GRANT AND HIS ARMY.

261

CHAPTER X.

GENERAL MITCHEL'S INVASION OF ALABAMA.-THE BATTLES OF SHILOH.

Feb. 27,

1862.

Feb. 14.

ET us return to Tennessee, and observe what Generals Grant and Buell did immediately after the fall of Fort Donelson, and the flight of the Confederates, civil and military, from Nashville. We left General Grant at the Tennessee capital, in consultation with General Buell. His praise was upon every loyal lip. His sphere of action had just been enlarged. On hearing of his glorious victory at Fort Donelson, General Halleck had assigned' him to the command of the new District of West Tennessee, which embraced the territory from Cairo, between the Mississippi and Cumberland Rivers, to the northern borders of the State of Mississippi, with his headquarters in the field. It was a wide and important stage for action, and he did not rest on the laurels he had won on the Tennessee and Cumberland, but at once turned his attention to the business of moving vigorously forward in the execution of his part of the grand scheme for expelling the armed Confederates from the Mississippi valley. For that purpose he made his headquarters temporarily at Fort Henry, where General Lewis Wallace was in command, and began a new organization of his forces for further and important achievements. Foote's flotilla was withdrawn from the Cumberland, and a part of it was sent up the Tennessee River, while its commander, as we have observed, went down the Mississippi with a more powerful naval armament to co-operate with the land troops against Columbus, Hickman, Island Number Ten, and New Madrid.

An important objective was Corinth, in Northern Mississippi, at the intersection of the Charleston and Memphis and Mobile and Ohio railroads, and the seizure of that point, as a strategic position of vital importance, was Grant's design. It would give the National forces control of the great railway communications between the Mississippi and the East, and the border slave-labor States and the Gulf of Mexico. It would also facilitate the capture of Memphis by forces about to move down the Mississippi, and would give aid to the important movement of General Curtis in Arkansas. Grant was taking vigorous measures to accomplish this desirable end, when an order came from General Halleck, directing him to turn over his forces to his junior in rank, General C. F. Smith, and to remain himself at Fort Henry. Grant was astonished and mortified. He was unconscious of acts deserving of the displeasure of his superior, and he requested Halleck

• March 4.

262

EXPEDITION UP THE TENNESSEE.

to relieve him entirely from duty. That officer, made satisfied that no fault could justly be found with Grant, wrote a letter to head-quarters that removed all misconception, and on the 14th of March the latter was restored to the chief command.' This satisfied the loyal people, who were becoming impatient because of seeming injustice toward a successful commander.

Meanwhile the troops that gathered at Fort Henry had been sent up the Tennessee in transports. The unarmored gun-boats Tyler and Lexington had gone forward as far as Pittsburg Landing, at the termination of a road from Corinth, and about twenty miles from that place. There they were assailed by a six-gun battery, which, after a mutual cannonade, was silenced. When the report of this success reached General Smith, sixty-nine transports, with over thirty thousand troops, were moved up the river. The advance (Forty-sixth Ohio, Colonel March 10, Worthington) landed at Sa

1862.

vannah, the capital of Hardin County, on the eastern bank of the stream, and took military possession of the place. General Smith, whose headquarters were on the steamer Leonora, immediately sent out scouts in the direction of Corinth, where Beauregard was straining every nerve to concentrate an army to oppose this formidable movement. Their reports satisfied him that the Confederates were not then more than ten thousand strong in his front, and that their capture or dispersion would be an easy matter. He hoped to be allowed to move upon them at once, and, as a preparatory measure, he ordered General Lewis Wallace, with his division, to Crump's Landing on the west side of the river, four miles above Savannah, and thence sixteen miles westward to Purdy, a village on the railway between Humbolt, in Tennessee, and Corinth, to destroy portions of the road and important bridges in that vicinity, and especially one with extended trestle-work at each end, a few miles south of Purdy. This was a hazardous undertaking, for General Cheatham, with a large force of the Confederates, was lying near, in the direction of Pittsburg Landing. But it was successfully accomplished by a battalion of Ohio cavalry, under Major Hayes, in the midst of a series of heavy thunder

