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When we last looked in on Captain Rafael Semmes, he was making an August rendevous with the British built steamer called "190", and assuming command of the vessel he renamed "The Alabama."
Semmes transferred six 32 pound smoothbores and an 8 inch rifle to the Alabama, and with his 24 officers serving as the crew, went in search of an actual crew to command. Semmes offered fantastic bonuses and prize shares and before long had rounded up 90 seaman, most of them English or Irish, the rest from a wide variety of backgrounds save Dixie itself.
Semmes then steamed into the North Atlantic and began attacking Northern merchant ships. In September he seized ten, in October he captured eleven. Three more had fallen to the rebel vessel in November before Semmes decided that he needed to resupply and refit in the neutral port of Martinique. They arrived on the morning of the 17th, and late that afternoon, in a coincidence, the USS San Jacinto, which had been out searching for the Alabama, also put in to the port for resupply.
Spotting the rebel raider and aware that no engagement could take place in neutral waters, the San Jacinto turned about and waited for the Alabama just outside the harbor. 150 years ago tonight, Semmes managed to slip by the San Jacinto in the darkness and headed for Galveston Bay where it hoped to disrupt the Union blockade there.
Though so far he had only attacked undefended opponents, and his crew was mercenary in makeup, word of Semmes' sea deeds spread throughout the South and he achieved a position of adulation otherwise reserved only for Generals Lee and Jackson. What added to Semmes' Robin Hoodish image was that to date, in his 25 captures, he had neither lost a man nor been forced to kill anyone. This image might have lost a bit of its luster had it been more widely known that of the Alabama's 25 victims, more than half had been "paroled" by Semmes.
The practice of a commerce raider is allow the crew and passengers of the captured ship to be brought aboard as temporary prisoners who would be dropped off at the next port of call. The captured ship was looted of whatever was useful, especially any water it carried, then sunk or burned. Semmes was too successful to keep up with the space demands, and for some captured ships there was no longer room for the crews aboard the Alabama. In these cases Semmes simply released the captured ship under what he called "ransom bond." This was a signed agreement between the captain of the captive merchant vessel and Semmes, which called for the former to pay a stipulated amount to the Confederate government "within thirty days of the conclusion of the present war."
That meant that the Union would only suffer a loss if the rebels won the war, obviously no Yankee captain was going to pay up to a government which had been put out of business. Still, these "ransom bond" victories were counted in Semmes' rising total of victims.
150 years ago today the Army of the Potomac, 113,000 strong, was intact and assembled at Falmouth, Virginia, directly across the Rappahannock River from Fredericksburg, now defended by General Jeb Stuart's cavalry, one artillery battery, but no infantry. To the north and to the south there were fords across the river, all of them usable at this time of the year. General Franklin, whose Grand Division had arrived on the 18th, asked General Burnside for permission to move up or down river and throw his men across to take the heights behind the town.
Burnside contemplated the request. He remembered his frustration and the criticism which had followed his throwing his Corps across the narrow front of the single lower bridge at Antietam. When the engineers arrived, they would be bringing material for five bridges, facilitating a broad crossing. Burnside also was concerned by what looked to him to be threatening skies. If one of his Grand Divisions crossed and this was followed immediately by heavy rain, they could wind up isolated and stranded on the opposite side of the river. And more than anything else, what Franklin proposed wasn't the plan. Burnside had a plan and he was going to stick with it, regardless of what opportunities he might have to neglect. Franklin was ordered to remain in place.
General Robert E. Lee was still uncertain as to Burnside's intentions, but when Stuart sent word that the entire Union army appeared to be gathering at Falmouth, Lee dispatched General Longstreet's Corps from Culpepper to march to Fredericksburg and occupy the heights in the rear. Lee also sent word to General Jackson at Winchester in the Valley to move his Corps to Orange Court House, 35 miles from Fredericksburg and wait for further orders.
Thus Burnside would enjoy a window of about 48 hours where had he been able to cross the Rappahannock, he would have been doing it against feeble opposition.
