ON THIS DAY: Tuesday, March 11, 1862

Back in the Saddle

Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s immediate superior, is a desk jockey who soldiers by the book (which he wrote) and has never met a bold idea that didn’t scare him. A few days ago, he removed Grant from command of an important expedition up the Tennessee. The reasons had as much to do with Halleck’s personal ambitions and jealousies as a breakdown in communication (which was not Grant’s fault).

Today, however, Grant has learned that Halleck will be sending him more troops for the Tennessee River expedition and that Grant should "be ready...to take the general command." Grant's time in purgatory is over.

(Grant is pictured above, on top and looking rather tired, as a newly minted major general, and below, in idealized form.)

At first, Grant, who is still upset and confused, considers refusing the restoration to command, but before the day is over he is issuing orders and writing to Julia, “Soon more troops will join us, then I will go in command of the whole.”

He gives Julia no further explanation of his strange removal, then restoration, because he himself has yet to understand it. Years later, however, he will write in his memoirs that it was Halleck’s “own reports that had created all the trouble.”

The troubles began with Halleck’s desire to take overall command of western forces instead of dividing them, awkwardly, with Brig. Gen. Don Carlos Buell. Halleck based his appeal to Washington on his claim of the Fort Donelson victory, although the credit properly belonged to Grant. When a disloyal telegrapher disrupted communications between Grant and Halleck, the latter used the situation to remove Grant from command of the Tennessee River expedition.

On March 11, however, President Lincoln formally issues his General War Order No. 3. In the West, departments are consolidated under Halleck, just as he wished. In the East, Maj. Gen. George George B. McClellan is relieved of overall command of Union forces, ostensibly so the slow-footed McClellan can concentrate his energies on moving the Army of the Potomac against the Confederate capital of Richmond. For the time being, no general-in-chief is appointed. In western Virginia, a new Mountain Department is created under the problematical but politically powerful John Charles Fremont.

So Halleck has what he wanted and, moreover, President Lincoln is asking for proof of Grant’s alleged dereliction of duty (of which there is none). That could be embarrassing--to Halleck--so he folds his cards and moves on. Thus, Grant regains the position that never should have been taken away from him. And once again we learn how politics, jealousy, and personal ambition are so often part of the story in the conduct of war.

ELSEWHERE IN THE CIVIL WAR: Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, refuses to accept the reports of Generals Floyd and Pillow, who cravenly fled Fort Donelson before its surrender. They are relieved from duty, as well they should be.

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: Tuesday, March 4, 1862

“Why do you not obey?”

As ordered by Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant today moved some of his forces from Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River to Fort Henry on the Tennessee River, preparatory to a major thrust southward. Grant expects to slice through western Tennessee as far as northern Mississippi.

Then came the shock: a blunt telegram from Halleck relieving Grant from command of the expedition, placing one of Grant’s division commanders—Charles F. Smith (pictured here)—in charge of it instead, while leaving Grant at Fort Henry. The terse telegram concludes, “Why do you not obey my orders to report strength and positions of your command?”

Years later, in his typically understated manner, Grant recalled, “I was surprised.” Grant had been reporting regularly, but neither his reports nor all of Halleck’s messages had reached their destinations. Later it would be discovered that a disloyal telegraph operator had blocked some communications before fleeing south.

Grant is stunned, although he assures Halleck he would obey. General Smith, to whom Grant turned over command, is dumbfounded by Halleck’s order as well. The order will be followed by days of baseless rebukes of Grant by Halleck, with Grant bewildered and heartbroken.

Grant’s shabby treatment was instigated by Halleck in the course of pursuing his own advancement. It is likely he exploited the communication breakdown, not only from frustration at Grant’s seeming disobedience, but from jealousy over his sudden fame and promotion because of the Fort Donelson success. Halleck gave Grant little credit for the achievement and even claimed it as his own, in hopes for expanding his command.

However, the situation will resolve itself, and soon.

