Thursday, August 30, 2012

Findings of the Warren Court of Inquiry

I downloaded and read the 60-page Findings of the Court of Inquiry and Reviews of the Judge-Advocate-general and of the General of the Army in the case of Major-General G. K. Warren, 1883.


There is nothing in them that indicate Warren should be "exonerated" so the exoneration must have occurred afterward, perhaps by President Hayes. I'll quote a few of the courts findings that seem representative:


In one case the court (or the Judge-Advocate General speaking for the court) found, ". . . It is believed that General Warren's failure to march during the night of March 31, as instructed, tended to defeat the expectations of the Lieutenant-General, and that General Sheridan was justified in remarking thereon, in his report, as he was charged with the direction and command of all the forces operating against the enemy between Dinwiddie Court-House and Five Forks at the time, and every incident connected with that service was a legitimate subject for remark in his official report of operations."


At another point the court found " . . . But the plain meaning of the order to Warren was not that he should go down to Dinwiddie to Sheridan, but that he should press the enemy in the rear . . . cut of their retreat, and capture or destroy them in the morning, in conjunction with Sheridan's command."


On page 49, the Court found, "It is evident that General Sheridan was seriously impressed by the behavior of General Warren in not making some personal exertion to hurry up the marching of his corps to the place of formation for the attack, and his apathy, or apparent apathy, in this respect led, no doubt, to the inference that he 'wished the sun might go down before the dispositions for the attack could be completed,' and although 'Warren remained near Gravelly Run Church directing the formation, explaining the mode of attack to the division and brigade commanders, with sketches prepared for the purpose,' yet Sheridan with his staff was also present and engaged in doing the same labor, and Warren, being well known to his brigade and division commanders, would have done far more to expedite the movement if he had ridden back with his staff and personally urged forward the divisions. It is believed that the Fifth Corps in this instance, numbering about 10,000 effective men, should have marched up to the place of formation within two hours at the most, from the time the order was given at 1 o'clock, and that the formation should, at all events, have been effected at a much earlier hour than 4 o'clock."


On page 51 the court finds, ". . . yet it may be stated as being undeniably true that General Sheridan deemed the confusion of a serious character, for he actually sent an officer of his staff to General Merritt, commanding the cavalry corps, to suspend the attack of the cavalry for the reason that the infantry was not coming up to its work, and General Merritt so testified, p. 846), General Sheridan testified, and the court reports, that General Warren was observant of the confusion in Ayres's division, but he made no personal exertion to remedy this confusion."


General Sheridan is quoted as saying, "There are certain conditions that I always adhered to during the war, in reference to the commanding officers of troops -- and that was in reference to their taking risk -- that I never wanted them to put themselves in danger except if confusion existed among their troops which might result in defeating those troops; then I held that the commanding officer should go out there and take his chances the same as the men."


In response to Sheridan's quote, the Judge-Advocate General said, "I think that this is quite a reasonable rule in such cases, and the rule by which the conduct of commanding officers should be determined; is not severe nor exacting too much from them; and that General Sheridan had a right to expect some personal exertion on the part of General Warren towards remedying the confusion."


At the end, Judge-Advocate-General writes, "I think it will be seen from the evidence that reasonable grounds existed justifying the statements contained in the reports of Generals Grant and Sheridan affecting General Warren, and that the act of General Sheridan in relieving General Warren from command as he did was the exercise of a discretion with which he was clothed, and in so doing there is nothing to show that he was actuated by other than patriotic and justifiable motives." it is signed,
D. G. Swaim,
Judge-Advocate-General


The Findings are accompanied by a two-page "Report of the General of the Army." The last two paragraphs of this report read, "My conclusion is that General Sheridan was perfectly justified in his action in this case, and he must be fully and entirely sustained if the United States expects great victories by her armies in the future.


"All the other branches settled by this court belong to the domain of history rather than military inquiry."
This report is signed,
W. T. Sherman,
General


Comment: I will be very interested in finding out what happened between the publishing of these "Findings" in 1883 and the "exoneration of Warren" that is referred to in a number of places and is undoubtedly the accepted fact.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Sheridan's Trevilian Mission

I think Sheridan accomplished this mission even to the winning of the "battle" of Trevilian Station, but some think otherwise. Let's see what the person who ordered that mission, General Grant, has to say about it.

From the Library of America edition of Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, Chapter LVII, pages 603-605:

"On the 7th of June, while at Cold Harbor, I . . . sent Sheridan with two divisions of cavalry to destroy as much as he could of the Virginia Central Railroad. General Hunter had been operating up the Shenandoah Valley with some success, having fought a battle near Staunton where he captured a great many prisoners, besides killing and wounding a good many men. After the battle he formed a junction at Staunton with Averell and Crook, who had come up from Kanawha, or Gauley River. It was supposed, therefore that General Hunter would be about Charlottesville, Virginia, by the time Sheridan could get there, doing on the way the damage that he was sent to do.

"I gave Sheridan instructions to have Hunter, in case he should meet him about Charlottesville, join and return with him to the Army of the Potomac. Lee, hearing of Hunter's success in the valley, started Breckinridge out for its defence at once. Learning later of Sheridan's going with two divisions, he also sent Hampton with two divisions of cavalry, his own and Fitz-Hugh Lee's.
"Sheridan moved to the north side of the North Anna to get out west, and learned of the movement of these troops to the south side of the same stream almost as soon as they had started. He pushed on to get to Trevilian Station to commence his destruction at that point. On the night of the 10th he bivouacked some six or seven miles east of Trevilian, while Fitz-Hugh Lee was the same night at Trevilian Station and Hampton but a few miles away.

"During the night Hampton ordered an advance on Sheridan, hoping, no doubt, to surprise and very badly cripple him. Sheridan, however, by a counter move sent Custer on a rapid march to get between the two divisions of the enemy and into their rear. This he did successfully, so that at daylight, when the assault was made, the enemy found himself at the same time resisted in front and attacked in rear, and broke in some confusion. The losses were probably very light on both sides in killed and wounded, but Sheridan got away with some five hundred prisoners and sent them to City Point.

