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General Grant had created a small controversy when he blew through Washington without stopping after his meeting with General Meade and the Army of the Potomac. Mary Todd Lincoln had planned a dinner in Grant's honor, but Grant had left a note for the president explaining that "time was important" and more candidly "I have had enough of this show business."
Grant and Sherman met in Nashville and took the train to Cincinnati, checking into the Burnett Hotel for space and privacy, and spreading their maps across every available surface. Their goal was to determine the best possible manner in which to employ the 300,000 men in the six main field armies which Grant now commanded. There were another 225,000 spread around in 19 departments on garrison duty which Grant deemed a waste. He would see what he could do to make them into more active participants, adding them to the field armies so as to overwhelm the already outnumbered Confederates. Also available that year would be an additional 130,000 black troops which were being formed and trained.
Grant had concluded that Union failures to date were a result of no coordination between the larger armies, each had been acting independently of the others, leaving the rebels in a position to shift troops to threatened sectors. Grant intended to eliminate this tactical advantage by having all of his forces in operation simultaneously, threatening multiple fronts and freezing the Confederate troops in place.
Grant and Sherman were also in agreement on what was going to be needed to achieve victory. That was the total destruction of the rebellion's war making capacities. The enemy soldiers would be targeted, but so would their resources. Sherman was to be given supreme command in the west, combining the Army of the Ohio, The Army of the Cumberland and the Army of the Tennessee into one immense killing machine. Grant was annoyed that General Banks was wasting time on the Red River Campaign and planned to throw that force against Mobile in the spring, concurrent with the drives against Richmond and Atlanta....if Banks got back in time.
The Army of the James, under General Butler, which was doing little apart from occupying Fortress Monroe and the northern North Carolina coastal region, would be beefed up and used to threaten Richmond from the east, while the Army of the Potomac advanced from the north. The Shenandoah Valley would be guarded by the fusion of three small armies under General Franz Sigel. Grant would have preferred military men to the political generals, Banks, Butler and Sigel, but the president had explained the political necessities of keeping those men at the heads of their forces. There would be a price to pay for this decision.
Grant told Sherman that he would make his headquarters in the field, attached to General Meade's army. This meant that Meade was having to take one for the team, accepting that he was being placed in a no win situation. If the Army of the Potomac was triumphant, Grant would get the credit. If it failed, Meade was available for the blame. Grant explained that Meade's target was to be Lee's army, not Richmond, and Sherman's real objective was the destruction of the Army of Tennessee, not taking Atlanta.
It was a plan as unsubtle as the man who designed it, calling for relentless, overwhelming pressure on all fronts for as long as it took to make the rebels surrender. It was most likely to result in a bloody slugging match and the winner would be determined by which side could endure it the longest.
Their meeting continued through the 20th and when completed, Sherman summed it up as "He was to go for Lee and I was to go for Joe Johnston. That was his plan."
The Burnett House Hotel In Cincinnati..Here The End Of The War Was Planned
General Banks 35,000 strong army moving in three separate collectives, along with Admiral Porter's 210 gun river fleet, continued to advance up the Red River in a ponderous manner. Banks was still devoting the majority of his time to concerns about the navy swiping his cotton confiscation glory, and was lagging further and further behind the rest of his force. The entire operation was being slowed by the begrudging cooperation between Banks and Porter and the focus on the cotton booty.
An exception was the advance cavalry brigade under General Joseph Mower which under a forced march had reached Henderson's Hill above Alexandria, twenty miles ahead of the rest of the army. There, 150 years ago today, they surprised and captured a rebel cavalry regiment composed of 250 troopers and a four gun battery. The Confederates had their guard down because it had been a night of heavy rain and hail, surely no one was moving about in such weather...and thus they went into captivity without a single shot being fired by either side.
The next major target was Shreveport and the next several days were devoted to waiting for the various sections to come together in an overwhelming concentration of power. And also for Banks to catch up with his army, get the cotton out of his brain, and start paying some attention to the military situation again.
It was a double blow of bad news for General Banks 150 years ago today.
The first came in the form of an order from General Grant, the first directed at Banks since the change in command. Grant had viewed the Red River campaign as a waste of time and resources, so he decided to put a time limit on it. Banks was informed that the troops that were on loan from the Army of the Tennessee, a third of Banks' army, were to be returned to General Sherman no later than April 15th. Grant specified that if this meant that the campaign would fail as a consequence, so be it, it was more important to have those troops on hand for the Atlanta campaign which Sherman was to launch in conjunction with General Meade's advance against Richmond.
