Grant Moves South (18 page)

Officially, however—as far as the President and the General in Chief could make military policy official—the Number One objective was an expedition through Cumberland Gap, and the people of eastern Tennessee assumed (to their cost) that it was going to take place immediately. Some two thousand of them had already filtered across the line into southeastern Kentucky, where they had been formed into Federal regiments by Brigadier General S. P. Carter, a native of East Tennessee and a former naval officer. Behind them, in the more open country below the mountains, other Tennesseans were rising in revolt, trying to destroy the Confederacy's all-important railroad line in the belief that Union troops would presently be on hand to protect them. Arming themselves as well as they could, they burned bridges and they tore up track, and by November they were giving Confederate patriots much cause for alarm. Early in the month the president of the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad telegraphed Confederate Secretary of War Judah Benjamin that he had evidence that these bands were ready to “destroy or take possession of the whole line from Bristol to Chattanooga,” and he said that unless the protection of Confederate troops was quickly provided “transportation over my road of army supplies will be an utter impossibility.” Two days later the superintendent of this road notified President Davis that several bridges had been burned and that the country was “in great excitement and terror”; a Confederate officer at Knoxville reported that two thousand Unionists were under arms, five bridges were down, and there seemed to be “a general uprising in all the counties.” Governor Isham Harris of
Tennessee sadly wrote Davis on November 12 that things were really bad: “The burning of railroad bridges in east Tennessee shows a deep-seated spirit of rebellion in that section. Union men are organizing. This rebellion must be crushed out instantly.” Harris would send state troops to the scene, but he begged Davis to send regulars from western Virginia. From Jonesborough, in eastern Tennessee, a correspondent told Davis that “Civil War has broken out at length,” and said that the epidemic of bridge burning was “occasioned by the hope that Federal troops would be here in a few days from Kentucky.” The railroad president supplemented his earlier report by saying that armed Unionists were massing to destroy the long bridges at Watauga and Strawberry Plains, and he warned: “If these two bridges are burned our road stops.”
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Federal troops did not come; Confederate troops did; the rebellion was put down with a heavy hand; some of the leading bridge-burners were hanged, and others were imprisoned. But although order was restored, Confederate officers on the scene wrote that the whole section was incurably hostile to the Confederate government. One commander reported: “I think that we have effected something—have done some good; but whenever a foreign force enters this country be it soon or late three-fourths of the people will rise to join them.” Most of the male inhabitants, he said, had fled to the mountains, and when Confederate troops appeared the women who had been left behind were “throwing themselves on the ground and wailing like savages. Indeed, the population is savage.”
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This was the background for Lincoln's insistence that a Union Army be sent down through the Cumberland Gap. McClellan and Buell were intimate—most of their letters to each other began “Dear Friend,” even when they wrote on official business—and McClellan did his best to make Buell see that the political factor might affect the military. McClellan tried to make it clear:

Were the population among which you are to operate wholly or generally hostile it is probable that Nashville should be your first and principal objective point. It so happens that a large majority of the inhabitants of eastern Tennessee are in favor of the Union. It therefore seems proper that you should remain on the defensive on the line from Louisville to Nashville while you throw the mass of your forces by rapid marches by Cumberland
Gap or Walker's Gap on Knoxville in order to occupy the railroad at that point and thus enable the loyal citizens of eastern Tennessee to rise while you at the same time cut off the railroad communication between eastern Virginia and the Mississippi.
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But Buell could not be moved. In a sense, he finally had his way; that is, the Federal blow in the west was at last directed against Confederate strength rather than against Confederate weakness. But the war was beginning to move faster than Buell had anticipated. From waiting at his headquarters in Louisville, studying things carefully and making detailed and balanced long-range plans, Buell before long would find himself making a desperate attempt to catch up with an offensive that had slipped out from under him. The Tennessee campaign would follow the general lines he had laid down, but he himself would have progressively less and less to do with it. With all of his caution and his foresight, Buell was simply setting things up for Grant.

Buell was well aware that his command was not as solid as it looked from Washington. In a report which he sent to the Adjutant General just before Christmas he pointed out that although he had an aggregate of 70,000 troops in his department, only 57,000 of these were to be reported as “present for duty, equipped,” and that figure included a number of totally untrained regiments; his efficient force he believed was no more than 50,000. Discipline was poor. There were 5500 officers and men absent on leave, and 1100 more absent without leave, and Buell felt that “there is not much difference between the two classes.” In a “Dear Friend” letter to McClellan he touched on his troubles with the state governors, from whom he was getting his troops. They tried to keep control over their regiments, the governor of Ohio “evidently looks upon all Ohio troops as his army,” and the governor of Indiana had raised a company of cavalry to act as bodyguard to one of Buell's generals and had shipped it off to camp without bothering to report its existence to department headquarters. Most colonels and brigadiers seemed to have their own personal establishments, and Buell wanted some replacements: “If you have any unoccupied brigadiers—not my seniors—send six or eight, even though they should be no better than marked poles.”
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For a time Buell tried to keep the East Tennessee move in mind. He assured McClellan just before the year 1861 ended that he definitely intended to send 12,000 men and three batteries down into East Tennessee, just as soon as proper preparations could be made, although he could not yet set a date for it. But he still felt that the big effort ought to be made in the western part of the state, and the center of this line, where the railroad which connected Columbus with Bowling Green crossed the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, stuck him as “the most important strategic point in the whole field of operations.”
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Buell's appraisal of the situation was somewhat warped by the fact that, like most generals at the time, he overestimated the strength of the forces opposing him. He lacked the emotional pessimism which had driven his predecessor, Sherman, into temporary retirement, but he did not yet realize how weak Albert Sidney Johnston really was. Aside from 4000 poorly armed and equipped soldiers who were guarding Cumberland Gap, Johnston had no more than 50,000 men of all arms at his disposal, and he was constantly begging the Richmond government (with very little success) to send him more troops. To impress the Yankees, meanwhile, he put on a bold front, circulating stories about immense levies and strong reinforcements, and these stories were believed. Not for the last time in this war, Confederate soldiers who did not exist exerted an influence on Federal strategy.

