The Civil War: A Narrative: Fredericksburg to Meridian (174 page)

Sherman arrived next day, riding in ahead of the relief column, which he had stopped at Maryville, eighteen miles to the south, when he learned that the Confederates had pulled back from Knoxville. Notified that the siege had been lifted, Grant proposed that Longstreet be pursued and driven across the Blue Ridge, thus to assure his removal as a hovering threat; but the redhead wanted no part of such an assignment. “A stern chase is a long one,” he protested, determined to resist all efforts to shift him farther eastward from the Mississippi Valley, which he still saw as the cockpit of the war. Now that the big river had been cleared and reclaimed from source to mouth, he preferred to deal with the rebels down in Georgia, intending to complete their destruction by driving them back on the rail transportation hub eighty air-line miles across the mountains in their rear. “My troops are in excellent heart,” he declared, “ready for Atlanta or anywhere.” Instructed to detach two divisions to strengthen the Knoxville garrison—in case Longstreet attempted a comeback from Rogersville, where he had ended his unpursued retreat, sixty-odd miles up the Holston—Sherman had Granger proceed north from Maryville with Sheridan and Wood, while he himself returned by easy stages to Chattanooga with his own four divisions. There he found Thomas and Hooker taking a well-earned rest from their recent exertions. Now that blustery weather had arrived, the Cumberland and ex-Potomac troops were already settling down in winter camps. Similarly, Grant had transferred his headquarters back to Nashville, and presently Sherman joined him there, enjoying such relaxations as the Tennessee capital afforded outside work hours, which the two friends spent designing further troubles for the Confederacy, to be undertaken in various directions as soon as the weather cleared.

That would not be for some time, however. Meanwhile Thomas was occupying himself with the establishment of a military cemetery on Orchard Knob. The thought had occurred to him, on the day he took it, that this would make a lovely burying ground for the Union soldiers who had fallen or were still to fall in the battles hereabout, and almost before the smoke of his involuntary assault on Missionary Ridge had cleared he had a detail at work on the project. When the chaplain who was to be in charge inquired if the dead should be buried in plots assigned to the states they represented—as was being done at Gettysburg, where Lincoln had spoken a couple of weeks ago—the Virginian lowered his head in thought, then shook it decisively and made a tumbling gesture with both hands. “No, no; mix ’em up, mix ’em up,” he said; “I’m tired of states rights.” Increased responsibility, accompanied by a growing and reciprocal fondness for the men in the army he now led, had brought a new geniality to the stolid Rock of Chickamauga. He had even begun to
tell stories on himself: as, for example, of the soldier who had come to him recently asking for a furlough. “I aint seen my old woman, General, for four months,” the man explained. If he thought this could not fail in its persuasiveness he was wrong. “And I have not seen mine for two years,” Thomas replied. “If a general can submit to such privation, surely a private can.” Evidently the soldier had not previously considered this connection between privates and privation. At any rate he looked doubtful. “I don’t know about that, General,” he said. “Me and my wife aint made that way.”

No doubt the Virginian’s jovial mood was also due in part to the fulfillment of his vow to be “even” with his former battery commander for the insult he had received in the course of the siege that had been lifted when his Cumberlanders took the bit in their teeth and charged, “against orders,” up Missionary Ridge. What was more, his satisfaction was enlarged by the knowledge that he had obtained it despite the department commander’s attempt to limit his participation in the action that had finally put revenge within his reach. In that double sense, as the outcome applied to both commanders, past and present, his gratification was doubly sweet.