1 It seems that some malignant or jealous person had made Grant's consultation with Buell at Nashville seem like an offense against General Halleck, his immediate chief; and the march of General Smith's forces up the Cumberland from Fort Donelson was condemned as a military blunder. Grant's inability, on account of sufficient reasons, to report the exact condition of his forces at that time was also a cause of complaint; and, without inquiry, he was suspended from the chief command for ten days.-See Coppée's Grant and his Campaigns. Note on page 81.

2"It is difficult to conceive any thing more orderly and beautiful," wrote General Wallace to the author, soon afterward, "than the movement of this army up the river. The transports of each division were assembled together in the order of march. At a signal, they put out in line, loaded to their utmost capacity with soldiers and materials. Cannon fired, regiments cheered, bands played. Looking up the river, after the boats had one by one taken their places, a great dense column of smoke, extending far as the eye could reach, marked the sinuosities of the stream and hung in the air like a pall. It was, indeed, a sight never to be forgotten." 3 From a photograph by Brady, taken before the war.

EVENTS NEAR PITTSBURG LANDING.

263

showers. A train, crowded with Confederate troops, came down while the bridge and trestle-work were burning, and escaped capture by reversing the engine and fleeing at railway speed.

a March 14, 1862.

General Sherman's division was sent farther up the river to Tyler's Landing, at the mouth of Yellow Creek, just within the borders of Mississippi, to strike the Charleston and Memphis railway at Burnsville, a little east of Corinth. Floods prevented his reaching the railway, when, by order of General Smith, he turned back and disembarked at Pittsburg Landing, and took post in the vicinity of Shiloh Meetinghouse, a little log-building in the forest, about two miles from the Tennessee River, that belonged to the Methodists. General Stephen A. Hurlbut took possession of Pittsburg Landing' without opposition, and held it in quiet until the night of the 20th,' when a scouting party, composed of detachments of the Fourth Illinois and Fifth Ohio cavalry, three hundred and fifty strong, and nearly one hundred infantry, all under Lieutenant-Colonel Heath, went out in the direction of the railway, near

March.

1 Pittsburg Landing was the projected site of a commercial river-town, to rival Savannah, below it, and Hamburg, above it. The only buildings there were a store-house on a terrace, at the mouth of a ravine near the shore, and a dwelling-house, on the high bank above, which served as a post-office. When the writer visited the Landing, in April, 1866, only a few scattered bricks and some charred wood were to be seen on the site of the buildings. In the view here given, the spectator is looking down the Tennessee River from across the ravine and creek, at the mouth of which, as we shall hereafter observe, the gun-boats Tyler and Lexington lav on Sunday night, April 6th and 7th. The river had been made brim full by recent rains at the time of the author's visit.

264

NASHVILLE AND JOHN MORGAN.

Iuka. These encountered, and, in a skirmish in Black Jack Forest, dispersed, six hundred Confederate horsemen, on their way to surprise and attack Hurlbut's encampment. These had come from Beauregard's army at Corinth.

While the movement up the Tennessee was going on, General Buell's army was slowly making preparations to march southward overland and join Grant's at Savannah. It was not until the 28th of March, when Grant's position had become a perilous one, as we shall observe, that Buell left Nashville. A part of his force, under General Mitchel, went in the direction of Huntsville, in northern Alabama, to seize and hold the Memphis and Charleston railway at that place, while the main body under Buell, composed of the division of Generals Thomas, McCook, Nelson, Crittenden, and T. J. Wood, moved more to the westward by way of Columbia, at which place they left the railway.

