Never Call Retreat (61 page)

the only immediate remedy he could see was to restore to the ranks all soldiers serving as cooks, mechanics, teamsters, and laborers, replacing them with Negro slaves.
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Meanwhile, he had more and more ground to hold, and always fewer men to hold it with.

It seemed impossible to bring the armies up to strength. As far back as the spring, Secretary Seddon had complained of "the decadence of the volunteering spirit." Many men who were liable to conscription were claiming exemption, and often enough were getting it. Major General J. L. Kemper, in charge of reserve forces in Virginia, estimated during the summer that Virginia contained 40,000 men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five who were not in the army, and he pointed out that partial returns in the Bureau of Conscription on September 1 showed more than 28,000 Virginians of military age were exempted or on detail. The commandant of conscripts in Alabama said that although more than half of 7994 deserters from Alabama regiments had been rounded up and returned to duty during the summer, there had been 6000 additional desertions from Alabama regiments in October and November, and in many counties it was impossible to enforce the conscription law because the absentees were armed and defiant. In December Howell Cobb urged a return to the old volunteer system, saying that "it would require the whole army to enforce the conscript law if the same state of things exists throughout the Confederacy as I know is the case in Georgia and Alabama, and I may add Tennessee."
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Some of the state authorities were of no help. Governor Joe Brown of Georgia insisted that the Confederate authorities had no power to draft men whom a state governor declared exempt, and he granted exemptions liberally; by autumn he had made 1350 justices of the peace exempt, along with an equal number of constables, not to mention 2751 officers in the state militia. Brown took an all-out states' rights position: if the central government could draft some state officials it could draft all of them—governor, legislators, judges, and everybody—and if it could do that it had the power to destroy any state government whenever it wanted to, in which case the cherished principle of states' rights was a nullity. This probably was entirely true, but clinging to this belief brought no recruits to the armies of Lee and Hood, and involved a complete failure to understand that the immediate threat to states' rights, as far as Georgia was concerned, came not from the government at Richmond but from General Sherman. In December Mr. Davis wrote wearily to a friend that some state officials were "hindering the action of this government, obstructing the execution of its laws, denouncing its necessary policy, impairing its hold on the confidence of the people, and dealing with it rather as if it were the public enemy than the government which they themselves had established for the common defence and which was their only hope of safety from the untold horrors of Yankee despotism."
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The problems were interlocking. One thing that made it impossible to enlarge the armies was the number of men exempt and on detail; one thing that made it impossible to feed and clothe the armies properly was the fact that not enough men were exempt and on detail, so that railroads and wagon lines and processing plants and mills operated badly; and one thing that caused desertions was the fact that the armies were poorly fed and clothed. There were not enough men behind the lines to round up and restore to service the men who had run away, but there were so many that their absence from the fighting front was sorely felt. (A wrathful War Department inspector found a host of skulkers at innumerable scattered commands in Mississippi: "Each little town in the state has its commandant of post, its conscript officer, its adjutants, its guards, in a word its little army around it. One of these officers could perform the duty of the whole.")
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From the beginning the Confederacy had had too much to do and not enough to do it with, and although it could not bring requirements into line with resources, it clung to the simple faith that Southern valor would overcome all obstacles. Now the machinery that had been overtaxed so long was breaking down, but what could be understood with the mind could not be accepted with the heart; and so there was a blind, unavailing hunt for the person, institution or practice that had been at fault. The trouble no doubt lay in the failure to conscript more vigorously, or possibly in the attempt to conscript at all; in too rigid observance of the principle of states' rights, or in the scandalous flouting of that principle; in some mysterious inability, by President or by Congress or by someone else, to give the Southern cause a greater dimension than the Founding Fathers had specified. A discouraged Senator from Texas noted that although the administration was constantly asking Congress for more men, Congress had long since placed at its disposal every able-bodied man in the Confederacy, and he went on to reflect: "It is true that they were not in the ranks, but it was not because Congress had not passed the laws desired by our military authorities to put them there." To attend the fall session of Congress, this Senator had come across the whole of the Confederacy, all the way from Texas, talking to people, listening to them, coming to his own conclusion about the failure of the laws to bring men into the army, and he quietly recorded a somber verdict: "Confidence was gone, and hope was almost extinguished."
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One by one the little flags that had flown so brightly were coming down. That famous sea raider, C.S.S.
Alabama,
which had ranged the seven seas to take more than threescore Yankee merchant ships, was at the bottom of the English Channel now, sunk by U.S.S.
Kearsarge
after a fight off Cherbourg breakwater on June 19; a romantic cruiser, gone from a war that no longer had romantic overtones. John Hunt Morgan, the cavalryman who had ridden Federal troopers off their horses in forays along the middle border, was dead, killed in an outpost clash at Greeneville, Tennessee, on September 4. Worst of all, the old hope that a bold stroke into Missouri would restore vitality to the dying war west of the Mississippi had flickered out in a meaningless cavalry raid.