"During that day, the 11th, Sheridan moved into Trevilian Station, and the following day proceeded to tear up the road east and west. There was considerable fighting during the whole of the day, but the work of destruction went on. In the meantime, at night, the enemy had taken possession of the crossing which Sheridan had proposed to take to go north when he left Trevilian. Sheridan learned, however from some of the prisoners he had captured here, that General Hunter was about Lynchburg, and therefore that there was no use of his going on to Charlottesville with a view to meet him.

"Sheridan started back during the night of the 12th, and made his way north and farther east, coming around by the north side of White House, and arriving there on the 21st. Here he found an abundance of forage for his animals, food for his men, and security while resting. He had been obliged to leave about ninety of his own men in the field-hospital which he had established near Trevilian, and these necessarily fell into the hands of the enemy.

"White House up to this time had been a depot; but now that our troops were all on the James River, it was no longer wanted as a store of supplies. Sheridan was, therefore, directed to break it up; which he did on the 22d of June, bringing the garrison and an immense wagon train with him. All these were over the James River by the 26th of the month, and Sheridan ready to follow."

Comment: Grant's account of the Trevilian raid supports the minor point I've been asserting, namely that Sheridan won this relatively inconsequential battle, but it doesn't support my major belief, namely that the raid was primarily a diversion to allow Grant to get his army safely across the James. Not wishing to abandon my theory without a fight , I wonder whether Grant could have had reason to avoid mentioning the trick he had played on Lee. Might it not have seemed to demean Lee and those who fought with him, many of whom would read his Memoirs?

Of course someone could use my reasoning to assert that Grant made Sheridan seem more successful than he really was so as not to offend him. But that seems less plausible than his not wishing to denigrate the memory of Lee. Trevilian Station was a small battle that occurred during a raid because Lee heard what Sheridan was up to and sent Hampton to stop him. Hampton did stop him and probably didn't care that he had lost the battle at the Station. He pulled back and was ready to interfere again depending upon what Sheridan did next. This wasn't like Shiloh where the South won on the first day and then sat on its hands allowing the North to achieve a greater victory on day two. There was no "day two" at Trevilian. Sheridan did as much as he could, which is basically the terminology of Grant's order, and returned home to the Army of the Potomac.

Could Sheridan have done more if Hampton hadn't interfered? Without doubt, but I fail to see how Sheridan can be faulted for not tearing up more track once Hampton showed up to fight.
Grant said casualties were light on both sides. He said that Sheridan tore up as much track as he was able to; which is what Grant asked him to do. As to not hooking up with Hunter at Charlottesville, Sheridan learned that Hunter was not at Charlottesville & so he didn't go there.
Grant provides no indication that he was disappointed with Sheridan's efforts.

Sheridan's Trevilian diversion

I've begun The Last Citadel, Petersburg, Virginia, June 1864 - April 1865 by Noah Andre Trudeau. On pages 16-19 Trudeau without mentioning the name Trevilian Station, sheds light on the reason for the diversion Grant intended Sherman to make:

"Ulysses Grant had made his decision to move south of the James on June 5, two days after his bloody failure at Cold Harbor. In a communication that day to Henry Halleck in Washington, Grant rejected the suggestion that he place the army between Lee's men and Washington. He also issued orders for a diversionary action, instructing Phil Sheridan to take his cavalry on a raid against Confederate rail lines northwest of Richmond. Sheridan departed on June 7, leaving behind Wilson's division to scout and screen for the infantry.


"The course Grant had determined to follow was a daunting one, requiring disengagement along an almost ten-mile front, a march of nearly fifty miles across swampy, ravine-rippled ground, and the bridging of a tidal river at a point where it was a half-mile wide. To further complicate matters, the crossing place could be reached by Confederate gunboats from Richmond.


"On June 6, Grant sent his aides Cyrus Comstock and Horace Porter to coordinate the planned movement with Benjamin Butler, whose army held positions south of the James, at Bermuda Hundred and City Point. On June 9, Grant instructed George Meade to have his Chief of Engineers, Major James C. Duane, 'select and intrench a line in the rear of the position at Cold Harbor, to be held while the army was withdrawing.' Duane finished the job on June 11. That day, Grant ordered Meade to see 'that all preparations may be made for the move tomorrow night.'


"Even before Grant came to his decision, Robert E. Lee was anticipating the move. As early as June 4, he warned his corps commanders that the enemy 'is preparing to leave us tonight, and I fear will cross the Chickahominy.' Lee's only hope was to catch the Union army in motion. 'General Lee is exceedingly anxious to be advised of any movement the enemy may undertake,' A First Corps circular noted on June 7. When Grant's army was discovered to be leaving its trenches, it was Lee's plan to move 'down and attack him with our whole force, provided we could catch him in the act of crossing [the Chickahominy].


"Even as he waited for Grant to make his move, Lee's attention was also turned to events int he Shenandoah Valley, where Federal activities so threatened the Confederate breadbasket that help was required. Lee sent off 2,100 men under Major General John C. Breckenridge on June 7, Two days later, Wade Hampton rode out of camp with most of the Confederate cavalry to intercept Sheridan's raiders. Richmond continued its pressure on Lee to send even more men north. In a June 11 note to Jefferson Davis, Lee grumbled that it would take at least a corps to do the job. He would release that many men if Richmond so ordered, but he warned, 'I think that is what the enemy would desire.' Nevertheless, the next day Lee issued instructions to Jubal Early 'to move, with the 2nd corps to the Shenandoah Valley.' Early's men set out on the morning of June 13."


[Trudeau then spends a couple of pages describing how Grant got his army across the James without Lee's knowledge.]


"Robert E. Lee learned at daybreak on June 13 that Grant's army had slipped away during the night. According to Eppa Hunton, one of George Pickett's brigadiers, 'It was said that General Lee was in a furious passion -- one of the few times during the war. When he did get mad he was mad all over.'"


Comment: If Trudeau is right then Grant didn't care how much railroad track Sheridan tore up, how badly he defeated Hampton or even if he defeated him at all. What he did care about was whether Lee would be distracted enough so Grant could get his army across the James without interference.