But the pontoons were not there. The shipment of the bridging material had been left in the hands of General in Chief Henry Halleck, who assigned the job to a subordinate who passed it on the the Army Corps of Engineers...and somewhere in the chain of command, the notion of "urgent" seems to have gotten lost. A late start, followed by the arrival of heavy rains which turned the roads into mudways, meant that the pontoons would be eight days late in arriving. The rain would also cause the river to swell and render the fords unusable for a time.
But Burnside would wait and while he waited the 40,000 men in Longstreet's Corps would arrive on the evening of the 21st and occupy the heights behind the town.
Thus, what had been the Army of the Potomac's best conceived and best executed march of the war, was about to be converted into their worst campaign and battle. The fruits of the rapid movement which had so pleased the president, were about to be tossed in the garbage. Burnside's clever plan had shown that he could think, and the Lee fooling high speed march had shown that he could move. Burnside was now showing that unfortunately, he did not seem to be able to think while on the move.
150 years ago today, another in a series of telegrams from General in Chief Henry Halleck, to the newly appointed commander of the Army of the Ohio, General William Rosecrans, arrived. The message was the same as had been the other daily inquiries which had begun coming across the wires on November 18th.
"Why aren't you moving?"
While General Burnside had understood that he had been tapped to replace McClellan because of the latter's glacial paced army movements, and had set the Army of the Potomac into rapid motion as a consequence, Rosecrans apparently was not influenced by the fact that he had replaced Buell for the same reason. Taking over the command in Nashville at the end of October, Rosecrans saw little but problems and was determined to fix the army before setting out.
To do away with the last taste of Buell's leadership, Rosecran's army was renamed. No longer the Army of the Ohio, it was now designated simply as the Union Army's 14th Corps. (It would not be until January, after the unit's baptism of blood, that it would receive the name it would retain the rest of the war...the Army of the Cumberland.
Rosecrans first reorganized the army, creating three "Wings" in the manner of Burnside's grand divisions. Then he set about stockpiling supplies, repairing rail connections and getting into a protracted battle with Halleck over transferring one of General Grant's brigadiers to take over Rosecrans' cavalry. He also insisted that the cavalry be equipped with several thousand revolving rifles and was unwilling to send them out until they had arrived and been broken in by his riders.
The telegram exchange which grew increasingly testy, was composed of Rosecrans making more and more demands, and offering more and more excuses as to why he needed to delay, and Halleck becoming more and more short tempered, continuously pointing out that the rebels seemed to be able to launch campaigns without having to compile so much material.
After the 26th, when repairs to the railways were completed, the exchange would get even more bitter, with Halleck threatening to replace Rosecrans if he didn't get underway immediately, and Rosecrans standing his ground and stating that he was ready to be removed, but would not march off half cocked just to be in motion.
It was the story of the administration vs McClellan/Buell all over again. Though Rosecrans was not a Little Mac admirer, he did share a number of personality traits. He was an excellent engineer, very high energy, loved the pomp of formal ceremonies and reviews, and was also prone to becoming over elated when things were going well, but deeply depressed when they were not. Rosecran also suffered from a periodic explosive temper, most often revealed when he redirected his fury at himself to whichever subordinate was convenient. The problem was that Rosecrans was a stutterer, not all the time, but most likely to happen during times of excitement. Rosecrans would start tripping over his words, become enraged at his own shortcoming, and take it out on whoever he was addressing, as though the listener was at fault.
The above did not contribute to Rosecrans popularity with his staff, nor did his habit of keeping them up most of the night while he delivered epic length lectures on the infallibility of Catholicism. Rosecrans had been a mid life convert to that religion, and as frequently is the case with adult converts, he was a fanatic about it. Requiring very little sleep himself, Rosecrans would put in a full day, retire to his headquarters around midnight, and be inspired to start his sermons which would go on for hours while whichever unlucky aids or officers who had been around, fought to stay awake and feign interest.
The troops would have very much preferred that the command had gone to General George Thomas, known to them as "Old Pap." You may recall that Thomas had nobly turned down the command before the Perryville battle out of loyalty to Buell. After Buell's second, and final sacking, Thomas expected to once more be offered the top spot. However, his earlier unselfishness cost him. His refusal of the command had generated an unfair impression in Washington that he lacked aggression and was afraid of taking the ultimate responsibility for an army.
