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 5
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# Romain, on page 321 of Vol. II. of his "Military Operations of General Beauregard," says: "General Beauregard could! now realize the full truth of the reported disintegration and confusion of the Army of Tennessee. Very little, if any thing, remained of its former cohesive strength. If not in the strict sense of the word a disorganized mob, it was no longer an army. None seemed more keenly alive to the fact and suffered more from it than General Hood himself." So much so that General Beauregard "had not the heart virtually to disgrace him by on lering his immediate removal."
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it was as well perhaps that thus, in a supreme effort to reaissert the sovereignty of the State and vindicate the right of the people to choose their form of government, the Confederate cause should go out in the glory of battle. the sons of Tennessee especially signal- izing their worth as the descendants of the men who followed Sevier and Shelby, and later still the immortal Andrew Jackson.
The destruction of the Army of Tennessee fitted into the plans and purposes of the Federal Commander-in-chief, who was an especial believer in the providence of the heaviest bat- talions, and. convinced that the Confederacy was a mere shell, had ordered movements at all available points between the Po- tomac and the Mississippi to crush that shell and end the long- protracted contest. A plain, unpretentious man, General Grant hid behind a settled, sphinx-like look as eager a spirit as ever beat in imprisoning cage; and, full of impatience as he advanced to the height which he ultimately and deservedly reached. he was, while not indifferent to the reputation of others, especially careful of that of those who best subserved his plans and pur- poses. He was impatient at what he deeined Thomas's unnec- essary delays in attacking Hood, and he superseded that very superior officer by appointing General John A. Logan, a volun- teer officer of distinction, to supreme command in Tennessee. But the orfler to this effect inet the news of Hood's finiil disas- ter, and it was recalled. Thomas, constitutionally methodical and provident, was a professional soldier who understood that fighting was his trade, and, as he proved at Chickamauga when fairly in the field, had all the bull-dog-like tenacity for which Grant himself has credit. He was, under any of the ordinary chances of war, more than a match for Hood, who was impetu- ous and headlong, and desperately brave. In an extraordinary emergency like that at Nashville, in which his own reputation was at stake. and with an army as compared with the Confed- erates two for one, fighting under as skillfully devised cover as the best engineering skill in a naturally fortified country could establish, less than overthrow and rout was not to be looked for. Hood's army dispersed. there remained but one organized body of troops that could be distinguished by the title of army in the Confederacy east of the Mississippi. This was the renowned Army of Northern Virginia, under General R. E. Lee. This Grant himself confronted with a daily recruited host, and with
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the aid of General Sheridan, one of the most skillful, self-reli- ant, enterprising, and vigorous of his lieutenants, was pushing its thin and long-extended line, at an awful cost of life, nearer to the point of retreat, nearer to the end. Sherman, no longer con- fronted by General "Joe" Johnston, who had proved more than his match, and relieved of the opposition which Mr. Davis # intended
#Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Albert Sidney Johnston are the three great historie figures of the civil war on the Southern side. Each occupies a dis- tinct position, the two latter as the ablest military commanders, the former as the civic head of the Confederate States Government. Mr. Davis was called to the position of provisional President of the Confederacy much to his own surprise. He was an educated soldier as well as a practical statesman, and had served with distinction at the head of a Mississippi regiment during the Mexican War. He therefore, on the secession of his State, expected to be at once employed as a sol- dier, believing that the opportunities for statesmanship would be few and far be- tween during the dreadful contest. At the first he was not disappointed. Gov- ernor Pettit, of Mississippi, immediately upon his return home from Washington, where he hed resigned his seat in the United States Senate, commissioned him senior Major-general of militia of that State; and he was just beginning the work of organizing an army when called to the higher trust by the convention sitting in Montgomery, Ala., and which represented the then seceded "Cotton" States. From that day until the final collapse in 1865, Mr. Davis was constant in the per- formance of the multifarious duties of his position, attended with increasing cares, guided by a singleness of purpose and devotion