While Sheridan was fighting Hampton at Trevilian Station, Grant got his army across the James. Did Sheridan "win" at Trevilian Station? I think so, but someone else will say that Trevilian Station was inconsequential and that Sheridan's campaign was larger than Trevilian. But Trudeau tells us that Grant's whole army was at risk. Grant knew it and so did Lee. Grant needed Sheridan to do something that would distract Lee from while Grant crossed the James. Trudeau doesn't say that Sheridan's diversion was a success, but it seems to me that it was.

How much of a distraction was Sheridan's diversion? Trudeau doesn't say, but Richmond was distracted and urged Lee to send troops to stop whatever it was that Sheridan was doing. Richmond must have distracted Lee a bit even if Sheridan didn't.


Who precisely should have been keeping an eye on what Grant was up to? Probably Lee's cavalry, but as we have seen, on June 9, "Wade Hampton rode out of camp with most of the Confederate cavalry to intercept Sheridan's raiders."

The "Battle of Trevilian Station" took place on June 11-12 between Sheridan's forces and Hampton's. Grant was crossing the James on June 12th and Early's Corps set out from Lee's Army on the morning of June 13th.

Since Grant's Army crossed the James on the 12th, the "distractions" which may have blinded Lee were 1) the fact that his "eyes" in the form of Hampton's cavalry were off fighting with Sheridan, and 2) Early's Corps was engaging in whatever disruption the leaving of Lee's camp on the morning of June 13th would have involved.

Bruce Catton on General Warren

Generals need to avoid the appearance of evil (a concept that those steeped in the Bible would have been familiar with), and that was especially important on the battlefield. How did a general "appear" to his troops? How did he "appear" to his commander. The battlefield was never a court of law. It was all about appearance. When the battle is over some might ask about an underlying reality, but a more important question would be to ask how did the events "appear" to those who fought and those who made the decisions. There was never time during a battle for anything beyond "appearance." Warren, as Catton writes, appeared erratic and defective long before he went to work for Sheridan.


Here is Catton writing about Warren on page 51 of A Stillness at Appomattox: "To the V Corps, in place of the departed Sykes, came one of the most baffling figures in the army -- Major General Gouverneur Kembel Warren.


"Warren was thirty-four, with long jet-black hair and a mustache which he was fond of twirling; a slightly built man with sallow complexion, looking not unlike an Indian, well liked by the troops because he displayed bravery under fire. (No officer could be popular in this army unless he could show a spectacular contempt for danger.) He was a queer mixture of the good and the ineffective -- a fuss-budget with flashes of genius, a man engrossed in detail and given to blunting his cutting edge by worrying over trifles which a staff captain ought to have been handling. He had never heard of delegating authority, and he had a certain weakness for setting his own opinion above that of his superior officer's.


"He had had two great days. One was at Gettysburg, when as an engineer officer on the commanding general's staff he had stood on Little round Top, had seen the coming danger, and by a hair's thin margin had got Union troops there in time to save the day. The other was at Mine Run, in December, when half of the army had been given to him for a mighty assault that was to destroy the Rebel army and make General Warren a national hero.


". . . He had filled in for Hancock in charge of the II Corps . . . and now he had a corps of his own. It included many good fighters and contained some of the best of the troops from the departed I Corps, and what it might do would depend a good deal on General Warren.


Pages 169-170: "When Cutler's division was briefly taken out of the line on June 8 for a short stay in the rear, its commander noted that this was the first day in more than a month in which no man in the division had been reported killed or wounded. One of his colonels wrote that he had had neither an unbroken night's sleep nor a change of clothing since May 5, and another remarked that he was so groggy with fatigue that it was impossible for him to write an intelligent letter to his family: 'I can only tell my wife I am alive and well. I am too stupid for any use.'


"And General Warren, sensitive and high-strung, turned to another officer one day and burst out:

"'For thirty days it has been one funeral procession past me, and it is too much!'


"Warren was showing the strain, and both Grant and Meade were noticing it. He had been a good friend of Meade for a long time, and Grant had been favorably impressed by him. when the army crossed the Rapidan, Grant even made a mental note that if anything should happen to Meade, Warren would be a good man to put in command of the army. But somehow he was not bearing up well. Details engrossed him, and he seemed to have a stiff pride which made it hard for him to accept direction and counsel. worst of all, he was never quite able to get his corps moving promptly. It was felt that he was slow in bringing his men into action the first day at Spotsylvania, and when the attack was made at the Bloody Angle and Warren was supposed to hit the Confederate left there had been a three-hour delay -- a costly thing, which led Grant to tell Meade to relieve Warren of his command if he delayed any longer. Meade replied that he was about to do it without orders, but Warren finally got his corps in motion just in time to save his job."


Pages 210-211: ". . . As the army settled into its trenches after four days of battle at Petersburg -- four days which cost, roughly, as many killed and wounded as had been lost in all twelve days at Cold Harbor -- some of its professionals were giving cause for worry.


"Meade was on the verge of removing Warren, just when Grant was sending Smith into exile. warren was increasingly given to broad interpretation and spontaneous revision of orders, and Meade could hardly fail to note that the all-out attack which he had told Warren to make at dawn on the crucial eighteenth of June had not actually been delivered until 3:30 P.M. At one time Meade had definitely made up his mind to send Warren away, but the trouble was reconciled somehow and by July 1 Assistant Secretary War Dana wired Stanton that 'the difficulty between Meade and Warren has been settled without the extreme remedy which Meade proposed last week."


Sheridan might seem to be less long-suffering than Meade in regard to Warren, but there can be little doubt that he was apprised of Warren's background. He would have known what Meade and Grant thought of Warren, and as has been quoted, Grant urged (ordered?) Sheridan not to let himself be impeded by Warren. Thus, on the crucial day of Warren's firing, "the great fury of battle was on Sheridan. Warren's corps had been late in getting to Dinwiddie and it had been late getting into position at Five Forks, and when it attacked two thirds of it had gone astray and Warren had gone with it; Sheridan did not in the least care whether the reasons for all of this were good or bad, and he did not want to receive any more reports from General Warren."


