Tennessee Thunder: A Tale of Two Armies

By Daniel F. Korn

Everyone has heard of Gettysburg, but for sheer ferocity of fighting, it is tough to match the horrendous stories of what happened in the fight for Tennessee in the battles of Stones River and Chickamauga. This is the story of two very different armies, and their equally different commanders. The Unions Army of the Cumberland, led by the charism

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dan Korn
• Release date: May 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781955205252

Daniel F. Korn

Daniel F. Korn was born in 1952 in Rochester, New York. As a young boy he was fascinated by the heroes and stories of our nation's history, with his first hero being Davy Crockett. Dan would grow up in western New York and would follow his love of history by attending the State University of New York at Brockport, (Brockport State), from whom he holds both a bachelor's and a master's degree in History and Education.    As a college student he read and fell in love with Michael Shaara's immortal Civil War novel The Killer Angels. The book inspired Dan to write his own novel, a story about those incredibly horrible days of battle that took place in April, 1862, on the shores of the Tennessee River, near a sleepy little church called Shiloh Meetinghouse.    Dan, his wife Cheri, and their family currently reside in Monroe, North Carolina where Dan teachs high school students in Honors U.S. History and Civil War, and shares a love for Revolutionary War reenacting with his son, Mike. Dawn's Gray Steel is his first book.

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Tennessee Thunder

Copyright © 2021 by Daniel F. Korn

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN

978-1-955205-26-9 (Paperback)

978-1-955205-25-2 (eBook)

DEDICATION

It’s been ten years since Dawn’s Gray Steel was released, and since then literally hundreds and hundreds of students have passed through my Civil War class at Porter Ridge High School. Since Dawn’s Gray Steel many readers have asked if there would be a sequel, and finally I can say yes. This is that story. This one contains a number of wonderfully illustrated maps by a great teacher of art, my friend and colleague Jan Kerley. The two of us have taught side-by-side for fifteen years, and Jan was very gracious and dedicated in creating these map illustrations for the book.

My family and I have crisscrossed hundreds of miles of our magnificent nation visiting so many historical sites, including all the places described in this episode of our nation’s most costly conflict. I also became a Civil War reenactor and have been able to quite literally recreate some of events I have written about, a truly amazing feeling. This work is dedicated to those whose story we attempt to tell in this tale of two armies; the Federal Army of the Cumberland and the Confederate Army of Tennessee and their two hellish fights at Stones River and Chickamauga. These two battles were absolutely two of the most ferocious and costly battles of the Civil War, and names like Helm, Kirkland, Sill, and Heg would meet a very premature fate, while others like Bragg, Rosecrans, Sheridan, Forrest, and Clem would survive and meet different fates. This is their story, and it is dedicated in memory of all who made the ultimate sacrifice during the four years of that titanic struggle. May they all rest in happy peace in Valhalla.

In addition this book is dedicated to my children; Gena Marie and Michael. Both of them have been strong supporters of my efforts to write this second book. Thanks guys!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE

