleck wrote Meade that “preparations should be made to at least threaten Lee, and, if possible, cut off a slice of his army. I do not think the exact condition of affairs is sufficiently ascertained to authorize any very considerable advance. I will write more fully to-day.” These vaguely worded instructions provoked intervention and explanation by the ever-watchful Lincoln and clarification by Halleck. “The main objects are to threaten Lee’s position,” Halleck told Meade, “to ascertain more certainly the actual condition of affairs in his army, and, if possible, to cut off some portion of it by a sudden raid, if that be practicable.” They also wanted hard information as to whether Confederate troops had truly gone to Tennessee. As he wrote Meade, this had direct bearing on the operations of Burnside, who was ordered to move toward Chattanooga, joining up with Rosecrans to face Johnston and Bragg and thus leaving “East Tennessee comparatively open on the Virginia side.”26
Moreover, while instructing Meade to “threaten Lee” and try to “cut off a slice of his army,” Halleck told him to expect very little in the way of reinforcements. While urging Meade to avoid doing anything rash, he pointed out that if Lee’s force was “very considerably reduced, something may be done to weaken him or force him still farther back.”27 Considering his opponent, rashness would be needed to accomplish either.
Halleck took the added step of enclosing a message Lincoln had sent him regarding Meade: “My opinion is that he should move upon Lee at once in manner of general attack, leaving to developments whether he will make it a real attack. I think this would develop Lee’s real condition and purposes better than the cavalry alone can do.”28
Meade replied that Longstreet’s corps had indeed left Lee’s army and that the Army of the Potomac would cross the Rappahannock River. He was not, however, optimistic about drawing Lee out of his trenches and into a fight. Moreover, Meade immediately began to fear that if they were wrong about how many men had been taken from Lee’s army, Lee might try to put his forces between the Army of the Potomac and Washington.29
Meade advanced because he believed Lee had weakened his army and would withdraw to Richmond if “threatened,” but Lee took up a strong position behind the Rapidan River. Meade thought his forces insufficient to fight a battle and then advance, and he was unwilling to run the risk without clearer orders from his superiors.30
Lincoln, always on the lookout for communications from the Army of the Potomac, gave his view of what Meade should do. He also assessed the Union’s strategic and operational situation in the East, offering a foreshadowing of things to come. As ever, he felt forced to submit to whoever was in the field regarding the best course of action. Nonetheless, he recognized the Union advantage and smelled opportunity. “These two armies confront each other across a small river, substantially midway between the two Capitals, each defending it’s [sic] own Capital, and menacing the other. Gen. Meade estimates the enemies[’] infantry in front of him at not less than forty thousand. Suppose we add fifty per cent to this, for cavalry, artillery, and extra duty men stretching as far as Richmond, making the whole force of the enemy sixty thousand. Gen. Meade, as shown by the returns, has with him, and between him and Washington, of the same classes of well men, over ninety thousand. Neither can bring the whole of his men into a battle; but each can bring as large a per centage in as the other. For a battle, then, Gen. Meade has three men to Gen. Lee’s two. Yet, it having been determined that choosing ground, and standing on the defensive, gives so great advantage that the three can not safely attack the two, the three are left simply standing on the defensive also. If the enemies[’] sixty thousand are sufficient to keep our ninety thousand away from Richmond, why, by the same rule, may not forty thousand of ours keep their sixty thousand away from Washington, leaving us fifty thousand to put to some other use?” However, to “avoid misunderstanding,” Lincoln made it clear that he was against forcing the enemy back slowly to his Richmond trenches. This, he felt, was a mistake. He recalled that “his last attempt upon Richmond” had been to try to get McClellan to march on the city when he was closer to the Confederate capital than the Rebel army was. “Since then I have constantly desired the Army of the Potomac, to make Lee’s army, and not Richmond, it’s [sic] objective point.”31
Halleck sent along to Meade Lincoln’s note, as well as one of his own. As usual, Halleck gave no orders. He told Meade to fight if he thought he could, but if he was to do something, he should do it before the troops on detached service with Bragg returned. He also repeated Lincoln’s key instruction to keep in mind that the Confederate army, not its capital, was the “objective point” and that he was to “do it as much harm as possible with as little injury as possible” to his own forces. Meade remained unimpressed. “As I expected,” the general told Mrs. Meade, “no decisive answer was sent to me, but I was told to act in accordance with my own judgment.” Talks in Washington followed. Meade thwarted an attempt to reduce his forces—or at least thought he had. He made plans for an offensive, but then received word that the administration considered his army too large for defensive purposes and was taking part of it away.32
Word that two corps had been taken from Meade and sent to Rosecrans provoked Lee into action. He decided to maneuver Meade out of the Union position at Culpeper Courthouse and try to turn his flank in a manner similar to what he had done to Pope the previous year. He told John D. Imboden in the Shenandoah Valley to support this by pushing as much as he was able.33
Lee put his army in motion on October 9, 1863. Meade withdrew over the Rappahannock River. “I am still moving with the view of throwing him further back towards Washington,” Lee wrote. On October 14 Lee attacked Meade’s rear guard at Bristoe Station. Meade’s forces stung him, then withdrew, leaving the field to the Confederates.34
Lee’s movements, though, worried the Union high command; they feared he would mount yet another invasion of the North. Stanton and Halleck scrambled to collect troops to prevent this.35 Clearly, Lee’s previous aggressive actions had garnered him a distinct psychological advantage over his foes. Halleck had also decided that it was time for Meade to fight Lee and pushed the general to do so. Lincoln did the same, sending word to Meade that he himself would bear the responsibility for any unfavorable results.36
