ON THIS DAY: Sunday, March 2, 1862

What They Are Doing Now

Ulysses S. Grant, now officially a major general because of his triumphs at Fort Donelson, is busy assembling his forces at Fort Henry. From St. Louis, Maj. Gen. Halleck has ordered an advance up the Tennessee River. Orders go out to two of Grant's division commanders, Generals McClernand and Smith, and messages about logistical matters go to Brig. Gen. Sherman, at Cairo, and Flag Officer Foote, at Fort Donelson. Although Grant’s forces have been weakened by sickness, battle casualties, and lack of supplies, and even though he is sick himself with a severe cold that “nearly destroys my energy” (pneumonia?), the Ohio-born commander uncomplainingly goes about following Halleck’s orders.

After three weeks’ home leave, Lt. Col. Rutherford B. Hayes is getting re-accustomed to army life with the 23^rd Ohio in winter quarters, Fayetteville, western Virginia. He is enjoying (and probably sharing) the food he brought from home in his haversack. And he is thinking about his beloved wife, Lucy, to whom he wrote yesterday: “Darling, you will be pleased to know, and so I tell you, I never loved you more than I do as I think of you on my late visit, and I never admired you so much.”

At 10 o’clock this evening, Capt. Marcus Spiegel of the 67^th Ohio is writing “My dear dear wife and beloved children,” telling her “it would make you feel good” to see Marcus skillfully leading his men while practicing skirmishing. Spiegel is stationed near the Paw Paw Tunnel, a 3,000-foot brick-lined portion of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. The canal runs along the Potomac River, which divides Maryland and western Virginia.

Sgt. Thomas F. Galwey of the 8^th Ohio, rusticating elsewhere in western Virginia, is enjoying an unusual treat: “two delightful months” on recruiting duty at Columbus, Ohio—a posting that undoubtedly afforded opportunities for returns home in Cleveland.

In Nashville, Col. William B. Hazen, commander pro tem of Buell’s19^th Brigade, has a challenge in his quest to turn raw volunteers into the best soldiers in the army. It is the 9^th Indiana, newly arrived from western Virginia and assigned to Hazen’s tender mercies. Expecting more from the regiment’s previous commander, Hazen is disgusted to find that not only is the regiment “far behind the others, but seems fixed in many vicious habits, acquired…in western Virginia.” Hazen is up to task, however: soon, “some severity” is being dispensed, for which a few officers will hold a grudge long after the war.

Sgt. Oscar D. Ladley is enduring the cold winter winds sweeping the fortifications Union volunteers had built atop Cheat Mountain in western Virginia. Col. Robert H. Milroy commands the fort. It is Milroy who is responsible for the 9^th Indiana’s sloppy habits, which so dismayed Colonel Hazen.

Pvt. Andrew Altman of the 68^th Ohio remains camped near Fort Donelson, Tennessee, wondering where he will be sent next.

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: Wednesday, Feb. 19, 1862

Stuck

Grant’s campaign for Forts Henry and Donelson in Tennessee is a triumph, the result of his aggressiveness. Aggressiveness is an all-too-rare commodity among Lincoln’s generals at this early stage in the war.

For some time, Grant’s buggy-eyed superior, Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, had been sitting at his headquarters in St. Louis, as immobile as a frog on a lily-pad during a sunny day. But while Halleck temporized, Grant was hatching plans and training his soldiers. He was ready to take off in a flash when President Lincoln ordered that armies advance. Hence, the first great Union victories of the war, an ecstatic North, and the sudden fame of the previously unknown Grant.

Today, while his army is processing 15,000 prisoners and cleaning up the mess after the Fort Donelson battle, Grant orders another advance—this by Brig. Gen. Charles F. Smith’s division. Smith is told to move east and take possession of the abandoned Confederate base at Clarksville, about half-way up the Cumberland River to Nashville.

Once again, without orders or even a congratulatory note from Halleck about Fort Donelson, Grant is thinking ahead. Clearly, Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston (commander of the Confederacy’s Western Department) is vulnerable. With the loss of Forts Henry and Donelson, the center of his so-called “Kentucky line” has collapsed under Grant’s assault. His wings invite attack.

Now Grant wants to advance against Nashville, Tennessee’s capital and a strategic and logistical center for the western Confederacy. He writes Halleck’s chief of staff that Nashville would be “an easy conquest.” But Halleck is engaged in a struggle with Washington to gain control over Brig. Gen Don Carlos Buell, with whom he now divides command of the Western Theater. He thinks Grant’s advance might imperil that.

Grant is stunned when Halleck vetoes the Ohioan’s plan to take Nashville. Ironically, Halleck not only fails to gain control over Buell, but Buell snatches Nashville out from under Halleck’s nose.