to his high trust that, however much men may differ from him, has never been questioned. Mr. Davis was regarded by the people and politicians of the North as the very front and moving cause of secession. The truth is, that while a disciple of Calhoun's and a strict construction- ist, he questioned the expediency of secession in 1860, because he knew the Southern States to be unprepared for the consequences certain to follow. But he yielded to the majority, and so has been made, like a scape-goat, to bear away what Northern politicians assumed were the sins of the Southern people. So, too, mindful that his trust was of and for the people. in seeking to enforce their views, often against his own judgment, he has been compelled to carry a load of criticism that should rest on millions of shoulders. Besides the anxious, eager people, acting always from impulse, he had to deal with a Congress that became little better than a political cabal. Then, too, there was the trouble of raising armies under the States rights theory, which admitted of the obtrusion of many and confusing councilors, and in some cases of bitter and determined opposition. Add to these very serious drawbacks the want of war munitions, a treasury whose notes finally became valueless, a blockaded coast and confinement to the daily depleted supplies of limited resources of men and means, the want of an efficient navy, and the opposing sentiment of the civil- ized world, and it will at once be seen that his task, herculean at the first, grew out of all proportions as the war was prolonged. That he made mistakes cannot be denied. Perhaps it is true, too, that he sometimes permitted his prejudices to override his judgment: but, recalling the limited material he had to work with and the enemy he had to deal with-always growing stronger in men, means, and 4
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Hood should offer, was marching through Georgia to the sea, and was thus proving the emptiness of the shell and the utter inability of the Confederate Government to rally for another campaign.
By March of 1865, all but one (Fort McAlister) of the sea- coast defenses were in the hands of the Federal forces, and Gen- eral Wilson had but recently destroyed, at Selma, Alabama, the last of the ordnance depots of the Confederacy. In the Trans- Mississippi Department there was a fairly equipped army of a few thousands, but it was unequal to any aggressive movement, and was held in check by the Federals under General Steele. Lee alone held the field, and on him the eyes of both peoples were turned for the few remaining weeks of the existence of a Government whose capital had so long been defended by his genius, his masterly tactics and strategy, his wonderful celerity in anticipating and confronting the enemy, and the bravery and endurance of soldiers equal to the best that history honors with
confidence-the wonder is that he was able to hold his Government together so long, and until all means had been expended and the country had been reduced to the last man, the cradle and the grave being robbed to fill the constantly de- pleted ranks of armies whose support cost the Southern States all that they had of property-all that they had accumulated from the earliest colonial days down to 1860. To be sure much of this-indeed, all of it-is due to the patriotism of the people; but without intelligent guidance, and a tenacious and determined spirit to lead, to rally, and to urge, even that would have given way long before the losses in men and money had reached the extreme of absolute beggary. No nation in ancient or modern times ever made such sacrifices for autonomy and life as the Confederate States of America, and no man ever so completely represented and vindicated the spirit of national sacrifice as Jefferson Davis. He was the em- bodiment of the will of the young republic whose life went out after four years of contest unparalleled in the world's history, and he expressed to the last its hopes and aspirations, and in his own case its tenacious hold on life. Its honor never suffered in his hands; its principles were never sullied by his act. With the struggle he closed the history of his public life, and he has steadily refused all entreaties, and remained in the dignified retirement he coveted after the fall of the Confederacy. He was for a time made the object of vindictive prosecu- tions; was imprisoned, and in the most wanton way was brutally ill-used; and he has been exempt from the pardon extended by the Federal Government to other Southern leaders, and thus has been forced to become a vicarious atonement to the Union for the effort made by the people of the South to maintain, according to the Declaration of Independence, the Government of their choice. Through all this he has borne himself with becoming dignity and reserve. Accepting the posi- tion and honors thrust upon him by political hate and maflevolence, he has become the one central figure of the Confederacy, surrounded by the love of the Southern people, the embodiment of their constancy, their devotion, and their patriotism.
