USA > Tennessee > The military annals of Tennessee. Confederate. First series: embracing a review of military operations, with regimental histories and memorial rolls, V.1 > Part 2
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*All save Virginia. fSlavery, according to Vice-president Stephens.
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MILITARY ANNALS OF TENNESSEE.
long as the war lasted continue to be, the scene of warlike oper- ations. The vote by her Legislature calling out fifty thousand men and appropriating five millions of dollars proved this, and also that hers was to be no rude awakening from a dream of only ninety days of merely holiday soldiering. From the moment secession was mooted her people accurately measured the possi- bilities of the future when once they were launched in the seri- ous business of civil war. The traditions of the State were all of them of a military character; her foundations were laid before the Revolution in a military fort away up in the mountains that form her eastern boundary, and from the day in 1754 when the hardy pioneers had christened Fort Loudon until the close of the Mexican War her citizens had been conspicuous among the soldiery of the republic, and had been so quick to respond to every call for her defense as to win for her the enviable distinction of the " Volunteer State." Until the Indians were removed to the west bank of the Mississippi River, the militia of Tennes- see was organized like a standing army, ready to move at a mo- ment's notice. War was the primal condition of the early set- tler within her borders. His rifle was as essential to him as his plow. Military organization preceded the foundation of the State, and the designations and details of the camp and gar- rison were more familiar to him than those of civil life. Some of the fathers of the State fought under Braddock, and during that memorable defeat learned to prize the soldierly qualities of Washington; and some of them fought at the battle of Ka- nawha in 1774, some in the "Illinois country " against the French and the Indians in 1775, and in 1776, on the the 20th of July, they mustered their full strength at the battle of Heaton's Sta- tion, the initial affair of the Revolutionary War in the South- west, forced by the British Tories, who hoped, with the aid of the Cherokees, to break up the infant settlements. After this, these sturdy patriots fought the English and Indians in Illinois in 1777, and later won the decisive battle of King's Mountain, which closed the contest with the British in the South in the war for independence. To this history of imperishable deeds there succeeded the victories under Jackson in Alabama, Flor- ida, and Louisiana, culminating in the famous victory of New Orleans in January, 1815. Following this, there comes the oc- cupation of Texas, the revolution against Mexico, the massacre
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TENNESSEE FOR FOUR YEARS THE THEATER OF WAR.
of the Alamo, from which only one person -- a woman born in Tennessee-was permitted to escape, and then the Mexican War, in which, from President Polk down, thousands of Tennesseans played conspicuous or humble parts. Many of the soldiers of these later wars still lingered upon the scene, the living witnesses of an historic heroism, when the bloody fracases in Kansas were succeeded by a general call to arms in 1861, and broth- ers divided against brothers appealed to the sword to decide a question that had been debated in one form or another every year since the adoption of the Federal Constitution. Soldiers by blood and breeding, the heirs of a great renown, the men of Tennessee were nevertheless slow to draw the sword. Almost every home had its memory and memento of war to admonish to peace, and they knew that behind the glamour, the glitter, and the tempting array of organized troops lay the agencies of de- struction and death. Intelligent and prudent, they weighed the consequences well; and it was not until the question presented itself in a new shape, and the coercion of the people of the Southern States, with whom they had hitherto made common cause in the protection and perpetuity of slavery, was involved, that they determined and fixed upon their course. In June of 1861, by a majority of fifty-seven thousand six hundred and ser- enty-five, the citizens of Tennessee voted to withdraw from the Union, and declared for the new Confederacy. In less than ninety days thereafter every city was a garrison, and the farm- ers whose crops were yet ungarnered, who in the latter days of May were pursuing the arts of peace, were become resolute men of war. The State was a camping-ground.
II.