In the face of Lee’s push, Meade retreated to Centreville, a position Lee considered too strong to assault. Lee could do no more, however much he wanted to. Logistically, he was at the end of his tether. His army was in sad shape. He told his wife that “thousands were barefooted, thousands with fragments of shoes, & all without overcoats, blankets or warm clothing. I could not bear to expose them to certain suffering, on an uncertain issue.” He told the Confederate quartermaster general that only his “unwillingness to expose the men to the hardships” had forced him to return to a position on the Rappahannock. “I should otherwise have endeavored to detain General Meade near the Potomac, if I could not throw him to the north side.”37
Lee’s rebuff at Gettysburg had not dampened his aggressiveness, nor had it given him much fear of Meade. Meade gave his adversary his due. “This was a deep game, and I am free to admit that in the playing of it he has gotten the better of me.”38
Meanwhile, Halleck pressed Meade to fight. By this point, however, he held Meade and the Army of Potomac in contempt, something made clear by his letters. To another general, Halleck remarked that if “a general is unwilling to fight, he is not likely to gain a victory. That army fights well when attacked, but all its generals have been unwilling to attack, even very inferior numbers. It certainly is a very strange phenomenon.” The Old Snapping Turtle had no qualms about biting back and told Halleck that if he had any orders to convey he should do so; if not, and if Halleck didn’t trust him, he would hand over his stars. Halleck backed down.39
Meade, though, did advance, upsetting Lee’s plans. Lee had hoped to reinforce Imboden so he could strike at the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which connected Harpers Ferry with Baltimore. But this did not prevent him from insisting upon action from his other forces. He told Sam Jones to move against eastern Tennessee because that might “attract the attention of the enemy in northwestern Virginia, so as to prevent a combination of his forces upon General Imboden.” He wanted action in general, preferring Jones to move against Knoxville, if possible, to secure the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad, but if this could not be done he wanted him to march into northwestern Virginia in conjunction with Imboden to attack the railroad there. “It behooves us to be active,” he wrote, “to give the enemy no rest, and to prevent his reinforcing his army about Chattanooga, which now seems to be the important point of his operations.” Lee wrote much to Jones, hoping “to inspire him.”40
The Union commanders continued their back-and-forth, Halleck and Lincoln keeping a tight leash on Meade while at the same time urging him to attack and suggesting plans and movements, including a push in conjunction with raids against the Confederate railroad and bridges between Lee’s army and Richmond. A meeting between Meade and Lincoln on October 23 did nothing to alter the odd situation. Meade’s superiors simply did not trust him. He held the same view of them, believing the politicians were after him. Meade slowly pushed south, and he did fight, but he refused to take big gambles, and his superiors refused to force him.41
Throughout the month of November, Lee and Meade probed and danced, Lee concluding that “our capital is the great point of attack of the enemy in the eastern portion of the Confederacy.” The pressure forced Lee back over the Rapidan River; then winter gripped the theater.42
THE LOSS OF VICKSBURG left Jefferson Davis distraught. After receiving word of its fall he asked Johnston for an explanation. Johnston replied that his forces had been too weak and that he had been unable to move on Vicksburg until the end of June because of transportation problems, reasons he had earlier related to the secretary of war. “I then moved toward Vicksburg to attempt to extricate the garrison,” Johnston wrote, “but could not devise a plan until after reconnoitering, for which I was too late.”43
After Vicksburg fell, Port Hudson was not far behind, surrendering on July 8. Johnston made no effort to relieve it. He did advise Franklin Gardner, the post’s commander, to pull his forces out and also hoped Richard Taylor would do something. (Johnston spent a lot of time hoping others would do something.)44
Immediately after Vicksburg’s surrender, Grant sent Sherman to drive Johnston’s forces from Jackson, Mississippi, issuing the orders before Vicksburg’s defenders had time to lower the Confederate flag. Sherman, as always, proved eager to strike another blow. After word of the surrender came he wired Grant: “Already are my orders out to give one big huzza and sling the knapsack for new fields.”45 With the capture of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, the Union had achieved strategic dominance in the West. Control of the Mississippi provided a supply route the Confederates could not cut and an untouchable springboard for operations into Confederate territory.
The Confederacy’s situation in the region went from bad to worse, both in the field and in the realm of civil-military relations. Davis looked for some type of counterthrust by his forces, but desertion plagued Johnston’s army. Davis and his Confederacy resorted to a Southern version of the levée en masse in an effort to summon enough men to the colors.46
Davis was particularly upset with Johnston. He wanted to relieve him, but politically this wasn’t feasible, as Johnston had strong supporters in the Confederate Congress, particularly Congressman Louis Wigfall, and was also a popular figure in the Confederacy. Davis did reorganize the command structure in the West, separating the commands of Bragg and Johnston and reducing Johnston’s area to southern Alabama, Mississippi, and a piece of western Tennessee.47
Davis also continued what had become a feud with Johnston over just what the general had commanded by dispatching a multipage letter to Johnston on the matter. He laid out a lawyerly (and pedantic) case consisting of thirty-four points, undeniably proving his brief, but missing the greater point: that he had a general who would neither fight nor exercise his command prerogative. Plus, with the reorganization of the western Rebel commands, none of this mattered. At root, the problem was that Davis and Johnston simply despised each other. Davis hated Johnston for all the ills he had brought upon him, and Johnston’s hatred of Davis “amounts to a religion,” as Mary Chesnut wrote in her diary. “With him it colors all things.” Johnston supplied an equally detailed and pointless reply.48 Their feelings meant that they could not maintain a professional detachment, and this directly interfered with the South’s prosecution of the war, mirroring the relationship between Lincoln and McClellan—and with similar results.