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a high place. There was a brave effort, under General Joe E. Johnston with an army hastily improvised in North Carolina, to protect his rear, but it was fruitful only of a few barren victories and in loss of life. The impetus of the final movement of the Fed- erals could not be stayed. The Confederate ranks were everywhere being thinned under the strain of constant attack. The end was very near. For a few weeks there were some "gallant stands." Here and there men came together with desperate resolution to retrieve the failing fortunes of the Confederacy. This was but the flickering of the candle. The defeat before Nashville sealed the fate not only of Tennessee, but of the Confederacy. It uncovered its nakedness and laid bare its utter poverty in men and means so creditable to the unswerving devotion and patriotism of the people. By June of 1865 the Confederacy had ceased to exist.
The battle of Nashville was the last great effort of men fight- ing for their homes, and it was an effort worthy of the name and fame they had made from the bleak, cold days of Forts Donel- son and Henry, in 1862, when they first encountered the enemy upon their own soil, down to the dreadful slaughter at Franklin. Years of discipline, of trial, of hardship, of march and camp, of skirmish and battle, had made them veterans, and they went to the work of death under the shadow of the capital and with- in sight of its pleasant homes with all the dash and spirit of troops closing a successful campaign. Their ranks wasted, they did not hesitate to encounter an army of double their number, inspired by frequent and recurring successes, and fighting under cover of massive works. But they in vain threw themselves again and again upon the enemy, and with desperate valor en- countered charges of soldiers commanded with consummate skill. Though led by some of the bravest and ablest officers in the Confederate armies, and fought in the most skillful disposi- tions it was possible to make, they were compelled to give way .* They retreated precipitately across the State under the cover of
*"The troops of the Tennessee army," said General Joseph E. Johnston in one of his dispatches to General Beauregard during the final campaign in North Car- olina in March, 1865, "have fully disproved the slander that has been published against them." And to this Romain, in his "Military Operations of General Beauregard," says: "Such well-deserved testimony in their behalf must have been most gratifying to their old commander, who, having so often tested their mettle, knew that even at this dark hour of our struggle, and after they had been so hardly tried, there were no better troops in the Confederate service."
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the cavalry commanded by General Forrest, the greatest of Ten- nessee's soldiers, and harassed by the victorious Federals, they crossed the Tennessee River and dispersed. Weary and foot- sore, the most favored of them but scantily clad, they had left their bloody tracks in the muddy road, the Arctic-like winter in- creasing their sufferings at every step. Thus the soldiers of Tennessee closed on the banks of the Tennessee River a cam- paign of four years, as they began it on the Cumberland, amid rain and sleet and snow. But, though filled with gloom and de- pressed by defeat, they still nursed a spark of hope. Beaten. baffled of their purpose, routed and dispersed, they could! not believe that all was lost. To the last they were full of the ardor, enterprise, push, and spirit that a hundred years before had sig- nalized their forefathers under Braddock in the "country of the Illinois," at Heaton's Station and King's Mountain, at Nick-a- Jack, and later at Emuckfau, the Horse-shoe, at New Orleans. in the jungles of Florida, at the Alamo, and in Mexico. The hero- ismn of the Volunteer State never shone more conspicuously than during that last effort of her soldiers to recapture the capital; and the superb endurance and moral courage that have signal- ized our race in all ages were never so sternly tested as on that bleak December day when the Army of Tennessee turned its back forever upon the soil it was mustered to defend. Nashville sits more proudly than ever upon her many hills. No frowning fortifications threaten nor soldiers menace her. The busy hum of industry attests the supremacy of order and of law. The happy husbandman proclaims the permanency of peace. Every- where right, not might, prevails. The Union is restored. Bat love lingers on the fields consecrated by the best blood of the State. A generation of men have come upon the stage of life since that fateful winter of 1864, and the labor of many hands, multiplied by the passing years, has wiped away every trace of the awful carnage, the bloody atonement of the people; but the story of the Army of Tennessee still lives-it has found an en- during lodgment in every home; and as the years recede it will pass from lip to lip a thrilling memory that cannot die. It will live forever, and inspire other generations to emulate the patri- otism of the men who fought in the war between the States.