This meant that Banks had only three weeks remaining to capture Shreveport and sweep down the Sabine River cutting Texas off from the rest of the Confederacy.
And if that was not bad enough, a report came from Admiral Porter that the Red River was running dangerously low. Not only was there now a danger that the fleet would not be able to advance with the army further up the river, but there was also a genuine question about their being able to return, even if they started now.
Banks' response was light a match under his until this time, sluggish advance. What had been a broad front advance would now be a spearpoint. To date there had been no serious opposition by the enemy and Banks was concluding that he had them awed by the size of his force. To shorten the distance to Shreveport, he had his army swing inland, away from the river and the supporting fleet, to utilize a shorter interior road. With this decision Banks ruined his entire campaign. Out there waiting to take advantage of just such a mistake was the son of a former US president.
Having wrecked the cavalry arm of the Meridian Campaign and thereby confining that expedition to Sherman's destructive march and return, General Nathan Forrest turned his attention back to raiding in Tennessee and Kentucky. The previous day Forrest had used one of the tricks in his bag to compel the surrender of the 7th Tennessee cavalry which was guarding Union City, Tennessee. Mounting painted logs on wheel carriages, he rolled this "artillery" to within range of the town and sent a note to the commander demanding its surrender or in the alternative, facing the consequences. 481 men went into captivity along with 300 horses and assorted supplies.
150 years ago today Forrest moved on to Paducah, Kentucky, an important Union supply depot on the confluence of the Tennessee and Ohio rivers. It was protected by a bastion called Fort Anderson and as soon as Forrest and his 3000 riders turned up, the Federals retired to the fort and left the town and depot open to Forrest's pickings.
Having emptied the depot and destroyed what he could not use, Forrest then attempted the same bluff against Fort Anderson, sending a note which promised good treatment if they surrendered, but no quarter should they force Forrest to have to storm the place. Forrest had no intention of attacking, the bluff was just to see if the garrison could be taken without bloodshed.
This time the federal commander turned out to be made of sterner stuff than anticipated. Colonel Stephen Hicks replied, declining to surrender and giving Forrest a bit of a surprise when two Union gunboats on the river began shelling the rebels. One of Forrest's regiments, commanded by Colonel A. Thompson, a native of Paducah who was eager to retake his home town, attacked without orders and was repulsed with 50 casualties. Among the dead was Thompson.
Forrest remained in the area threatening the fort until midnight. Then he retired, announcing a week off for his hard riding troopers. They were to return to their homes, relax, refit, get new horses, try and recruit neighbors, and then report back to Forrest. Some of Forrest's officers feared that letting the men go like this would mean that this was the last that they would ever see of them. Forrest insisted that they would not dare incur his wrath in such a manner, and he proved correct. 100 % of those sent on this vacation turned up a week later as ordered.
Hicks might have emerged a greater hero, as the man who faced down That Devil Forrest, but the day after the fight he ordered the houses in town which Forrest's men had used as cover, burned to the ground to deprive then of being used that way again in the future. Sixty homes were put to the torch, understandably angering those who owned the dwellings, especially since it seemed to be a horses gone/barn door slamming affair. The newly homeless filed a collective lawsuit against the government, but they did not prevail. And of course Fort Anderson was never again threatened, so the destruction turned out to be entirely superfluous.
Copperhead/Loyalist antagonisms in the North erupted into deadly violence 150 years ago today in Charleston, Illinois.
Local Judge Charles H. Constable, had ruled on a case involving four accused Union deserters, allowing them to go free. This had angered the Union garrison in the town and they had stopped Constable on the street and subjected him to assorted humiliations, including being made to swear an oath of allegiance to the Federal government. The Peace Democrats (Copperheads) who were in the majority in the town, were in turn disturbed by those actions and after a lengthy session of drinking and discussion, spilled out into the streets and confronted the soldiers.
What happened next depends upon the source used, the contemporary accounts placed blame according to their political sympathies. There was some sort of confrontation between the Copperheads and the soldiers which very suddenly escalated into a riot with shots being exchanged by both sides. For two hours the soldiers and Copperheads chased and fought one another around the town until the latter were finally compelled to flee. The arrival of reinforcing troops assured that there would be no repeat.