CHAPTER 1   BRAGG

CHAPTER 2   DAVIS

CHAPTER 3   BRAGG

CHAPTER 4   BRAGG

CHAPTER 5   BRAGG

CHAPTER 6   ROSECRANS

CHAPTER 7   THOMAS

CHAPTER 8   THOMAS

CHAPTER 9   BRAGG

CHAPTER 10   SHERIDAN

CHAPTER 11   WILLICH

CHAPTER 12   McCOWN

CHAPTER 13   CLEBURNE

CHAPTER 14   LIDDELL

CHAPTER 15   MARKS

CHAPTER 16   SHERIDAN

CHAPTER 17   THRUSTON

CHAPTER 18   SHERIDAN

CHAPTER 19   BRAGG

CHAPTER 20   HAZEN

CHAPTER 21   HANNAFORD

CHAPTER 22   MARKS

CHAPTER 23   ROSECRANS

CHAPTER 24   BRAGG

CHAPTER 25   BRECKINRIDGE

CHAPTER 26   ROSECRANS

CHAPTER 27   BRECKINRIDGE

CHAPTER 28   HANSON

CHAPTER 29   BRECKINRIIDGE

CHAPTER 30   BRAGG

CHAPTER 31   THOMAS

CHAPTER 32   BRAGG

CHAPTER 33   THOMAS

CHAPTER 34   BRAGG

CHAPTER 35   ROSECRANS

CHAPTER 36   WILDER

CHAPTER 37   BRAGG

CHAPTER 38   HEG

CHAPTER 39   THOMAS

CHAPTER 40   DAVIS

CHAPTER 41   BRAGG

CHAPTER 42   THOMAS

CHAPTER 43   BRAGG

CHAPTER 44   NEGLEY

CHAPTER 45   THOMAS

CHAPTER 46   BRAGG

CHAPTER 47   JOHNSON

CHAPTER 48   MINTY

CHAPTER 49   MINTY

CHAPTER 50   MINTY

CHAPTER 51   WILDER

CHAPTER 52   McCOOK

CHAPTER 53   WATKINS

CHAPTER 54   THOMAS

CHAPTER 55   ROSECRANS

CHAPTER 56   SCRIBNER

CHAPTER 57   STARKWEATHER

CHAPTER 58   TURCHIN

CHAPTER 59   DAVIS

CHAPTER 60   HEG

CHAPTER 61   ROBERTSON

CHAPTER 62   POLLEY

CHAPTER 63   BENNING

CHAPTER 64   HEG

CHAPTER 65   LONGSTEET

CHAPTER 66   BRAGG

CHAPTER 67   ROSECRANS

CHAPTER 68   LONGSTEET

CHAPTER 69   THOMAS

CHAPTER 70   POLK

CHAPTER 71   WHELESS

CHAPTER 72   ROSECRANS

CHAPTER 73   HELM

CHAPTER 74   LONGSTREET

CHAPTER 75   THOMAS

CHAPTER 76   ROSECRANS

CHAPTER 77   WOODS

CHAPTER 78   LONGSTREET

CHAPTER 79   JOHNSON

CHAPTER 80   LYTLE

CHAPTER 81  WOOD

CHAPTER 82  HOOD

CHAPTER 83  KIRKLAND

CHAPTER 84   THOMAS

CHAPTER 85   VANCE

CHAPTER 86   ROSECRANS

CHAPTER 87   WILDER

CHAPTER 88   GRANGER

CHAPTER 89   STEEDMAN

CHAPTER 90   CLEM

CHAPTER 91   LONGSTREET

CHAPTER 92   PRESTON

CHAPTER 93   DOUGHMAN

CHAPTER 94   THOMAS

CHAPTER 95   WATKINS

CHAPTER 96   WALKER

CHAPTER 97   FORREST

CHAPTER 98   GRANT

CHAPTER 99   ROSECRANS

CHAPTER 100   GRANT

POST BATTLE

CONFEDERATES

UNION

ABOUT THE BOOK

PREFACE

After the April 1862 battle of Shiloh, a series of events would transpire in the western half of the Civil War that would have a great deal to do with the main characters in our story. Three of the journalists who had been at Pittsburg Landing, including Whitelaw Reid, would apply for passes to return to Cairo, Illinois, eager to report back to their newspapers, and thus to the country, about the horrific events the three had witnessed at Shiloh. The three would manage to finagle their way onto a large steamboat that was transporting hundreds of the more seriously wounded men northward back to Cairo, Illinois. They would spend the night in the soft darkness, illuminated such as it was by the harsh glow of the interspersed lanterns that hung from the rafters of the ship, in an uneven attempt to provide at least some light for the surgeons and other medical personnel as they performed their somewhat grisly duties. Reid and the others moved as gingerly as possible about the wounded, whose bloody litters occupied every space available. They attempted in soft whispers to interview those that could still speak, even as they were all the while trying not to slip in the ever-larger dark puddles seeping out from under the litters of the in, always careful to avoid the bloodied bandages and mangled limbs of the wounded, as if the mere touch of a man’s bandages would convey a leprosy-like contamination. They tried, without success, to ignore the groans and screams, the shouted curses, the muttered men’s prayers, all to no avail, the sorrowful sounds and foul smells inescapable in the dark and cramped spaces of the boat, like a dark and heavy cloak, oppressive in its weight.

Reid was haunted by his experience, and those who saw him upon his arrival in Cairo exclaimed about how Reid’s transfixed expression looked as that of a man who had just escaped from some imminent and frightful danger. Upon his arrival in Cairo he quickly hailed a carriage, and rapidly as he could get the driver to push his horse, he sped to the railroad depot. There, Reid would quickly catch a train to Cincinnati and with dispatch, disembark and hurry to the building which his newspaper, the Cincinnati Gazette, occupied most of, and where Reid’s editor sat anxiously in his little office awaiting Reid’s report. Although other papers had already printed accounts of what they thought was the story, Reid refused to be hurried. His frantic editor cried and begged Reid for something he could publish, but when Reid showed him his lead for the story, his boss backed off, and gave him the time necessary to write the rest of the piece. By the time, it was completed, it was one of the most vivid descriptions of any battle or fight of the war, for you could smell the gunpowder, hear the rebel yell amidst the cries of the wounded, and visualize the glory of the charge along with the horror of the dead and the dying. For the first time, a great human mystery was exposed-that of the internal view of a great battle from the inside-to mere mortal view. It was a marvelous piece of journalism, yet, in some ways, Reid’s description was completely and utterly false.

Reid’s story would describe Shiloh as a great and bloody folly, the bitter fruit that had blossomed from a seed of complacency, a terrifying brush with fate that took the North to the very edge of the abyss, and gave her a look as to what total defeat could have looked like. He praised the Union’s Don Carlos Buell, exclaiming in verbose print how the sudden miraculous arrival of Buell’s Army of the Ohio saved Ulysses S. Grant’s Army of the Tennessee from complete and total destruction at Pittsburg Landing. Reid saved his most damning critique of the battle for Grant, and his leadership. It was this treatment of Grant’s leadership, or the lack thereof according to Reid, that revealed truly how little of the battle Reid had actually seen. According to Reid, Grant had done virtually nothing with fighting the battle, had no idea of what to do, and was saved only by Buell’s miraculous arrival. The reality was something much different, for Grant had been everywhere on this fateful day, orchestrating a mighty federal effort, from rounding up the stragglers, riding hard from division to division to consult with each commander, to organizing the ammunition trains to bring the badly needed bullets, gunpowder, shot, and shell to the front, to ordering up the creation of the massive artillery reserve, to trying to put together a battle that would annihilate the enemy, all the while dealing with the intense pain of a badly injured ankle. Nowhere in the Gazette story did Reid make mention of Grant’s resourcefulness, energy, imagination, courage, or daring. Had Reid truly covered the battlefield as he said he did, he would have encountered Grant time and time again. Perhaps if he had, he would have shared the fate of the three other journalists who were seriously injured. But no, he had not, for apparently having been on the scene of the Chicago Tribune’s Irving Carson’s beheading by a passing cannonball in the midst of the battle had been enough for Reid.

-As a result of Reid’s witnessing Carson’s death, he had stayed away from the front-most lines of the fight, missing much of what took place in the latter part of the first day. Instead, he spent the rest of his time interviewing the wounded and the stragglers down by the riverbank, a point that an angry William Tecumseh Sherman would be quick to point out later. Sherman was quick to dismiss Reid’s work, partly because he disliked journalists greatly, especially the late Carson. (It was Carson who had written the story that made Sherman sound like he was insane when he said the North would need several hundred thousand men to subdue the Confederate western forces, a statement that got Sherman sent home to rest for a while.) A second reason Billy Sherman hated Reid was because of Reid’s incorrect reporting of both Sherman’s involvement in the battle and his subsequent wounding. Billy Sherman had survived two horses being shot out from under him, a near decapitation by a passing cannonball, and a wound by buckshot to his right hand. Reid had incorrectly reported Sherman’s involvement in the fight and merely reported his wounds as a musket ball shot through Sherman’s hand.

The news stories stirred up old rumors and concerns-was Grant drunk before the battle? Before Shiloh, the newspapers had been loath to repeat the rumors and whispers about the hero of Donelson, but Reid’s piece regarding Shiloh changed all that. Grant’s drinking habits would become the subject of much speculation. Even though Reid didn’t write anything about Grant actually drinking, he had done enough damage to Grant’s reputation by implication that others, mostly Grant’s rivals and enemies, now felt free to pin the mistakes at Shiloh-and by that same thought process the cost of the huge butcher’s bill-on Grant’s issues with alcohol.