Except as to men, Tennessee was wholly unprepared for war. There was not an armory, arsenal, or fort within her limits. There was not a piece of ordnance in the State; not a service- able musket, except the few in the keeping of a half dozen uni- formed companies. There were about one thousand two hun- dred flint-lock muskets in the crypt of the Capitol that had seen service during the Mexican War. This was all there was of armament or equipment with which to begin war with a peo- ple who possessed both the army and navy, all the armories and nearly all the arsenals in the country; the old Government,
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with its powers and its prestige, and, above all, its treasury and credit, controlled the international commerce of the Union, and was also in possession of the great cities and manufacturing centers and the mines, and had the means at hand with which to supply, equip, and arm millions of men. Fortunately for Ten- nessee, the then Governor of the State-Isham G. Harris-pos- sessed an accurate knowledge of the resources of the State, its strategic and therefore perilous importance, and was in hearty sympathy with the momentous movement then on foot. In twenty-four hours after the ordinance of secession had passed he had organized quartermaster, commissary, and ordnance depart- ments, and by the chiefs of these or by their suggestion work- shops were quickly established in Memphis and Nashville and others of the larger towns for the manufacture of ordnance, for altering shot and squirrel guns into percussion rifles and mus- kets, for making tents, clothing, powder and fixed ammunition, spurs, swords, bayonets, saddlery and artillery harness, boots and shoes, hats and caps, and every thing necessary to wel !- equipped armies. This was perhaps the most amazing work of the people during the civil war. A majority of the mechanics employed in the existing workshops, foundries, and factories at the outbreak of hostilities between the sections were Northern men, and were, most of them, on the side of the Union. By hundreds and thousands they vacated their situations and re- turned to their homes, many-if not most of them-to enlist in the Federal armies, and return as the handicraftsmen, whose skill in building and repairing bridges and other mechanical constructions, and the repair of railroads and engines, aston- ished a gaping world. This exodus increased the embarrass- ments of the South, and devolved upon the few skillful mechan- ics left the work of not only inventing the machinery by which the change in arms and all the needs and necessities of the ordnance and quartermaster's departments were to be supplied, but the training of thousands of workmen and women to supply a demand that was never, up to the close of the war, nearly half satisfied. But the whole population rose to an equality with the emergency; and it was soon found that there had been lying dor- mant a mechanical skill and inventive genius equal to any de- mand, however pressing, so long as the raw material could be had. Merchants, planters, doctors, and lawyers found them-
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TENNESSEE FOR FOUR YEARS THE THEATER OF WAR.
selves the possessors of forces hitherto latent, which were speed- ily turned to account; and the result was not only the formation of depots of supply, but the partial equipment of the hurriedly improvised armies which a suddenly precipitated revolution had called forth.
On the 8th of June, 1861, the State seceded. On the 11th the Governor issued his first order, notifying the commanders of mili- tia to hold their troops in readiness, and to put them at once in training for the field, and by the 13th General Plilow, a distin- guished veteran of the Mexican War, commissioned Major-general and Commander of the Army of Tennessee, had established his head-quarters in the city of Memphis," and with a thorough knowl- edge of his duties was enthusiastically pushing the work of prep- aration in every direction, and organizing troops. The example of his sturdy patriotism was not needed, but his experience and energy were felt everywhere as forces stimulating men in right directions, and to the accomplishment of the greatest possible results in the shortest possible time. The work of organizing and equipping troops was thus well under way when, on the 13th of July, Major-general Leonidas Polk arrived in Memphis and announced himself Commander of Department No. 1, by virtue of authority vested in him by the Provisional President of the Confederate States Government, the limits of the depart- ment extending from the mouth of the Arkansas, on both sides of the Mississippi, to the northern limits of Confederate author- ity, and east as far as the line of the Mobile and Ohio railroad. He found the people of that portion of his department east of the Mississippi already offering in numbers not only greater than could be armed and equipped, but in some cases double and even quadruple the number called for. Memphis had become a great military center. Fort Pillow, near Randolph, was in proc- ess of construction, and everywhere there was bustle and activity. General Polk entered at once upon his duties, and in a few weeks troops were being mustered into the service of the Confederacy,
# On April 26, 1861, G. P. Smith, Aid-de-camp, published an order announcing that Gen. S. R. Anderson had been appointed by Gov. Harris to organize the vol- unteer forces of West Tennessee, and instructing the commanders of companies to report to his head-quarters at the Gayoso House, their strength, condition, etc. This was the initial movement for the organization in Memphis of the army that afterward became historic as the Army of Tennessee, and was made in anticipation of the secession of the State.