To placate Thomas, Rosecrans offered him the status of second in command, but Thomas had been on the scene when Halleck had sidelined Grant with the same sort of ceremonial status which came with no real duties or responsibilities. Instead he asked for and received the command of Rosecrans center, and largest, Wing.
"...and thus it was all resolved by the Diet of Worms when the bishops united against the apostates and......" William Rosecrans (front row, second from left) and his captive staff
Rosecrans' oppoent had also been busy reorganizing his army and preparing it to go into winter quarters at Murfreesboro, Tennessee. General Braxton Bragg, having survived the minor mutiny by his subordinates thanks to President Davis' diplomatic interventions, had no plan of any kind for his force apart from a general occupation of middle Tennessee where it could block the anticipated advance by Rosecrans from Nashville to Chattanooga. Rosecrans was showing no indication of movement and the winter was setting in, so Bragg decided that martial matters had concluded for the year in his sector.
Bragg's Army of the Mississippi, whose resume now included Shiloh, the first siege of Corinth, the Heartland invasion and Perryville, was consolidated by the CS Congress along with General Kirby Smith's eastern Tennessee army, into the Army of Tennessee, by which it would be known through the end of the war. Kirby Smith went from independent army command to being a division leader under Bragg. Though Smith had promised President Davis that he would cease undermining Bragg for the good of the cause, he was still deeply unhappy about this state of affairs. Smith would eventually decide that the portion of his force which had been left to watch the Cumberland Gap, was more in need of his on the spot services than was the larger portion now encamped with Bragg. In mid December Smith returned to eastern Tennessee and stayed with his troops there.
Two of Bragg's other four divisions were still under the dissident generals Polk and Hardee who like Smith had resigned themselves to doing their duty, but whose negative opinions of Bragg had not changed. Bragg's 4th division was under the only sub commander he had yet to alienate, former VP and now General John Breckenridge. Serving under General Van Dorn, Breckenridge had concluded that he was being led by a dramatic clown, and kept petitioning Bragg to transfer his brigade to his force.
The transfer had come through in mid September, and Breckenridge had wasted no time loading his 2500 men onto trains to head for Kentucky. What should have been a trip of a few days, thanks to logistical shortcomings and mechanical breakdowns on the rebel railways, turned into a two week journey. For reasons that no historian seems to understand, Bragg decided that Breckenridge had dallied, and that his failure to join him in a timely manner in Kentucky, had been the cause of the recruiting failure in that state. (Breckenridge was from Kentucky.)
Breckenridge learned that Bragg was blaming him in this unreasonable manner, and began developing a hatred of Bragg which would grow with time. So now all four of his division commanders were viewing Bragg with suspicion, mistrust and loathing.
150 years ago today a weary and depressed President Lincoln was at Aquia Creek along the Potomac in Virginia. He had made the trip to meet with General Ambrose Burnside who appeared to be in the grip of a personal paralysis.
The president's depression was a consequence of contemplating the year coming to a close without any further blows being struck against the rebellion. By his plans and orders, there should have been four Union armies in motion, closing in on key objectives. Instead, only one, Grant's Army of the Tennessee, was doing what it was supposed to be doing.
General Banks had gone to New York to recruit additional troops for his force in Louisiana and had found that things had changed in the last six months. The early enthusiasm for the cause which had resulted in states oversubscribing their volunteer quotas, had diminished considerably after the bloodbaths at Shiloh, Second Manassas and Antietam. Banks would not even arrive in New Orleans to take over General Butler's former kleptocracy until mid December. The southern thrust at Vicksburg was not going to happen in 1862.
General Rosecrans was still in Nashville making preparations and channeling General Buell's spirit of no movement until every last piece of equipment was collected and stored. Increasingly angry and threatening telegrams from General in Chief Halleck had not had any impact on Rosecrans.