Grant expected all this to happen, writing Julia to expect much criticism to come from those who were not even there. He was right, for soon he was damned in newspapers and congressional mailbags across the entire North. But it wasn’t just journalists or congressional fellows lusting for his blood, for Grant’s enemies like politician-turned soldier John McClernand sensed an opportunity to supplant Grant, and get control of his army. Soon McClernand began to spread stories to all who would listen that Grant had been so drunk he had nearly lost the battle. Even Grant’s immediate superior, Henry H. Halleck, the clerk-like commander-in-chief of the Union’s western armies, was jealous of Grant, and saw the near-debacle at Shiloh as a convenient opportunity to get rid of his rival, something the unassuming Grant did not realize. Halleck had left his comfortable headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri, with the idea that he was the savior of the army, and with his mind already made up about the ineptness of Grant, arrived in Pittsburg Landing four days after the Shiloh fight, and promptly made sure to forward the reports from a number of soldiers regarding Grant’s behavior at Shiloh to various important people, including general-in-chief George McClellan. Of course, Halleck did not bother mentioning that the reports of Grant’s intoxicated state came mostly from the skulkers and cowards who ran away at the first sounds of the fight, and that these men were doing their level best to get Grant fired, for fear of repercussions upon themselves. Their howls of rage would reach clear to their respective state capitols, causing at least one governor, Ohio’s David Tod, to demand Grant’s dismissal.

One of Halleck’s first actions upon arriving at Pittsburg Landing was to convene a board of inquiry to examine Grant, and the army’s combat performance during the battle. It would not be long before a number of prominent politicians and soldiers would spring to Grant’s aid. Congressman Elihu Washburne would loyally defend his constituent on the floor of Congress, having received a detailed letter from Grant’s aide, William Rowley that detailed an account of the battle in such a way as to convince Washburne that the stories of Grant’s intoxication were lies. Other commanders, such as Colonel Jacob Ammen who commanded Buell’s lead brigade and had seen Grant the night before the Shiloh fight, had stated unequivocally that Grant was not intoxicated before Shiloh. However, perhaps the greatest ally of all that Grant had was that tall, melancholy man who occupied the White House. After one prominent Pennsylvania politician, had spent two hours telling Lincoln why public support demanded that Grant had to go, Lincoln simply replied; I can’t spare this man. He fights!

Along with Grant there was Don Carlos Buell. Buell had been appointed a brigadier-general in May, 1862, and given command of the Department of the Ohio, and was headquartered in Kentucky. From there he had helped hatch the plan to use the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers to attack the western Confederacy. As a result of the plan Grant had captured the two key Confederate forts guarding the two rivers, Forts Henry and Donelson. Buell followed up Grant’s victories with his own victory, taking of Nashville, the first of the Confederate capitals to fall to the Union. He would join Grant as the toasts of the Union, but the glory would be short-lived with the blood bath that took place at Pittsburg Landing. Now, Halleck had taken control, and was determined to take Corinth, Mississippi.

Halleck now laid out his plan to take personal control of the Union forces preparing to march on the Confederates now occupying Corinth. The jealous Halleck had not given up on his secret hopes of shelving Grant, whom he saw as his opponent in terms of future greatness and promotions, but he would have to be subtler in the way he tried to do it than in the past. When the board didn’t do what, he wanted, Halleck reorganized his forces into four components. Grant’s Army of the Tennessee was designated the right wing of Halleck’s force, reinforced with troops from Buell, and placed under the command of the Virginian, George Pap Thomas. The crusty Thomas had stayed on the side of the Union, much to the chagrin of his Virginian relatives, who promptly disowned him. What was left of Buell’s Army of the Ohio now became Halleck’s center and remained under Buell’s command. The left wing of the force was entrusted to Major-General John Pope, the hero of New Madrid and Island Number 10. The boastful Pope had captured the two enemy strongholds in a swift, clever, and almost bloodless campaign that had given the Union forces almost complete control of the Mississippi as far south as Memphis, making that river city extremely vulnerable to Union attack. The reserve force Halleck placed under the command of politician-turned soldier John C. McClernand. All together Halleck commanded a force of fifteen divisions, almost 120,000 men, with another 30,000 in reserve to guard his flanks and rear. Grant was made Halleck’s second-in-command, a figurehead with no authority, since Halleck did not bother communicating with Thomas, Buell, and Pope through Grant like he was supposed to. Instead the army commander bypassed his able subordinate, and communicated with his corps commanders directly. Ten days of this was all Grant could stand, and when he confronted Halleck regarding the matter, demanding to know if he was in trouble or if censure was implied, Halleck lied brazenly, assuring Grant that he had always looked out for Grant, and was indeed, his friend. Grant was reassured by the lie, but understandably, no happier, since what little duties he had were merely administrative, things his aide John Rawlins was quite used to handling.

Slowly Halleck would move on Corinth. His force he would move in three parts.The left wing was commanded by Pope, the center under Buell, with the capable Thomas on the right, with McClernand bringing up the reserve. The Mississippi city, while small and run down, nevertheless was one of the most important railroad centers in the Confederacy. Two railroads passed through her, the Mobile and Ohio Railroad from north to south, and the Memphis and Charleston from east to west. A third railroad, the Mississippi Central, had its steel rails passing the town just a few miles from Corinth. Protecting her was the badly mauled Confederate Army of the Tennessee, now under P. G. T. Beauregard. Beauregard’s force had been badly damaged at Shiloh, as well as losing their commander, Albert Sidney Johnston to a bullet. Beauregard was desperately attempting to reinforce and refit his army, but still had only fifty thousand men with who to face Halleck’s combined Union forces. The Confederate force would eventually increase to seventy thousand with the arrival of Van Dorn and his men, but it was still heavily outnumbered by the advancing Federals. However, Halleck suffered from the same sort of mental affliction as possessed McClellan in the east. He was always convinced that the enemy troops facing him heavily outnumbered him, and believing that the town of Corinth was heavily fortified and held at least a hundred thousand rebel troops. He would spend the entire month of May advancing south at about a mile per day. Halleck’s plan utilizing a maximum of maneuver and a minimum of combat would culminate in each night having the Union troops dig trenches and build breastworks, all beautifully designed, neat, regular, and completely useless. The Confederates were not going to attack, but Halleck was convinced they would, and that the rebel forces were superior in numbers to his own. Grant realized that Halleck’s caution was over-blown, believed the town could be taken in two days and made proposals to that effect, but Halleck brushed all of Grant’s arguments off as being too stupid to discuss, frustrating Grant, (and Sherman), even further.

By May 30, the Union forces had reached the outskirts of Corinth. Early that morning they were greeted by the sounds of explosions, and as dawn rose and the sky grew lighter; thick, dark plumes of smoke could be seen rising into the sky above the town. To Halleck, this meant the rebel forces were on the move and preparing to fight.

