Never Call Retreat

Books by Bruce Catton

The Coming Fury

Never Call Retreat

A Stillness at Appomattox

Terrible Swift Sword

This Hallowed Ground

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BRUCE CATTON

NEVER CALL RETREAT

WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS PUBLISHED BY POCKET BOOKS NEW YORK

A Washington Square Press Publication of

POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10020

Copyright © 1965 by Bruce Carton

Published by arrangement with Doubleday & Company, Inc.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Doubleday & Company, Inc., 245 Park Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017

ISBN: 0-671-63883-1

First Pocket Books printing August 1967

22   21   20   19   18   17   16   15   14   13

WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS, WSP and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Printed in the U.S.A.

To the one-time members of E. P. Case Post Number 372, Grand Army of the Republic, who now sleep in the village cemetery at Benzonia, Michigan, this book is affectionately dedicated.

Foreword

THE CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR by Bruce Catton is a project begun in 1955 by Doubleday & Company, Inc., in conjunction with
The New York Times.
As originally planned, this is a three-volume work constituting a modern history, based on the fullest as well as the most recent research.

The three volumes, which are entitled THE COMING FURY. TERRIBLE SWIFT SWORD, and NEVER CALL RETREAT, may be read and understood separately.

In the foreword of Volume One of the original publication of the work, Mr. Catton wrote of Mr. E. B. Long: "As Director of Research for this project he has made a more substantial contribution than it is possible to acknowledge properly." Mr. Catton also noted the "able assistance given by that indefatigable and charming person, Mrs. Barbara Long."

Contents

Foreword                                                            vii

List of Maps                                                         xi

Chapter One:
IN THE RAPIDS

1.
 
Castles in the Air                                              1

2.
 
Battle without Logic                                       11

3.
 
The Politics of War                                        23

4.
 
In the Mists at Stone's River                        34

5. Paralysis of Command                                  45
' 6. A Question of Control                                  53

Chapter Two:
PARTING OF THE RED SEA WAVES

1.
 
The Land of Cotton                                        67

2.
 
In Motion in All Directions                          77

3.
 
The Needs of Two Armies                            88

4.
 
A Bridge for the Moderates                          98

5.
 
The Way of the Liberated                           106

Chapter Three:
REMORSELESS REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE

1.
 
Ironclads at Charleston                                 117

2.
 
Men Trained for Command                         127

3.
 
The Darkness, and Jackson, and Fear         138

4.
 
Aftermath of Victory                                    149

5.
 
Mirage on the Skyline                                  160

6.
 
Encounter at Gettysburg                              170

Chapter Four:
IN LETTERS OF BLOOD

1. All or Nothing                                                185

2.
 
The Notion of Equality                               197

3.
 
Servants of the Guns                                   208

4.
 
The Road to Zion                                          217

5.
 
A Mad Irregular Battle                                227

6.
 
37,000 Plus One                                           239

Chapter Five:
THE IMPOSSIBILITIES

1.
 
The Impassable Gulf        254

2.
 
Eloquence at Gettysburg 263

3.
 
Amnesty and Suffrage      272

4.
 
Solitary in a Crowd          281

5.
 
The General and the Statesman 292

Chapter Six:
ACT OF FAITH

1.
 
The Last Barrier                                            302

2.
 
Sideshows                                                      314

3.
 
The Cork in the Bottle                                 326

4.
 
However Bold We Might Be                       337

5.
 
Vested Interest in Failure                           351

6.
 
A Grand Simplicity of Purpose                   364

Chapter Seven:
HIS ALMOST CHOSEN PEOPLE

1.
 
Appeal Against the Thunderstorm            377

2.
 
What Have You Done?                                387

3.
 
Too Late                                                        399

4.
 
None Shall Be Weary                                   409

5.
 
As in the Old Days                                       422

6.
 