Six soldiers, two Copperheads and a Republican civilian had been killed, and a score of townspeople had been injured. The next several days were devoted to hunting down and arresting those Copperheads who had participated in the fracas. Eventually fifteen men were incarcerated and held without trial until President Lincoln ordered their release in November.
Newspaper Engraving Representing The Artist's Conception Of The Riot
The previous two days should have been a warning to General Banks. His advance against Shreveport had gone well for the first five days, but then the navy had encountered the rapids around Alexander, Louisiana, sixty miles shy of the goal. Here it took two full days to try and pass the 210 gun fleet of Admiral Porter over the dangerously shallow, and dangerously violent waters.
Not all of them made it. Priority was given to the thirty troop transports which would be needed for the Sabine River portion of Banks' triumph, and all thirty were finally wrestled through. The supply boats had to be unloaded and their cargo transported along the banks to lighten them sufficiently to pass the rapids. Then came the 21 warships and only thirteen of the gunboats and River Monitors made it, seven had to remain south of the rapids and one was destroyed and abandoned. Those that had made it through then had to proceed with extreme caution, the waters north of the rapids were not as deep as the portion of the river which had already been passed, which had been barely deep enough.
With only a dozen days left before General Grant's orders would subtract the ten thousand men borrowed from the Army of the Tennessee, it should have been apparent to Banks that there was no longer any possibility of completing his campaign in time. The falling state of the Red River which was frustrating the northern navigation, might very well soon make a return trip impossible. Making matters worse, on this day 150 years ago the northern cotton agents who Banks had lured into coming along with promises of huge confiscations for purchase and sale, became disgusted with the lack of results and they abandoned the expedition and headed back toward New Orleans, none of them likely to be future Banks voters.
His infantry now inland and out of touch with the supporting naval vessels, his supply lines a mess, his merchants gone, the river barely passable and the deadline for having to release 10,000 men to other duty getting closer..and Banks decided to press ahead.
While all of the above was taking place, General Richard Taylor, the son of former president Zachary, was slowly enlarging his command with reinforcements sent by theater commander General Kirby Smith. He continued to fall back toward Shreveport, luring Banks into a battlefield of Taylor's choosing....away from the river and the Union fleet.
Taylor was Kentucky born and had followed his father around numerous posting across the frontier portions of the nation. Despite this wilderness upbringing, and despite the "Rough and Ready" military pedigree, Taylor was inclined toward scholarship ,and rather than West Point he attended Harvard and later graduated from Yale. During the Mexican War he had served as his father's personal secretary. After the war he managed the family's cotton plantation, married into wealth and fathered five children, three of whom survived childhood.
When the war began, because Taylor was known to be extremely well versed in military history, he was asked to serve as a civilian instructor of troops in Pensacola. Impressed with the job that he did, he was commissioned a colonel in the 9th Louisiana infantry which fought at Bull Run. Bumped to brigadier, he was attached to General Ewell's Corps in Stonewall Jackson's Corps and distinguished himself during the Valley Campaign.
He was promoted to major general and sent west where he saw less action and slipped from public notice. Combining what he learned from his father, and from Stonewall, the 36 year old Taylor was about to make his own legacy.
Chip Off The Rough And Ready Block..General Richard Taylor
An important change in command 150 years ago today.
General Alfred Pleasonton had commanded the cavalry for the Army of the Potomac after General Hooker had appointed him to that post following General Stoneham's disappointing and futile performace at Chancelorsville. He then began to badger and annoy Hooker about the insufficient (in Pleasonton's mind) support being given for the cavalry arm. Pleasonton was also a politically oriented officer and Hooker suspected that he was among those who were lobbying to get rid of him. Hooker's own dismissal as army commander saved Pleasonton's job and he led the horse element at Gettysburg. A blame game for the ill fated charge made by General Killpatrick's division after the assault on the third day had already failed, resulted in Pleasonton being fired by Meade and replaced by General David Gregg.
Gregg was a competent officer but there had been no opportunities to distinguish himself in the dance but not fight maneuvers of the fall of 1863. Now the matter was in General Grant's hands and he decided to go with an odd looking fellow who had distinguished himself in every command in the west.
Five feet five inches tall with unusually long arms which radiated a simian appearance, dark complexioned with a severe looking face and apparently born before they invented necks, Philip Sheridan did have a quality which Grant deemed essential. He was a fighter, a tremendously combative man who shared Grant's philosophy of find the enemy, close with the enemy and fight.