Davis was not the only one critical of Johnston. Bragg also weighed in after Vicksburg’s surrender, noting that he too had wondered why Johnston was falling back, “yielding ground we cannot recover, and without which we cannot survive. By this time this whole army could have been in Mississippi and a victory won. As it is, we may expect to be destroyed in detail.”49
But one can also critique the criticism. Rosecrans’s advance in late June seems to support Johnston’s point that pulling the troops from Tennessee meant deciding between Vicksburg and Tennessee, or more specifically Vicksburg and Chattanooga, the latter a critical rail connection between the eastern and western Confederacy, as well as the portal to the Deep South. Bragg’s complaint about leaving Pemberton’s army in Vicksburg to be captured is more difficult to refute, raising the question of whether the Confederates should have left smaller garrisons at Vicksburg and Port Hudson to free up more men for a field army, thus improving their chances of stopping Grant. But in addition to his own predisposition against offensive action, Johnston had real transportation and supply problems to overcome. Having a larger army would have multiplied these issues. Nonetheless, a larger army would have made thwarting Grant more likely. Moreover, freedom to maneuver gives one the chance to seize the initiative, something that the South never had in Mississippi once Grant bottled up Pemberton in Vicksburg. Had Johnston and Pemberton coordinated their attacks on Grant, they might have succeeded. But given that Pemberton and Johnston could not communicate freely and Johnston could not muster enough forces to strike Grant, the South was forced to yield the initiative to the North, and Vicksburg became a prison.
In July, Johnston placed the blame for Confederate failure in the West, particularly the fall of Vicksburg, on Pemberton. He had ordered the city evacuated (Port Hudson as well), but “General Pemberton set aside this order under the advice of a council of war.” In other words, Pemberton was guilty because he did not abandon his position. But one can also imagine the recriminations if Pemberton, a Northern-born Confederate general that many Southerners already viewed with suspicion, had marched away from the “Confederate Gibraltar.” Pemberton had no good choice. Still, obeying Johnston’s order to break out was probably the best of those he did have. Better to risk the army and lose the city than to lose both.
As Johnston retreated, Davis wanted to know what the general now intended. “My purpose is to hold as much of the country as I can,” Johnston replied, “and to retire farther only when compelled to do so. Should the enemy cross Pearl River, I will oppose his advance, and, unless you forbid it, order General Bragg to join me to give battle.” This did not satisfy Davis. He told Lee as much, noting that Johnston’s “vague purposes” were reminiscent of what he had supplied when “he held his army before Richmond.”50
Davis was desperate for Lee’s advice during the trying time after the Vicksburg disaster. Lee had already offered his opinion on the West, advising the selection and fortification of a suitable spot on the Mississippi River, one that could be held by a small garrison, thereby freeing the bulk of the region’s forces for active operations against the enemy.51 This was also what Bragg had suggested.
The Confederate generals in the West had other ideas. On July 26, Polk proposed to Davis a plan for a Confederate offensive in Tennessee. He recommended the concentration of most of Johnston’s forces with Bragg’s in Chattanooga, adding Buckner’s as well. This, he believed, would give them 70,000–80,000 men with which to crush Rosecrans and move across Tennessee, cutting Grant’s supply lines. They could advance all the way to Memphis, reestablishing communications with the Trans-Mississippi, and attack Grant from the north. The only downside Polk saw to his plan was that Alabama would be left open to the enemy, but this was a risk he believed had to be taken.52
Polk’s proposal was deeply flawed. He was seeking to make use of what became the standard Confederate response to a Union push: concentration of forces. But the essence of Polk’s plan was to ask the impossible while assuming the enemy would not react. Marching the length of Tennessee would have taxed even Union logistics, which were formidable. Moreover, the Confederates had no hope of finding the supplies and transportation necessary for such a move. Even if successful and unopposed, the offensive would not have separated Grant from his supplies; the North controlled the Mississippi. Lastly, nothing would prevent Grant from destroying the communications of the advancing Confederates by simply blocking any routes of retreat.