Buell believed that Johnston had at least 30,000 men at Bowling Green, and he told McClellan that this number could quickly be increased to 50,000 or 60,000 by transfers from Columbus. It seemed clear to him that he could strike no blow of his own unless Halleck, by threatening Columbus and the Confederate forts on the Tennessee and the Cumberland, could make such transfers impossible. The thrust at East Tennessee struck Buell as a move that could be made only as a supplement to a drive toward Bowling Green and Nashville, and that drive could be made only in co-operation with Halleck. East Tennessee, therefore, would have to wait and the wait might be a long one.
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Mr. Lincoln waited, with dwindling patience. On December 31 he sent a message to Halleck: “General McClellan is sick. Are General Buell and yourself in concert? When he moves on Bowling Green,
what hinders it being reinforced from Columbus? A simultaneous movement by you on Columbus might prevent it.” A copy of this message he sent to Buell.

The Generals replied promptly, but the replies did not make Mr. Lincoln happy.

Buell wired:

There is no arrangement between General Halleck and myself. I have been informed by General McClellan that he would make suitable disposition for concerted action. There is nothing to prevent Bowling Green being reinforced from Columbus if a military force is not brought to bear on the latter place.

And from Halleck came this wire:

I have never received a word from General Buell. I am not ready to cooperate with him. Hope to do so in a few weeks. Have written fully on this subject to Major General McClellan. Too much will ruin everything.
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On the following day Halleck sent word to Buell:

I have had no instructions respecting co-operation. All my available troops are in the field except those at Cairo and Paducah, which are barely sufficient to threaten Columbus, etc. A few weeks hence I hope to be able to render you very material assistance, but now a withdrawal of my troops from this state is almost impossible. Write me fully.
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More correspondence followed. Slowly recuperating from an attack of typhoid fever, McClellan notified Halleck that “it is of the greatest importance” to keep the Rebels at Columbus from reinforcing those at Bowling Green, and he suggested an expedition up the Cumberland, supported by gunboats. He urged, also, a demonstration against Columbus, with strength enough to make a real attack on the place if any troops had been withdrawn, and proposed a simultaneous feint up the Tennessee. Federal success in Kentucky, he said, would depend largely on these measures, and “not a moment's time should be lost in preparing these expeditions.” Buell wrote to Halleck that “the great power of the Rebellion in the west”
was arrayed from Columbus to Bowling Green, estimated that Johnston had at least 80,000 men there, and remarked that Halleck would of course “at once see the importance of a combined attack on its center and flanks.” Whatever was done, he said, “should be done speedily, within a few days.”
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Lincoln's patience continued to diminish. On January 4 he asked Buell to report on the progress and general condition of the movement toward East Tennessee, ending the telegram with the terse word: “Answer.”

Buell replied that he was planning to move a division toward the Cumberland Gap, but that he lacked transportation and that other preparations had not been completed. He added, frankly:

I will confess to your excellency that I have been bound to it more by sympathy for the people of east Tennessee and the anxiety with which you and the General-in-Chief have desired it than by my opinion of its wisdom as an unconditional measure. As earnestly as I wish to accomplish it, my judgment from the first has been decidedly against it, if it should render at all doubtful the success of a movement against the great power of the Rebellion in the west, which is mainly arrayed on the line from Columbus to Bowling Green and can speedily be concentrated at any point of that line which is attacked singly.

This drew a rebuke from McClellan, who wrote to Buell bluntly:

There are few things I have more at heart than the prompt movement of a strong column into eastern Tennessee. The political consequences of the delay of this movement will be much more serious than you seem to anticipate.… I was extremely sorry to learn from your telegram to the President that you had
from the beginning attached little or no importance
to a movement in east Tennessee. I had not so understood your views, and it develops a radical difference between your views and my own which I deeply regret.

My own general plans for the prosecution of the war made the speedy occupation of east Tennessee and its lines of railway matters of absolute necessity. Bowling Green and Nashville are in that connection of very secondary importance at the present moment. My own advance cannot, according to my present views, be made until your troops are soundly established in the
eastern portion of Tennessee. If that is not possible, a complete and prejudicial change in my own plans at once becomes necessary.… Halleck, from his own account, will not soon be in a condition to support properly a movement up the Cumberland. Why not make the movement independently of and without waiting for that?
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And Halleck, on January 6, wrote to President Lincoln explaining that at best he could spare only 10,000 men to help Buell, and saying: “It would be madness to attempt anything serious with such a force, and I cannot at the present time withdraw any from Missouri without risking the loss of this state.” Most of the middle and northern counties of Missouri, he added, were in a state of insurrection, and the presence in them of strong Federal forces was essential. Moreover, many of Halleck's troops and officers were unreliable, and “I am in the condition of a carpenter who is required to build a bridge with a dull axe, a broken saw, and rotten timber.” Halleck knew nothing about Buell's intended operations, and the idea of making simultaneous movements on the Rebel stronghold struck him as folly: “To operate on exterior lines against an enemy occupying a central position will fail, as it has always failed in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. It is condemned by every military authority I have ever read.”

At the foot of this letter President Lincoln scribbled a gloomy endorsement: