Part 15 (2/2)
Serious disagreement among the Confederate commanders also hastened the fall of the place. On February 16, General Buckner, to whom the senior officers had turned over the command, proposed an armistice, and the appointment of commissioners to agree on terms of capitulation. To this Grant responded with a characteristic spirit of determination: ”No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works.” Buckner complained that the terms were ungenerous and unchivalric, but that necessity compelled him to accept them; and Grant telegraphed Halleck on February 16: ”We have taken Fort Donelson, and from twelve to fifteen thousand prisoners.” The senior Confederate generals, Pillow and Floyd, and a portion of the garrison had escaped by the c.u.mberland River during the preceding night.
Since the fall of Fort Henry on February 6, a lively correspondence had been going on, in which General Halleck besought Buell to come with his available forces, a.s.sist in capturing Donelson, and command the column up the c.u.mberland to cut off both Columbus and Nashville. President Lincoln, scanning the news with intense solicitude, and losing no opportunity to urge effective cooperation, telegraphed Halleck:
”You have Fort Donelson safe, unless Grant shall be overwhelmed from outside: to prevent which latter will, I think, require all the vigilance, energy, and skill of yourself and Buell, acting in full cooperation. Columbus will not get at Grant, but the force from Bowling Green will. They hold the railroad from Bowling Green to within a few miles of Fort Donelson, with the bridge at Clarksville undisturbed. It is unsafe to rely that they will not dare to expose Nashville to Buell.
A small part of their force can retire slowly toward Nashville, breaking up the railroad as they go, and keep Buell out of that city twenty days.
Meantime, Nashville will be abundantly defended by forces from all south and perhaps from here at Mana.s.sas. Could not a cavalry force from General Thomas on the upper c.u.mberland dash across, almost unresisted, and cut the railroad at or near Knoxville, Tennessee? In the midst of a bombardment at Fort Donelson, why could not a gunboat run up and destroy the bridge at Clarksville? Our success or failure at Fort Donelson is vastly important, and I beg you to put your soul in the effort. I send a copy of this to Buell.”
This telegram abundantly shows with what minute understanding and accurate judgment the President comprehended military conditions and results in the West. Buell, however, was too intent upon his own separate movement to seize the brilliant opportunity offered him. As he only in a feeble advance followed up the retreating Confederate column from Bowling Green to Nashville, Halleck naturally appropriated to himself the merit of the campaign, and telegraphed to Was.h.i.+ngton on the day after the surrender:
”Make Buell, Grant, and Pope major-generals of volunteers, and give me command in the West. I ask this in return for Forts Henry and Donelson.”
The eagerness of General Halleck for superior command in the West was, to say the least, very pardonable. A vast horizon of possibilities was opening up to his view. Two other campaigns under his direction were exciting his liveliest hopes. Late in December he had collected an army of ten thousand at the railroad terminus at Rolla, Missouri, under command of Brigadier-General Curtis, for the purpose of scattering the rebel forces under General Price at Springfield or driving them out of the State. Despite the hard winter weather, Halleck urged on the movement with almost peremptory orders, and Curtis executed the intentions of his chief with such alacrity that Price was forced into a rapid and damaging retreat from Springfield toward Arkansas. While forcing this enterprise in the southwest, Halleck had also determined on an important campaign in southeast Missouri.
Next to Columbus, which the enemy evacuated on March 2, the strongest Confederate fortifications on the Mississippi River were at Island No.
10, about forty miles farther to the south. To operate against these, he planned an expedition under Brigadier-General Pope to capture the town of New Madrid as a preliminary step. Columbus and Nashville were almost sure to fall as the result of Donelson. If now he could bring his two Missouri campaigns into a combination with two swift and strong Tennessee expeditions, while the enemy was in scattered retreat, he could look forward to the speedy capture of Memphis. But to the realization of such a project, the hesitation and slowness of Buell were a serious hindrance. That general had indeed started a division under Nelson to Grant's a.s.sistance, but it was not yet in the c.u.mberland when Donelson surrendered. Halleck's demand for enlarged power, therefore, became almost imperative. He pleaded earnestly with Buell:
”I have asked the President to make you a major-general. Come down to the c.u.mberland and take command. The battle of the West is to be fought in that vicinity.... There will be no battle at Nashville.” His telegrams to McClellan were more urgent. ”Give it [the Western Division]
to me, and I will split secession in twain in one month.” And again: ”I must have command of the armies in the West. Hesitation and delay are losing us the golden opportunity. Lay this before the President and Secretary of War. May I a.s.sume the command? Answer quickly.”