As for Bragg, the reconsolidation of his army behind Rocky Face Ridge—completed on November 28 with the arrival of Cleburne, who was greeted with cheers for his rebuff of Hooker at Ringgold Gap the day before—brought with it not only a sense of relief at having been delivered from destruction, but also a certain added ruefulness, a letdown following hard upon the relaxation of tension. He knew now just how narrow his escape had been and, what was worse, how unlikely he was to be so fortunate in another contest with the foe who had just flung him out of a position he had judged impregnable. Worst of all, perhaps, was the attitude of the troops, then and since. “Here’s your mule!” they had hooted in response to his attempt to rally them with “Here is your commander,” and he took it as a bad sign that, far from being despondent over their disgrace, many of them were grinning at the memory of their headlong break for safety. “Flicker, flicker!” they called to one another in their camps, that being their accustomed cry when they saw a man whose legs would not behave in combat. “Yaller-hammer, Alabama! Flicker, flicker, yaller-hammer!” they would shout, adding by way of reprise: “Bully for Bragg! He’s hell on retreat!” Though this might be no more than their way of shrugging off embarrassment, it did not seem to him to augur well for the outcome of the next blue-gray confrontation, wherever that might be. “We hope to maintain this position,” he wired Richmond the following day, “[but] should the enemy press on promptly we may have to cross the Oostenaula,” another fifteen miles to the south, beyond Resaca. “My first estimate of our disaster was not too large,” he continued, “and time only can restore order and morale. All possible aid should be pushed on to Resaca.” And having gone
so far in the way of admission, he went one step further. “I deem it due to the cause and to myself,” he added, “to ask for relief from command and an investigation into the causes of the defeat.”

Perhaps this last was no more than a closing flourish, such as he had employed at the end of the letter sent out after Murfreesboro, wherein he invited his lieutenants to assess his military worth. In any event, just as they had taken him at his word then, whether he meant it or not, so did Davis now. “Your dispatches of yesterday received,” the adjutant general replied on the last day of November. “Your request to be relieved has been submitted to the President, who, upon your representation, directs me to notify you that you are relieved from command, which you will transfer to Lieutenant General Hardee, the officer next in rank and now present for duty.”

There he had it. Or perhaps not quite; perhaps the flourish—if that was what it was—could be recalled. At any rate, if he was thus to be brought down, he would do what he could to assure that his was not a solitary departure. In sending next day, by special messenger, “a plain, unvarnished report of the operations at Chattanooga, resulting in my shameful discomfiture,” he included a letter addressed to his friend the Commander in Chief, who had sustained him invariably in the past. “The disaster admits of no palliation,” he wrote, “and is justly disparaging to me as a commander. I trust, however, you may find upon full investigation that the fault is not entirely mine.… I fear we both erred in the conclusion for me to retain command here after the clamor raised against me. The warfare has been carried on successfully, and the fruits are bitter. You must make other changes here, or our success is hopeless.… I can bear to be sacrificed myself, but not to see my country and my friends ruined by the vices of a few profligate men.” Specifically he charged that Breckinridge had been drunk throughout the three-day battle and “totally unfit for any duty” on the retreat, while Cheatham was “equally dangerous” in that regard. As for himself, he said in closing, “I shall ever be ready to do all in my power for our common cause, but feel that some little rest will render me more efficient than I am now. Most respectfully and truly, yours, Braxton Bragg, General, &c.”

Still in Dalton the following day, December 2, he tried a different tack in a second letter—still headed “Headquarters Army of Tennessee” and still signed “General, Commanding”—in which he assessed the tactical situation and made an additional suggestion: “The enemy has concentrated all his available means in front of this army, and by sheer force of numbers has triumphed over our gallant little band. No one estimates the disaster more seriously than I do, and the whole responsibility and disgrace rest on my humble head. But we can redeem the past. Let us concentrate all our available men, unite them with this gallant little army, still full of zeal and burning to redeem its lost character and prestige, and with our greatest and best leader at its head—yourself, if practicable
—march the whole upon the enemy and crush him in his power and his glory. I believe it practicable, and I trust that I may be allowed to participate in the struggle which may restore to us the character, the prestige, and the country which we have just lost.”

Whatever might come of this in the future, and he knew how susceptible to flattery Davis was in that respect, there was nothing for him to do now, after waiting two whole days for them to be rescinded, but carry out the instructions he had received. Painful though the parting was, at least for him—“The associations of more than two years, which bind together a commander and his trusted troops, cannot be severed without deep emotion,” he remarked in the farewell address he issued that same day—he turned his duties over to Hardee, as ordered, and took his leave. In the seventeen months he had been at its head the Army of Tennessee had fought four great battles, three of which had ended in retreat though all save the last had been claimed as victories. Similarly, in the equal span of time ahead, it would fight a great many more battles that would likewise be claimed as victories although they too—once more with a single exception, comparatively as bloody as Chickamauga—would end in retreat; but not under Bragg. His tenure had ended. “I shall proceed to La Grange, Georgia, with my personal staff,” he notified Richmond, “and there await further orders.”