And now Burnside, after getting off to such a swift and clever start, had the Army of the Potomac encamped at Falmouth, staring across the river at General Longstreet's 40,000 man corps which had arrived on the 21st and began entrenching. The pontoons which were supposed to have arrived on the 19th, finally began showing up on the 24th, but even after they became available, Burnside still remained inactive. The plan had been to beat Lee to Fredericksburg via a swift march, cross the Rappahannock unopposed and advance against Richmond. Now that there was opposition in place on the other side of the river, something which wasn't in the plan, Burnside was unable to think what to do.
So he did nothing.
Lee had still not brought General Jackson's 35,000 man corps to Fredericksburg, he too was puzzled about Burnside's intentions. Crossing the river across from Fredericksburg with Longstreet's Corps strongly dug in to oppose them, seemed like such extreme folly that Lee was confident that what was really planned was some sort of flanking movement. To cover that possibility, Lee had Jackson's four divisions spread out up and down river, guarding likely crossing points.
The president's meeting with Burnside did nothing to alleviate Lincoln's concerns. He had never been a Burnside enthusiast and had only appointed him because he was....not McClellan. Lincoln had also been skeptical of Burnside's overall campaign plan because it was based on the objective being Richmond rather than Lee's army. He had consented with the provision that he thought it would work if carried out with great speed, and had been thrilled when Burnside had gotten his whole army to Fredericksburg in sixty hours of fast marching.
And now his general seemed lost, completely unable to come up with an alternative to his original plan. Lincoln suggested a double flanking movement, crossing the river above and below Fredericksburg, but Burnside would not agree to divide his army in the face of the enemy.
Lincoln returned to Washington without having learned anything encouraging. The situation along the Rappahannock remained static and would remain so until December 9th when Burnside finally decided to act. Lee's army would enjoy a great deal of time to perfect their defensive works.
There was nothing of major importance on this day in 1862, so I'll utilize the opportunity for some general catch up, the specific subject the Union blockade.
US Secretary of the Navy Wells, along with his energetic and capable assistant G. Fox, had accomplished an astonishing build up of the US Navy in a very short period of time. From 16 major and 32 smaller warships at the outbreak of the conflict, the Union fleet now boasted well over 200 plus armed vessels. Some were purchased and converted merchant ships, others were of specific design, such as the Monitor or the Eads river rams.
In 1861 the blockade was just being assembled and for the year, they caught less than 10 % of the blockade runners. In 1862 that percentage would rise, but five out of six blockade runners were still getting through. However, the proper measure of the effectiveness of the Federal effort was not in how many were caught, but in how many had been discouraged from trying. By the end of 1862 cotton exports from the South had fallen to 25% of their pre war levels, (it would fall to 5 % by the end of the war) a product of merchants and seamen unwilling to run the risks of losing everything, vessel and cargo. The skyrocketing cost of shipping when blockade runners had to be used, was also a factor. Built for speed, they could store less cargo, and could not operate on a fixed schedule because the elements had to be in place to justify the attempt to break out, or in. Moonless, stormy or foggy nights were most desirable, the primary goal being to slip past the Federal ships unseen. In addition, ships which had to clear harbor bars, had to wait until high tide conditions permitted this.
The typical blockade runner was not trans Atlantic. They made their way to either Bermuda or the Bahamas where ships with goods bound for the South would rendezvous and transfer the cargo to the runner. The runner would also be offloading whatever cotton and other goods it had managed to sneak past the Federal fleet.
Blockade duty was incredibly tedious, the chance to chase a blockade runner the exception rather than the rule. A typical squadron operated with small spotting boats close in to the rebel harbors, a couple of fast steamers just outside, and any larger warships a few miles out, watching for incoming traffic. The spotter boats would fire colored flares in the direction any blockade runner was heading, the steamers would take up the chase. After a time the Confederates got wise to this system and began firing their own flares in the opposite direction of their intended escape route. Sometimes they just fired flares to make the Union ships go off on a fruitless phantom chase.
Up to this point the war on the waters had mostly gone the Federal's way. On its own, the navy had captured New Orleans, Memphis and the defensive installations of the Carolina coasts. They had been essential to the the conquest of western Tennessee and General McClellan's Peninsula Campaign. The blockade was starting to have an impact.
I note the above because the next six or seven months will be the low point of the war for the US Navy, a period fraught with disasters and failures.