The South was already considering a counteroffensive when Polk dispatched his note. On August 1, Adjutant General Cooper asked whether Bragg could attack if reinforced with Johnston’s army.53 Bragg consulted with Johnston and quickly decided that even if they joined forces they lacked sufficient resources to mount a northern-bound offensive. “The defensive seems to be our only alternative,” Bragg concluded, “and that is a sad one.” Davis, obviously disappointed, sided with his general. “However desirable a movement may be, it is never safe to do more than suggest it to a commanding general, and it would be unwise to order its execution by one who foretold failure.”54
GETTING UNION GENERAL ROSECRANS to move always required the largest of Archimedes’s levers. By late July, his recalcitrance had pushed the administration to the limits of its patience. Halleck bluntly relayed the administration’s dissatisfaction and told him to lighten his baggage, live off the land, and move his army against the enemy before Johnston’s forces united with Bragg’s. Halleck also pushed Burnside to make the perpetually planned movement into eastern Tennessee, and wanted them moving together, Rosecrans against Bragg, and Burnside into eastern Tennessee.55
This effort had been delayed by a cavalry raid that carried John Hunt Morgan and his men into Ohio (in disobedience of his orders from Bragg). In a ride that Morgan believed was the means of thwarting both Burnside and Rosecrans, he succeeded only in wrecking his command and making himself a Federal prisoner.56
Unperturbed, Rosecrans told Halleck that his ambition was “something like your own—to discharge my duty to God and our country.” He advised Halleck that “whenever the Government can replace me by a commander in whom they have more confidence, they ought to do so, and take the responsibility of the result.” He also supplied a soliloquy on the various supply and communication obstacles facing his army.57
Halleck lost patience. He informed Rosecrans that his forces had to move forward “without further delay.” Rosecrans was to send him daily reports about his progress until he crossed the Tennessee River. Old Rosy asked whether Halleck really meant for him to march immediately, or if he had the commander’s discretion to move when he felt ready. Halleck replied that the orders to advance were “peremptory.” He simultaneously ordered Burnside to advance on Knoxville.58
Burnside promised obedience. Rosecrans pled unreadiness and difficulty and asked to be relieved if the order was not modified. Halleck barked some more, but not loudly enough to get Rosecrans to budge. On the positive side, Rosecrans and Burnside did try to coordinate their movements and make them mutually supporting. Rosecrans even appealed to Lincoln, who backed Halleck. Burnside’s campaign jumped off on August 15. Rosecrans began crossing the Cumberland Mountains the next day, aiming at Chattanooga.59
In the midst of the Union move, Davis asked Bragg whether he could unify his forces and throw them against one column of the Union advance, thereby defusing the threat. Bragg could not save Chattanooga, but he did intend to fight, hoping to meet Rosecrans with his whole force when the point of attack was revealed. Bragg asked for help. It came from Johnston, as well as in the form of paroled prisoners, some of whom had been at Vicksburg. Davis dispatched his aide-de-camp Colonel James Chesnut to the governors of Georgia and Alabama to convince them to send men to Bragg because the best way to defend Alabama and Georgia was by strengthening the Confederate forces in Tennessee.60
Davis sent another aide, Colonel W. P. Johnston, to Tennessee and Georgia in early September on a fact-finding mission. Davis hoped that General Sam Jones’s forces, as they advanced west, would give freedom of action to the troops of Brigadier General William Preston, allowing these units to get in the rear of Burnside’s army. Davis wanted the “junction” of Bragg’s and Buckner’s forces in eastern Tennessee so that they could attack one of the advancing Union columns before they were in “supporting distance of each other,” with the help of reinforcements coming from Johnston’s army, as well as Georgia and Alabama. Davis was very concerned about what Bragg and Buckner might accomplish, telling an aide that that the duo “will realize how necessary it is for every consideration that we should have a success against the enemy in that quarter.” It would be “disastrous” to lose the mountainous regions that guarded the entrance to Georgia and Alabama, which could serve as a basis for regaining control of middle Tennessee and southern Kentucky.61 Davis saw the South as having its back against the wall in the West—and he was right. Losing the passes of north Georgia would be a disaster, opening the way into the Deep South.
The Union advances unhinged the Confederate position in Tennessee. Burnside’s troops took Knoxville on September 2 unopposed, severing the important and direct rail line between Richmond and Chattanooga. Six days later, they took Cumberland Gap. Meanwhile, Rosecrans pushed his army through the mountain passes in three separated columns, a move similar to the one that had forced Bragg to retreat to Chattanooga in June. He masked some of his intent with a well-executed deception that included nightly fires at every potential crossing along 40 miles of the Tennessee River. This, and fast marching, undermined the Confederate defensive positions.62
Bragg retreated, gathering his reinforcements as he did so. The lack of supplies in the area forced him, as he put it, to “maneuver between the enemy and our supplies,” but as he marched he looked for a chance to attack. Davis was convinced that Rosecrans intended to force Bragg out of Chattanooga and then combine forces with Burnside. He urged Bragg to attack one or the other, defeating them in detail, meaning destroying one and then turning against the survivor. On September 6, Bragg wrote Davis: “Rosecrans’ army has certainly crossed Tennessee River. Reported now as moving toward Rome. We shall move on him promptly.”63
In support of his operations against Rosecrans, Bragg ordered Cumberland Gap abandoned, the destruction of all stores there that could not be removed, and the retreat of its defenders toward Abingdon, Virginia. Davis rescinded the order, believing that Bragg and Buckner were unaware of the true situation there. The area had been reinforced, and Davis advised the department commander, Sam Jones, to advance, but also gave him discretion to do as he thought best. Jones sought to hold his corner of Tennessee in order to keep at least a portion of Burnside’s men from fighting Bragg.64
Help, though, was on the way to Bragg from another quarter—the Army of Northern Virginia—in the form of Longstreet’s corps. The decision to send this force arose from a Richmond conference held at the end of August and the start of September. The Confederacy’s leaders, reeling from reverses in both the Eastern and Western Theaters, believed they could not afford another in their center. Longstreet was eager for the change, believing that the Confederates’ best opportunities lay in the West. They also discussed sending Lee, who professed a willingness to go, if Davis desired it, while insisting the department would be better commanded by someone already on the scene and familiar with the situation.65
Davis didn’t make Lee go, partly because he feared his absence from Virginia. This created one of the great what-ifs of the Civil War. What if Lee had taken command of the Army of Tennessee? The theater certainly would have benefited from his leadership and organizational skill, as well as from his reputation, which Davis estimated as being worth more than a corps.66 But had Lee been in command at Chickamauga instead of Bragg, the outcome might have allowed the Confederates to clear at least parts of Tennessee and forestall a future Union advance. Such a victory might have been enough to delay the Union’s offensive into Georgia and the subsequent capture of Atlanta, an event that sealed Lincoln’s reelection and the South’s doom.