They were certainly on the move, but not toward Halleck. The rebels had begun a retreat the night before, and by morning all were gone, leaving in their place an army of painted straw-filled dummies, all dressed to look like soldiers, their painted smiles and fake weapons a mockery of Halleck’s efforts. Grant rightfully interpreted the explosions as meaning that the rebels were evacuating, but Pope convinced Halleck otherwise. It would not be until full day light that Pope’s patrols would find that all that was left of the formidable Confederate defenses were straw- filled dummies dressed in the remains of uniforms and Quaker guns-large logs of different girths and painted black to look like cannons. Beauregard was gone, along with fifty-two thousand men, his artillery, and most of his supplies. He would retire to Tupelo, Mississippi, just fifty miles south of Corinth. Here, his army had good healthy surroundings, an ample supply of good water, and would gradually rebuild and regain both its size and strength.

With Corinth taken, the Union now controlled the only railroad which directly connected the Mississippi River to the Atlantic seaboard in the South, a victory that combined with the Union elimination of Confederate strongholds at Fort Pillow and Memphis, opened the Mississippi River for Yankee movement as far down the river to the Confederate Gibraltar of the Mississippi-Vicksburg. Halleck was overjoyed by his almost bloodless victory, but Grant was disgusted. He had until this point, been slightly in awe of Halleck’s intellectual reputation, the nickname of Old Brains considered to be a true indicator of Halleck’s brilliance, and of the man’s comprehensive knowledge of both military history and theory. He truly expected Halleck to try and destroy Beauregard’s army, which would have left Halleck with a free hand to go anywhere he wanted; to the Gulf of Mexico, picking off Vicksburg along the way, or perhaps even into Tennessee, where he could then move on the Confederate stronghold of Chattanooga, freeing eastern Tennessee from its rebel captors, a plan that would have surely pleased Lincoln. Halleck’s failure to destroy Beauregard’s army at Corinth forever ended that aspect of Grant’s relationship with his superior. While he realized that the taking of Corinth was in itself a good thing, the fact that the enemy had gotten away made it a barren victory. It had become increasingly obvious to Grant that his superior had not grasped the nuances of this war; that merely capturing land meant nothing, if you did not also destroy the army that occupied it. Halleck could not seem to grasp that this was a new type of war, not one that called to mind the ancient times of limited war, when fortress-like castles dominated much of Europe, and campaigns were designed to seek and seize strategic points. No, all that had changed when the Corsican war god, Napoleon, had changed all the rules, and instead of wasting his time in long, drawn-out sieges, would instead isolate and go around the enemy fortresses, leaving them to wither on the vine so to speak, and instead saving his armies to move rapidly and decisively, applying his muscle to try and kill his opponents’ forces. Grant understood that this was what was necessary to win this war, to obliterate the rebels’ ability to fight. He had no time to waste on offensive strategies that smacked of overtly cautious designs. He wanted to win, and to do that you had to hit the enemy, hit him hard with overwhelming force, and force him to surrender, or be annihilated. The taking of the enemy cities was a secondary consideration to him.

Grant was further upset when Halleck made no effort to catch and destroy the fleeing Confederates, the latter not bothering to give any orders that could have sent Halleck’s five thousand well-mounted cavalry thundering off to pursue the Johnny Rebs. Instead, while the rebels had taken advantage of the good weather and dry roads to get away, down south to Tupelo, Mississippi. Halleck had sent Pope’s infantry divisions to follow along, not to attack, but mainly to make sure Beauregard would not come back. Halleck would then proceed to disperse his one hundred thousand men, sending much of Lew Wallace’s division to assist Union forces fighting in Arkansas, and then ordering Buell to take his thirty-one- thousand-man Army of the Ohio on a march to Chattanooga, and at the same time rebuild the wrecked Memphis and Charleston railroad, the line on which Halleck was planning to depend on to move Union supply trains. This was a plan that Grant could not understand, and to Grant this would become one more example of Halleck’s inability to see things clearly, since the Memphis and Charleston line ran directly on the boundary between the territory just conquered, and the hostile region which lay directly to the south of the line, the area wide open to constant attack and disruption by the ever-present Confederate cavalry. The remainder of Halleck’s formidable forces, about sixty-five thousand men strong, Halleck would use for railroad repair and garrison duties, keeping some with him at Corinth for track work, the rest, which was pretty much what was left of Grant’s old Army of the Tennessee, and Pope’s Army of the Mississippi, Halleck ordered to be stationed at various points between Memphis and Decatur.

In the meantime, Halleck moved the rest of his forces into what had been Beauregard’s expansive breastworks, fortifications that truly needed a hundred thousand men to properly man them, and then set his soldiers to digging even more entrenchments. Soon the thunk of axes chopping logs, and the thock of pounding hammers beating rocks into place, filed the air like some percussive symphony. It was more than the tone-deaf Grant could take, and within days of Corinth’s fall, he was making plans to go away on leave, Julia and the family being in St. Louis.

Sherman then stepped in, having heard from Halleck of Grant’s plans, and having made a somewhat erroneous assumption that Grant was leaving for good, Sherman did his level best to talk Grant out of leaving. He had walked into Grant’s command tent, catching Grant in the midst of packing; his personal chests piled high in the corners of the tent. When Sherman asked if it was true that Grant was leaving, the latter replied that yes, he was, that he felt he was just in the way, and that he had stood what he perceived as a slight for as long as he could. When Sherman asked where he was going, Grant replied St. Louis. Sherman continued with his inquiry, asking Grant if he had any business there, to which Grant replied that he had none. Grant really did have business in St. Louis. Julia was there, and so were the children, and all Grant wanted to do was to get away from Halleck, and away from Halleck’s way of doing things. What he needed was a break, but Sherman would not hear of it, reminding his friend that there had been a time when he, Sherman, had been considered crazy, and that he had been so frustrated by what the newspapers had said about him that he had considered quitting himself. But he hadn’t and Grant and the events at Shiloh had brought him back, and now Billy Sherman was in fine fettle. He explained to Grant that he believed that things would change for him as well, as long as he stuck them out, and he too would bounce back. However, if he left, when the situation changed, as Sherman saw it, then Grant would be completely

out of the picture, and his career would be finished.

Grant was touched by this statement of loyalty, knowing Sherman well enough to know that it was truly sincere. Being the shy fellow that he was, he made no real effort to correct Sherman’s mistaken assumption, allowing Sherman to ride away with his erroneous conclusions. Grant was well aware that Sherman and Halleck were close. Grant would mull over the sentiments that Sherman had expressed, and come to the conclusion that Sherman was probably right, especially since he seemed to always know what was afoot with Halleck. Grant therefore decided to stay in the camp, sending Sherman a note to that effect, and delighting Sherman with his news. It didn’t take long before Sherman looked like a seer of the future, for Halleck soon after taking Corinth, came to the conclusion that the present command structure he had assembled was too large and bulky, and needed to be streamlined. Therefore, from a point of strategy, he decided to have Grant, Buell, Thomas, Pope, and McClernand resume their former commands. Grant immediately seized upon the opportunity, and moved his headquarters to the recently captured Memphis, now under the control of Lew Wallace, the future author of Ben Hur. Here Grant took command of his old army again.