Distribution Of The Blockade Squadrons
Last edited by Grandstander; 11-28-2012 at 05:56 PM..
150 years ago today President Lincoln delivered his second State of the Union address to Congress. This was still long before the tradition arose of presidents delivering them in a personal appearance, so in keeping with what had been the practice since President Washington, it was read out loud in Congress by a clerk.
Naturally the main subject was the war, although the first part of the speech covered many other concerns as well...public land sales, the profitability of the postal system, relations with native Americans and foreign nations. A report on the treasury was given, including the actual figures of surplus money, debt and expenses.
Then he addressed slavery and the coming Emancipation Proclamation which would go into effect on January 1st of 1863.
At this point Lincoln was still convinced that there could never be an American society with free blacks and whites co-existing. He still was seeing the emigration of freed slaves to some African or Latin American location as the most desirable solution, but did acknowledge that not all blacks seemed to be embracing the idea.
Quote:
Applications have been made to me by many free Americans of African descent to favor their emigration, with a view to such colonization as was contemplated in recent acts of Congress. Other parties, at home and abroad--some from interested motives, others upon patriotic considerations, and still others influenced by philanthropic sentiments--have suggested similar measures, while, on the other hand, several of the Spanish American Republics have protested against the sending of such colonies to their respective territories. Under these circumstances I have declined to move any such colony to any state without first obtaining the consent of its government, with an agreement on its part to receive and protect such emigrants in all the rights of freemen; and I have at the same time offered to the several States situated within the Tropics, or having colonies there, to negotiate with them, subject to the advice and consent of the Senate, to favor the voluntary emigration of persons of that class to their respective territories, upon conditions which shall be equal, just, and humane. Liberia and Hayti are as yet the only countries to which colonists of African descent from here could go with certainty of being received and adopted as citizens; and I regret to say such persons contemplating colonization do not seem so willing to migrate to those countries as to some others, nor so willing as I think their interest demands. I believe, however, opinion among them in this respect is improving, and that ere long there will be an augmented and considerable migration to both these countries from the United States.
(Lincoln would drop his support for this idea entirely in the coming year, after a conversation with Frederick Douglas who explained that the American black saw America as home, and had no interest in migrating as start up colonists in Africa or Latin America.)
He then devoted a lengthy session revisiting his idea for compensated emancipation. He re raised his argument about the economic sense of it, that it would cost less to purchase the freedom of the slaves than the war to liberate them was costing the government. Lincoln also argued that such an offer extended to the South, might cause them to give up the fight before the Proclamation took effect and the loss of their slaves became certain.
In both these ideas, emigration of freed slaves and compensated emancipation, Lincoln would find no takers, North or South. The slaves did not want to leave, and the Radical Republicans in Congress were way past the idea of paying for what they were now accomplishing with the war. And across the Mason-Dixon Line, there was nothing but scorn. The whole idea of the rebellion for Southern independence was to escape Yankee interference in their institutions. They were not about to be bought off by the Great Northern Tyrant.
The president then closed with a return to his poetic self, contributing another phrase which would forever be associated with him, found within this call for greater efforts in both preserving the nation and advancing the cause of freedom.
Quote:
Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We -- even we here -- hold the power, and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free -- honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just -- a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.
Despite the near threat to Richmond from the Army of the Potomac at Fredericksburg, 150 years ago today President Davis was in the western theater, visiting his commanders and trying to sort out another controversy. This time it wasn't Bragg vs his subordinates, it was all of Davis' generals against one another.
There were three areas in the west currently under Federal threat. One was the trans Mississippi, which at this point meant Arkansas. Any campaign coming down the Mississippi against Vicksburg might decide to use the Arkansas bank as easily as the Mississippi side. In addition there were smaller Federal forces in Southern Missouri which might advance south at any time. In charge of the 35,000 Confederate soldiers in the state was Lieutenant General Theophilus Holmes.
The second and most important was Vicksburg and the 160 mile stretch of the river which the rebels still controlled. General Grant was already advancing south on the Mississippi side with 30,000 troops, following the rail line which paralleled the river. General Sherman was in Memphis and positioned to advance his troops by water down the Yazoo River which emptied into the Mississippi a few miles above the Confederate citadel. Commanding the 24,000 defenders of Vicksburg was General John C. Pemberton.