On the other hand, Lee’s transfer also might have changed nothing; the Army of Tennessee, despite its bravery and sacrifice, was not the Army of Northern Virginia, and the terrain of Tennessee made it more difficult to move and feed forces there than in Virginia. Nonetheless, Davis probably should have made Lee go, at least for a season. The South needed to recoup some of its disastrous losses of the summer of 1863, and that autumn was its last chance to do so.
His communications threatened by Rosecrans’s advance, Bragg abandoned Chattanooga. The Federals took the city on September 9. As Rosecrans pushed beyond the city, Halleck, unsure of the truth to reports that the Rebels had sent part of Bragg’s army to Lee, put the brakes on Rosecrans’s advance on September 11, planning to give orders for future movement soon. He directed Burnside to take the gaps in the mountains of North Carolina and link up with Rosecrans with at least his cavalry. Rosecrans thought it more likely that reinforcements were coming to Bragg. This was confirmed on the fourteenth. Meanwhile, Rosecrans worried about an attack on his communications. Halleck responded by ordering Burnside to push as many troops as possible to Chattanooga to reinforce Rosecrans and ordered Old Rosy to prevent Bragg from getting back into middle Tennessee. Halleck also began coordinating other forces to meet a possible counterthrust by Bragg by taking troops from the various commands farther west. Optimism arose in some quarters of future success by Rosecrans. Former journalist and now assistant secretary of war Henry Dana wrote Stanton, “This army has now gained a position from which it can effectually advance upon Rome and Atlanta, and deliver there the finishing blow of the war.”67
Halleck waited for the Rebel counteroffensive to break. He first expected it to land on Meade in Virginia, but by September 15 he was certain that the Rebels were massing against Rosecrans and Burnside. He told Meade, “The enemy probably saw that if you and Rosecrans could hold your present position till Grant and Banks cleaned out the States west of the Mississippi, the fate of the rebellion would be sealed.”68 Halleck was overreaching a bit, but he had revealed exactly the shift in Union strategic thinking. The emphasis, for a while, was moving to peripheral operations.
Reinforced by Buckner as well as units from Joe Johnston’s army, Bragg had decided to attack. Rosecrans’s widely dispersed forces, moving through the mountain like three fingers, had given Bragg the chance to smash one, then move on to the next, defeating the enemy in detail. But unclear orders from Bragg, combined with his subordinates’ mistrust, allowed the fore of the Union advance, a corps under George Thomas, to escape. Still, the opportunity to hit another Union prong remained. Bragg decided to do this, but then waited five days. His hesitation gave Rosecrans time to concentrate his divided forces; Bragg lost his chance. The Battle of Chickamauga, the third-bloodiest engagement of the Civil War, took place on September 19 and 20. The Union forces held off the Confederates on the first day. But then more Rebel troops arrived in the form of Longstreet’s corps. Longstreet’s men delivered a solid blow against the Union center on the second day of the fight, crumpling the Federal line. A retreat began, Rosecrans and some of his staff leading the way. Only the corps of George Thomas, who ever since has been known as the “Rock of Chickamauga,” stood firm; they withdrew that night, unimpeded, after having done much to save Rosecrans’s army. Both sides had about 60,000 men engaged. The North suffered 16,000 casualties, the South 18,000. Though a Confederate victory, it was not complete. Like Meade after Gettysburg, Bragg failed to follow the retreating Rosecrans, provoking consternation from Longstreet and the accusation that Bragg had thrown away a great opportunity. The Confederates then besieged the Union army in Chattanooga, Bragg hoping to starve them out.69
Rosecrans’s defeat caused not a little worry in Washington (not to mention in Chattanooga). Rosecrans sounded the alarm, and Lincoln tried to take matters in hand, ordering Burnside to march for Chattanooga. He told Rosecrans, “Be of good cheer,” and bade him take up a solid position until Burnside could come to his relief. Lincoln considered it critical to hold Chattanooga or its environs because “it keeps all Tennessee clear of the enemy, and also breaks one of his most important Railroad lines.” He told Halleck that they had to do the “utmost of our ability” to help Rosecrans. “If he can only maintain this position,” Lincoln concluded, “without more, the rebellion can only eke out a short and feeble existence, as an animal sometimes may with a thorn in its vitals.” This was a conclusion that McClellan had come to two years earlier when he first took up his command in Washington. Halleck issued a typically loathsome reply, telling the president that he had given basically the same instructions ten days before.70