To the end of his days, Grant believed he could have ended the war in 1862 if he had been allowed to advance, destroy the armies of Johnston, and capture the western Confederacy. Grant’s reasons? He wanted to fight and believed he could win. Halleck’s reasons? His desire to advance his career.

But while Halleck's wartime career will rise and fall, Grant's--like the man--will only advance.

ELSEWHERE IN THE CIVIL WAR: Capt. Marcus Spiegel of the 67^th Ohio, now in western Virginia, writes his cousin, Moses Joseph of Uniontown, Ohio, that a general had told Spiegel he “was the best officer he had met since he took this command.” And he writes “My dear and good wife” that the war will improve him in two ways: First, he apparently has learned to “eat anything;” Second, “I will not be half as much a ‘complainer.’”

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: Saturday, Feb. 8, 1862

“Perfectly locked in”

Having captured Fort Henry on the Tennesssee River, today is the day Grant (right) intends to start his advance on Fort Donelson, 12 miles away on the nearby Cumberland River. The idea is to capture it before the Confederates have time send in reinforcements, but the weather is not cooperating. Grant writes Halleck’s chief of staff, “At present we are perfectly locked in by high water and bad roads and prevented from acting offensively as I should like to do.”

There is also the question of whether Halleck approves of Grant’s Donelson venture. Halleck’s original orders to Grant said nothing about Donelson, telling him only to “take and hold” Fort Henry. Nor, until two days ago, had Grant ever indicated—in telegraphic and written communication—any intention to do otherwise.

Herein lies one of the small mysteries of the Civil War, with hints of personality differences peeping through. Halleck is the quintessential desk soldier—known throughout the army as “Old Brains,” a man who knows everything there is to know about warfare but lacks the urge to actually conduct it. He is cranky, overly cautious, and a micro-manager. Grant’s quiet façade conceals a relentless aggressiveness that will, in time, win this war, but at the moment manifests itself in a determination to strike and strike again at the enemy.

It looks as if President Lincoln’s “General Order Number 1” has given the impatient Grant license to charge ahead. Since the beginning of this campaign, the tone of his wires to Halleck has been assertive, almost defiant, as if to dare Halleck to try to stop him.

Halleck is not only cautious, however, he is reluctant to give Grant the credit he is due. He wires Grant neither congratulations for Fort Henry nor explicit permission to move on Fort Donelson. Years later, Grant will write, “General Halleck did not approve or disapprove of my going to Fort Donelson. He said nothing whatever to me on the subject.”

While the published records suggests this is technically true, the records also indicate Halleck was quite aware of the Donelson move and even ordered troops to support it. But his caution kept him from committing himself to Grant in writing and his jealousy prevented sending of congratulations or even encouragement.

In his excellent study of Grant and Lee (Grant and Lee: A Study in Personality and Generalship), British Maj. Gen. J. F. C. Fuller wrote in 1957 that “the supreme value of military history is to be sought in the personalities of the generals who shaped them. At base, seven-eighths of the history of war is psychological.” That was certainly true in the cases of Grant and Halleck.

ELSEWHERE IN THE CIVIL WAR:

At this early stage of the war, Brig. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside of Rhode Island is doing well, belying—so far—history’s poor opinion of him. In October 1861, Burnside got the go-ahead for his plan to organize a special division of troops to attack the Confederacy along the Atlantic coast. Aboard a fleet of 65 transports, escorted by warships, Burnside entered North Carolina’s Pamlico Sound and yesterday landed 7,500 troops on Roanoke Island. Today he defeated a Confederate force and took, 25,000 prisoners as well as inflicting 150 other casualties while suffering fewer than 300 himself. What was a glorious start to a campaign that could eventually take the Confederate capital of Richmond is largely forgotten—because it did no such thing.

As if President Abraham Lincoln didn’t have enough to worry about, he now agonizes over son Willie, deathly sick with typhoid. But the work of the war must go on. The President queries his obstinate, going-nowhere general in chief, George B. McClellan: “Have you any farther news from the West [regarding efforts to get Buell and Halleck to cooperate] [McClellan’s answer: No] ; “Have you determined, as yet, upon the contemplated movement we last talked of?] [Mac asks to until Monday “to give a final opinion”]

From western Virginia, Capt. Marcus Spiegel of the 67^th Ohio writes Caroline, his “Beloved Wife!”: “Tell me every little thing; you do not know how much it interests me to hear from you everything that happens…” It is the typical plea from the lonely soldier accompanied by the not-untypical reassurances to the worried wife: “Keep up spirit my love, all will be right. I will come out of this with honor and money.” Marcus closes, “Good by my sweet, my good, my dear little Cary, may God bless you and keep you in good health so that you may enjoy a many, many pleasant time in the arms and on the breast of you true and ever loving, Marcus….”

