ON THIS DAY: Wednesday, Jan. 8, 1862

“My Dear Brother”

Three weeks have passed since Brig. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman returned to active duty following a respite at home to calm his rattled nerves. But Sherman is still agonizing over his panicked behavior in Kentucky. In a long letter his brother, Sen. John Sherman (pictured here) in Washington, Cump pours out his heart.

“I am fully conscious that in surrendering that command I confessed my inability to manage it,” he wrote. “This is mortifying but true.”

However, Sherman also describes in great detail all the problems he still believes Union forces have in Kentucky, from lack of troops and supplies to an unfriendly countryside. In doing so, he reveals a problem that will exist for much of the war: a shortage of resources for Western forces. “It is all very well for your politicians to sit and calculate what men should do, but this force in the West has been half armed….”

Washington’s concentration on the Army of the Potomac and the Eastern Theater at the expense of the Western had, of course, a great to do with the paired beliefs that the nation’s capital must be defended at all costs and that if the Confederate capital at Richmond could be seized, the Confederacy might die.

Sherman is almost in physical pain over the disgrace he believes he has brought upon the family:

What distresses me most is that you and Ellen and my children should suffer from my disgrace. Could I alone atone for it there would be some chance of endurance but I know full well hundreds and thousands who have been my friends will attribute to me the most unworthy motives, and then would adjudge against my children.

Also at Louisville I smoked too many segars & drank somewhat because of the nervous anxiety about which seemed to me beyond my control.”

The question now is whether redemption will ever be within Cump’s reach.

THE WAR ELSEWHERE: Same old, same old. Skirmishes here and there in Kentucky (no reports of casualties), Missouri (six Union men killed and 18 wounded), and western Virginia at Dry Fork, on the Cheat River), 6 Union men wounded. No Ohioans involved. And so goes another day of low-intensity combat in the first winter of the Civil War.

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, Dec. 24, 1861

“I had not the faith”

It is Christmas Eve and across the nation tens of thousands of families must face a Christmas with fathers, sons, husbands, and brothers absent. In army camps, cooks are preparing—in some cases, with limited resources—for a holiday dinner on the morrow. And, at Benton Barracks nears St. Louis, Brig. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman ponders recent events and shares his thoughts.

To his foster father, Sen. Thomas Ewing in Washington, Sherman candidly admits, “I was convinced in Kentucky that I could not guide events, that I either grossly misapprehended them or was unprepared to lead in them. To guide I had not the faith that would inspire success.” He rejects his foster father’s advice to bring a libel suit against the newspapers, preferring to remain silent. He finds no fault with the Lincoln administration’s conduct of the war, but thinks that fighting on Southern ground puts the Union at a great disadvantage.

He also tells Senator Ewing that Maj. Gen. Halleck, his superior officer, has assigned him to duty at Benton Barracks where “a large body of men” await arming and training. (Pictured above: Indiana volunteers arrive at St. Louis.) Presumably, Halleck thinks a training camp is a place where his friend Sherman will not careen out of control.

To his brother John, Cump apologizes “for the stain I may have cast on you all, of my name.” He repeats his belief that the Union is at a disadvantage for standing “in the nature of invaders,” and once again admits, “I have not the faith for a leader.” He still fears that the “House committee” (presumably the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War) “will fix on me more than my share in the Bull Run disaster.”

After explaining he is in charge of drilling and supplying 12,000 men at Benton Barracks, he concludes, “All I ask & hope for is to be allowed to remain in as much obscurity as possible till we see some …hope of ending the war….”

Cump will not get his wish.

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: Tuesday, Dec. 17, 1861

“Gloomy & Unnatural”

After a two-week home leave to soothe his jangled nerves, Brig. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman (pictured here) reports for duty at the St. Louis headquarters of Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, commander of the Union’s Department of the Missouri. Still upset over the December 11 Cincinnati Commercial article headlined “General William T. Sherman Insane,” Cump writes Ellen, “I cannot see that affairs here are materially changed in my absence” and “Matters here look gloomy & unnatural.”

Sherman still doubts his ability to command effectively: “I am not yet assigned a command and hardly know whether to push it, or take it easy, leaving Halleck time to assign me.” He also fears the outcome of the war: “If I could see any end to this war, save ruin to us all, I could occasionally feel better, but I see no hope at all.”