The problem became getting Burnside to march to Rosecrans’s relief. Burnside asked for clarification of his orders: was he supposed to abandon his gains in eastern Tennessee? Lincoln composed an angry response to the former commander of the Army of the Potomac. But as he so often did, Lincoln folded the note away and dispatched something more constructive. “Hold your present positions, and send Rosecrans what you can spare, in the quickest and safest way.”71
Meanwhile, Halleck continued stripping the western commands to save Chattanooga. He took troops from Sherman, who, in what for the Ohioan passed for optimism, replied, “I doubt if our re-enforcement to Rosecrans can reach him in time to do good.” Sherman also supplied an alternative plan, suggesting that the “Texas expedition” and “all our available forces” be directed at Mobile and at destroying the Mobile and Ohio railroad: “This would force Joe Johnston to make very heavy detachments from Bragg.” Halleck concurred, but nothing came of this.72
Burnside responded with three different plans, asking Halleck to decide between them, and also sending them to Rosecrans. Halleck, as always, refused to decide. He wired Burnside: “I can only repeat what I have so often urged, the importance of your connecting with General Rosecrans’s army on the north side of the [Tennessee] river, so as to command the crossings.” Rosecrans wanted Burnside to implement his first suggestion, which was to abandon eastern Tennessee, except for Cumberland Gap, and push 20,000 troops to Rosecrans along the north bank of the Tennessee. Burnside asked Halleck if he should do as Rosecrans wanted.73
Meanwhile, bigger things had been brewing in the Union high command. Almost two weeks before, on September 19, Lincoln penned his extended analysis of the Eastern Theater in which he concluded that he could pull forces from the Army of the Potomac to use elsewhere. This same day, Bragg shattered a wing of Rosecrans’s army. An anxious White House meeting occurred in the midnight hours of September 23–24 at which Stanton suggested using the rail lines to ship 30,000 men from Meade’s army to the West, promising it could be done in five days. Lincoln, though skeptical of his secretary of war’s timeline, approved the move. Stanton delivered—though not quite as quickly as promised—and moved 20,000 men west.74
Lincoln kept his eye on Rosecrans while the movement took place. The general’s behavior in the aftermath of Chickamauga worried the president. He said Rosecrans was “confused and stunned like a duck hit on the head.” Lincoln assured him that “if we can hold Chattanooga and East Tennessee, I think the rebellion must dwindle and die. I think you and Burnside can do this, and hence doing so is your main object.” But he also told him that since Bragg’s army was staring him in the face he had the opportunity to “menace or attack” it at any time and suggested that this might be the quickest way to end the Rebel assaults on his communications.75
The Confederates also saw opportunities. Lee hoped Bragg would operate on the enemy’s communications and take advantage of what he had won. If he did so, Lee believed, Longstreet could move into Tennessee and “open that country,” then combine with General Sam Jones’s troops and rejoin Lee’s army as quickly as possible to face what Lee saw as the growing power of General Meade.76
The initial Confederate response, however, was Bragg and his generals fighting among themselves. Bragg had Leonidas Polk forced out for failing to obey orders and others transferred to different commands. Many of the remainder, including Longstreet, summoned the nerve to petition the government for Bragg’s removal but not the moral courage to admit authorship of the indictment. Davis visited the army and heard many complaints, but when he departed Bragg remained the commander. He could think of no better alternative. Other quarrels followed.77
Despite these troubles, Bragg tried to figure out how to pry the Federals out of Chattanooga. The works were too strong to storm, so Bragg tried to starve them out by mounting cavalry raids against the city’s supply lines. Three such efforts produced very little. Meanwhile, Bragg tightened the Confederate noose around the city. The administration prodded him to advance; Bragg sat.78
On October 11, 1863, Davis, Bragg, and Longstreet met. Longstreet wanted to take Bridgeport, Alabama, a key point for the Federals to keep Chattanooga in supply, while Bragg pushed for implementation of a plan suggested by Beauregard to bring in men from Johnston and Lee, cross the Tennessee River north of Chattanooga, and force the Union out. Davis liked Beauregard’s idea and admitted its virtue, but he refused to further weaken Lee. A successful Union attack on October 28–29 secured the Federals’ communications with Bridgeport.79
A few days later, Davis confirmed his hopes in an overly revealing interview with a newspaper. The paper reported that Davis was “very anxious that we should gain the possession of Tennessee as soon as convenient, and winter [the army] in Kentucky, if possible.” Another quoted Davis as saying “that his purpose was to ‘snatch’ Tennessee from the clutch of the Abolitionists.”80 Davis had adopted a bad habit of telling reporters what Confederate armies in the West planned to do.
