This Week in the Civil War: June 22-28, 1862

BACK IN THE SADDLE

On June 3, in Corinth, Mississippi, Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman persuaded his friend and fellow son of Ohio, Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, to stay put and be patient. Frustrated by a month as the powerless “second-in-command” to Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, Grant had been packing to leave, probably for good. In his memoirs, Sherman recalled that he “begged” Grant not to leave, arguing “some happy accident might restore him to favor and his true place.”

Within hours, Grant agreed to wait and Sherman rejoiced. Then, a few days later, Sherman’s prediction came true. Halleck decided to break up the huge force he had assembled at Corinth and send its parts in various directions to hold territory won from the Confederates. As part of this, Grant was restored to command of his Army of the Tennessee and told to take charge of west Tennessee. He would make his headquarters in Memphis (Scenes of the important river port of Memphis before the war are shown above).

Grant liked horses, so he skipped taking a train in favor of riding horseback for the 100-mile trip to Memphis. On Saturday, June 21, Grant climbs on his horse and with only a small escort, heads for his new headquarters. Only recently captured by Union forces, Memphis is the first Confederate city to come under Grant’s direct supervision.

In riding to Memphis, Grant’s lack of concern for his own safety approaches recklessness. For the latter part of the trip he has an escort of only 12 men as he rides through territory still crawling with armed Confederate sympathizers. At one point, troops led by CSA Gen. John K. Jackson came within three-quarters of an hour of intercepting Grant’s little party.

Arriving in Memphis on June 23, Grant finds the city in “bad order, secessionists governing much in their own way.” Never daunted, Grant declares, “In a few days I expect to have everything in good order.” A Confederate major on parole who had unwisely been given the run of the streets was arrested, picket guards were posted around Memphis, clergymen were ordered to omit prayers for the Confederacy, and a provost marshal, backed up by three regiments of Indiana troops, are directed to keep order in the city. Grant orders his Union occupiers to behave themselves. Wandering about, pilfering, or straggling are forbidden; soldiers are told to stay in their camps.

He is back in command, but for the next few months, Grant will have to content himself with housekeeping and security duties. To protect west Tennessee, his troops are too dispersed to undertake major offensive actions. To Grant, this is almost as torturous as serving as Halleck’s toothless second-in-command. However, he has the comfort of having his wife, Julia Dent Grant, join him in Memphis.

MEANWHILE…

Col. Rutherford B. Hayes’ 23^rd Ohio is enjoying the summer breezes and not seeing much action, while perched on Flat Top Mountain, a landmark in the southern region of western Virginia. The 3,750-ft mountain stretches for almost 20 miles; the camp of the 23^rd positioned near the boundary between Mercer and Raleigh counties.

Like other elements of Gen. Jacob Cox’s Kanahwa Division in the Union army’s Department of the Mountains, the 23^rd Ohio is keeping western Virginia safe as the region works to separate itself from old Virginia and become a new Union state.

Frequent scouting expeditions help relieve some of the monotony, but there is a lot to find. Occasionally, enemy scouts are encountered, but these are regular soldiers; stern measures by Cox’s men seem to have ended “bushwhacking” by guerrillas in this region.

AND ELSEWHERE IN THE CIVIL WAR:

On Monday (June 23), Robert E. Lee—the newly appointed (and not yet impressive) commander of the Confederate forces in Virginia—meets with his generals. Among Them is Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, who has just finished his brilliant campaign in the Shenandoah Valley to keep Union forces from reinforcing Union Gen. George B. McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign. Now, Lee, Jackson, and company are planning to stop McClellan himself.

The next day, McClellan makes the first move. So close to Richmond that Union soldiers can hear church bells ringing, McClellan sends two divisions across the headwaters of a swamp. Their objective: gain enough ground so Union siege guns can be brought into action and bombard Richmond. The Confederates know that Richmond cannot withstand a siege, so they push back—hard. When darkness halts the bitter fighting, the Yanks have lost much of what they gained early in the day. Their net progress is only 600 yards, achieved at a cost of one casualty for every yard. This, the Battle of Oak Grove, will go down in history as McClellan’s last and only tactical offensive against Richmond.

With that, the so-called Seven Days’ Battles begin, and the initiative passes to Lee. On Thursday (June 26), Lee sends A. P. Hill to drive McClellan out of Mechanicsville, east of Richmond. Hill takes heavy losses without gaining his objective. Nonetheless, the Federals start backpedaling under the pressure. The Battle of Mechanicsville is the beginning of the end for McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign.

The next day, Friday, brings the Battle of Gaines’s Mill, the third of the Seven Days’ battles. Despite yesterday’s shortfall, Lee presses ahead, with more success this time, even while taking more casualties than the Federals. McClellan’s forces continue retreating in what some called a “great skedaddle.”

At the end of the week, McClellan uses a relatively quiet Saturday, June 28, to continue withdrawing, while Lee plans his next move. As usual, McClellan blames others—Lincoln most of all—for his losses. His tone to Lincoln is so bitter and insolent that War Department staffers delete some of his telegram before giving it to the President. McClellan claims he had too few troops (although he hadn’t even used the majority of the men he had on hand). But there were failures on the Confederate side as well. Fresh—or perhaps exhausted—from his brilliant Shenandoah Valley campaign, Jackson keeps showing up late for the battles on the Peninsula.