Comment: If Warren had not performed poorly under Meade would Sheridan have fired him for poor performance at Five Forks? I suspect not. Sheridan was not quick to fire anyone. There had to be a history of failure, the "appearance of evil" on several occasions and that appearance already existed in Warren's case. Had Sheridan ignored Grant's warning and if Sheridan failed because of Warren, that would have reflected badly upon Sheridan, but the warning would have been enough. If Warren's Corps performed as it was ordered to then fine, but if it didn't Sheridan wasn't going to listen to the sorts of excuses Meade listened to -- there wasn't time.


The Battlefield isn't a court of law, and while I haven't read the records of Warren's Court of Inquiry I have an impression of how it must have gone. Warren would have described and documented all of the extenuating circumstances, the reasons why he couldn't comply with Sheridan's orders -- without reference to whether Sheridan could have known about those reasons. The Court of Inquiry would have sought something close to the truth and not mere "appearance." Thus, Warren (and Averell) satisfied their courts that there were legitimate reasons for not performing in accordance with Sheridan's orders.


Should Sheridan be condemned for not acting in accordance with those "reasons" during battles? No General can be held to that standard. Sheridan wouldn't have had the luxury or the time available to a Court if Inquiry. He needed to make snap decisions based upon "appearances." I don't know if Meade talked to Sheridan about Warren, but Grant did and he would have told him of Warren's behavior under Meade; so Sheridan would have been on the lookout for failures of that sort.


In response to the idea that Sheridan was wrong because the Court of Inquiry found that Warren did X, I would ask whether Sheridan knew that Warren did X -- or whether Sheridan believed that he had done Y as he had under Meade. Warren had a history of doing Y. Grant ordered Sheridan not to let Warren do Y; so when Warren gave the "appearance" of doing Y; Sheridan did his job and fired him.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

The Firing of Warren

From Morris's Sheridan, The Life and Wars of General Phil Sheridan:


". . . Sheridan reported the enemy buildup to Grant, requesting that he be reinforced by reliable Horatio Wright and the VI Corps, but Wright was too far away. Grant offered him Warren's V Corps instead, which Sheridan declined. For the time being, he and his horsemen would have to fight alone."


"At sundown Pickett made a final attempt to capture Dinwiddie, but was quickly repulsed. The two sides settled down for an uncomfortable night in the rain, their lines less than a hundred yards apart. Sheridan sent two messages to Grant: the first, carried by his brother Michael, indicated Sheridan's line of retreat, should he be driven from Dinwiddie; the second somewhat more hopeful, followed the roundabout return of Devin's men. Now Sheridan proposed to 'hold on to Dinwiddie Court House until I am compelled to leave.' neither message was exactly suffused with the little Irishman's customary fire, and Grant dispatched Warren's V Corps and an additional cavalry division from the Army of the James to reinforce him at Dinwiddie. Sheridan would rather have had Wright's VI Corps than Warren's unfamiliar sloggers, but Grant explained that this was impossible."


". . . If Sheridan were to move quickly -- more to the point, if Warren were to move quickly -- the two Union wings could catch Pickett in a death grip of his own devising. Sheridan always moved quickly.


"Gouverneur Warren was not Phil Sheridan's favorite soldier, even in the best of times, which these clearly were not. Twice before, during Grant's Wilderness campaign, Warren had publicly criticized the 'damned cavalry' for getting in his way, and had displayed noticeable ill will when asked to help Sheridan's horsemen attack the barricaded enemy on the way to Spotsylvania. Most recently, Sheridan had found him sleeping in his tent in the middle of the afternoon, 'rather despondent' about the overall prospects for the army's success. Like Meade, Warren was an engineer-general, careful, methodical, and (in the eyes of such hard-nosed scrappers as Sheridan and Grant) a bit timid. In the charnel house of the Wilderness, he had suffered something like a nervous breakdown, crying out that 'for thirty days it has been one funeral procession past me, and it has been too much!' Grant was concerned that Warren should fail Sheridan in the crunch, and took pains to assure him that he was in command of all forces in the vicinity, with full authority to fire Warren if and when he found him an impediment.


"It would be nearly twelve hours before Sheridan found Warren at all, a long night compounded of anger, anxiety, and teeth-grinding frustration. Grant had told him, unrealistically, that Warren would arrive at Dinwiddie at midnight, a logistical impossibility since Warren did not even receive his marching orders until 11:00 P.M. The roads, inky darkness, and swollen streams further delayed Warren, who, true to form, was not evincing much sense of haste on his own. Sheridan tried his best to speed the dilatory New Yorker along, sending him a painstakingly detailed account of the golden opportunity facing them both and urging him to attack at daylight. No answer came from Warren. 'Restive as a racer,' Sheridan paced in the dark.


". . . At daybreak, meanwhile, the first of Warren's divisions straggled into Dinwiddie. 'Where's Warren?' Sheridan demanded of the first ranking officer he could grab, Brigadier General Romeyn Ayres. Back at the rear, said Ayres. 'That's here I expected to find him,' snapped Sheridan. Finally, at midday, Warren loped in, and Sheridan hurriedly gave him the plan of attack. While Merritt's dismounted cavalry menaced the Rebel front, Custer would simulate an attack on the enemy right. Meanwhile, Warren's sixteen thousand infantry would attack the angle in Pickett's line and attempt to get into his rear. Warren, who was sitting under a tree making a sketch of the area, nodded agreement, but still seemed strangely apathetic. Perhaps he was just tired. When Sheridan pointed out that Lee was less than three miles away, Warren shrugged. 'Bobby Lee is always getting people into trouble,' he allowed."


". . . Despite Sheridan's prodding, it took Warren three more hours to get his men into position. The cavalry had been banging away for at least that long, and Sheridan was worried that they would expend their ammunition before Warren even began his attack. 'This battle must be fought and won before the sun goes down,' Sheridan fumed to his staff. 'All conditions may be changed in the morning; we have but a few hours of daylight left.' Somehow he managed to control his temper -- for a little longer, anyway. Finally, at 4:00 P.M., Warren began his attack. It started badly. Ayres, commanding the lead division, dutifully sent his men crashing against the angle on the Confederate left. Unfortunately the two divisions on his right, commanded by Brigadier Generals Sam Crawford and Charles Griffin, swung too far to the north and came near to marching themselves completely out of the battle. Meanwhile, unsupported, Ayres's men were taking fire from all sides.