The next Confederate offensive move came, as it so often did, at Davis’s prompting. Davis advised Bragg to look for an opportunity to attack Rosecrans in detail if he moved from Chattanooga. But he also had ambitious objectives to be accomplished before the fall campaign season ended. He was happy with Bragg’s efforts at clearing the Union forces from eastern Tennessee thus far, but hoped to see that area recovered and Bragg’s reestablishment of his communications with Virginia. As always, the problem of supplies loomed, and Davis also wanted Bragg to redeem as much of the lost areas of Tennessee as possible in order to feed his army. He told him to consider dispatching Longstreet to drive out Burnside and recapture Knoxville. He also promised additional troops from commands farther west and discussed the ubiquitous efforts at cooperation with Sam Jones. Nonetheless, Davis expected little from this much-discussed but isolated quarter of the Confederate realm, and little could ever come from here. But this did not stop him from trying. Davis deemed success in eastern Tennessee imperative, writing at one point “how disastrous it would be to lose possession of that mountain region which covers the entrance into Georgia & Alabama & constitutes our best base for the recovery of Middle Tennessee & Southern Kentucky.”81
When the decision was made, however, Bragg wasted no time in sending Longstreet on his way, and Longstreet wasted no time going. He made bit ter remarks against Bragg, accusing him of refusing to grasp opportunities when they arose; Chickamauga remained a particular sore point. He had already grown to hate Bragg as much as did those generals who had served with him far longer. Longstreet was not optimistic, believing the effort had little chance of success because his force of 12,000 was too small. He thought 20,000 men would allow him to deal quickly with Burnside. But Bragg would have had to withdraw from around Chattanooga and find a better defensive position in order to spare sufficient troops. This he was unwilling to do. “We thus expose both to failure and really take no chance to ourselves of great results,” Longstreet insisted. Edward Porter Alexander, who was in Longstreet’s corps, agreed. Historian Craig Symonds cogently observed: “This was a particularly foolish dispersion of force, for it left Bragg with only about 36,000 men to besiege a Federal Army that had grown to nearly 80,000.”82
Longstreet’s observation revealed a pivotal problem with the Confederate command in the West. Lee realized that the South’s inferior manpower forced it to undertake greater risks for the chance of benefit. The South simply did not have the ability to protect everything against a numerically superior enemy. And yet if the Confederacy was to have any chance of turning the tide on any front, it had to take risks.
GRANT BIDED HIS TIME through the summer and early fall. Events elsewhere were working to raise his status even higher. Before Longstreet’s move to eastern Tennessee became apparent, there were major stirrings in the Union high command. The most important had to do with Rosecrans’s fate. Defeated at Chickamauga and besieged by the Confederates in Chattanooga, he was also under siege from Assistant Secretary of War Henry Dana. Dana notified Washington of the lack of support, both in the ranks and among his immediate subordinates, for Rosecrans. Previously, Lincoln had had the problem of a replacement. Now he found one in Grant. On October 16, Halleck told Grant to go to Nashville and take charge, giving him permission to relieve Rosecrans or not. The administration even created a new department, consolidating three into one, all under Grant.83
Grant wasted no time when he took up his new command, issuing orders even before he arrived. “Hold Chattanooga at all hazards,” he wired Thomas on October 19. “I will be there as soon as possible.” “I will hold the town till we starve,” Thomas replied. Grant ordered Burnside to repair the routes coming into Chattanooga and push in supplies, as well as to prepare the key points in eastern Tennessee so they could be held with as few men as possible. Grant had already removed Rosecrans.84
Meanwhile, Halleck laid out for Grant what Rosecrans and Burnside were supposed to be accomplishing in eastern Tennessee and what had been done so far to reach these objectives. Moving together, they were meant to achieve the administration’s long-cherished goal of freeing eastern Tennessee while cutting an important Rebel railroad and robbing the Confederates of access to areas producing important foodstuffs and raw materials. Taking Chattanooga supported this. But, Halleck said, Rosecrans was instructed only to hold on to the mountain passes and no more. “In other words, the main objects of the campaign were the restoration of East Tennessee to the Union, and by holding the two extremities of the valley to secure it from rebel invasion.” Then things fell apart because the Rebels attacked. Halleck gave Grant very little direction, merely telling him to retake the Lookout Mountain passes, “which should never have been given up.”85
Grant reached Chattanooga on the night of October 23. Seeing opportunity as well as danger, he hurried Sherman along. Later, Grant wrote about how desperate the supply situation had been when he arrived and how close the enemy gripped the Union forces in Chattanooga—so close, he complained, that they “have been able to send Longstreet off, before my eyes, and I have not been able to move a foot to stop his advance up the Tennessee Valley against Burnside.”86
In Chattanooga, Grant determined to secure his supply lines and prepare his troops for a forward movement. Acting on plans conceived before he arrived, Grant’s forces cleared the Confederates out of Bridgeport, as we saw earlier, securing his supply lines. Then, reinforced by troops from the east under Hooker, he prepared to attack.87
Burnside, meanwhile, worried about Confederate forces concentrating against him. Grant tried to coordinate his movements with Burnside’s and to get Halleck to push troops into what was now the new state of West Virginia to take pressure off his fellow general. Halleck asked if Grant could cut the rail lines supporting Bragg, preventing him from massing against Burnside. Grant committed to doing all he could to keep the Rebels from advancing on Burnside from the southwest, just as soon as he had supplies.88
Meanwhile, Grant began thinking about launching cavalry raids against the railroads east of Atlanta. Halleck was thinking along the same line: “How would it do for Sherman or a cavalry force to threaten Rome or Atlanta, moving by Warrenton and Jacksonville? If Bragg’s communication can be cut off, he cannot supply an army in East Tennessee.” Grant replied that he planned to recapture Lookout Mountain when Sherman arrived, but he also planned to hit the enemy’s communications with cavalry as soon as possible. Long-street’s appearance scotched this plan. Grant wanted to attack immediately, but Sherman hadn’t yet arrived. Grant told Burnside to hold. He would send Sherman to relieve him while Grant moved against Bragg’s army.89 Burnside though, would have to wait a bit first. Grant had more pressing work for Sherman and his men.