General James S. Negley was left in command of reserves at Nashville,

1 This skirmish was maintained by the advanced company of Illinois cavalry, under Captain George Dodge. 2 It was at about this time that John Morgan, the famous guerrilla chief, first became conspicuous. The Confederate Congress had given its sanction to what the Spaniards call guerrilla warfare, which was carried on in small bands by troops not under any brigade-commanders, roaming at pleasure, with power to take any thing from foes or neutrals, but generally responsible to the major-general commanding in their department. They became, in many instances, mere roving bands of marauders and plunderers, equally terrible to all parties. Among the most noted of these was Morgan, a young man about thirty-five years of age, six feet in height, well made, strong, agile, and perfect master of himself. He had a keen, bluish-gray eye, a light complexion, sardy hair, and generally wore a moustache. Before the war he was known as a generous and jolly horse-loving and horse-racing Kentuckian, and he had great influence over his associates. He was an admirable horseman and precise marksman. He was an inexorable disciplinarian, and demanded implicit obedience. He once ordered one of his troopers to perform some perilous act in battle. The man did not move. "Do you understand my orders?" asked the chief. "Yes, Captain, but I cannot obey," was the answer. "Then good by," said Morgan, and shot him dead. Turning to his men, he said, "Such be the fate of every man disobeying orders in the face of an enemy." After that, no man waited for a second order.

We shall meet this bold rider frequently westward of the mountains and in East Tennessee. Here we will notice a single act of his, at about the time we are considering, which illustrates his coolness and daring. It is said to have been performed just after Johnston had fled from Nashville, and Morgan was scouting and foraging in his rear. He went into the city dressed as a farmer, with a load of meal, which he gave to the National Commissary, saying that there were some Union men out in his region, but they had to be careful to avoid the rebel cavalry. He dined at the St Cloud hotel, and, at the table, sat by the side of General McCook, who was so cruelly murdered afterward. He was pointed out as the generous Union farmer who had made the gift to the commissary, and he was persuaded to take the value of it in gold. Then he secretly informed the general that a band of Morgan's cavalry was camping near his residence, and that if one or two hundred horsemen would come to his house he would show them how to capture the noted rough-rider. They were sent, and were all captured by Morgan.-See Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army, by an impressed New Yorker.

MITCHEL'S EXTRAORDINARY MARCH.

265

forces of Beauregard at Corinth. This was effected on the 1st of April, and the united armies lay upon the line of the Mobile and Ohio railway from Corinth south

to Bethel, and on the Memphis and Charleston railway, from Corinth east to Iuka. They were joined by several regiments from Louisi ana; two divisions from Columbus, under Genera! Polk; and a fine corps from Mobile and Pensacola, commanded by General Bragg. "In numbers, in discipline,

FORT NEGLEY."

in the galaxy of the distinguished names of its commanders, and in every article of merit and display, the Confederate army in the vicinity of Corinth was one of the most magnificent ever assembled by the South on a single battle-field." The whole number of effective troops was about forty-five thousand. It was this army that Grant and Buell were speedily called upon to fight near the banks of the Tennessee.

General Mitchel performed his part of the grand movement southward

a March 28,

with the most wonderful vigor and success. With the engines and cars captured at Bowling Green, his troops had entered Nashville. He was sent forward, and occupied Murfreesboro' when the Confederates abandoned it in March. After he parted with the more cautious Buell at that place, on the moving of the army southward at the close of March," his own judgment was his 1862. guide, and his was practi cally an independent command. Before him the insurgents had destroyed the bridges, and these he was compelled to rebuild for the passage of his troops and munitions of war. This work was done so promptly, that his army was seldom even halted in waiting. On the 4th of April he was at Shelbyville, the capital of Bedford County, Tennessee, at the terminus of a short railway branching from that which connects Nashville with Chattanooga. This was almost sixty miles from Nashville, and there he made his deposit of supplies. At that point he

ORMSBY M. MITCHEL

1 This is a view of the front of Fort Negley, or the face toward the country, commanding the southern approaches to Nashville, as it appeared when sketched by the author in May, 1866 2 Pollard's First Year of the War, page 295.