Sheridan was from Albany, New York, attended West Point where he was suspended for a year for....fighting with classmates. He graduated in 1853, too late for the Mexican War, but Sheridan made up for that by seeing extensive combat in the west against warring native tribes. When the Civil War began, he was at first used as a supply staff officer, primarily because he had a well earned reputation for incorruptible honesty and no fear at all in upsetting superior officers when conducting investigations. He continuously applied for a combat command, getting his first in early 1862. He seemed to have a knack for being with whichever army was going into combat at the time. He fought at Pea Ridge and the siege of Corinth, was transferred to the Army of the Ohio and fought with great distinction at Perryville and Murfreeboro, and then commanded a division in General Rosecrans' Tullahoma Campaign. It was Sheridan's division which led the way at Chattanooga, scaling Missionary Ridge without orders and sending General Bragg into headlong retreat.
Grant had noticed. In his memoirs Grant stated that Sheridan was his first and only choice for the cavalry command. General Halleck's memoirs dispute this, stating that Grant originally was going to appoint General Franklin, but was talked into selecting Sheridan by Halleck.
However it came about, in bringing Sheridan east, Grant was making exactly the right choice. Sheridan would orchestrate some of the most vital Union victories of the war.
"The enemy retreats before us and will not fight a battle this side of Shreveport, if then."
So wrote General Nathaniel Banks to his wife three days earlier. To General Halleck he wrote that the rebels would not dare and try to stand against his mighty army. He was radiating confidence as he set out on the last leg of his march, the final 60 miles to Shreveport which he believed would be his without bloodshed.
The reality of matters brought his confidence into question. His army was strung out on a single inland road, away from the supporting navy vessels and starting on the 6th, mired in muck as heavy rains appeared and turned the narrow road into a mudpit. The column was obliged to bring along all of its food, this was cotton, not produce growing country, so each division had at least 300 wagons accompanying them, another thousand wagons brought up the rear, and now all were sinking in the quagmire that had been the road. So overloaded with baggage were they that the front of the column was nearly twenty miles in front of the rear. If the head of the force was attacked, full support was a day's march away.
150 years ago this afternoon, Banks received the first hint that his march might not be the uncontested cakewalk he was anticipating. Three miles past Pleasant Hill a rebel cavalry force had appeared in a blocking position. Previously all such opposition had merely looked over the Federal force and scampered away to report. This was expected of these grey horsemen as well, but instead 3000 rebels put the spurs to their horses and charged the front of the Union column, scattering them in a panic and causing them to have to fall back on the infantry as it came up. Once the infantry was spotted, the Confederate cavalry withdrew.
As usual Banks did not know what to make of the situation, and as usual he made wishy washy decisions, reflective of his irresolution. On the one hand he saw the need for caution now that the rebels were finally showing fight, on the other hand he did not want to slow his timetable nor appear to be backtracking on his predictions of unopposed victory. So Banks compromised. he ordered the front of the column to advance another four miles before camping for the night, but in response to their request for infantry support, he dispatched but a single brigade. There were no more encounters with the Confederates that day, so Banks went to bed believing that the next day would be a resumption of his unimpeded advance.
It would be his last restful night for quite some time.
150 years ago today the Red River Campaign was brought to a permanent halt and was altered from a program to seize NW Louisiana and eastern Texas, into a fight for survival and escape.
General Taylor's original 9000 man army had been reinforced by other elements under General Kirby Smith so that he now commanded about 14,000 troops, still less than half of force being brought against him. However, with that enemy force so strung out on the march and separated from their naval support on the river, it was now possible for Taylor to strike a portion of the Union army before help could come from the rest.
At the vanguard of the Federal advance were 7500 men, 3500 cavalry and 4000 infantry from two different Corps. In their path was the town of Mansfield in an area known as Sabine Crossroads. Among the roads which met there, one of them reconnected to the river road which Banks had abandoned. Not wishing Banks to reconnect to his naval support, Taylor chose this spot to make his stand, spreading his divisions on either side of the road and sending his cavalry out to fall back in front of the Federals to lure them further on. Taylor's intent was to fight a defensive battle.