But McClellan was in no mood to sacrifice the ambition of his intimate friend and favorite, General Buell, and induced the President to withhold his consent; and while the generals were debating by telegraph, Nelson's division of the army of Buell moved up the c.u.mberland and occupied Nashville under the orders of Grant. Halleck, however, held tenaciously to his views and requests, explaining to McClellan that he himself proposed going to Tennessee:
”That is now the great strategic line of the western campaign, and I am surprised that General Buell should hesitate to reinforce me. He was too late at Fort Donelson.... Believe me, General, you make a serious mistake in having three independent commands in the West. There never will and never can be any cooperation at the critical moment; all military history proves it.”
This insistence had greater point because of the news received that Curtis, energetically following Price into Arkansas, had won a great Union victory at Pea Ridge, between March 5 and 8, over the united forces of Price and McCulloch, commanded by Van Dorn. At this juncture, events at Was.h.i.+ngton, hereafter to be mentioned, caused a reorganization of military commands and President Lincoln's Special War Order No. 3 consolidated the western departments of Hunter, Halleck, and Buell, as far east as Knoxville, Tennessee, under the t.i.tle of the Department of the Mississippi, and placed General Halleck in command of the whole.
Meanwhile, Halleck had ordered the victorious Union army at Fort Donelson to move forward to Savannah on the Tennessee River under the command of Grant; and, now that he had superior command, directed Buell to march all of his forces not required to defend Nashville ”as rapidly as possible” to the same point. Halleck was still at St. Louis; and through the indecision of his further orders, through the slowness of Buell's march, and through the unexplained inattention of Grant, the Union armies narrowly escaped a serious disaster, which, however, the determined courage of the troops and subordinate officers turned into a most important victory.
The ”golden opportunity” so earnestly pointed out by Halleck, while not entirely lost, was nevertheless seriously diminished by the hesitation and delay of the Union commanders to agree upon some plan of effective cooperation. When, at the fall of Fort Donelson the Confederates retreated from Nashville toward Chattanooga, and from Columbus toward Jackson, a swift advance by the Tennessee River could have kept them separated; but as that open highway was not promptly followed in force, the flying Confederate detachments found abundant leisure to form a junction.
Grant reached Savannah, on the east bank of the Tennessee River, about the middle of March, and in a few days began ma.s.sing troops at Pittsburg Landing, six miles farther south, on the west bank of the Tennessee; still keeping his headquarters at Savannah, to await the arrival of Buell and his army. During the next two weeks he reported several times that the enemy was concentrating at Corinth, Mississippi, an important railroad crossing twenty miles from Pittsburg Landing, the estimate of their number varying from forty to eighty thousand. All this time his mind was so filled with an eager intention to begin a march upon Corinth, and a confidence that he could win a victory by a prompt attack, that he neglected the essential precaution of providing against an attack by the enemy, which at the same time was occupying the thoughts of the Confederate commander General Johnston.
General Grant was therefore greatly surprised on the morning of April 6, when he proceeded from Savannah to Pittsburg Landing, to learn the cause of a fierce cannonade. He found that the Confederate army, forty thousand strong, was making an unexpected and determined attack in force on the Union camp, whose five divisions numbered a total of about thirty-three thousand. The Union generals had made no provision against such an attack. No intrenchments had been thrown up, no plan or understanding arranged. A few preliminary picket skirmishes had, indeed, put the Union front on the alert, but the commanders of brigades and regiments were not prepared for the impetuous rush with which the three successive Confederate lines began the main battle. On their part, the enemy did not realize their hope of effecting a complete surprise, and the nature of the ground was so characterized by a network of local roads, alternating patches of woods and open fields, miry hollows and abrupt ravines, that the lines of conflict were quickly broken into short, disjointed movements that admitted of little or no combined or systematic direction. The effort of the Union officers was necessarily limited to a continuous resistance to the advance of the enemy, from whatever direction it came; that of the Confederate leaders to the general purpose of forcing the Union lines away from Pittsburg Landing so that they might destroy the Federal transports and thus cut off all means of retreat. In this effort, although during the whole of Sunday, April 6, the Union front had been forced back a mile and a half, the enemy had not entirely succeeded. About sunset, General Beauregard, who, by the death of General Johnston during the afternoon, succeeded to the Confederate command, gave orders to suspend the attack, in the firm expectation however, that he would be able to complete his victory the next morning.