The story of the raid was eloquent. After Banks' Red River campaign came to grief, General Edmund Kirby Smith had been moved to strike at Missouri, but he never managed to put any real weight into it. When his force at last moved from Arkansas into Missouri late in September it was strictly a cavalry expedition, 8000 men or more, led by valiant General Sterling Price. Price hoped to reclaim Missouri for the Confederacy, but he was not strong enough; desperately needing the infantry Smith had not given him, he won minor victories, briefly threatened St. Louis, rode off to the north-western part of the state, and ran into an overpowering array of Federals under such competent generals as A. J. Smith, Samuel R. Curtis, and Alfred Pleasonton. The odds were too great. There were several days of fighting, climaxed by a hard battle at Westport on October 23, and Price was routed. He went off in a confused retreat, marked by sharp rear-guard actions, and rode desperately south through eastern Kansas and western Missouri, shaking off his pursuers but going on all the way to Texas. He proudly reported that he had made a 1400-mile march, capturing many guns and prisoners, seizing abundant supplies and giving the Yankees cause for alarm, but the hard fact was that the campaign had failed. For its supreme effort the trans-Mississippi Confederacy had been able to do no more than make a spectacular but ineffective cavalry raid. . . . Hope in truth was almost extinguished.
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On October 4—more than a month before the re-election of Abraham Lincoln sent its warning across the South: not long after General Sherman had spoken of men's inability to appeal against the thunderstorm—General Lee wrote to Secretary Seddon to ask if there was any chance at all to increase the army.

"If we can get out our entire arms-bearing population in Virginia and North Carolina," he wrote, "and relieve all detailed men with Negroes, we may be able, with the blessing of God, to keep the enemy in check to the beginning of winter. If we fail to do this the result may be calamitous."
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2.
What Have You Done?

IN A WAY, Mr. Lincoln's message to Congress was routine. He spoke of fair harvests, of growth in the western territories, of the prospect for a Pacific railroad, and of a treasury whose condition was good despite a public debt that was rising toward two billion dollars. He avoided eloquence, talking quietly as a man might who was at the head of a strong nation with an assured future, and he drew especial attention to the temporary disappearance of General Sherman.

Sherman and his army had gone off the board. On November 15 the army left Atlanta and marched southeast into darkness, beyond the reach of telegraph wires and newspaper correspondents. Sherman sent back no reports, nobody in the North knew exactly where he was or what was happening to him, and the President invited Congress to reflect on the significance of this fact. "It tends to show a great increase in our relative strength," he said, "that our General-in-Chief should feel able to confront and hold in check every active force of the enemy and yet to detach a well-appointed army to move on such an expedition." What looked like a risky venture was, in short, nothing less than a move to sweep in the chips.
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It was made easier by the fact that General Hood committed a great blunder.

Late in October Hood had gone into northern Alabama, hoping that Sherman would follow and that he could be defeated in detail while doing so. Instead Sherman returned to Atlanta, wrecked the railroad he had been guarding so long, and prepared to march off to the sea; and now Hood was too far away to stop him. Mr. Davis had talked hopefully of a Confederate army going to the banks of the Ohio, a river as remote as the Ganges, but he insisted that Sherman must be beaten first. When it became apparent that an unbeaten Sherman was going to march southeast Mr. Davis urged Hood to come across Georgia with all speed and at least beat the Federals to Augusta; but the odd fatality that had always kept the President from getting a firm grip on the western war was still at work, and now Hood was convincing himseli that he must go into Tennessee at once, no matter what Sherman did.