IN OTHER NEWS: The United States Senate confirms Tennessee’s Andrew Johnson—the only southern U.S. senator not to resign in favor of the Confederacy—as military governor of Tennessee. Although eastern Tennessee is still in Confederate hands, most of middle and western Tennessee has fallen to the Union—and the Confederacy’s so-called “Kentucky line”—its east-west defensive cordon across southern Kentucky—has evaloprated.

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, March 1, 1862

“One of the greatest men of the age”

From St. Louis, Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, commander of the department of the Missouri and Grant’s superior, sends Grant orders to move back to Fort Henry. Grant is ordered to prepare an expedition against the Confederates by moving up the Tennessee River. Grant will receive these orders tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Grant keeps busy at Fort Donelson with housekeeping duties. One dispatch goes to Halleck’s assistant adjutant general in St. Louis. Interestingly, it remarks, “I have informed the Gen. Comdg. Dept. generally through the chief of staff, every day since leaving Cairo of my wants [and] what information was obtained of movements of the enemy….” This remark will achieve significance with a couple of days.

Grant emphatically reiterates his needs: he now has a “very weak force,” debilitated by loss in battle, sickness, and lack of supplies.

Grant also writes Julia, now in Covington, Kentucky, enclosing $700 and promising to send a $100 a month “for your support,” to be followed in time by $400 a month. Grant wants Julia to save as much as she can so when the war ends they will have “a few hundred dollars at least independent of anybody."

Always mindful of his family, he asks Julia to tell his “dear children” that “their pa thinks of them every day notwithstanding he has so much else to think about.”

He mentions the weak condition of his army and his lack of supplies, but adds, “Not that I have any fault to find with Gen. Halleck. On the contrary, I regard him as one of the greatest men of the age.” Soon, Grant will have reason to revise his opinion.

ELSEWHERE IN THE CIVIL WAR: Confederates in the Western Theater are frantically rearranging their scanty number of troops to prepare for Union attacks, which they anticipate—correctly—will take place along the Mississippi and Tennessee rivers. Beauregard is concentrating his troops at Columbus, Kentucky, and Island No.10, both on the Mississippi, and Johnston is moving from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, to Corinth, Mississippi.

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. 23, 1862

Nashville is doomed

The streets of the Confederate capital of Tennessee are filled with rushing soldiers, men, and wagons, struggling to escape the city as Federal soldiers and gunboats approach.

Losing Nashville will be a severe blow to the Confederacy, for it is the breakaway nation’s main supply depot and rail center in the Western Theater. The Confederacy’s eight largest city, it is also an important industrial center and one the agrarian South can ill afford to lose.

With Grant’s capture of Fort Donelson, downriver from Nashville on the Cumberland, the city can no longer be defended. Grant has punched a hole through the center of the Confederacy’s so-called “Kentucky Line”—once a nearly straight line of defiance, running from Arkansas to the Appalachians.

Now Don Carlos Buell’s Army of the Ohio is descending on Nashville from the North. Federal gunboats are cruising the Cumberland. Grant’s victorious army is waiting ominously at Fort Donelson, where it captured 15,000 Rebel soldiers, and Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston’s diminished army is split into two wings—one at Columbus, Kentucky, on the Mississippi River, the other at Nashville, but scrambling fast to get out.

For reasons having to do more with army politics than winning the war, Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck has denied Grant’s plan to advance on Nashville himself. But with a cunning and a determination that belie his quiet, self-effacing manner, Grant comes up with a work-around.

Imbued with the confident authority that comes from success in battle (and promotion to major general), he ignores department lines and orders two of Brigadier General Buell’s divisions, now near Paducah and separated from Buell, to advance on Nashville. These divisions had been ordered west to aid Grant’s attack on Fort Donelson, but had arrived too late. Grant co-opts them without asking Buell’s permission.

Buell will arrive in Nashville the day after tomorrow to discover that Grant has beaten him to the punch—using Buell’s own men. However, Grant is content to let Buell take the limelight for entering Nashville, so long as the point is won for the Union. Now Grant hopes to make an advance of his own.