Finally there was Chattanooga, threatened by General Rosecrans' army at Nashville, and defended by General Bragg's army at Murfreesboro.
A few weeks earlier Davis had appointed his old nemesis, General Joseph Johnston, to the post of theater commander in the west. His job was to coordinate the efforts of the three generals and he had no sooner arrived on the scene than a controversy erupted. Johnston thought Vicksburg the most important of the threatened rebel positions and wanted either Holmes or Bragg to detach a portion of their army to be sent to bolster Pemberton. Both Bragg and Holmes argued violently that they could spare not a single soldier and this dispute is what brought the rebel president west.
Davis decided that Arkansas was the lowest priority and he traveled to visit with Holmes and persuade him that since his job was defending the Mississippi River, not defending Arkansas, he could do that best by sending troops to Pemberton. He got back an earful of states rights from Holmes, along with a lecture explaining why no fighting men could possibly be removed from Arkansas without seriously placing the whole state in jeopardy. Not many men were willing to stand up to Jefferson Davis in this manner, but not only did Holmes do so, he apparently got away with it. Davis left Arkansas and wound up ordering a very unhappy Bragg to detach a 9000 man division and send it to Pemberton's department.
Johnston, who had been in favor of the move, now began complaining that Bragg no longer had a sufficient force to defend middle Tennessee and that Davis should not be surprised if it was lost.
150 years ago today President Lincoln's mind for once wasn't on his sluggish generals, radical Republicans or peace Democrats. This was the day he was called upon to make a decision he hated to make.
Throughout the 1850's, US relations with the Dakota tribes of Minnesota had been deteriorating. Broken treaties and corrupt, greedy Indian agents were the complaints from the natives, periodic raiding and isolated murders of settlers represented the government's grievances. The Dakota united and presented a demand to the US that the crooked agents be eliminated and that their annuity payments come directly to the tribes. This was denied and hostilities were further inflated.
On August 17th, five settlers were killed after a dispute arose with a Dakota hunting party. The Dakota elders became convinced that the whites would not forgive this, and decided in for a penny, in for a pound, expressed in whatever the Dakota equivalent of that cliche might have been. They launched a general war against Minnesota whites with the specific purpose of driving them out of the area permanently.
With the whites engaged in killing one another in the east, the native war was at first a huge success. An estimated 800 settlers were killed, their homes and barns burned, their towns sacked. Those who survived fled to the east and the protection of the army.
The army in this case was the command of General John Pope, architect of the humiliating loss at Second Manassas. In September Pope began a campaign of attrition that lasted three months and resulted in the deaths of 150 native warriors and the arrest and incarceration of more than a thousand Dakota tribesmen. At that point the natives surrendered.
Those under arrest were tried for murder and rape in early December, 303 of them were condemned to death, sentences which awaited only the confirmation of the president of the United States.
Lincoln was heartbroken over this duty, as he always was when having to consider any military tribunal finding which ended with a death sentence. His natural inclination was always to look for any mitigating circumstance which would permit granting clemency. He was able to do so in 265 of the cases before him, but 38 of the natives had been convicted of crimes so severe that mercy would not be tolerated by the public.
The president signed the death warrants for those 38. They were hanged on December 26th. And of course the following year the government disregarded the existing treaties and moved the Dakota out of Minnesota entirely.
Little Crow..leader of the uprising. He survived the war only to be murdered by bounty hunters the following year.
Last edited by Grandstander; 12-05-2012 at 07:23 PM..
A few days back I had cause to mention President Davis' visit to Arkansas on what proved to be a failed mission to persuade General Homes to detach a portion of his army for the defense of Vicksburg. Holmes insisted that Arkansas was too threatened to spare a man.
150 years ago today Holmes received a small measure of validation.
After the Battle of Pea Ridge, Union commander General Samuel Curtis had advanced close to the Arkansas capitol at Little Rock, but then withdrew. Since then the Union held a line in the northern part of the state anchored on Helena, and the Confederates held one anchored at Fort Smith. There had been small scale fighting but no major engagements.