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: Monday, Jan. 27, 1862

“I love you more than ever!”

Since driving out the Federals two weeks ago, Stonewall Jackson’s Confederates have occupied Romney, a key point near the eastern edge of Unionist western Virginia. The Feds want Romney back. and the 67^th Ohio is among the forces rushed from Camp Chase in Columbus, Ohio, to western Virginia to deal with Jackson. Capt. Marcus Spiegel is a company commander in the 67^th.

As usual in the army, however, it’s hurry up and wait. Tonight, Spiegel and 67^th find themselves camped near New Creek, Virginia, and not doing much. Romney is less than 20 miles away, but Romney will be liberated without the help of the 67^th, and Spiegel’s men will not see action for another month.

Captain Spiegel uses the time to write “My dear and much beloved Wife and Children!” and tell them “I am hale and hearty and God only knows that I love you more than ever!” (A German immigrant, he has not adopted the more laconic speech of his fellow Midwesterners.) Spiegel relates the regiment’s peripatetic existence since leaving Columbus January 19^th. Flooding of the Ohio River prevented the regiment from setting up camp the first night of its journey. Instead, the soldiers had to spend the night in dirty freight and cattle cars.

The next night, Spiegel’s men had hardly escaped from the inexorable train cars and set up their tents beside the track when the 67^th’s colonel came along and ordered them move to another spot. The next day the men reboarded the train to spend 26 straight hours riding in the filthy cars with only one two-hour break. Finally, last Saturday, the men were allowed off the train and were given a hearty breakfast before setting up their tents on a branch of the Potomac River.

All this activity has been demanding. “I never in my life have been kept as busy and constantly engaged. No place to write and no rest if I had [a] place, for [listening to] thousands of questions of the Boys.” The use of the word “boys” is significant. Many of the best commanders take a fatherly interest in their men, who feel warmest toward officers who take a nurturing interest in them.

Spiegel adds a postscript to this letter to Caroline: “My good little wife it is just 2 o’clock….Everybody sleeps. I suppose you do. Pleasant dreams and 1000 kisses to you and the children from your ever true Marcus….”

ELSEWHERE IN THE CIVIL WAR: President Abraham Lincoln is fed up to his eyeteeth with his major generals’ lack of aggressiveness. In the east, Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, general in chief and commander of the Army of the Potomac, has done except claim an advance on Confederate defenses at Manassas was high risk; his claims of enemy force were later learned to be wildly inaccurate. In Kentucky, Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell, commander of the Army of the Ohio, has openly admitted he opposes Lincoln’s wish for an advance on eastern Tennessee. Further west, Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck seems unable to figure out how to work in concert with Buell (and, unbeknownst to Lincoln, he has just turned down Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s proposal for an advance. Today, Lincoln finally acts like the commander in chief. He issued General War Order No. 1, demanding—not asking—that “the 22^nd of February 1862 be the day for a general movement of the Land and Naval forces of the United States against the insurgent forces.”

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: Friday, Jan. 3, 1862

“An honest-looking contraband”

“Charles”—his only name, as if to symbolize how slavery diminishes a man—arrived today, with ten others runaway slaves, at Camp Union in Fayetteville, western Virginia. He had walked more than 50 miles to escape his master in Confederate territory. Lt. Col. Rutherford B. Hayes of the 23^rd Ohio looked Charles over and decided he is “an honest-looking contraband—six feet high, stout-built, thirty-six years old.” (A different group of escaped slaves is shown here.)

An intelligent and observant man, Charles brings a trove of information about the Confederate enemy along with some insights into the plight of slaves. Charles had lost his wife five years ago when their owner, a farmer near the town of Union in western Virginia, ”sold [her] South.” Slaves were property, after all, and owners could treat them like farm livestock, breaking up families with no concern for their feelings.

Slavery’s apologists like to claim how slaves are happy with their lot. Apparently not: Southerners at this time are trying to scare slaves out of escaping by telling them (Hayes recorded) that “Yankees cut off the arms of some negroes to make them worthless and sell the rest in Cuba for twenty-five hundred dollars each to pay [the] cost of the war.”

Charles also tells Hayes how Confederate authorities exploit inequality among the whites. They take the horses of poor people but not the rich, give sons of rich men discharges from military service, and force poor people to mount patrols to keep rich people’s slaves from running away.

When the fleeing Charles and his party were halted by Federal picket guards, they feared they would be mistreated. However, a blue-clad soldier lowered his gun and said to the other soldiers, “Boys, these are some of our colored friends” telling the blacks ‘come on, not to be afraid,’ that they were safe.

Charles exclaimed to Hayes, “Oh, I never felt so in my life, I could cry, I was so full of joy. And…all [the soldiers] I have seen [have been] so friendly—such perfect gentlemen, just as we hoped you were, but not as they told us you were.”