Spring Came on Forever

NEWS OF THE GREAT CHATTANOOGA VICTORY, which had begun on Monday and ended on Wednesday, spread throughout the North on the following day, November 26. By coincidence, in a proclamation issued eight weeks earlier at the suggestion of a lady editor, Lincoln had called upon his fellow citizens “to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.” Instituted thus “in the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity,” this first national Thanksgiving was intended not only as a reminder for people to be grateful for “the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies,” but also as an occasion for them to “implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and Union.” Now that word of what had happened yesterday on Missionary Ridge was added to the “singular deliverances and blessings” for which the public was urged to show its gratitude today, it seemed to many that the Almighty Hand had interposed already, answering a good part of their prayers in advance, and that the end so fervently hoped for might be considerably nearer than had been supposed when the proclamation was issued in early October, not quite two weeks after the shock of Chickamauga caused those hopes to take a sudden drop. “This is truly a day of thanksgiving,” Halleck wired Grant as the news of his latest triumph went out across the land and set the church bells ringing as wildly as they had rung after Donelson and Vicksburg.

Moreover, just as Thomas had taken his revenge for Chickamauga, so had Banks obtained by now at least a degree of recompense for the drubbing he had suffered in September, when he opened his campaign against coastal Texas with Franklin’s botched attack on Sabine Pass. Revising his plan by reversing it, end for end, he decided to start
with a landing near the Mexican border, then work his island-hopping way back east. It was true the pickings would be much slimmer at the outset, for there was little that far down the coast that was worth taking; but the objectives were unlikely to be as stoutly defended, and he would be moving toward, rather than away from, his New Orleans base of supplies, which should serve to encourage his men to fight harder and move faster, if for no other reason than to hasten their return. Accordingly, after sending Franklin’s unhappy soldiers to Berwick for a renewed ascent of the Teche—an ascent that would end abruptly on November 3 at Grand Coteau, ten miles short of Opelousas, where the column was assaulted and driven back through Vermilionville to New Iberia by Richard Taylor and Tom Green, who lost 180 and inflicted 716 casualties, including the 536 fugitives they captured—he loaded aboard transports a 3500-man division, commanded by a Maine-born major general with the resounding name of Napoleon Jackson Tecumseh Dana, who set out from New Orleans on October 26, escorted by three gunboats. This time Banks went along himself, presumably to guard against snarls and hitches. At any rate there were none. On November 2—the day before Franklin was thrown into sudden reverse at Grand Coteau—Dana put his troops ashore at Brazos Santiago, off the mouth of the Rio Grande, and though he encountered practically no resistance, the graybacks having been withdrawn to thicken the defenses in East Texas, Banks did not let this tone down the announcement of his achievement. “The flag of the Union floated over Texas today at meridian precisely,” he notified Washington. “Our enterprise has been a complete success.” Four days later he occupied Brownsville, just under thirty miles inland, opposite Matamoros, and sent for the puppet governor Andrew Hamilton, who had been waiting off-stage all this time and who was established there at the southernmost tip of the state and the nation, along with his gubernatorial staff of would-be cotton factors, before the month was out. Meanwhile Banks had followed up his initial success with a series of landings on Mustang and Matagorda islands, thus gaining control of Aransas Pass and Matagorda Bay. But that was all; that was as far as he got on his way back east. Galveston and the mouth of the Brazos River were too strongly held for him to attack them with Dana’s present command, reduced as it was by garrison detachments, and Halleck could not be persuaded to accede to requests for reinforcements. All Banks had gained for his pains these past three months, including the drubbing at Sabine Pass, was a couple of dusty border towns and a few bedraggled miles of Texas beach, mostly barren dunes, which he described as “inclement and uncomfortable, in consequence of the sterility of the soil and the violence of the northers.”