And so ends the first few days of the Seven Days’ Battles. And so ends yet another Union hope of a quick end to the Civil War.

ON THIS DAY: Tuesday, April 8, 1862

“Our Arms Have Been Victorious”

Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant detains a departing steamboat long enough to dash off a reassuring note to Julia: “Again another terrible battle has occurred in which our arms have been victorious…I got through all safe having but one shot which struck my sword but did not touch me.”

He concludes tenderly, “Give my love to all at home. Kiss the children for me. The same for yourself. Good night dear Julia. Ulys.”

The battle had “no equal on this continent,” Grant says, and he is right. In this two-day bedlam of blood and fury, a record 3,482 men have been killed (1,754 Union, 1,1728 Confederate) and 16,420 men wounded (8,408 Union, 8,012 Confederate). The gruesome outcome shocks both Northerners and Southerners. It will remain the costliest two-day battle of the war. Northern exultation over the victory will begin to fade as newspapers begin publishing reports of Grant’s lack of preparedness.

In the meantime, the weary soldiers of both armies try to pull themselves together. The discouraged Confederates stream back to Corinth, Beauregard harboring an unrealistic hope that Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn’s Army of the West, then in Arkansas, will come to his aid. Delayed by his loss to a Union force at Pea Ridge, Van Dorn and his men will not reach Corinth until April 18.

Grant sends a small force of cavalry and infantry to harass the retreating Beauregard, but, having endured a costly battle, he does not attempt a major blow. Nonetheless, this is a significant victory. As James McPherson put it in Battle Cry of Freedom, “Grant made mistakes before the battle…but in the end the Union armies won a strategic success of great importance at Shiloh. They turned back the Confederacy’s supreme bid to regain the initiative in the Mississippi Valley. From then on it was all downhill for the South in the crucial region.”

Today, Grant’s battered army roams the battlefield, looking for lost comrades. Burial parties inter the dead. Because of the heat, it is important to do so quickly. One soldier writes how he dreads having to bury the Rebel dead: “They are swollen and smell so awful bad and terrible many of them. I do not see how I can stand it.” Another soldier explains, “We did holes in the ground, lay them [the Union dead] side by side without any coffin, fire a salute over the grave, and then cover their cold bodies with the Tennessee clay. The Secesh we bury with less ceremony, dig a hole, roll them in and cover them.”

Meanwhile, 130 miles north, Brig. Gen. John Pope and his recently formed Army of the Mississippi were accepting the surrender of the Confederates who had been holding Island No. 10, yet another position that had been blockading Union river traffic on the Mississippi. Over 4,500 soldiers, including their commander were captured, as were 52 big guns and other equipment the Confederate forces needed badly.

In the opinion of Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, Pope had conducted a brilliant campaign. In order to surround the Confederates on three sides, Pope had ordered a 12-mile canal dug around the enemy position. He then sent gunboats and troop carriers through it, and within four days Island No. 10 was surrendered.

At almost exactly the same time, the North had won two smashing victories—Shiloh and Island No. 10. Only a year after secession and the attack on Fort Sumter, the western Confederacy was coming apart. Surely, Northerners thought, the end is near.

About 25 to 30% of the units in Grant’s and Buell’s armies (combined) were from Ohio. Perhaps 10% of Pope’s army was.

IT’S COMING SOONER THAN YOU THINK: April 12, 2011—less than 3½ years from now!—will be the 150^th anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War. In 1861, April 12 was the day Confederates opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.

Your suggestions, comments, and questions about this blog are always welcome. Address the author: Ohioan@bloodtearsandglory.com

For more information about the author and his newest book, please go to http://www.orangefrazer.com/btg

ON THIS DAY: Sunday, Feb. 9, 1862

“Your plain brother”

The most important people in the life of Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant are his wife, Julia Dent Grant, and their four children. They form his snug harbor of safety, support, and love. Throughout the war, he will bring them to live at his headquarters whenever it is safe to do so.

Grant’s family has been living with him at Cairo, Illinois, headquarters of his District of Cairo, but now that the general is on the warpath, Julia and the children are about to leave the war zone and join Grant’s mother, father, and sister in Covington, Kentucky.

Grant’s mother and father are two pieces of work with whom the general has an uneasy relationship. His mother is a strangely silent monolith, a brooding presence who seems to live in her own world, neither reachable nor reaching out. Father Jesse (above, right) is one of those hard-headed, hard-shell strivers with whom nineteenth-century frontier America abounded, a man who expects to use his son’s position for his own benefit and who does not hesitate to complain to Ulysses about the conduct of the war. It can be safely assumed that words of praise from either parent are rare.

So, these days, when Ulysses writes home, he likes to write his sister, Mary. Still unable to advance from Fort Henry to Fort Donelson, he sits down with pen and ink “to let you know that I am alive and well.”