On the Confederate side, Beauregard was done. The hero of Sumter and Bull Run had seen his stature diminished by the losses at Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, and Shiloh. Thus, the loss of Corinth was the last straw as far as the Confederacy’s Jefferson Davis was concerned, and when Beauregard’s migraine problems became too much, and he went on sick leave, Davis replaced the jaunty Creole with one of his corps commanders, the black-humored, beetle-browed and owl-faced Braxton Bragg. Now it would be the irascible Bragg’s job to stop the Union advances. To do it he would have some 56,000 men of the Army of Mississippi, who were now regrouping in Tupelo after retreating from the Yankee capture of Corinth, and another 10,000 men, who along with their commander Edmund Kirby Smith, were based in the Tennessee city of Chattanooga. Davis would make it quite clear to Bragg that further retreats were not an option, and that Bragg was expected to go, seek out the enemy, and fight. Like Beauregard before him, Bragg’s orders were clear. He was to strike northward, take out those same passes the Union had used so effectively, smash through the strung-out Federals, and take Nashville back. That was the directive from the War Department in Richmond. It didn’t matter a whit how it got done, for all Davis cared about was that it was done. How Bragg was to do this was entirely up to him.

While things were going well for the Yankees in the West, they were not experiencing the same degree of success in the East. After succumbing to pressure from the Lincoln administration to take and do something with his marvelously trained army, George McClellan had finally shaken himself free from a self-imposed languor, and taken his Army of the Potomac by boat down the waters of the Chesapeake. The great Army of the Potomac resembled a huge blue snake, its long body reaching back down the James Peninsula, its tail back at Fortress Monroe, its head facing Richmond, as it began to twist and slither its way at an agonizingly slow pace up the James Peninsula, constantly stopping to fight off nonexistent hordes of Confederates. There were rebel forces on the peninsula, but nothing like McClellan estimated there were.

In this, both McClellan and the dubious Halleck, were alike as peas in a pod, both seeing inestimable forces of rebels in front of them, the enemy defenses bristling with huge quantities of guns, only to find in the end that the guns were fake, and the enemy fading back, leaving to fight another day and leaving nothing but empty earthworks to be taken.

So as Beauregard had done to Halleck in the West, now the eastern Confederate commander Joe Johnston would do the same to McClellan. Still smarting under Lincoln’s threats regarding his (McClellan’s) use of his army, McClellan would finally stir his massive force long enough for the great blue snake to slash at the Confederates at a small crossroads named Seven Pines. Here the monstrous blue snake would find some success, wrapping its monstrous blue coils around its prey, its fangs finding a victim in Joseph Johnston. Johnston would be seriously wounded in the fight, but what that entire event would do was to bring Robert E. Lee out of his Richmond War Office position to a new one as the commander of the newly-named Army of Northern Virginia, and things would suddenly get very bad, for McClellan and the Army of the Potomac.

Lee would leave a small force desperately building earthworks around Richmond, driving some to nickname him the King of Spades. Others called him Granny Lee, and reminded others of Lee’s inability to stop McClellan in western Virginia. However, Robert E. Lee would quickly erase all memories of that other Lee, striking McClellan again, and again, and again, in a series of hammer-like blows that resulted in the battles known as the Seven Days Battles, and driving McClellan back down the peninsula.

For a short time, the very existence of McClellan’s army was threatened, and the North experienced a shock, a wave of fear and apprehension rippling across the Northern regions. This crisis revealed to Lincoln his own limitations as a military man, since having removed McClellan earlier from the role of commander-in-chief, and limiting the man to the job of commanding the Army of the Potomac, Lincoln had acted as his own commander-in-chief. He now realized that he could not run the country, and at the same time coordinate all the various armies’ activities. With this in mind, in early July Lincoln ordered Halleck to Washington to assume new duties as the Army’s commander-in-chief.

Halleck would recall Grant to Corinth, although Grant would not yet be in charge of the entire western theater, something that Halleck secretly could not abide. Instead of having one central command in the West, Halleck decided to instead fragment the command structure, and give several commanders areas to be responsible for. Before Grant left Memphis, he sent Lew Wallace on leave, and when Wallace asked to return to active duty, Grant informed the War Department that he had no assignment in his command that Wallace could fill, effectively dismissing Wallace from serving with Grant’s troops in the West ever again.

Grant would accomplish two things with this act; he paid Wallace back for Wallace’s miserable work as a combat commander, and Grant exorcised his last bad memory of Shiloh. Wallace sputtered and protested to the War Department, (and Lincoln), but Grant got his way. On July 14 Grant returned to Corinth, and immediately began to make plans for his next campaign.

During his first month in Corinth, Grant would take time to take stock in the overall situation both in the West, and in the war. His command now numbered eighty thousand men, albeit dispersed widely across western Tennessee and northern Mississippi. Still, it was the largest force he had ever handled up to this point. Although Grant had not been put in charge of the Western Department, he did not feel slighted, telling his father Jesse, that he really didn’t want to command a department because he felt he could do a better job in the field. He was quite content to be a combat commander, commanding an army and taking the war to the enemy, although he was admittedly concerned about someone junior to him in rank being placed in a position of authority over him. He had also come to realize that the war would not be settled in one huge battle. Partly this was because of Halleck’s failure to destroy Beauregard’s army at Corinth when he could have, but mainly because of a mind-set Grant had detected among the civilian population in Memphis. Even though the city was occupied by the Federals, the citizens of this thriving, bustling Southern town were anything but reconciled to their fate. No, Grant saw in their mocking, hostile glances, their defiant, muttered utterances of hate, their infuriatingly smugness in their self-righteousness that their cause was right, that he had no doubt as to their hostility to the Union and against what he perceived as the finest government on the face of the earth. To him there was no doubt as to what it would take to win the war, and what the future held for all who were a part of it, soldier and civilian alike. When Grant coupled this new understanding with the knowledge he had absorbed while watching Halleck’s inability to understand how war had changed, he finally understood what the struggle had finally come to. Grant was beginning to draw the conclusion that only the complete and total destruction of not only the physical capability for war, but also the mental desire to continue the struggle would be the only way to defeat the Southern cause. In Corinth Grant, would settle into what had been the palatial home of a local businessman, a businessman who had been an original supporter of the Confederate Army, and who had been compensated for his generosity to the Southern cause by a stay in the Federal prison in Alton, Illinois. Grant quickly sent for Julia and the children, for nothing cheered this stoic individual more than to have his children around him, and his loving and protective wife to fuss over him. His time from here on in Corinth would be split between enjoying his children and beginning to piece together the plan as to how to best destroy the enemies who faced both him and the country. To accomplish this, he would begin to surround himself with the men he needed to be able to accomplish his plan with. The first man Grant immediately thought to start with was William T. Sherman.