But in this hope he was disappointed. During the day the vanguard of Buell's army had arrived on the opposite bank of the river. Before nightfall one of his brigades was ferried across and deployed in front of the exultant enemy. During the night and early Monday morning three superb divisions of Buell's army, about twenty thousand fresh, well-drilled troops, were advanced to the front under Buell's own direction; and by three o'clock of that day the two wings of the Union army were once more in possession of all the ground that had been lost on the previous day, while the foiled and disorganized Confederates were in full retreat upon Corinth. The severity of the battle may be judged by the losses. In the Union army: killed, 1754; wounded, 8408; missing, 2885. In the Confederate army: killed, 1728; wounded, 8012; missing.
954.
Having comprehended the uncertainty of Buell's successful junction with Grant, Halleck must have received tidings of the final victory at Pittsburg Landing with emotions of deep satisfaction. To this was now joined the further gratifying news that the enemy on that same momentous April 7 had surrendered Island No. 10, together with six or seven thousand Confederate troops, including three general officers, to the combined operations of General Pope and Flag-Officer Foote. Full particulars of these two important victories did not reach Halleck for several days. Following previous suggestions, Pope and Foote promptly moved their gunboats and troops down the river to the next Confederate stronghold, Fort Pillow, where extensive fortifications, aided by an overflow of the adjacent river banks, indicated strong resistance and considerable delay. When all the conditions became more fully known, Halleck at length adopted the resolution, to which he had been strongly leaning for some time, to take the field himself. About April 10 he proceeded from St. Louis to Pittsburg Landing, and on the fifteenth ordered Pope with his army to join him there, which the latter, having his troops already on transports succeeded in accomplis.h.i.+ng by April 22.
Halleck immediately effected a new organization, combining the armies of the Tennessee, of the Ohio, and of the Mississippi into respectively his right wing, center, and left wing. He a.s.sumed command of the whole himself, and nominally made Grant second in command. Practically, however, he left Grant so little authority or work that the latter felt himself slighted, and asked leave to proceed to another field of duty.
It required but a few weeks to demonstrate that however high were Halleck's professional acquirements in other respects, he was totally unfit for a commander in the field. Grant had undoubtedly been careless in not providing against the enemy's attack at Pittsburg Landing.
Halleck, on the other extreme, was now doubly over-cautious in his march upon Corinth. From first to last, his campaign resembled a siege. With over one hundred thousand men under his hand, he moved at a snail's pace, building roads and breastworks, and consuming more than a month in advancing a distance of twenty miles; during which period Beauregard managed to collect about fifty thousand effective Confederates and construct defensive fortifications with equal industry around Corinth.
When, on May 29, Halleck was within a.s.saulting distance of the rebel intrenchments Beauregard had leisurely removed his sick and wounded, destroyed or carried away his stores, and that night finally evacuated the place, leaving Halleck to reap, practically, a barren victory.
Nor were the general's plans and actions any more fruitful during the following six weeks. He wasted the time and energy of his soldiers multiplying useless fortifications about Corinth. He despatched Buell's wing of the army on a march toward eastern Tennessee but under such instructions and limitations that long before reaching its objective it was met by a Confederate army under General Bragg, and forced into a retrograde movement which carried it back to Louisville. More deplorable, however, than either of these errors of judgment was Halleck's neglect to seize the opportune moment when, by a vigorous movement in cooperation with the brilliant naval victories under Flag-Officer Farragut, commanding a formidable fleet of Union war-s.h.i.+ps, he might have completed the over-shadowing military task of opening the Mississippi River.
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