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. 22, 1862

Letters home

Capt. Emerson Opdycke [pictured] of the 41^st Ohio has a headache. Until yesterday, Opdycke’s regiments and others in Hazen’s Brigade were in steamboats “going up and down the [Cumberland] river,” killing time while awaiting orders. They had arrived too late to participate in the battle of Fort Donelson. Finally coming to rest at Paducah, Opdycke rushes off the boat and into a photographer’s studio.

The captain’s wife, Lucy, has been pestering him for a picture, so a peevish Opdycke spends a frustrating morning at the studio trying to get a good one taken. The best he can get “is so outrageous, I shall have a notion to pitch it into the Ohio [River]; I would do so, only I know I shall never have any peace until you have a picture of some kind.”

Because of all the fussing in the studio, Opdycke returns to his boat with a headache that “came near to sending me to bed.” By evening, he feels better about the picture, so he turns to fretting about something else. “I am sick of doing nothing, while others are doing so much. Our arms are winning glorious triumphs, which are but the beginning of the end of the rebellion,” he concludes, fearing he will lose out on the action.

Others are writing as well. Near Fort Donelson, Pvt. Andrew Altman of the 68^th Ohio uses his knapsack as a writing desk (“It is a poor place for to wright”). He tells a younger brother, Isaac, “You must not cut up” in school and asks him to “tell all the scholars at school that I think of them every day and hope they may do well.”

In Cincinnati, Lt. Col. Rutherford B. Hayes is enjoying a final day or two of furlough at home. He writes his mother that the “recent victories [meaning Grant’s triumphs at Forts Henry and Donelson] convince everyone that the Rebellion can be conquered. Most people anticipate a speedy end of the war.”

This evening. Grant himself writes his wife, Julia, to tell he has just learned he is being promoted to major general. “There is but little doubt but that Fort Donelson was the hardest fought battle on the continent. I was extremely lucky to be the commanding officer.

“I have no doubt but you have read of Fort Donelson until you have grown tired of the name so I shall write you no more of the subject. Hope to make a new subject soon.”

And he would.

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: Thursday, Feb. 20, 1862

Itching for battle

Generals Grant, McClernand, and Wallace spend the day visiting Clarksville, Tennessee, which General Smith’s division has just occupied on Grant's behalf. This widens the notch Union forces have carved in northwestern Tenessee with the Forts Henry and Donelson campaign.

Clarksville, McClernand wrote his wife, is a “beautiful village or town of 5 or 6000 inhabitants,” but almost completely deserted by its white residents. “We marched through the streets but met no welcome except from the negros,” the general wrote.

Clarksville is strategically located on the Cumberland River, part-way between Fort Donelson and Nashville, the Tennessee capital. Confederate forces have withdrawn from Nashville, so Foote’s gunboats and Grant’s infantry could easily capture the city—if Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, Grant’s superior, hadn’t forbidden it. Now Grant is forced to sit still and think about what he might do next.

ELSEWHERE IN THE CIVIL WAR: The 48^th Ohio, which had spent months waiting impatiently at Camp Chase while it slowly filled its ranks, has finally been ordered into the war zone and today arrives in Paducah, Kentucky. The 48th had traveled from Cincinnati by steamboat, an overnight trip. The regiment will remain in Paducah for more than two weeks, most of the time training without weapons—a source of great dissatisfaction for the men. They want to see action. After the war, a regimental historian will write, “The general opinion of the rank and file seemed to be, ‘The war will be over before we can get into it.’ Alas! How little any of us dreamed of what was to come.”

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: Tuesday, Feb. 18, 1862

The guns “cracked as fast as popcorn”

Pvt. Andrew Altman, a farm boy from Henry County, Ohio, and a member of the 68^th Ohio, has been having the time of his life in the army, compared with what must have been a threadbare existence on a small farm in northwestern Ohio. At Camp Chase in Columbus, he reveled in the abundant food and ample clothing provided by the army. And then there was the excitement of going to war for his country and the possibility of “shootin’ a rebel.”