Now Curtis had divided his Army of the Frontier into two striking wings and advanced south in late November. Curtis fell ill and overall command passed to General James Blunt. A series of small scale running battles, cavalry clashes and patrol ambushes had followed but the main bodies of the opposing armies had yet to close.
That finally happened when rebel general Thomas C. Hindman, commanding an 11,000 strong wing of Homes' army, moved out to counter attack and came upon Blunt's command dug in on Cane's Hill near Prairie Grove. Blunt ordered the other wing of his army, under General Francis Herron, to make a rapid forced march to the battlefield.
Learning of Herron's approach, Hindman canceled his attack plans and drew his 11,000 men up in a defensive position on a line of hills outside of the town.
Herron arrived, bringing the Federal numbers close to ten thousand, and 150 years ago this morning Blunt launched them in an attack against Hindman. It was a back and forth affair, characterized by repeated incidents of the Federals charging, being beaten back by the Confederates who then counter charged until meeting the Union artillery line which blew them back again. No progress was made by either side and when darkness ended the fighting, both sides held nearly the same positions that they had occupied that morning.
It had cost the Federals 1250 casualties, Hindman had suffered a bit over 1300. Blunt sent for reinforcements to renew the contest, Hindman had no reserve of any kind and decided to pull back that night. It had been a tactical draw, but a strategic Union victory in that they suffered no set back in their continuing campaign to subdue the state. By the end of the month Hindman's command will have been forced out of the state entirely.
After two weeks of vacillation on the banks of the Rappahannock River across from Fredericksburg, 150 years ago today General Ambrose Burnside finally reached a decision and sent a telegram to Washington explaining his plans.
In what ranks as one of the war's most bizarre bits of reasoning, Burnside concluded that since his original plan was based on surprising General Lee with his river crossing, that was what he still needed to do. The 40,000 men of Longstreet's Corps on the opposite bank who had now had the luxury of two weeks to entrench and sight their artillery, represented a challenge for doing this with any element of surprise. Worse, the delay had given Lee the chance to draw in additional troops from assorted regional guard duties until he was able to concentrate nearly 90,000 men to contest the assaults, the largest army Lee would command at any one point in the war. Burnside announced that since the rebels were so well prepared to meet a crossing attempt at Fredericksburg, then that would be where they least expected it to happen. Therefore, that was precisely where the Army of the Potomac would cross.
Burnside had told all who would listen that he thought the command of the army was beyond his capabilities, and apparently he felt the need to prove it. He called in his three Grand Division Commanders and laid out a rather vague plan which provided only the most general ambitions and was wretchedly short of details and alternatives. General Bull Sumner's division was to cross directly into Fredericksburg and attack the heights behind the town. General Franklin's division was to cross south of town and maneuver the rebels off the high ground there, turning their flank and driving them back upon the Confederate left. General Hooker's division would be left on the Federal side of the river to act as the reserve and go in wherever they could do the most good.
The outline was horribly short on details with no mention of coordination between the units or the general goals of the advance, not much more than "cross the river and beat the enemy." The three Grand Division left the meeting scratching their heads, taking glances at the heavily fortified heights across the river, and perhaps wishing that they had McClellan back. They would all return to Burnside's headquarters the next day asking for a clarification meeting.
And Burnside would make it worse.
In Washington, the president, the secretary of war and the general in chief were all depressed by the simplistic, bull straight ahead plan which had been communicated to them, but their levels of frustration during the inactivity of the past two weeks had risen so high that their mood was "Anything is better than just continuing to sit there." At least Burnside was finally going to attempt something....
General Lee had his full army near at hand, but still had not concentrated them at Fredericksburg apart from Longstreet's Corps. Lee could not accept the idea that Burnside would be so foolish as to come across the river in a place where the crossing could be contested, and only to find himself in a position to attack an impossibly strong defensive line. Because of this, he continued to keep General Jackson's Corps spread out, watching the fords north and south of the town.
So, Burnside would indeed surprise Lee with his frontal crossing and attack, but only to the degree that it might surprise the fox to have the hen run to, rather than away from, him. Either way it is going to be bad for the hen.
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