ELSEWHERE: From Camp Chase in Columbus, where the 67^th Ohio Volunteer infantry is training, Marcus M. Spiegel, captain of Company C, writes his wife with enthusiasm for his new life. “The new colonel is very favorably disposed to me and I think would do anything to please me,” he tells her with relish, adding, “I drilled the boys all day & am getting to be quite a soldier. My men love me & are willing to swear by me.”

Captain Spiegel is falling in love.

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, Dec. 29, 1861

Love Letter

At Camp Chase outside Columbus today, a man who is having one love affair and beginning another writes his wife, Caroline, at their home in Millersburg, Ohio. The writer is Marcus M. Spiegel, a man passionately in love with Caroline, who he had met and married eight years earlier. But Spiegel (pictured here), who is captain of Company C in the newly formed 67^th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, is also falling in love with army life.

“My dear & much beloved wife and children!” Spiegel practically shouts at the beginning of his letter (For clarity, most of the spelling and syntax in these excerpts have been changed.). “Here we have barracks large and commodious….My quarters are prepared with [a] bunk also & [are] as warm as can be….If I could only see you and the children once a day, I would feel as happy as I could wish.

“While I write you I can hear 2 bands playing and the drummers beating. This is a most magnificent day and the guard mounting& dress parade today [were] splendid.”

Spiegel ends by urging his wife not to worry, a soldier’s typical words that are typically ignored. “Farewell, my loves, & remember your ever-loving husband & father,” he concludes.

Spiegel is a Jew in an age of open anti-Semitism, although his winning personality seems to have spared him much of the usual hostility. Still, the feeling is there, if not always spoken. Moreover, Spiegel’s work as a wholesale merchant in Holmes County had not spared him “pecuniary troubles…for the last 3 years.” So the army offers Spiegel a new opportunity to achieve success and esteem.

Eventually, Spiegel’s new love affair will affect his first one. Actions—especially those in war—have consequences.

Col. Marcus Spiegel’s picture appears here through the generosity of his great-great granddaughter, Jean Powers Soman. Colonel and Caroline Spiegel’s story is told in full in A Jewish Colonel in the Civil War, the colonel’s letters edited by Mrs. Soman and Frank L. Byrne.

OTHER OHIOANS TODAY: From Camp Union, Fayetteville, western Virginia, Lt. Col. Rutherford B. Hayes: of the 23^rd Ohio bombards Lucy with rhetorical questions about their newborn son, not yet named, “Does the ‘face of the boy’ indicate the heart of the boy’? Do you love him as much as the others? Do you feel sorry the fourth [son] was not a daughter?” We do not know how Lucy answered, but we can guess.

Also from Camp Union, Col. Eliakim Scammon’s expedition of 5 companies—about half a regiment—marches 25 miles south from Fayetteville to Raleigh (now Beckley), hoping to surprise a camp of sick Confederates further down the road. So far, the Federals have met no opposition nor surprised any Confederates. So it goes.

From Camp Jefferson in Kentucky, Robert Caldwell of the 21^st Ohio, Company I, cheerily writes his mother in Elmore, Ohio, that “We live top top.” The dutiful son assures his mother that his tent and the area around it “are thoroughly policed every morning” for cleanliness and that his company has a wonderful cook, a Mr. Barnes. Caldwell claims the company cook is skillful enough to work in a restaurant, making him a rarity among army cooks.

Another member of the 21^st Ohio is less chipper. Alfred D. Searles, one of two brothers from Fulton County, Ohio, who are enrolled in Company H, complains to his family, “Here in camp…they is so many men and they hurried here by the thousands and the tens of thousands all expecting to be led on to battle and now within a few miles of the enemy we are stopped and commanded to lay here for near 3 months and not a man of us even to our colonels can solve the mystery or even guess what the meaning may be.” Innocent young men like Searles cannot guess what is coming. Before the war is over, the 21^st will have seen all the combat it could ever want, and more.

Creating the mystery in Searles’ mind is Brig. Gen. Don Carlos Buell, commander of the Army of the Ohio. Washington is urging Buell to action, but the slow, stubborn general is secretly waiting for spring so he can attack Nashville and East Tennessee on his own schedule and in his own way. Buell does not realize he has less than a year to prove himself.

ELSEWHERE IN THE CIVIL WAR: Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant has returned from inspecting the troops under his command in the District of Cairo. Grant ordered some tweaking of troop locations, found many loyalist refugees living in a cave, and gathered intelligence about the number and disposition of Confederates in western Kentucky. Grant informs Union command in St. Louis that he also has a spy in Columbus, Kentucky, busily mapping Confederate earthworks and eavesdropping on enemy conversations.

DON'T FORGET: April 12, 2011 marks the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War. That's less than 3 1/2 years from now!

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