A few days ago,, the 68^th had been rushed from Camp Chase to Halleck’s Western Department and now Altman and his regiment find themselves at Fort Donelson, if only in a support role. The 68^th sees no action in this battle and takes no casualties, but, writing home today and four days later, Altman reports he had a front-row seat from which to view the battle (Pictured above.). “We were in sight all the time and the canon ball came torde us and some of the boys dug it out of the ground. There is dead men a laying a round here yet over the ground.”

Ohio is amply represented Fort Donelson by its son, Brig. Gen.Ulysses S. Grant, but of the estimated 24,090 Union infantrymen present, only about 2,190 are Ohioans, distributed among four regiments. (Most of Grant’s army comes from Illinois.) Of the battle’s approximately 2,600 casualties (killed, wounded, or missing), only 19 are Ohioans. Ohio’s sacrifice will soon enough, however.

In the meantime, Ohioans like Altman are excitedly writing to tell their families what they saw. “The 58^th [Ohio regiment] charged bayonets on [the Confederates] and you ought to a seen them run over the [breastworks]. They went like deer,” wrote a proud Altman.

Four days later, he wrote his father, “I would liked if you had been here when the fight commenced. The guns cracked gust as fast as though you would put pop corn in [the] ovin.” Having had time to ponder what he has seen, Altman now mixes a bit of bravado with stoicism. “Oh if I ever get home, I would feel like going a gain. If it is my lot to be shot, so it be and if not so mutch the better.”

Elsewhere in the vicinity of Fort Donelson, General Grant continues with the tedious follow-up work of battle. Perhaps the most dramatic incident of the day occurs when some Union soldiers gather around the jail in the nearby town of Dover, angry over what looks, at first glance, as if several of their fellows had been bound and gagged, then shot. The rumor spreads throughout the area, gathering so much force that it alarms Confederate General Simon B. Buckner. He quickly sends a message to General Grant, warning that fears are mounting that angry Union soldiers are threatening revenge to their Confederate prisoners.

The situation at the jail is investigated quickly. It clearly appears that the four bodies there were NOT tied and, in fact, had been laid out for burial. They were fully clothed, their wounds bandaged, and showed no signs of abuse. They simply were combat fatalities whose fellow soldiers had placed the bodies in the jail to shelter them. End of story.

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. 15, 1862

Breakout!

It is about 5 o’clock on a cold February morning, with most of Grant’s shivering troops arrayed outside Fort Donelson and trying to sleep, when suddenly shots ring out on the Confederate left. Confederates are pouring from the fort to attack Union Brig. Gen. John McClernand’s division, which forms the right side of the encircling Union army. Confederate Brig. Gen. Gideon Pillow’s division, bolstered by a second division, is trying to fight its way out and escape in the direction of Nashville.

Pillow’s men succeed in fighting their way through the surprised Union soldiers, but then comes another surprise. Brig. Gen. John B. Floyd, Fort Donelson’s commander and Pillow’s senior, orders the troops to return to the fort!

The escape was planned last night by Pillow, Floyd, and Fort Donelson’s third in command, Brig. Gen. Simon B. Buckner—the only one of the three generals who knew what he was doing. Although the fort had beaten off yesterday’s gunboat attack, other gunboat attacks were feared and so was the Union army, of unknown size, that was massing outside the breastworks. The Confederates did not feel they could withstand either a massive attack or a long siege.

Grant had gone downriver to meet with Flag Officer Foote (who had been wounded and could not come to Grant). Now Grant came rushing back. He ordered Brig. Gen. Charles F. Smith to attack the Confederate right while McClernand’s division, bolstered by a newly arrived third division led by Brig. Gen. Lew Wallace, plugged the gap Pillow had opened. And so the Confederates’ escape hatch was closed.

(Wallace, who would become more famous for writing Ben Hur than for his generalship, had been left behind at Fort Henry, but now a worried Grant summoned him and gave him 11 infantry regiments and a battery of light artillery. Among Wallace’s regiments were the 58^th, 68^th, and 76^th Ohio who would, however, see only limited action in this fight).