He goes to explain that he writes her “a very hasty and random letter simply to let you know that I believe you still remember me and [that we are] carrying on a conversation while [I am] writing with my staff and others.” He adds, “Julia will be with you in a few days….”

The unpretentious, plain-spoken Ulysses S. Grant, something of a stoic in his quiet manner, is not often self-revelatory, but to his sister he unbends a bit:

You have no conception of the amount of labor I have to perform. An army of men all helpless looking to the commanding officer for every supply. Your plain brother however, as yet, had no reason to feel himself unequal to the task and fully believes that he will carry on a successful campaign against our rebel enemy. I do not speak boastfully but utter a presentiment.

The father is so unwilling to credit his son that perhaps the son feels the need to make a statement to home base on his own behalf.

ELSEWHERE IN THE CIVIL WAR: The Joint Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War, headed by Ohio Sen. Benjamin F. Wade, interprets its oversight role broadly and has a tendency to interfere or raise suspicions more out of war-time anxiety than real evidence. Eager to fix blame for the Union debacle at Balls Bluff, Virginia, last October, it recommends the arrest of Brig. Gen. Charles F. Stone on suspicion of treason. On War Department orders, Stone will be imprisoned for 189 days without charges or trial, then released without explanation. To this day, Stone’s imprisonment stands as an example of the injustices and violations of civil rights that can occur because of war-time paranoia.

IT’S COMING SOONER THAN YOU THINK: April 12, 2011—less than 3½ years from now!—will be the 150^th anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War. In 1861, April 12 was the day Confederates opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.

Your suggestions, comments, and questions about this blog are always welcome. Address the author: Ohioan@bloodtearsandglory.com

For more information about the author and his newest book, please go to http://www.orangefrazer.com/btg

ON THIS DAY: Sunday, Nov. 17, 1861

"Love in a Time of War"

Among the Civil War’s leading generals, Ulysses S. Grant probably was the calmest in battle, the most inner-directed, and the most capable of keeping the big picture in mind. Making all that possible were his secret weapons: his wife, Julia, and their four children.

All soldiers drew strength from the support of their families. Over the course of the war, caring wives and sweethearts would mean more to men’s morale than almost anything else. Anyone reading soldiers’ mail from long ago is struck by how the men constantly begged for letters from home. To them, the letters signified how much they were cared for and how a “normal” world still existed, away from the battlefield. And that could make all the difference to being a dedicated soldier. Civil War literature has not paid enough attention to the crucial role of ordinary women in supporting the troops.

For Grant, Julia and the children provided a snug harbor of normalcy, an anchor that helped him weather the terrible demands of war. During their courtship, he wrote Julia from New Orleans, “You can have but little idea of the influence you have over me, Julia…” That didn’t mean Mrs. Grant ever had a voice in her husband’s strategic thinking. The practice of war was strictly his, and she was no “co-commander.” Instead, Grant drew moral strength from Julia and the children. They formed the emotional foundation on which Grant built his extraordinary wartime achievements.

The unpretentious Grant usually dressed in an ordinary soldier’s uniform with only a general’s shoulder boards added, but, whenever it was safe to do so, he would exercise one privilege of rank: he would bring his family to live with him at headquarters. Julia Dent Grant was a strong, stocky woman with a muscle weakness that kept her eyes from aligning with each other, causing her to require photographers to take her image only in profile. She wasn’t a classic beauty, but her bubbly personality and self-confidence gave Grant a firm base that sustained him through the trials and tribulations of war.

In the field and away from her, Grant wrote Julia on almost a daily basis. When he established headquarters at Cairo, Illinois, he began urging Julia to leave Galena, bring the children, and join him. After “much timidity,” Julia finally did, arriving in Cairo by train the day after the battle of Belmont. Cairo did not present an appealing prospect. She found the Mississippi River “high and angry” and Cairo itself “desolate.”

The Grant family had rooms in the general’s headquarters building. The building was Spartan, resembling a “great barracks,” Julia would recall later. But, with effort, she and the children managed to be comfortable, and the personable Julia quickly made friends. The Grant family found occasional diversion in the general’s reviews of his troops, at which the band would play “Hail to the Chief.” Several times Mrs. Grant ventured short distances down the Mississippi River on flag-of-truce boats.

In Cairo, danger lurked over the horizon and the living was hardly plush, but “Ulys”—Julia’s pet name for husband—and his family were together. That mattered a lot, and not just to one man’s state of mind.

Your suggestions, comments, and questions are always welcome. Address the author: Ohioan@bloodtearsandglory.com

For more information about the author’s book, go to http://www.orangefrazer.com/btg

ON THIS DAY: Saturday, Sept. 28, 1861

While Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant commands his troops from headquarters at Cairo, at the southern tip of Illinois, Julia Dent Grant and the four Grant children remain in the family home, a rented brick house in hilly Galena, in northwestern Illinois. Nearly 400 miles separate husband and father from wife and children. Always uncomfortable when separated from his family, Ulysses writes Julia almost daily, urging her to join him and bring the children. Afflicted with “much timidity” about moving nearer the combat zone, Julia will demur until early November.