MEMPHIS, July, 1885.
alex. P. Stewart.
THE ARMY OF TENNESSEE. - A SKETCH.
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THE ARMY OF TENNESSEE. A SKETCH.
BY ALEX. P. STEWART, OXFORD, MISS.
AR is a fearful game for kings or peoples to play. There can be no greater crime against human- ity than a needless or an unjust war. Those who appeal to arms are under an imperious obli- gation to make clear to the world the necessity and rightfulness of such course. It should be made apparent that the miseries of the situation from which escape is sought surpass the evils caused by the remedy-the destruction of prop- erty, the waste of human life, the suffering and wretchedness, the demoralization, which are the inevitable effects of war. If ad- missible to take into the account the influence of war on the eternal destinies of men, doubtless no war-of modern times at least -- can be justified. Yet it is doubtless true that through the over- ruling providence of God great virtues may be born of war.
The Government of the United States of America, under the Constitution, went into operation on the 4th of March, 1789. On the 20th of December, 1860, the State of South Carolina. acting through a convention, adopted an ordinance of secession from the Union. Other States followed her example; and on the 8th of February, 1861, the Confederate Government was organized, embracing the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. To these were soon added Texas, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Ar- kansas. On the 12th of April of the same year, at half-past four o'clock in the morning, war between the United States and the Confederate States was inaugurated by the opening of fire on Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor, by a Confederate bat- tery under the command of General G. T. Beauregard. This war-the most gigantic civil war, if that title be applicable to it. of all the ages-continued through four long, weary years. It is said to have cost the entire country, North and South, ten thou- (55)
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sand millions of dollars and a million of lives. But what arith- metic can compute the sorrow and anguish, the suffering, the misery, the woe it occasioned, or number the souls it destroyed? It resulted in the overthrow of the Confederate Government, the restoration of the seceded States to the Union, the abolition of slavery in the Southern States, the enfranchisement of the negro, and the surrender by the States of the Confederacy of "the right to withdraw from the Federal Union on account of any real or supposed grievance," or "to pass any law in deroga- tion of the supreme allegiance of citizens of the States to the Government of the United States."
During the seventy-two years the Constitutional Government of the United States had been in operation its power was felt by those subject to it chiefly as a source of blessing, rarely indeed as one of oppression. The prosperity of the country, its growth in power and in influence among the nations, the peaceful en- largement of its domain, far exceeded every precedent of ancient or modern times. The people were proud of the title of Amer- ican citizen, which was justly regarded as even a greater distinc- tion than ever it was to be called a Roman; and the national flag was idolized as the beautiful symbol of the glory of the country, and of the perfect security of her children beneath its ample folds. It is the power of the State Government, whose sphere embraces local interests and most personal relations, of which the citizen of the United States is chiefly conscious.
Why, then, did eleven States secede from the Union in 1861, and organize a separate Government? and why did the United States make war upon them? Was secession justifiable? and whether so or not, was war just and necessary ?
There were two prime causes of dissatisfaction on the part of the Southern States with the Federal Government. As an agri- cultural country, the South was opposed to the policy of "pro- tection," which from the very beginning of the Government was embraced in the tariff legislation of Congress. She desired to be free to sell her surplus products and purchase her supplies in the most favorable markets of the world. While perfectly willing to pay the duties necessary for purposes of revenue, she felt that it was both unjust and unconstitutional to tax her peo- ple, through the high prices imposed by protective tariffs, for the benefit of the manufacturers of other sections. South Car-
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olina, especially, resented the action of Congress during the ses- sion of 1831-2, when the protective policy was carried to a greater extreme than in any former tariff. She pronounced the act un- constitutional, and therefore null and void, threatened resistance to any attempt by the officers of the Government to collect the duties imposed by this "tariff of abominations," as it was called. in her ports, and planted herself on the doctrine of State sov- ereignty, and the consequent rights of nullification and seces- sion. She was appeased by the passage of the compromise tar- iff of 1833.