The march of the Federal forces from Shiloh to Corinth, although in terms of military significance truly not much of major importance nevertheless had two major consequences. The 100,000 men involved were, in Sherman’s opinion, not properly used. Sherman believing that a force of that size and strength should have been used to strike deep into the South, to go as far as Mobile, or even Vicksburg, and open up the Mississippi completely. Sherman believed that this was what Halleck truly wanted to do, but had been stopped by the meddling of those in Washington, specifically the War Department. This had led to the breakup of that command structure which would send Buell off toward Chattanooga, George Thomas to be reassigned, and John Pope to the East toward a fateful meeting in Virginia with Robert E. Lee at a place called Manassas Junction. Even though Halleck and Sherman had been close, Halleck had successfully hidden his jealousy about Grant from Sherman, not allowing Sherman to see his friend Halleck’s faults, especially when it came to the relationship between Halleck and Grant.

The second consequence was just as important. With these familiar faces, reassigned others would begin to make their presence known. Although some would claim that Shiloh was the catalyst that created the compound that became the Grant/ Sherman combination, to Billy Sherman, it had been those rough days for Grant in May 1862, when Sherman believed he had talked Grant out of leaving the army to go to St. Louis. Now, with Halleck leaving, Grant in Corinth was in charge. Almost immediately, he would assign Sherman to Memphis, to take Grant’s place with his former command. Sherman would take control in Memphis in late July and immediately begin to make his mark. At the same time as Grant was having his epiphany, Abraham Lincoln was pushing for a campaign to free the eastern Tennessee region of Confederate control. Lincoln was convinced that the North had to take eastern Tennessee quickly, and hold it. This concern about eastern Tennessee would bring other Union men to the forefront of the fight for Tennessee, and while Grant and Sherman were too busy themselves in the fight to control the Mississippi, these others would be the men who would continue to fight to capture Chattanooga, and Tennessee. If Chattanooga fell to the Union, the Lincoln administration would now control one of the most strategic points in the entire Confederacy, and would control the one true line of communication between the Atlantic and the Mississippi.

This would destroy the last connection between the sections east and west of the Alleghenies, forcing a complete detouring by way of the Atlantic. Lincoln wanted these men to completely wrest control of Tennessee from the Confederacy, and help lead the North to additional victories in the war to control the western portion of the Confederacy. George Thomas, John Pope, and Don Carlos Buell would still be there. When Pope was ordered east to a new command one of those men who would still be there would be the man who would replace Pope as the commander of the Army of Tennessee. He would be another former West Point man; an ex-mining engineer and inventor named William Starke Rosecrans. Rosecrans would take over Pope’s old command. Another newly minted leader would be a short, fiery, bandy-legged character with a head shaped like a bullet. His name was Phillip Sheridan.

The new plans formulated by both sides would lead to a deadly cat-and-mouse game between the Union and Confederate forces in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama. Confederate commander Kirby Smith, who commanded the Confederate forces in east Tennessee, understood the strategic value of the region, and argued for a summer offensive to regain middle Tennessee and possibly even gain Kentucky for the Confederacy. This offensive led to the 1862 Confederate invasion of Kentucky. Kentucky had seven railroad connections with the North, and Louisville Kentucky was the main Union supply base for the region, and therefore was considered to be a prize plum for the Confederates to capture. By comparison, there was but only one railroad connection with the South.

The invasion started off well, for the Confederates. Kirby Smith’s army of 19,000 defeated Union forces at the Kentucky towns of Richmond and Munfordville, captured Lexington and Frankfort, and threatened Cincinnati, Ohio, even as the Union state government fled to Louisville. General Braxton Bragg’s 32,000 men Army of the Mississippi quickly moved out of the way after the Munfordsville fight, moving clear to Bardstown, which allowed the Federal troops under Don Carlos Buell to reach Louisville uncontested, Buell receiving 25,000 reinforcements. Buell, not noted usually for his speed, moved with alacrity against the Confederate forces, giving orders on October 1, 1862, that sent 20,000 federals after Kirby Smith, while Buell personally led 58,000 men after Bragg’s army.

The Confederate government had expected large numbers of Kentuckians to volunteer, but were sorely disappointed when few did. Most of those who did wanted to ride with the dashing cavalier, John Hunt Morgan. To try to get more men, Bragg had left his army with Major General Leonidas Polk, the Episcopalian bishop-turned- soldier, while Bragg went to Lexington to confer with Kirby Smith, and to install a new provisional Confederate government under the new Confederate governor, Richard Hawes. The newly installed governor was unable to long enjoy his new-found authority, having been sworn in on October 4, only to have to abandon the festivities planned in his honor, and leave town as Federal troops neared the city.

The summer and fall of 1862 was one of the driest in Kentucky, as well as Tennessee, history, and the soldiers of both sides suffered deeply from the heat, stifling dust, and bad water, even as they maneuvered across the state, a deadly game of chess. As Buell marched towards Bardstown, Polk withdrew his forces back through Springfield, and Perryville, where good water was available. In turn, Bragg ordered the two separate Confederate forces to concentrate at Harrodsburg, expecting to meet and fight the federals near the town of Salvisa, just south of Lawrenceburg. After several days of back-and-forth Bragg would strike the Union defenses during the afternoon of October 8, 1862 at Perryville.

Desperate fighting by both sides surged back-and-forth, with both sides taking heavy losses. Bragg sent waves of men, backed by artillery, but the Union I Corps troops under Major General Alexander McCook held firm, holding their lines even as others fell back, until Buell finally realized what was happening. Here for the first time, a young, fiery Union commander by the name of Philip Sheridan would be heard from, as the bandy-legged little Irishman would fight like a crazed banshee, and inspire his men to do the same. Their intensity served them well, as due to an interesting phenomenon known as acoustic shadow, Buell did not hear the fight being waged within his lines, until close to 4:00 PM, when, after finally riding out to see what was happening, Buell sent out two Third Corps brigades to shore McCook’s lines up, until darkness and exhaustion finally brought a welcome halt to the battle, which became the largest battle to take place in Kentucky during the war. Union casualties numbered almost 4,000, while the Confederates had lost over 3,100. That night thousands on both sides cried piteously, begging for relief and for water, even as the surgeons of both sides worked frantically to save as many as they could, the butcher’s bill heavy for both sides.