In mid-November, Davis had urged Bragg to attack before the Union could bring up reinforcements, just as Grant was now doing. Bragg had not done so.90 Grant opened his offensive on November 23, having gathered 70,000 troops to face Bragg’s now perhaps 40,000 men holding the hills ringing the southern and southeastern rim of Chattanooga. Grant’s plan was to have George Thomas test and pin the center of the Confederate force while Hooker did the same to the Rebel left. Sherman would then land the coup de grâce against the Confederate right on the northern end of Missionary Ridge, the intention being to crumple that flank and roll up the Confederate line. Thomas and his men did their job well when the attack kicked off on the twenty-third. Hooker followed up their success with one of his own on the twenty-fourth, his progress aided by a heavy mist that engulfed the battlefield. Sherman launched his prong the next day, but heavy resistance from the single division of Confederate major general Patrick R. Cleburne stymied the Union forces and had Grant worrying about a Confederate counterattack. To regain the initiative, Grant ordered Thomas to push the Confederate center. He did, and his men overran the Confederate positions immediately to their front. Then, without any orders and seized by no one knows what—euphoria, adrenaline, or perhaps simply enthusiasm—the troops charged to the top of Missionary Ridge, shattering the Confederate center. Bragg’s army collapsed and began streaming from the field. The Rebels retreated first to Chickamauga, then south to Ringgold, Georgia, before reaching Dalton, Georgia, by the twenty-seventh.91
As Bragg retreated, Davis told Longstreet to help Bragg if it was at all possible. It wasn’t. The Union victory over Bragg had severed the rail links between Bragg and Longstreet, whose offensive had culminated in a series of failed attacks against Knoxville on the twenty-ninth. Davis became afraid that the Union would now move against Longstreet to relieve Burnside and destroy Longstreet’s army as it did so. This forced Longstreet’s withdrawal, and he went into winter quarters near Morristown, Tennessee.92
After the defeat at Chickamauga, Bragg confessed to Davis, “The disaster admits of no palliation, and is justly disparaging to me as a commander.” Nonetheless, Bragg made the case that the fault was not entirely his. Bragg’s response contrasts sharply with Lee’s after Gettysburg, in which Lee offered his resignation and shouldered all the blame. Bragg pointed the finger at his subordinates.93 Change would once again come to the Army of Tennessee.
A week later, Lincoln gave his own assessment of the situation in Tennessee, one based upon an inaccurate account of Longstreet’s withdrawal. Lincoln believed that if the Army of the Potomac “was good for anything,” it could move troops down to Lynchburg and catch Longstreet. “Can anybody doubt, if Grant were here in command that he would catch him? There is not a man in the whole Union who would for a moment doubt it.” Nonetheless, Lincoln did not yet want to bring Grant from the west. He also saw Sherman’s linking up with Burnside as pivotal, calling it “one of the most important gains of the war—the difference between Burnside saved and Burnside lost is one of the greatest advantages of the war—it secures us East Tennessee.”94
CONFEDERATE MILITARY STRATEGY was reaching perhaps its lowest point. Despite intense debate and discussion, very little emerged that might be deemed valuable. No one had figured out how to win the war, and indeed, the leaders generally were not asking this question. At best, they thought operationally, and when they did, the plans were often outlandish, showing no understanding of logistics, geography, and time. Longstreet’s dispatch west provides a case in point. The idea was rooted in Longstreet’s original proposal to send a force to Tennessee in an effort to save Vicksburg before Lee’s army marched into Pennsylvania. This would have linked the armies of Bragg and Johnston to destroy Rosecrans and then allowed a drive for Cincinnati. Alexander thought well of this idea, saying it “must be pronounced by all military critics to have been much our safest play.”95
Other voices echoed this plan. The West allowed more room for maneuver, and the South was certainly losing the war there. A successful campaign to defeat Rosecrans might have resulted in the recovery of Tennessee, a place that would have provided food, fodder, industry, and, perhaps most important, fresh troops.
Nonetheless, as historian Charles P. Roland argues, even had the Confederates managed to destroy Rosecrans’s army—an unlikely event considering the immense difficulty in doing this in any war—the plan assumed inaction on the Union’s part.96 The North had proved that it could quickly move troops from the Potomac to Tennessee. The forces under Grant, Banks, Meade, and Steele also would have not remained idle. The chances of a Confederate army reaching Cincinnati, as Longstreet hoped, were very slim indeed.
Union strategy in the last half of 1863 was no more distinguished. The Federals failed to capitalize on the victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, as well as the advantage gained by Rosecrans when he maneuvered Bragg out of Tullahoma and Chattanooga. Coordination from the top was slow, ineffective, and generally counterproductive. The biggest failure was a shift to a focus on secondary theaters that mattered very little, leaving the major Confederate armies a chance to rest, rebuild, and rearm. The Trans-Mississippi was not a critical region, nor was Texas. The Union had the chance to apply simultaneous pressure at a number of different points in the fall of 1863, perhaps resulting in the collapse of its enemy. Instead, it nibbled at the edges, giving the enemy what he needed most: time.