A Blaze of Glory (2 page)

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n April 1861, the American Civil War erupts with the firing of artillery by rebellious officials from the city of Charleston, South Carolina, toward the Federal military installation called Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor. For decades, the disagreements and animosity between Northern and Southern states has been escalating, but when the cannons fire, those disagreements are replaced by mortal combat.

The first significant bloodshed occurs closest to the boundary lines separating North and South. In the East, Virginia sides with the South, while Pennsylvania goes North. Between them, Maryland remains steadfastly neutral. West of the Appalachians, the same situation becomes much more hotly contested. Between the Southern state of Tennessee and those states north of the Ohio River lies the large state of Kentucky. Much more so than Maryland, the political forces within Kentucky are angrily divided. The state legislature splits, and two separate state governments are formed, led by two governors. That competition divides the entire state, including the military. Regiments are formed that choose to fight for the North, while others go South.

As the two sides grasp the enormity of what this war might involve, the territories west of the mountains face logistical difficulties that do not apply in the East. One is the control of the enormously important Mississippi River. Small-scale battles break out in those areas crucial to both sides, key junctions and small shipping centers, increasing tensions in supposedly neutral Kentucky. Throughout 1861, the events in the East, including the first major confrontation in Virginia, the Battle of Bull Run, are of little strategic significance to the armies struggling for control of the Mississippi River. North of the Kentucky–Tennessee border, the two armies maneuver and feel their way toward each other, uncertain generals and untested troops moving toward a conflict the magnitude of which none can truly predict. In the North, there are immediate concerns for protection of the river cities, including Cairo, Illinois, and Louisville, Kentucky. But the newly formed Southern army, under the command of Albert Sidney Johnston, pushes northward, very much aware that establishing positions in such towns as Columbus, Bowling Green, and Mill Spring, Kentucky, will provide a protective shield for the Southern states under his command, and will most certainly force a response from his Federal counterparts. Though Johnston’s army continues to grow, fed by regiments from the states to the south, in Kentucky, there is as much outrage at the presence of the invading Southern troops as there is as support for the Southern cause.

The Federal army is slow to mobilize, but they do not suffer the difficulties the Southerners face in equipping and supplying a fledgling army. The result is a somewhat clumsy standoff, as each side seeks to organize and train for the conflict that must certainly come. Adding to Johnston’s woes, what has happened in western Virginia also occurs in eastern Tennessee. There sizable numbers of the population place their sympathies with the Union. There is little hope that the Southern cause will receive any support from the mountain regions, thus eliminating any convenient link with the Confederate forces east of the mountains. The Civil War becomes a war of separate theaters, divided by both rivers and mountains, linked together only by railroads. It is one more reason the Southern army cannot hope to hold off a strong Federal force that is organizing to drive them out of Kentucky.

Close to the Tennessee–Kentucky border, the Southern forces create an anchor that they hope will prevent the far superior Federal navy from driving straight into the heart of the western Confederacy, which could split Johnston’s Kentucky defenses in two. Two forts are constructed at the mouth of each of the two major rivers that flow northward out of Tennessee, the Tennessee and the Cumberland. It is a geographical coincidence that at a point just south of the Kentucky line the two rivers curve toward each other, the gap between them no more than twenty miles. To Southern engineers, it is a logical place to build the forts, since either one can support the other, with either supplies or men.

The two forts are named Henry and Donelson, and great care is taken to design them primarily to defend against Federal gunboats. But Fort Henry, on the Tennessee River, and not yet completed, is constructed on low ground, prone to flooding, and offers no real barrier to an assault. On February 6, 1862, the fort is attacked. Federal general Ulysses Grant, with a force of fifteen thousand men, aided by a flotilla of gunboats commanded by Flag Officer Andrew Foote, confronts a Confederate defense that consists of seventeen guns, all of which are inferior to the heavy cannon on Foote’s ironclad boats. After a brutally effective bombardment, the Confederate commander, Lloyd Tilghman, recognizes the futility of trying to hold the fort. Tilghman removes most of his troops to Fort Donelson, and surrenders Fort Henry and a handful of artillerymen to Grant. But Grant knows that Donelson is the greater prize. The navy gunboats make the short journey back to the mouth of the Tennessee River, steam up the Ohio to the Cumberland, and surge upstream once more. Expecting another easy victory, both Grant and Foote approach Donelson to find that this time the Confederate engineers have the benefit of much higher and much stronger ground. On February 12, 1862, Grant’s infantry and Foote’s gunboats make their assault. But Johnston understands the value of sealing off the Cumberland to Federal troops. The river flows directly out of the key supply depot and rail hub of Nashville, Tennessee, just forty miles to the south. Johnston reinforces the fort significantly. When Foote’s gunboats begin their attack, they are surprised by the superior placement and accuracy of the Confederate artillery, which badly damages most of the fleet and gives Foote a serious wound. Forced to withdraw the boats, Grant’s infantry is left on its own. Then Mother Nature turns against Grant as well, and a blizzard blows across the Federal troops, who have little protection from the elements. But Grant’s superior numbers and the ability to maneuver give him the upper hand. With the fort virtually surrounded, the commanding general, John Floyd, after consulting with his two subordinates, Simon Bolivar Buckner and Gideon Pillow, decides to drive a hard thrust directly through and around Grant’s position. But Floyd vacillates, allowing Grant the time he needs to strengthen his hold. The only sizable number of troops who make good their escape toward Nashville is the cavalry of Colonel Nathan Bedford Forrest. Forrest finds a clear path around the Federal flank and hundreds of his cavalrymen slip away through dense woods and a swampy morass without sighting a single enemy along the route, a route that Forrest knows could have afforded much of Floyd’s army the same avenue of escape. Those few infantry who choose to follow Forrest’s horsemen find the same clear path, making their way through the rugged countryside that eventually takes them to Nashville.