An angry Bragg sounded off on his anger with the men of Kentucky in general, and the lack of Confederate recruits specifically, have grossly overestimated how many Kentuckians would favor the Confederate cause, and join the rebel army. Finally realizing just how large a Union force he faced, Bragg made haste to retreat back to Harrodsburg, where finally the two Confederate forces were joined. Here, snug behind well-developed defense works, he waited for a Union attack, but Buell declined the opportunity to attack, and finally Bragg, dismayed by supply issues, and thoroughly frustrated by the lack of new recruits from Kentucky, decided that discretion was the better part of valor, since his army was essential for the defense of the western Confederacy, and pulled his men out of Kentucky through the Cumberland Gap. One thousand Confederate cavalry under the boy-genius, Colonel Joseph Fighting Joe Wheeler, covered the withdrawal of Bragg’s forces from Buell’s extremely methodical pursuit, even as Brigadier General Patrick Pat Cleburne’s troops drove the long Confederate wagon train through the gap without loss. Although Kentucky would still see her share of Confederate raiders, this second attempt would be the last time a major Confederate force would invade Kentucky.

However, the northern press would not be so forgiving. The press looked at Bragg’s retreat as an escape, and Buell was the reason for it. Buell, under orders from Lincoln to pursue and destroy Bragg’s forces, had failed to follow through, and let Bragg get away, completely irritating Lincoln. Buell did not agree with the Lincoln Administration’s war plan, and like McClellan in the East, followed a plan of limited war, something that did not sit well with the infuriated Lincoln, who was already seething over McClellan’s failure to pursue Lee’s shattered army after the latter’s failed invasion into Maryland. Unlike his southern counterpart, Buell did not enjoy the protection of a long friendship with his nation’s chief executive. In addition, like Bragg, Buell had lost whatever confidence his troops had ever had for his abilities as a commander of them.

There was a reason for this. The roots of this issue regarding Buell’s lack of leadership predated both the Perryville fight and the lackluster pursuit of the retreating Bragg, and were directly tied to Buell’s contempt for the volunteer soldiers who made up so much of his force. He could not accept the fact that these rough western farm boys would not accept the Regular Army standards of discipline, and this was a fundamental error, a true reflection of Buell’s inability to understand what it took to lead his men. What Buell had failed to understand was that these men had signed up for this fight out of a strong sense of patriotism and duty, and although ready to give up their lives for that which they believed in, the average farm boy from Illinois, Indiana, or Ohio had absolutely no intention of giving up their strong sense of individualism and distaste for authority. These men came from stock that had moved west in the first place to get away from the very overbearing type of governmental (or military) authority that Buell felt was necessary, and that was the fatal flaw in the relationship. These were men who would obey an order if seen to be sensible, but refused to be treated as mere robots, so they found this view of Buell’s totally intolerable. Those commanders, who practiced a sense of justice, fairness, kindness, and even sympathy, found they could lead their troops to the point of excellence. Those who did not practice these virtues soon found themselves considered to be tyrannical and overbearing, and as a result, lost control. This definitely applied to Buell, (and his counterpart on the southern side in Bragg.) During the tough marches through the Kentucky campaign, these angry sentiments regarding the Union commander found themselves into many a soldier’s letter to the loved ones at home, and thusly, these sentiments also reached the ears of sympathetic politicians back home.

Especially receptive to the angry allegations was the war governor of Indiana. Republican Oliver P. Morton was as tough a politician as any the war produced. Buell had placed himself squarely in the hard-nosed politician’s sights, through perhaps what had been an unavoidable conflict. Practicing somewhat of a states’ rights philosophy, Morton had been very reluctant to relinquish his grip on his Hoosiers who had volunteered for service to their country, having gone so far as to send members of his own staff to see to the individual regiments’ welfare, even after they had mustered into United States Army service. The governor’s meddling had gone so far as to exchange the arms of one of his Hoosier regiments without the knowledge of the unit’s brigade commander. When Buell was informed of the act, he had immediately stepped in, (as he should have), and put a stop to Morton’s involvement, but by doing so, incurred the hard-nosed Indiana governor’s enduring enmity.

Morton wasn’t the only western governor out to nail Buell’s proverbial hide to the wall. Like the Indiana leader, Andrew Johnson’s reasons for his extreme dislike for Buell were very much personal and selfish. Without Union victories, Federal authority in Tennessee, and thus, Johnson’s authority, was extremely limited. Without control of the region being exerted by the Army of the Ohio, Johnson’s authority as Tennessee governor was basically that of a paper tiger. Johnson hated the planter hierarchy with a venomous quality, and not only saw Buell’s Chattanooga campaign in its worst light, but saw the Union commander’s refusal to pursue Bragg’s army into east Tennessee as the decision of a traitor-or at least, a traitor to those ambitions of Johnson. When Buell refused to take personal property in the territory occupied by his federal forces, Johnson was incensed-who felt that all Southern society-both those who actively fought, and those who supported the combatants either actively or quietly, had to be punished for their participation in the rebellion. When Buell fired a brigade commander who had ransacked the Alabama town of Athens, thus refusing to follow Buell’s doctrine of limited war, in combination of Buell’s sluggish pursuit of Bragg, both governors smelled blood and lashed out regarding Buell’s perceived kid-glove treatment of the rebellious southerners.

Morton issued Lincoln the equivalent of an ultimatum. The letter stated that; "An officer, just arrived from Louisville, announced that Bragg has escaped with his army into east Tennessee, and that Buell’s army is counter-marching to Lebanon. The butchery of our troops at Perryville was terrible. Nothing but success speedy and decided will save our cause from utter destruction. In the Northwest distrust and disrepair are seizing upon the hearts of the people."

The message was clear; Either Lincoln replaced Buell or he faced the real possibility of losing the Northwest.

Lincoln gave the courtly Buell one last chance by issuing peremptory orders that ordered Buell to give chase over the mountains and into eastern Tennessee, and not to give Bragg a moment’s rest. He furthered reminded the sensitive Buell of the importance of securing the sanctity of east Tennessee, an area in which the largely loyal citizenry had suffered a great deal of abuse from the Confederate guerrillas who raided in the area. Lincoln reminded Buell that he felt that Buell should certainly be able to march anywhere that Bragg did.