This evening sees another meeting of the three Confederate generals and they agree to surrender the fort. Floyd, an incompetent “political general” and Pillow, a West Point graduate of no great ability, are senior to Buckner. Floyd, Buchanan’s secretary of war, fears treason charges if he’s caught, and Pillow just wants to escape. They agree to slip away by themselves and leave Buckner holding the bag, along with most of their troops. Somehow, the perpetrators of the South’s “Lost Cause” mythology forget to mention this spineless behavior by their generals.

ELSEWHERE ON THE BATTLEFIELD: While the soldiers rest and the Confederate generals confer, Mary Alice Bickerdyke, gratefully called “Mother” by the soldiers, roams the battlefield, ministering to the wounded and making sure no one is left behind. Born in Ohio, later an Indianan, Mother Bickerdyke is a self-appointed angel of mercy who irritates stuffed-shirt officers but is idolized by the soldiers.

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: Tuesday, Feb. 11, 1862

A “convocation,” not a council

In a “council of war” aboard the steamboat New Uncle Sam, docked at Fort Henry in northwestern Tennessee, Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant sits and smokes silently, “but never said a word,” one of the generals—Lew Wallace (right)—later recalled of the meeting, called to plan the attack on Fort Donelson. “In all probability he was framing the orders of march which were issued that night,” sniffed Wallace, who considered the meeting “a convocation” and not a traditional council, wherein give-and-take was expected.

If General Wallace—better known today for writing Ben Hur than for his generalship—was put out by what he seemed to think was a sham council of war (to be followed in a few weeks by a serious issue between Wallace and Grant), he nonetheless sketched an accurate word picture of Grant the man. “From the first his silence was remarkable,” Wallace wrote of Grant. “He knew how to keep his temper. In battle, as in camp, he went about quietly, speaking in a conversational tone; yet he appeared to see everything that went on , and was always intent on business.”

The quiet solemnity of this man who seemed impossible to ruffle and yet was a great noticer of everything around him would be remarked upon again and again by others. To Wallace, Grant seemed supremely inner-directed, issuing orders with calm confidence and so little discussion thatt “his aides were little more than messengers.” There would be occasions as the war progressed when Grant would be more consultative, but Wallace’s description of Grant’s appearance would remain unchanged: “In dress he was plain, even negligent; in partial amendment of that his horse was always a good one and well kept.”

ELSEWHERE IN THE CIVIL WAR:

At home on furlough in Ohio since February 4, Lt. Col. Rutherford B. Hayes finally emerges to pay a visit in Columbus to visit his brother-in-law. In Washington, President Lincoln listens to a stenographic report of testimony given in the case of Gen. Charles S. Stone of Massachusetts, suspected of treason in connection with the debacle at Balls Bluff last October. Sen. Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio, chairman of the Committee on the Conduct of the War, is one of the bloodhounds dogging General Stone; War Secretary Edwin M. Stanton, also of Ohio, is another. However, most of Lincoln’s day is devoted to his deathly ill son, Willie, and son Tad, now ill as well. The White House reception usually held on Tuesdays is cancelled for this reason.

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: Friday, Feb. 7, 1862

The Day After

There is little time for Grant to savor the capture of Fort Henry (pictured above: Fort Henry the day after its surrender). After looking over Fort Henry, Grant and his staff, escorted by some cavalry, reconnoiters his next target, Fort Donelson. He approaches within a mile, scopes out the surrounding terrain, thinks about the fort’s commanders (of whom he had a low opinion), and tells his staff he expects no serious opposition if they move quickly.

Fort Henry yielded a considerable harvest of stores, so Grant gives orders for its disposition and for the confinement of approximately 100 Confederate prisoners, including General Tilghman

Fresh from their capture of Fort Henry, Union gunboats go chugging up (south) on the Tennessee River, deep into enemy territory, to see what trouble they can cause the Confederacy.

Meanwhile, Grant’s telegraphed declaration that he will take Fort Donelson next hangs in the air, awaiting Halleck’s reply. Will the ever-cautious Halleck agree or disapprove before Grant begins his advance tomorrow?

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