"Again Sheridan rose to the challenge. crying 'Where's my battle flag?' He spurred Rienzi toward the threatened infantry. Oblivious to the deadly zing of minie bullets whizzing about his familiar red and white guidon, he dashed from one end of the line to the other, urging Ayres's men to take the breastworks. . . Sheridan was everywhere. 'Come on, men!' he urged. 'Go at 'em with a will. Move on at a clean jump or you'll not catch one of the them! They're all getting ready to run now, and if you don't get on to them in five minutes they'll every one get away.' The omnipresent Horace Porter, of Grant's staff, rode behind Sheridan in the charge, marveling; the little general, he said, was 'the very incarnation of battle.'


"Warren . . . was nowhere to be found. . . Brigadier General Joshua Chamberlain, like Warren a true hero at Gettysburg, smartly led his brigade into the breach caused by the misalignment. 'By God, that's what I want to see: general officers at the front!' cried Sheridan, just then in the act of practicing what he preached. . . brandishing his twin-starred flag [he] leaped Rienzie over the breastworks, dropping down on a group of astonished southerners like the angel of death, or mercy. 'where do you want us all to go?' asked one of the Rebels, throwing up his hands. 'Go right over there' said Sheridan. 'Drop your guns; you'll never need them any more.'


"Abruptly the Confederate stand disintegrated. Rebs by the hundreds surrendered en masse; only the cavalry managed to get away . . ."


". . . Sheridan, true to form, was trying to organize a further advance on the Southside Railroad, three miles away, when a courier rode up to him at sundown, with word from Warren that he was in the Confederate rear.


'By God, sir, tell General Warren he wasn't in that fight!' roared Sheridan. The messenger, startled, asked if he could take it down in writing. 'Take it down, sir!' Sheridan said. 'Tell him by God he was not at the front.' Next Sheridan sought out Griffin, the senior division commander in the V Corps, and brusquely gave him command of the entire corps. A second messenger carried the unhappy news to Warren, who made somewhat better time back to Sheridan's headquarters than he had made coming to his aid or leading his infantry into battle the previous two days. White-faced and shaken, the hero of Little Round Top asked Sheridan to reconsider his order relieving Warren of command. 'Reconsider, hell!' said Sheridan. 'I don't reconsider my decisions. Obey the order.' Like Averell and Torbert before him, Warren had failed Sheridan where it counted most, on the battlefield. Sheridan could forgive the occasional blunder by youngsters such as Custer -- Armstrong fought like hell when the time came. But slowness, timidity, or caution -- unwanted children of the same defeatist father -- these Sheridan could not excuse. Warren rode away, his career in shambles, and Sheridan returned to the task of winning the war, which today's victory at Five Forks had brought a good deal closer."


Comment: I know Warren was a hero at Gettysburg, but he had emotional problems in the Wilderness and so might not have been the same man he was at Gettysburg. A commander like Sheridan (or George Patton) wouldn't have taken on the task of babysitting Warren through any emotional problems he might be having. The battle was going on and Warren wasn't helping. a court of inquiry eventually overturned Warren's firing just as another one overturned Averell's but I doubt that Sheridan or Grant would have cared. Sheridan needed his troops to be at peak efficiency during battles and Grant urged Sheridan to get rid of Averell and Warren if as he feared they would turn out to impede Sheridan's progress.


One can after the battle take Warren out of context and say shame of Sheridan, but in the midst of battle, Sheridan (IMO) did the right thing.

Another firing of Averell

 

In the blog note http://northagainstsouth.com/the-aft...-fishers-hill/ is a reference indicating that Sheridan told Averell "not to be reckless." That sounds contrary to Sheridan's (and Grant's) impression of Averell.


Both Morris and Stackpole describe Averell's poor performance but they don't mention that Averell was relieved of command once before -- at least according to a reference in the New York State Library:WILLIAM WOODS AVERELL PAPERS, 1836-1910: New York State Library :


". . . one of the true Cavalry fights of the war occurred on the Rappahannock River at Kelley's Ford. Averell's Force had been embarrassed on 25 February 1863, when a small force of Confederate Cavalry under the command of Fitzhugh Lee captured 150 men. Averell then regrouped his forces and mounted an attack on 16 March that was successful in breaking the Confederate line. Shortly, after Kelly's Ford, Averell was relieved of his command by General Hocker for alleged lack of resolve to fight during Stonement's raid, which may have in part attributed to the Union Army's defeat of Chancellorsville."


Comment: My present belief is that Sheridan acted properly in letting Averell go, but let's assume for a moment that the opposite was the case, that Hocker, Grant, Crook & apparently others were wrong about Averell, and Sheridan in watching his performance watched it too closely because of the bad recommendations he got especially from Grant and Crook. Should Sheridan have delayed, thinking to himself, "Even though it seems that Averell is a poor-performer, I will give him more time, and risk my command just so I don't unjustly ruin Averell's career"?


I agonized through depressing biographies of Jefferson Davis and Braxton Bragg. In Davis's case his commitment to seniority and loyalty to friends regardless of whether they were the best people to command his armies severely hampered the South's chance of success. In Bragg's case, he begged Davis to let him get rid of the recalcitrant lieutenants who had been left in place far far too long; so long in fact that Bragg was not able to recover his health after they were removed. He may have been irascible and difficult, but he didn't have the energy or health to fight with his lieutenants as long as he did. I found it refreshing to read that Grant and Sheridan didn't have to put up with that. Grant told Sheridan to ignore seniority and that may have been the initial act that caused Averell's "slows" to get even slower.


As to the evidence in Robert Billies blog note, it sounds like the sort of thing that might be found in one of Averell's reports referred to by Stackpole, reports that in great detail explain why Averell wasn't able to carry out the task he had been assigned.

Stackpole on Averell

The following quotes are from Sheridan in the Shenandoah by Edward J. Stackpole:


Page 35: "General Crook's subsequent account of Hunter's campaign referred in scathing terms to the ineffective service of Averell's cavalry during this period. It seems that Hunter on approaching Lexington from the north had sent Averell to cross black River higher up, to come in on the rear of the VMI cadet battalion that was opposing the Union advance. This Averell failed to do, allowing the cadets to escape to Lynchburg. . ."