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organized into regiments, and sent to encampments in the vicin- ity of the city and of Fort Pillow. By the 7th of September, the day on which Columbus, Kentucky, was occupied, an army larger than either of those that invaded Mexico had been partly armed, equipped, drilled, brought under discipline, and put in the field. It was a work without a parallel in the military annals even of the Volunteer State.
General Polk, though a graduate of West Point, had long been removed from the army and army ways. After graduating, he served a few years in the artillery branch of the service, and then entered the ministry of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and ultimately became Bishop of that Church in the State of Louisiana. He was fulfilling this sacred trust when the war broke out; and at the instance of President Davis, and with the consent of the presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the Confederate States (Meade, of Virginia), and what was of more importance to him, his own consent, obtained after the most prayerful consideration, he accepted a commission as Major- general and assignment to the command of one of the most im- portant military divisions in the country. To the discharge of his duties he brought a mind trained in the clearest and most conscientious methods of thought, and the highest technical training of West Point; and these qualities were reenforced by a patriotism as large, buoyant, and hopeful as burned in the heart of the youngest volunteer. Dignified, firm, strong, and resolute, he was under all circumstances a refined and courte- ous gentleman in the best sense of the term. Duty to him was a sacred word, implying the most sacred obligations. Strictly obeying orders himself, he set an example to all under and near him that at such a juncture and in such trying times was most valuable. He was self-poised, and nothing could disturb the equilibrium of a temper that, whatever its original infirmities, had been chastened by many years in the ministry. He gradu- ally put away the cloth to which he had been habituated, and as gradually assumed the insignia and uniform of his rank. He wore so slowly but steadily into his duties that it was only when he ordered the movement to Columbus, Kentucky, that the min- ister, to all outward observance, was lost in the soldier.
At Columbus the nucleus of what was afterward known as the Army of Mississippi, and ultimately the Army of Tennessee, was
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formed, with General Pillow in command of the "column in the field," General Polk still retaining command of the department.
On the 10th of September General Albert Sidney Johnston was assigned to the command of Department No. 2, which em- braced the States of Tennessee and Arkansas and that part of the State of Mississippi west of the New Orleans, Jackson, and Great Northern railroad, and the military operations in Ken- tucky, Missouri, Kansas, and the Indian Territory. He thus superseded General Polk in the command-in-chief. On the 18th, the General, after advising with General Zollicoffer, and approving of his contemplated advance into Kentucky from Cumberland Gap, ordered General Buckner, who with some Ken- tucky troops had just joined the Confederate army, forward to Bowling Green with about four thousand men, and then went over to Columbus for consultation with General Polk. On the 26th of September General Johnston announced his personal and de- partmental staff, and began at once concerting measures to meet the Federal forces then confronting him on a line extending from South-western Missouri to the mountains that separate Virginia from Tennessee. The first battles fought in this de- partment were those of Wilson's Creek and Carthage, Mis- souri, in both of which the Confederates were successful. The next was fought at Belmont, in the same State, opposite Colum- bus, Kentucky, on the western bank of the Mississippi River, on the 7th of November, in which the Confederates, under Generals Pillow and Cheatham-the latter also a Mexican veteran, greatly beloved by his troops for his fine soldierly qualities, his courage and address-were successful in driving Grant's forces back to their boats in hasty retreat to Cairo. General Polk was on the field during the day, and stimulated the men by his pres- ence, his coolness under fire, and the discretion with which he made his dispositions. By the end of November there was heavy skirmishing almost every day all along the line from Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River, via Bowling Green to Fishing Creek in East Tennessee, guarded by not more than twenty-five thou- sand troops, one-third of them without arms. On the 9th of Jan- uary, 1862, an affair occurred at Prestonburg, Kentucky, between a Confederate brigade under General Humphrey Marshall and a force of Federals under Colonel James A. Garfield,* in which the
* Elected President of the United States in 1880, and assassinated July, 1881.