To the Dark Indefinite Shore                      434

Notes                                                                  447

Bibliography                                                      502

Acknowledgments                                            523

Index                                                                   527

The Centennial History of the Civil War

VOLUME THREE

I

NEVER CALL RETREAT

CHAPTERONE

In the Rapids

1. Castles in the Air

OFFICIALLY, Jefferson Davis was traveling incognito; and yet, as the Chattanooga newspaperman wrote, a live President was still something of a curiosity in Tennessee, and the trip got a good deal of attention. The reporter considered Mr. Davis "decidedly handsome for a middle-aged gentleman," and said that he wore a perpetual expression of good humor, combining graceful manners with an impressive senatorial dignity; and he commended him for going about without ostentation or parade, his only luggage one leather valise, his only attendant a single body servant. It was inspiring (said the reporter) to contrast this republican simplicity with the pretensions of the "miserable despot of abolitionism" in Washington, who never went abroad without a file of armed dragoons and who lived "in constant apprehension of the assassin's dagger in his own capital."
¹

Mr. Davis was making this trip in the middle of December 1862, drawn from Richmond to the Mississippi Valley by grave problems of command, of strategy and of public morale. A few days earlier he had confessed to a committee of the Confederate Congress that the war had entered its most dangerous period, and on this trip he saw nothing to make him revise that opinion; yet in public he was serene, and in Knoxville, the most dissident of all Confederate cities, he told an attentive audience that "the Toryism of east Tennessee" had been greatly exaggerated. Two days later, at Murfreesboro, he assured an enthusiastic crowd that if the Southern people persevered a little longer final victory would be theirs.

Perhaps it was easy to be hopeful at Murfreesboro. The powerful Army of Tennessee was in camp there, and this army had never looked better. It had recovered from the bewildering Perryville campaign, in which a valiant thousand-mile march brought nothing but an inconclusive battle and a missed opportunity; it had had plenty of rest, for once it was properly shod and clothed, it had more than 45,000 veterans in its ranks, and morale was high. Even its generals were feeling confident. Braxton Bragg, the army commander, a dyspeptic martinet who ordinarily radiated an infectious gloom, seemed sprightly, and he assured the President that the army was ready for anything. It was nobly supported, he said, by the patriotic people of Tennessee, who, "having felt the heel of the tyrant," were furnishing men and supplies in abundance. He believed he could whip the Yankee army that held Nashville if that army could ever be induced to come out and fight.
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Mr. Davis was ready to agree. He reviewed the army, was impressed by what he saw. and impressed those who saw him. His old friend Leonidas Polk, the Episcopal Bishop who was now a lieutenant general commanding an army corps, wrote to Mrs. Polk with innocent enthusiasm: "We have had a royal visit, from a royal visitor. The President himself has been with us." The review was "a great affair," and the Bishop said Mr. Davis told him that the soldiers who passed in review were "the best-appearing troops he had seen, well appointed and well clad."

Bishop Polk had the President's trust and affection, he was a West Point graduate (of a lone-gone vintage, to be sure) and he was a devout patriot; and on both sides in this war men were commissioned general for less impressive reasons. He could still wear episcopal vestments over his uniform. In this month of December he officiated at a wedding, marrying General John Hunt Morgan, the famous Kentucky cavalryman, to pretty Mattie Ready of Murfreesboro, with Bragg and his staff, and other generals, looking on; and this was a storybook affair with a storybook romance back of it. A few months earlier, Mattie Ready was living in Federally occupied territory. She did not then know Morgan, but she defended him with much spirit when she heard Federal officers deride him, and one of them demanded her name— he would write it down, and see that she was listed as a confirmed rebel. She gave it to him, and added defiantly: "But by the grace of God I hope one day to call myself the wife of John Morgan." After the Federals were gone Morgan heard the story, laughed, then rode around to see her; liked what he saw, courted her, and now made her his wife. . . . So went the story. A day or so after the wedding. Morgan and his squadrons went riding hard to the northward, to go raiding far behind the Federal front and spread alarm along the wild Kentucky border. The ceremony at army headquarters went into the Confederate legend, along with bride and bridegroom and the memory of candlelight glinting off the brass buttons and sword-hilts. The good bishop assured his wife that the wedding had been a historic occasion.
³