Page 88: ". . . Crook's autobiography covering this period makes scornful reference to the part played by Sullivan's division and Averell's cavalry, accusing the former of all the shortcomings in the book, including physical cowardice, and stating that the cavalry was of little assistance, with its commander getting drunk during the fighting."

Page 91-102: "Averell's division, number about 2,500 men, arrived at Greencastle at dusk and went into bivouac at the very hour that McCausland was completing his march on Chambersburg; an action that served rather well to confirm the inadequacy of Averell as a cavalry commander. He had repeatedly demonstrated that he was dilatory in obeying orders, slow to react when speed and aggressiveness would have paid off in Union successes, and entirely too ready to avoid combat or to press matters to a conclusion, once committed to action. This he had proven in his fight with Fitz Lee on the Rappahannock prior to the Chancellorsville campaign and again int he course of the campaign. Crook was disgusted with his apparent indifference to his responsibilities during the recent skirmishes with Early in the Valley. The people of Chambersburg would very shortly blame him for dereliction of duty, in the conviction that he could have saved their community from destruction, but was too lethargic to stir himself in their defense. Finally, within a matter of months, Averell's performance in the Valley would be such that General Sheridan, who demanded efficient and bold service from his generals, would peremptorily relieve him from command."


". . . on July 29 [General] Couch had in Chambersburg nothing but one section of a field artillery battery, while the only other armed force in the entire Cumberland Valley that remained subject to his orders was a company of infantry with a strength of but 106 men . . . [he expected] Averell's cavalry would ride in to its defense in response to his repeated telegrams. . . When Averell failed to respond, Couch made the decision to remove himself and the handful of guns from Chambersburg to avoid certain capture . . ."


". . . there was a definite lack of rapport between Hunter and Averell, the former blaming the latter for the failure to take Lynchburg: 'I should certainly have taken it,' Hunter had written to Grant, 'if it had not been for the stupidity and conceit of that fellow Averell, who unfortunately joined me at Staunton, and of whom I unfortunately had at the time a very high opinion, and trusted him when I should not have done so."

". . . Averell's unheroic attitude and the damning implications that he could have prevented the rape of Chambersburg are related in letters from two reliable citizens addressed to Jacob Hoke, a resident of that community, who wrote and published a painstakingly researched book on Lee's Gettysburg campaign." [The letters are quoted by Stackpole, but too long to quote here.]


Page 165: "The rearward march of the three Federal corps of Wright, Emory, and Crook was ably covered by the cavalry divisions of Merritt and Wilson, the latter having reported to Sheridan from Grant's army on August 17. Averell, who rarely moved quickly, did not reach the army from West Virginia until Sheridan's new line was stabilized north of Charlestown some days later. . . ."


Page 258: ". . . [Sheridan was] . . . frustrated and angered by the indifference to orders and disinclination to fight displayed by General Averell, whose cavalry division had been placed in a position at Fisher's Hill from which it was expected to execute the historic role of cavalry in the pursuit and exploitation of a retreating foe.


"A review of Averell's military record during the Civil War is cause for wonder that he lasted as long as he did as a cavalry division commander. Perhaps it would be generous to state that he lacked the fighting heart that marks the true cavalry leader, and let it go at that. That he was agile-minded in composing his official reports is evident from reading his accounts; there always seemed to be sound reasons for not accomplishing his assigned missions, and he never failed to elaborate at great length. The fact remained, however, that more times than not his division failed to reach the scene of action until after the need for its presence had passed and the enemy had concluded his immediate operations.


"General Sheridan reached Woodstock early on the morning of September 23 in the company with advance elements of his infantry, expecting to find that Averell's division had been in hot pursuit of the routed Confederates and that the cavalry general would have a glowing report to submit. But Averell wasn't there and no one seemed to know where he was. . . About noon Averell's division showed up, having taken time out for a good night's rest, followed by a leisurely jaunt over the few miles of road between Fisher's Hill and Woodstock. Sheridan minced no words in upbraiding Averell, and immediately sent him packing after Devin, who had run up against rear-guard opposition at Mount Jackson, but still was making progress despite his small force. It wasn't long after Averell had joined Devin and assumed command of the combined forces that Sheridan received a message from him to the effect that a signal officer had advised him that 'a brigade or division of the enemy was turning his flank' and that he thought it prudent to withdraw his division. Sheridan sent back word that Averell should not let the Confederates bluff him so easily; then, thinking it over, he decided he had had enough of that inferior kind of leadership, and dashed off a Special Order that relieved Averell from command and ordered him to Wheeling to await further orders. Colonel William H. Powell was assigned to command of the First Cavalry Division in the same order that brought to an end the military career of the disgruntled William W. Averell."


Page 261-2: It had been "Averell's job to harry and slow down the retreating Confederates with his cavalry division, and by unremitting pressure against the enemy rear guard to force Early's tired infantry to deploy and redeploy constantly. He failed abjectly in carrying out that mission. Seldom had such an opportunity fallen to the lot of the Union cavalry -- the sort of thing to which horse troops were ideally suited -- and Averell had muffed it badly, losing his command as indeed he should have. . ."


Comment: While two biographies do not comprise evidence beyond all dispute, these two (Stackpole's & Morris's), written about 40 years apart, were developed by historians delving into the primary evidence (note for example that Stackpole seems to have read all of Averell's official reports) and while these historians do not describe the events pertaining to Averell's performance and firing in quite the same words, there is no essential disagreement.


There seems to be a phalanx of anti-Sheridan emotion at work in modern historiography today; which makes an examination of its salient points interesting, but in this particular case, the "case" against Sheridan for unjustly firing Averell, I have seen no substantiating evidence.

Sheridan and Averell per Morris

The following is from Sheridan, The Life and Wars of General Phil Sheridan by Roy Morris, 1992:


Page 185-6: "In addition to three infantry corps and twelve attached artillery batteries, approximately 35,000 troops in all, Sheridan was to have three divisions of cavalry at his disposal. He had already told Halleck at their meeting in Washington that 'for operations in the open country of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Northern Virginia, cavalry is much better than infantry.' Two of the divisions were his own, enroute from Army of the Potomac and commanded by brigadier Generals Alfred T. A. Torbert and James Harrison Wilson. The third, already on the scene in the Shenandoah Valley was headed by Brigadier General William W. Averell.