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latter was successful. On the 18th of the same month General Thomas, under orders from General Buell, attacked the Confed- erates under General George B. Crittenden, at Mill Springs, and defeated them. General Zollicoffer, who was among the killed, had been a conspicuous Whig leader in the State, but was with- out military training, and had but little experience, yet he handled his troops with skill and ability, and distinguished himself on the fatal occasion by almost unexampled coolness. These defeats, so inopportune in view of the want of arms and munitions, were the beginning of a series of disasters that were due, not to want of good generalship or bravery in the soldiers, but to the superior armament and strength of the Federal ar- mies.
On the 6th of February Fort Henry, on the Tennessee River, fell under a vigorous attack by a combined naval and military expedition under General Grant and Commodore Foote. Only a few prisoners were taken, as the larger portion of the Confeder- ate garrison escaped to Fort Donelson, in front of which Grant appeared on the twelfth. On the fourteenth Bowling Green was evacuated, and on the sixteenth, after three days of hard fight- ing, Fort Donelson capitulated, not more than two thousand of the troops present making their escape, among them Forrest's regiment of cavalry. This was the first serious engagement in Tennessee, and the defeat was an exceedingly unfortunate one in view of the importance of the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers to the Confederacy. Forts Henry and Donelson were the gate-ways of the State, and their capture was contested with a stubbornness and a gallantry that were subsequently lost sight of in the excitement of hurrying events. Without rest or food, harassed night and day by the ever-vigilant and greatly supe- rior Federals, so that they could not even light fires to cook ra- tions, the young Tennesseans, fresh from the comforts of home, fought through every hour of the awful storm of shot and shell, often for hours up to their waists in snow, slush, and freezing water. It has seldom happened in the war history of the world that raw levies have been called upon to endure such hardships, or have been subjected to such tests, not only of physical but moral courage. Veterans could not have done better. Their defeat, the first great disaster to the Confederate arms, was mourned throughout the country, which hung with dread sus-
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TENNESSEE FOR FOUR YEARS THE THEATER OF WAR.
pense for so many weary hours upon the result of the unequal contest. But they earned an immortal renown, and passed into history among the stanchest defenders of the State. The loss of these outposts compelled the Confederates to fall back to Murfreesboro, and thence to Corinth, Mississippi, to which place the garrison of Columbus followed on the 2d of March, the Confederate line being reestablished from New Madrid and Island No. 10, on the Mississippi, via Humboldt, Tennessee. to Corinth, Mississippi, and so along the Memphis and Charleston railroad to East Tennessee. As a result of the most extraordi- nary exertions on the part of General Albert Sidney Johnston, ably seconded by General Beauregard, the Army of Mississippi, made up of all the troops in his department east of the Missis- sippi River, after four weeks devoted to consolidation, reorgani- zation, and drill,# moved out to Shiloh Church, on the Tennessee River, to oppose the advance of General Charles F. Smith, who, with the army that operated so successfully at Forts Donelson and Henry under General Grant, much reenforced, had landed there with a purpose to invade the State of Mississippi, and march to the Gulf of Mexico. On the 6th and 7th of April a great battle was fought near that place, in which the losses on both sides were very great, those of the Federals commanded by General Grant preponderating. On the first day the Confederates were successful. They surprised the enemy, his annihilation or capt- ure being only prevented by the untimely death, late in the after- noon, of General Johnston, one of the greatest commanders of modern times, a soldier whose modesty was in keeping with his unflinching courage, his Bayard-like purity of character, his coolness and prudence, and the self-control and self-abnegation
* General Bragg, who joined General Johnston at Corinth with his admirably drilled and disciplined division from Pensacola, Florida, describes this army has- tily organized in four weeks for a campaign against Buell and Grant as a " het- erogeneous mass, in which there was more enthusiasm than discipline, more capac- ity than knowledge, and more valor than instruction. Rifles, rifled and smooth- bore muskets-some of them originally percussion, others hastily altered in m flint-locks by Yankee contractors, many with the old tint and steel-and shot- guns of all sizes and patterns, held place in the same regiments The task of organizing such a command in four weeks, and supplying it especially with amin- nition suitable for action, was simply appalling. It was undertaken, however. by General Johnston with a cool, quiet self-control, calling to his aid the best know !- edge and talent at his command, which not only inspired confidence, but soon yielded the natural fruits of system, order, and discipline."