And yet others are laboring on his behalf. Brother John had discussed Cump during a long interview with President Lincoln and reported “the President felt kindly to him.” Ellen wrote a blistering letter to a Louisville newspaper that had copied the Commercial story and Ellen and John was able to persuade both the Louisville and Cincinnati papers to publish retractions. Brother Philemon Sherman had already written the Commecial to refute its claim, enclosing a letter from Halleck to that effect. In St. Louis, Halleck spoke reassuringly to Cump (while privately telling his wife “certainly he has acted insane”).

For a West Point-trained warrior, William Tecumseh Sherman is off to a very bad start in this war.

IN NEWS ELSEWHERE: Newspapers arriving here from abroad reveal the anger of the British public over the Trent affair. Suddenly, the U.S. Navy’s halting of the British ship to arrest two Confederate envoys doesn’t seem the brilliant idea it had at first. The New York Times editorializes hopefully that this is no more than “the work of the excited English press, and not at all the utterance of the English government.” The Times is wrong, and even it admits the reaction by English newspapers “threw Wall Street into such a paroxysm of alarm, and created so much excitement in [New York City] at large.”

Washington, we have a problem.

THE BIG PICTURE: So far, the Confederacy seems to be doing well and the Union has made progress here and there, but the situation is troubling to both. The Confederacy controls 11 states, plus significant portions of Kentucky and Missouri. And yet, there are troubling developments. The Union navy is nibbling away at the Confederacy’s coastline, with scattered toeholds Fortress Monroe in Virginia to Ships Island, Louisiana. And, thanks in large part to Ohio troops, western Virginia has effectively been wrested from Confederate control and the largest portion of Kentucky is still in Union hands. Further west, Ulysses Grant is consolidating his grip on southeastern Missouri and thinking ahead to more dramatic achievements. But in the Eastern Theater, Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan’s huge Army of the Potomac is going nowhere

ON THIS DAY: Thursday, Nov. 21, 1861

“I Am Not Myself”

Still in Louisville and still in turmoil over the Union cause there, Brig. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman (shown on right) pours out his feelings.

“I have never seen daylight” while in command in Kentucky, Sherman writes to Robert Anderson, who had relinquished the same position because of nervous strain. Sherman adds, “I am therefore disqualified to lead….I am not myself.”

To politician-brother John Sherman, Cump writes that he wishes he could “now hide myself in some obscure corner.” In a few days, he will do almost exactly that. He will be transferred out of the Department of the Ohio to the Department of the Missouri, where he will take a mundane staff position under Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck.

Fellow Ohioan Don Carlos Buell has taken over Sherman’s Kentucky command and seems headed for glory while Sherman seems destined for oblivion. But stunning reversals of fortune await both Buell and Sherman.

>>> Elsewhere, in an age of open n anti-Semitism, something unusual happens in the Confederacy. CSA Attorney General Judah P. Benjamin, a Jew, becomes the new secretary of war. Benjamin will do as well as anyone could have in an extraordinarily difficult position, but after a few months he will change to the secretary of state’s position and serve there until the end of the war.

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, Oct. 26, 1861

From his headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky, Brig. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman writes yet another worried letter, this to brother John Sherman, a member of Congress (House 1855-61 and Senate 1861-77). “My force is ridiculously small…[I] feel that I am about to be sacrificed….I tell you, and warn you of the danger. So far as my power goes, I cannot promise to prevent the enemy reaching the Ohio River at a hundred different points.”

Sherman’s nightmares will not come true. Although the Confederates hold the southern edge of Kentucky—most of which they will lose in a few months—they will make no threatening moves toward Ohio for a year—and fail then as well.

ON THIS DAY: Saturday, Oct. 5, 1861

Brig. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, second in command in Kentucky, writes his younger brother John Sherman in Ohio. John is busy recruiting troops, hopes to lead his own regiment, and believes eastern Kentucky is loyal to the Union, even if fighting will be required in the western portion of the state. Cump seems to have slid into a slough of despond. "I am afraid you are too late to save Kentucky," he writes. The loyalists seem unwilling to actually do anything on behalf of the Union, Cump complains, while secessionists are very active. "The people are all unfriendly," he claims--surely an exaggeration. "I am far from easy about the fate of Kentucky," he tells John. "I hope you will be successful in raising your regiments, but it will be too late."

In London, diplomatic recognition of the Confederate States of America is becoming a hot topic. The Post thinks it would be a good idea, while the Times seems to favor the Union. Diplomatic recognition of the CSA by the British government would go a long way toward legitimizing the Secession in the eyes of the world, and be a blow to the Union.