This last did not sit well with Buell, and Lincoln’s admonishments went pretty much unheeded. Buell insisted that any advancement needed to be started from Nashville, and thus Buell had turned the army westward even as the last of the rebel forces disappeared into the relative safety of the Cumberland Mountains. With this last move, and with the midterm elections out of the way, Lincoln had had enough, seeing an opportunity to eliminate as many McClellan supporters as possible from the Federal high command; Lincoln sacked Buell, much as he had McClellan.

When others demanded an explanation as to why Buell, who to uneducated eyes appeared to be a hero, had been sacked, the Lincoln Administration quickly launched a campaign of whispered innuendo. Stories were spread that inferred that the courtly Buell, who was married to a Southern woman, whose family were slave-holders, was really a Southern sympathizer who had deliberately taken his time in aiding Grant at Shiloh, and then after Perryville, intentionally allowed Bragg to escape.

Decision time was here; who does Lincoln replace Buell with? There were several candidates, including Virginia’s George H. Thomas, who had proven to be a strong and capable leader, and twenty officers in the Army of the Ohio had made it clear that they wanted Thomas. Then there were those in high places who were pushing for his promotion, Andrew Johnson being one of those leaders who continued to fill Lincoln ears with his thoughts on how to conduct the war. Another potential candidate was the young bantam rooster of a leader, the hot-headed but up-and-coming bullet- shaped-head fighter named Philip Sheridan. The young commander had impressed with his toughness at Perryville, but he was considered by those in authority to be still too inexperienced. Then there was also William Rosecrans.

Thomas had strong supporters, particularly Andrew Johnson. Johnson’s disdain for Buell was becoming well-known, and had expressed his desire for Thomas to replace Buell directly to Thomas. Thomas had stared the discomfited Johnson in the eyes, and immediately made his views in this command debate clear.

Governor, let me make my position clear. I most earnestly hope I may not be placed in the position, for several reasons. One particular reason is that we have never yet had a commander of any expedition who has been allowed to work out his own policy, and it is utterly impossible for the most able General in the World to conduct a campaign with success when his hands are tied. I can confidently assure you that General Buell’s dispositions will eventually free all of Tennessee, and go very far to crush the rebellion entirely. As a result, Johnson was forced to back off.

As the summer turned into fall however, it became increasingly evident that Buell was not the man to do the job. Finally, on September 29, the Lincoln War Department had enough, and Buell was ordered to turn over the army’s command to Thomas. No sooner had Thomas found out what was going on that he was on Buell’s doorstep, declining the job. Buell showed class, and asked Thomas to re- assess his decision, but the Virginian was adamant in his refusal. As a result, the War Department rescinded the order, but Thomas had damaged himself by his integrity, and cost himself supporters. While Secretary-of-War Edwin Stanton was still in Thomas’s corner, Secretary-of the-Treasury Salmon Chase was a firm supporter of fellow Ohioan Rosecrans.

Then there was Lincoln. The president was quite aware of Thomas’s Virginia heritage, and although his pre-war record was solid he carried the double stigma of being not just a Southerner, but a Virginian as well as a Southerner, a fact not lost on Lincoln. In addition, Rosecrans was a Northern Catholic, whose appointment would be a popular choice with gubernatorial and congressional candidates who had many constituents who were members of the same faith as the Catholic Rosecrans, and who saw this war as a Yankee war, one that had been started by those of Puritan ancestry. Lincoln saw the appointment of Rosecrans as a bit of a sop to those of the Catholic persuasion.

In addition, Lincoln was not ready to pick someone without much of a resume in Sheridan, and he was simply not ready to pick a Virginian in Thomas, remembering with some bitterness another Virginian who had once turned down Union high command; Robert E. Lee. Lincoln instead decided on another westerner. On October 24 Lincoln removed Buell, and replaced him with William Starke Rosecrans, and with a stroke of a pen, changed the date of Rosecrans commission from August 21, to that of March 31, eliminating concerns regarding Rosecrans seniority to others. The war in the West was about to enter a new phase.

CHAPTER ONE

BRAGG

Army of Tennessee

Early December, 1862

God, I’m tired of this.

Braxton Bragg muttered to himself. The commanding general of the Confederate Army of Tennessee had risen early to take care of this particular morning’s daily camp needs, and then had mounted his horse to ride to a particular Tennessee regiment’s camp. As he approached the camp, his aides, who had to accompany Bragg, all fell back a way by mutual silent assent, none wanting to engage in conversation with Bragg as he rode along, the epitome of ramrod-straight sturdiness on his steed, a picture-perfect soldier clad in Confederate gray. He looked around, a scowl plainly visible on his bushy salt-and-pepper bearded face, as he noted the staff’s reluctance to ride beside him.

I don’t blame them. He thought to himself, as he rode. I wouldn’t want to be around me this day either. His normally sour disposition was blacker than usual, a fact that was but further accentuated by two things; the first being the fact that Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy was on the way to Bragg’s camp for a visit. Normally a meeting with Davis would not have upset Bragg, since the two men were friends, and had a cordial relationship since the old Mexican War days. But things were not good in the camps of the Army of Tennessee, and there had been a considerable concern regarding the army’s morale, and particular attention paid to the written complaints by Bragg’s subordinates, a fact that had contributed to the reasons Jefferson Davis was now on his way to Tennessee. Davis had left Bragg in charge in of the Army of Tennessee, even after the stormy session in Richmond with first, some of Bragg’s subordinates, then with Bragg himself. Trouble was, Davis had also left Bishop Leonidas Polk, the Episcopalian bishop of Mississippi, and Davis’s former West Point roommate, in a corps command under Bragg, a fact that did not sit well with either Bragg or Polk, especially with Polk’s incessant attempts to undermine Bragg as an army commander. Bragg had often bitterly noted that Davis was blind to the effect that Polk had on other officers in the Army of Tennessee, simply because he could not believe his old West Point friend had forgotten his cadet code of honor, a fact Bragg believed had been proven out by the way Polk had violated the chain of command, and instead had simply continued to go to Davis with his complaints, the pompous aristocratic Polk attempting to go over Bragg, and even the area commander, Joe Johnston’s, head, with his unceasing complaints about Bragg’s command abilities.

The second item, that regarding morale was a problem bore out by the second fact, this morning’s mission, an event he had come to this particular camp this gloomy day to witness. Desertions were up in the Army of Tennessee and those that were caught needed to serve as a lesson. Officially his duties as the commanding general of the Confederacy’s Army of Tennessee did not