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which endeared him to all who were brought within his influ- ence. No other General of the Confederate armies, except Gen- eral Polk, suffered so much at the hands of the press and the politicians, who assumed to speak for the people. Without either experience or knowledge, they for months berated him for re- verses that were due to want of men and munitions. They con- stantly magnified the numbers of his army, sometimes twenty- fold the real figures, and the character and amount of his sup- plies, and upon this gross exaggeration built theories and mis- statements that were accepted by a too eager public in the absence of any contradiction or explanation from the discreet and superbly patient General, whose lips, as a duty to this very public, were sealed. No grander character than Albert Sidney Johnston's was developed by a war whose heroes are numbered by thousands. He had been a conspicuous soldier in the Texas Revolution and of the Mexican War, and commanded the Federal army in Utah, leaving the Federal Department of Cali- fornia with the rank of Brigadier-general. He was a man of imposing presence, whose simple dignity was an assurance of power, and his deference to the humblest about him a guarantee that his purposes were to be fortified by the largest measure of intelligence. He was eminently a thinker, a man of great re- serve, of few words, but of amazing tenacity, determination, and sustained power. All the qualities of great generalship inhered in him, and all the equally great qualities of perfect manhood. He was in a preeminent sense worthy the love, respect, and con- fidence of his friend, President Jefferson Davis.
When General Johnston fell, General Beauregard, second in command, who was sick, though on the field, took command of the army, and following the plan and dispositions of General Johnston continued the battle until night-fall; at the close of the contest the victorious Confederates lying down to rest in the deserted camps of the enemy. The battle, which was resumed on the seventh, was fought by the Confederates under many dis- advantages. Grant's defeated troops, hugging the bank of the river all night under cover of a fleet of Federal gun-boats, were reenforced by Buell, whom General Johnston hoped to meet and defeat after he had destroyed or "bagged" Grant. These Fed- eral reenforcements, though foot-sore by reason of herd marches, were not demoralized, as were the troops of Grant and Sherman.
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As fast as they could be crossed over the river they were sent to the front; and they were the men the Confederates met and beld in check, administering chastisement so severe as to prevent them from following for any great distance after the line of re- treat to Corinth had been taken up-as it was so soon as it could be effected in safety and in an orderly way. The battle of Shi- loh, was the first pitched battle fought on the soil of Tennessee during the civil war, and it was one of the severest. The losses were very heavy (Confederates ten thousand six hundred and ninety-nine ), especially of the Federals (fifteen thousand), who on the first day lost a whole brigade-that of Prentiss-which was captured by Polk's division. Surprised as they were in the early morning, and driven into the utmost confusion by the suddenness of the attack, the Federals nevertheless fought with great bravery; and although they never recovered any of the ground lost, they managed to inflict very severe punishment on their opponents. The triumph of the Confederate army was a signal one, due to the consummate generalship which planned the battle as much as to the bravery of the soldiers. Up to the hour of General Johnston's death his troops were victorious in every part of the field; and had it not been for the timely succor of Buell, Beau- regard would doubtless have captured Grant's army on the sec- ond day, or driven a mere remnant of it across the Tennessee River. The Confederate army reoccupied Corinth, and fortitled it with a view to a siege; but on the near approach of the Fed- erals, under General Halleck, who assumed command after Shi- loh, this design was abandoned, and a retreat to Tupelo, Missis- sippi was ordered and effected by the the 30th of May. As a result of this retreat, all the defensive positions on the Missis- sippi River above Vicksburg fell in rapid succession into the hands of the Federals-Island No. 10 and New Madrid on the 7th of April, Fort Pillow on the 4th of June, and Memphis on the 7th. The State of Tennessee was in the hands of the Federals from the mountains to the Mississippi River.
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