Leading the blue advance, General Albert L. Lee came upon the defensive position and called a halt. Taylor was waiting for an attack to be launched, Lee decided to wait until more supporting troops came up. The consequence was a two hour staring match between two pm and four. At that point Taylor recognized that no immediate attack was going to be made and that if battle was to be joined while the numbers still favored the rebels, he would have to initiate his own attack. At four pm they surged out of their lines and hit the surprised Yankees on both flanks. On the eastern side of the road the Union men held their ground, but on the west the entire position collapsed when Taylor's men lapped around the defending Federals and began driving them in on themselves.
That caused the entire Union line to give way and they began a hasty retreat, running into the division of General Cameron which was coming up in support, and causing them to stampede toward the rear as well. The flight was a running battle for several miles until they finally reached the next Union division, that of General Emory who rallied the fugitives and formed an imposing defensive line. Since it was getting dark at this point, Taylor wisely halted his attack. Just at that moment a messenger from Kirby Smith arrived with orders for Taylor to act cautiously and not bring on any general engagements until more troops could be brought to the scene. Taylor wrote back explaining that it was too late and that the battle had already been fought and won.
At a cost of about 1000 casualties, Taylor had inflicted 2300 on his foe as well as capturing twenty artillery pieces and dozens of supply wagons left behind when their drivers had unhitched the horses and ridden them hastily to safety. Settled for certain was the question of whether or not Banks would be able to reach Shreveport before the April 15th deadline for returning the borrowed Army of the Tennessee troops. Banks now had his men dug in in a defensive position around Pleasant Hill. Across the way Taylor planned to resume his assault the next morning.
The Battle of Sabine Crossroads (Mansfield) Banks Routed Yet Again
150 years ago this morning found General Taylor ready to resume the battle which had started yesterday afternoon, 16 miles further north. Thoughts of a glorious and uncontested march into Shreveport had vanished from General Banks' mind and now he had as much of his army as was on the scene, entrenched on Pleasant Hill awaiting the renewal of the rebel assault. Banks was apparently already anticipating further defeat, he had his baggage trains in motion to the south, including a number of artillery batteries. In that Banks had lost a score of pieces to the enemy the previous day during the wild retreat from Sabine Crossroads, and was further detaching cavalry and infantry to escort the retiring guns, it certainly appeared as though he had already made up his mind to retreat regardless of the outcome today.
Pleasant Hill was not much of a hill, more of a low ridge upon which sat a small community of perhaps 300 persons. They had cultivated and cleared the surrounding forest, making this open section the natural place to stage a battle. What it did not have was any nearby source of water which could sustain an army, nor was their sufficient forage. Banks would have to go forward, or back, after the fight was over, he could not remain very long. As noted, he seemed to have already determined that it would be back.
It would not be the battle itself which caused the retreat. Unlike yesterday, Banks had his force concentrated and dug in, not strung out on the march. The numbers were about equal. Banks had around ten thousand on the line and another two thousand within supporting distance. Subtracting his losses from yesterday, along with units detached to cope with the prisoners, and of course stragglers who always found good reasons to be elsewhere when battle seemed likely, Taylor was able to bring 12,000 men to this day's confrontation.
As with yesterday's fight, there was a prolonged period of inactivity as the two sides sized one another up and crafted plans. It was not until early afternoon that Taylor advanced his skirmishers to test Banks' line for weaknesses. That and an inconsequential artillery duel marked the fighting until 5 in the afternoon when Taylor ordered an assualt. The fight see sawed through the remaining sunlight with neither side gaining any advantage. After two hours of attacks and counter attacks, darkness brought the battle to an end. Taylor had suffered around 1600 casualties while inflicting about 1300 on his foe. At best it could be called a drawn fight.
However, Banks converted the draw into a strategic victory for the rebels by ordering a complete withdrawal that night which began at 2 am. It was not a tactical withdrawal designed to find a more advantageous place to fight, it was the beginning of the retirement of the army from the entire campaign, there would be no further attempts to advance, only an increasingly desperate attempt to escape. The Red River Campaign was defeated, all that remained to be determined was how badly.
Artist's Depiction Of The Battle Of Pleasant Hill
This Map Shows The Problem Banks Faced. Mansfield, the closest he got to Shreveport is in the upper left. Pleasant Hill is marked by a red dot just south. Now Banks had to conduct a fighting retreat to Alexandria to rejoin the naval arm of his force, and then get the ships back over the rapids which had presented so much difficulty on the way north.
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