Though Generals Pillow and Floyd also slip away from the fort, most of their troops are left behind. On February 16, Buckner surrenders the fort to Grant, along with nearly eight thousand Confederate soldiers.

The fall of Forts Henry and Donelson opens a clear pathway for the Federal army, and at his headquarters in Bowling Green, Kentucky, Johnston knows he has no choice but to withdraw completely out of the state.

To the south, the city of Nashville receives a grotesquely premature message from Fort Donelson that Grant’s army had been thoroughly defeated, the bluecoats driven back into the Cumberland River. The message sets off a wave of jubilation in the city. But on February 16, the messages change. The truth flows southward along with the retreat of Forrest’s cavalry, and the celebration in Nashville turns to a flood of black despair. The citizens of Nashville realize they have been misled by their generals, who are nowhere to be seen and who have made their escape by abandoning their own men. Word follows that what began as a glorious fight had been decided not by strength and honor, but by surrender, that thousands of Confederate troops have simply been handed over to the victorious Yankees.

With Union troops now massing within forty miles of Nashville, the city is thrown into chaos. Already, refugees choke the roads southward, entire families on the move, salvaging anything they can carry, to avoid what nearly everyone believes will be the brutality and savagery of the Yankees. Those few soldiers who escape capture and those who occupy outposts south of Donelson quickly make their way to the great city, some seeking food and ammunition, some running from the ghosts in their own minds. The panic of the soldiers spreads panic to the city, and the army makes efforts to secure the vast mountains of supplies held in the storage depots. The first senior commander who arrives in Nashville is John Floyd, who attempts to take control of the city. But Floyd carries very little weight now since his inglorious surrender of so much of his army at Fort Donelson. Many of the civilians understand what the soldiers already know, that a man who scampers away from his own defeat, saving himself by sacrificing his army, is not a man who inspires respect at all. Floyd wisely leaves Nashville, continuing his journey southward to Murfreesboro, where General Albert Sidney Johnston now awaits, fresh from his own retreat out of Kentucky.

CONFEDERATE DEFENSIVE LINE, JANUARY 1862

With the defeats at Forts Henry and Donelson, the broad defensive lines that Johnston had spread across southern Kentucky and into northeastern Tennessee can no longer be maintained. Both rivers that drive deeply into the Confederate center are now in Federal hands. Johnston knows that Nashville, sitting squarely on the Cumberland River, is simply indefensible. The single alternative to withdrawing from the city is to make a stand there, turning the capital of Tennessee into a bloody battlefield. It is not a viable alternative. Johnston’s most urgent priority is to gather what remains of the Confederate troops throughout Tennessee and Kentucky and to position those troops where they can best defend against the inevitable Federal invasion.

The last strong force of Confederate troops in Nashville belongs to Nathan Bedford Forrest, whose primary mission is to hold off the enemy for as long as he can, thus allowing the enormous supply depots and warehouses to be emptied, the arms, supplies, and food that the Confederate forces desperately need. Forrest knows to make use of the river, the rail lines, and any usable roadways to remove as much as he can from the city. But the outraged civilians will not accept that the fate of Nashville has already been decided and react violently by raiding the army’s supply depots themselves. No matter Nashville’s importance, Johnston’s orders are clear and direct. His army is to be pulled southward, and the civilian officials in Nashville and throughout central and northern Tennessee are informed that there will be no attempt to save their towns.

For victorious Federal forces west of the mountains, the stain of politics and ugly ambition begins to seep into what should be clear-cut military strategy. If the North is going to succeed in bringing down this rebellion, they must put into the field officers and soldiers who can focus on the job at hand, no matter what kind of wrangling clouds the air around them, no matter the quest for attention and a place in the history books. To confront them, the men chosen to lead the Southern armies must replace the glory and romance of the Cause with the stark reality of a bloody military campaign. If the Southern generals have any hope of defeating a far more numerous and far better equipped enemy, they will have to do it on their own soil, and make the Yankees fight on Johnston’s terms.

MANEUVER