In the year 1619 African slavery was introduced into Virginia. Eventually all the colonies became slave - holding, although "nowhere was slavery formally established in the organic law as a permanent social relation." "In the North, the sever- ity of the climate, the poverty of the soil, and the all-pervad- ing habit of laborious industry among its people, set narrow limits to slavery. In the States nearest the tropics it throve luxuriously, and its influence entered into their inmost political life."" So it happened that the institution drifted southward, and took up its permanent abode in the fifteen southernmost States of the Union. Moral sentiment and interest combined created a fierce opposition to slavery among the people of the North. By the ordinance of 1787 "for the government of the territory of the United States north-west of the river Ohio," slavery was forever excluded from that territory; and the States into which it was divided-Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin -- came into the Union as free States. On the application of Missouri, in 1819, to be admitted as a slave State, violent opposition was made, and that agitation of the question of slavery began which was finally terminated only by an appeal to arms, the emancipation of the negro, and the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, as results of the war. So far as Missouri was concerned, the question was set- tled by the " Missouri Compromise," an act by which Missouri was admitted with slavery, which, however, was to be forever excluded from all other territory lying north of the southern boundary of that State-the parallel of 36° 30' north-while States formed of territory lying south of that line were to be admitted with or without slavery, as the people of such States might choose.
Bancroft: " History of the United States," Vol. VI., p. 303.
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This measure quieted the agitation of the subject-at least as a political question-until after the annexation of Texas and the acquisition of new territory consequent on the war with Mexico. Another " compromise " was adopted in 1850, the great object of which was to settle this vexed question in reference to the new territory, and it was hoped to settle it forever. California, though a part of it lay south of 36° 30', was admitted as a free State. Territorial governments for Utah and New Mexico-the latter lying mostly south of 36° 30' -- were organized without con- ditions as to slavery. The division of Texas was authorized, so that as many as four new States might be formed out of its ter- ritory, which were to be admitted with or without slavery, as the people should determine. A new and more rigorous "fugitive slave law" was enacted, and the slave trade in the District of Columbia was abolished. These acts produced a partial and temporary calm; but the agitation was renewed with increased bitterness in 1854 by the introduction into the Senate of a meas- " ure known as the "Kansas-Nebraska Bill." It provided for the organization of the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska, and authorized the people of those Territories to decide for them- selves, in the formation of their Constitutions, whether they would admit or exclude slavery. These Territories lay north of the parallel of 36° 30', and by the passage of the bill the Mis- souri Compromise was declared unconstitutional and void, and repealed by the compromise of 1850. A struggle ensued for the possession of Kansas. Settlers from both sections rushed in, each party hoping to secure a Constitution and State Govern- ment favorable to its own views. Frequent collisions between the parties took place, and an irregular but bloody war was carried on. Finally, in 1859, an anti-slavery Constitution was adopted, and Kansas became a free State. In the meantime a new polit- ical party had been organized, known first as the Free-soil, later as the Republican party. It was composed chiefly of Northern Whigs, who abandoned their old party ties. Its distinctive principles were the supremacy of the Federal Government, op- position to State sovereignty, and to the extension of slavery. It soon absorbed all the elements of opposition to slavery that existed in the North, and became a powerful anti-slavery party. The final crisis of the slavery question was evidently approach- ing, when the conflict of parties would be followed by the battle
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of sections. The South claimed that the Territories were the common property-the purchase of " the blood and treasure "- of the people of both sections, and that therefore a Southern slave-holder should have the right to remove into any Territory, taking with him his slaves as well as any other species of prop- erty, the final question of freedom or slavery to be settled only when the Territory became a State. On the other hand, the North opposed the extension of slavery into any new Territory. insisting that it should be confined to existing limits, so that eventually it might be hemmed in by a cordon of free States, and, like a serpent girdled by fire, sting itself to death.
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