Hood's reasoning was somewhat glib: if he moved from northern Alabama to south-eastern Georgia his men would think he was in retreat, and because of their low morale (which Hood had been talking about for weeks) the army would probably come apart. The only hope was to march north. If Hood could not reach the Ohio he could at least get into western Tennessee, and if he did this smartly he could defeat Thomas and capture Nashville. This surerly would call Sherman back, and if it did not Hood could turn eastward, march to Virginia, and help Lee defeat Grant.
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This was the strategy of despair, verging on the wholly fantastic, based on the belief that the way to counter Sherman's thrust into the deepest South was to march off in the opposite direction. Hood discussed the move with his new superior, General Beauregard, who had been given the same kind of supervision over western operations that Joe Johnston had found so impractical two years earlier. Beauregard gave reluctant approval, feeling that the plan might work if it were executed immediately. He specified that Joe Wheeler and his cavalry must be sent down to oppose Sherman—a move that did Sherman no harm but that helped Hood substantially, because to take Wheeler's place on the march of invasion Hood got Forrest.

Unfortunately the speedy action Beauregard demanded was not forthcoming. The long spell of railroad-wrecking the Yankees had inflicted on the Alabama-Mississippi country made it hard to concentrate troops and collect supplies, and for some reason Hood was strangely irresolute. Beauregard kept prodding him, but not until November 21 did Hood begin to move. It was too late now, or nearly so. Sherman had already gone beyond the reach of anything Hood might conceivably do in Tennessee, and Pap Thomas had been given the extra days he needed.

Thomas would be safe enough if he could have a little time. He had a field army of 22,000 infantry and 7700 cavalry, which had not yet been assembled in one place. Grant had ordered General A. J. Smith to bring 10,000 veterans over from Missouri, but Smith was delayed by Price's raid and his men had not yet arrived. Thomas also had 27,000 soldiers in permanent garrisons, but this figure was deceptive. It included 16,000 infantry, much of it wholly untrained, 3000 gunners manning heavy artillery in fixed forts, and more than 8000 dismounted cavalry which properly considered itself useless, and these men were scattered all over the state guarding bridges and supply depots. To make an army out of all of these elements was going to take time; with more than 35,000 seasoned combat soldiers ready to go, Hood had an immediate advantage if he used it immediately. If he did not he must face the old, insoluble problem of trying to make an offensive campaign against an enemy who greatly outnumbered him.
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When he finally moved, Hood moved fast, and he almost began with a smart victory. The Federal General Schofield was Thomas' outpost; he had 23,000 infantry and 5000 cavalry at Columbia, 40-odd miles south of Nashville on the Duck River, squarely in Hood's path, and he intended to impose delay. Hood marched up to his front, studied the situation, deftly moved upstream, crossed the river far beyond Schofield's left, and by the afternoon of November 29 had his army in position at Spring Hill, ten miles in Schofield's rear. By everything in the books, Hood now had a winning advantage. Schofield had to retreat, his escape route ran right past Hood's front, and one hard blow might obliterate him. The oddest tactical mystery of the war lies in the fact that Hood, a hard hitter if nothing else, was unable to strike him.

Hood had set the stage skillfully. His troops were in a winning position, he issued the proper orders, the Confederacy's last chance for a significant victory was bright on the skyline—and all Hood got out of it was some brisk but unproductive fighting and an unending controversy. From early afternoon until long after midnight the Federals marched the length of the Confederate battle line, within gunshot, and although they had to fight to hold the road their way was never blocked, as it could have been. Inexplicably, Hood's army did not make a serious attack. Hood blamed his generals, they blamed him, and all anyone knew for certain was that Schofield escaped. By morning the chance was gone, and Hood wrote bitterly: "The best move in my career as a soldier I was thus destined to behold come to naught."
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Wherever the fault lay, the command system in his army had failed dismally.