"Organizing the cavalry into an unofficial corps, Sheridan surprised everyone by naming Torbert to be its chief. His reasons for bypassing Averell, who was senior to Torbert and, many though, his superior as a soldier, were never spelled out. It may have been a desire on Sheridan's part to entrust the corps to an officer who had already served under him, as Averell had not. Or he may have intended it as a message to his new command that things were going to be different now, with Sheridan at the helm. It is also possible that he might have heard from Crook or others that Averell had performed badly at Kernstown, refusing to commit his horsemen to fight and thus allowing the Rebels to turn Crook's flank. Whatever the case, Torbert was duly installed as cavalry chief, and the disappointed Averell was brusquely told to follow orders."


Page 203-5: "Later that morning, his celebrated temper already frayed by Torbert's inexplicable conduct, Sheridan received a second bit of bad news from William Woods Averell, the ranking cavalryman on the scene and thus the unwitting target of his commanding general's self-nourishing wrath. Sheridan had assumed that Averell was somewhere south of the army, pursuing Early's 'perfect mob' of fugitives. Instead, Averell sauntered into camp from the north, having scorned further pursuit of the enemy and blithely bedded down for the night while Sheridan and the infantry continued harrowing the worsted Rebels. Hot words ensued between the two, and Sheridan sent Averell away with the pointed injunction that he find some Rebels to fight -- and soon. Incredibly, Averell ignored both that direct order and a follow-up note from Sheridan calling for 'actual fighting, with necessary casualties,' choosing instead to go into camp before dark that afternoon. Sheridan quickly learned of the insubordinate behavior, and by midnight Averell was en route to Wheeling, West Virginia, out of Sheridan's army, and sight, for good.


"The total breakdown of cavalry pursuit enabled the enemy to get safely away and left Sheridan in the unusual position of being about the only man in his army -- Averell excepted -- who was at all disappointed by the twin victories at Winchester and Fisher's Hill. At Petersburg, Grant greeted the news with another of his patented live-ammunition salutes; other commanders across the country followed suit. Sheridan's showing, Grant told him, 'wipes out much of the stain upon our arms by previous disasters in that locality.' Keep on, he added, 'and your good work will cause the fall of Richmond.'


"Sheridan, for his part was not so sure. 'Our success,' he noted, 'was very great, yet I had anticipated results still more pregnant.' Early's army, although twice beaten and no doubt downhearted, nevertheless remained undestroyed, sheltering in the Blue Rudge Mountains and awaiting more reinforcements from the indomitable Lee. . . ."

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Sheridan at Stones River

In addition to pages 104-112 of Morris's Sheridan, The Life and Wars of General Phil Sheridan pertaining to Stones River, I have two battle histories of Stones River: No Better Place to Die, The Battle of stones River by Peter Cozzens and Stones River -- Bloody Winter in Tennessee by James Lee McDonough. The battle histories agree with Morris's description the highlights of which are presented below:


Rosecrans, McCook and virtually the entire rest of Rosecrans army were not expecting Bragg to attack on the morning of December 31st. Almost everyone was convinced Bragg would dig in and wait for Rosecrans to attack. Only Sheridan and Sill (commanding Sheridan's 1st Brigade) thought otherwise. They heard rumbling in the night, but couldn't get anyone else to take an interest. So, on December 31st, Rosecrans' army "had fixed on 7:00 A.M. as zero hour to give the soldiers time to eat."


Sheridan, on the other hand had gotten his men up at 5:00 A.M. and fed them while it was still dark. Thus, when "ten thousand Confederate troops broke for Johnson's unsuspecting [2nd] division at a dead run . . . [his troops] never had a chance." After driving Johnson's 2nd division from the field, the Confederates turned on Davis's 1st division.


Sheridan's 3rd division opened fire with its artillery, "tearing great gaps in the enemy line; musket volleys from fifty yards forced the attackers into stumbling retreat. Sill, buoyed by the successful stand, led a counterattack through the blood-spattered cotton. Leaning across his horse's neck to tell artillery captain Asahel Bush to double-shot his guns, he suddenly pitched headlong to the ground, struck in the face by a minie bullet. Staff officers carried the dying general off the field in a blanket. Rosecrans, told of Sill's death, said grimly, 'We cannot help it. brave men must be killed.'


"Sheridan, likewise, had no time to mourn for his friend. Woodruff, on the right, had been overrun, leaving the division vulnerable to being flanked. Sheridan receded Sill's brigade and ordered Roberts to cover the withdrawal by charging the Rebels in the woods to the south. At the same time, Schaefer and Greusel, now commanding Sill's brigade, were directed to form a new defensive line on the high ground behind their artillery batteries. Roberts's men charged forward across an open field, sunlight glinting off their bayonets. The Rebels fell back behind their artillery; canister splintered into the trees above them. The charge brought Sheridan time to cobble together a new position at a right angle to his original line. He also attempted, without notable success, to rally Davis's badly demoralized men. . ."


"A similar disaster now threatened Sheridan. The two enemy divisions that had overrun Johnson and Davis now wheeled ominously toward his line. The distinctive 'sip-sip' of bullets clipped through the branches of mangled cedar trees. Sheridan held as long as he could, then withdrew deeper into the woods to link up with Brigadier General James S. Negley's unbloodied division [the 2nd division of General Thomas's 'center' corps]. Calmly chewing an unlit cigar, he stationed his men at a ninety-degree angle to Negley, facing south-southwest -- almost exactly opposite the direction they had faced a few minutes before. The enemy pressed them on every side.


"It was now 9:00 A.M. McCook's corps had been under devastating attack for almost three hours; of his sixteen thousand troops, only Sheridan's division remained in the fight. As he had done at Perryville, McCook failed to take charge of the situation. 'The right wing is heavily pressed and needs assistance,' he reported to Rosecrans. Then on the heels of his first report: 'The right wing is being driven. It needs reserves.' Rosecrans, hearing the steady thump of artillery, blanched at the news. 'So soon?" he asked. He dispatched a message to Sheridan telling him to hold where he was. Sheridan had no illusions about the order -- it 'would probably require a sacrifice of my command.'


"He prepared to make the sacrifice, but he wanted to force the Rebels to pay dearly for it. . . Three times the Confederates charged Sheridan's line, each time presaging their attack with knee-buckling artillery fire. . . Through it all Sheridan moved calmly about, directing artillery, shifting his lines, giving orders' as quietly as though sitting in his tent.' Studiedly insouciant, he lit his cigar. Rousseau, among other, marveled at his comportment. 'I knew it was hell in there before I got in' Rousseau said later. 'But I was convinced of it when I saw Phil Sheridan, with hat in one hand and sword in the other, fighting as if he were the devil incarnate.'


"Finally, after two hours of unremitting fire, Sheridan yielded to the inevitable. As the Rebels prepared another assault, he ordered Roberts -- 'an ideal soldier both in mind and body' -- to cover the retreat. . . Roberts's brigade, the only one of the three with any ammunition left, deployed north of the Wilkinson Turnpike while the rest of the division withdrew under fire through the shattered trees. Roberts, on horseback, rode the line, shouting encouragement to his thinned-out ranks. A perfect target, he toppled from the saddle with three bullet wounds. Gasping in pain, he ordered his men to put him back on his horse; he died as they were hoisting him up. . . Despite constant pressure, Sherman reported, 'the division came out of the cedars with unbroken ranks, thinned by only its killed and wounded. . . "Here we are,' he told Rosecrans, 'all that are left of us.' . . . in four hours of furious combat, culminating in one of the bravest fighting retreats of the war, he had lost more than 1,600 men including three brigade commanders. Sill, Roberts, and Harrington were dead; soon Schaefer would join that terrible list."

"The Rebel effort was magnificently brave, but, as at Perryville, it was not enough. By 5:00 P.M. their attacks had ceased. The Union line had held at last, with nowhere else to bend. The Confederates had simultaneously driven the Yankees too far and not far enough. Night fell, as it had at Perryville, on a southern army that had won the day -- but not the battle. Seven thousand Federals, and an equal number of Confederates, lay dead or wounded on the awful field."


". . . The next morning . . . Bragg was shocked to find Rosecrans still standing between him and Nashville. . . An . . . attempt by Bragg . . . to break the Union left ended with a deafening roar from Rosecrans's well-laced artillery. In the space of an hour, 1,700 Rebels were killed or wounded.

"The Battle of Stones River was over, although it took Bragg another day to admit it. Nearly 25,000 soldiers had fallen in the fighting; Sheridan's losses totaled 1,633, or forty percent of his division, his highest casualty rate of the war. . . He had with the help of . . . Sill, correctly perceived the danger looming on the night before the battle. Alone among division-level commanders on the Union right, he had prepared for an attack that, once it was launched, had quickly overwhelmed other, more unwary divisions. With the help of outstanding subordinates, whose worth he had recognized long before the battle, he not only had withstood the initial attack, but had also managed to delay the enemy's advance for two crucial hours, enabling Rosecrans to cobble together a new position. As a fighting withdrawal, his division's performance at Stones River ranked among the very best in this, or any other, American war. No less an expert than Ulysses S. Grant would later say: 'it was from all I can hear about it a wonderful bit of fighting. It showed what a great general can do even in a subordinate command; for I believe Sheridan in that battle saved Rosecrans' army.'


"Grant was not alone in his praise of Sheridan. McCook commended his 'gallant conduct and attention to duty,' and Rosecrans reported that 'the consistency and steadfastness of [Sheridan's] troops . . . enabled the reserves to reach the right of our army in time to turn the tide of battle and change a threatened rout into a victory.' He urged that Sheridan be promoted to major general. For someone who, a mere seven months earlier, had been a lowly commissary captain wrangling over the quality of beef for his general's table, Sheridan's rise had been truly remarkable. Furthermore, it had been achieved on the battlefield, not in some drawing room or rear-echelon tent. His men -- those who had not been left behind on the viney hills of Perryville or in the winter-stricken woods at Stones River -- knew his worth as a fighting general; their steadfastness and courage had helped him prove it. . . ."

Sheridan and General Curtis

Wittenburg (on page 4 of his Little Phil) writes, "After Pea Ridge, Sheridan had a falling out with Curtis, who wanted to replace Sheridan with a crony. Curtis prevailed, and a forlorn Sheridan reported to Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis, looking for work."


Here is the more detailed, and I believe accurate account provided in pages 52-55 of Morris's biography of Sheridan:


". . . some of Sheridan's subordinates had been stealing horses from local farmers and selling them back to the army at a profit. Sheridan, in his position as quartermaster, controlled the army's purse strings, and immediately put a stop to their sport by declaring such horses captured property, branding 'US' on their flanks, and refusing to pay the thieves a penny. 'Misled by the representations that had been made, and without fully knowing the circumstances,' Curtis ordered Sheridan, in essence, to shut up and pay the men. In a letter to Major Thomas J. McKinney, Curtis's adjutant, Sheridan pointedly refused, adding somewhat injudiciously that 'I will not jayhawk or steal on any order, nor will I acknowledge the right of any person under my supervision in this district to do so.' Quartermasters did not ordinarily use such language to their commanding generals, particularly one who had just preserved the entire state of Missouri for the Union. Curtis came back from the front in high feather, immediately had Sheridan placed under arrest, and drew up a lengthy and self-justifying bill of particulars, charging among other things that Sheridan had disobeyed a standing order to provide horses and supplies for the army, had remained behind 'where he was not needed,' and -- this was the real bone in Curtis's craw -- had been disrespectful.


"although in later years he sought to downplay the incident as 'the culmination of a little difference that had arisen between General Curtis and me,' Sheridan at the time was mortified and furious. . ."

"Curtis went to some pains to explain to Halleck why his young protégé, who had so noticeably distinguished himself in the four months he had been in Missouri, had suddenly and culpably become a drag on the service. With tortured logic he blamed the jayhawking on Sheridan himself, noting to Halleck's assistant adjutant general that if quartermasters would only furnish adequate supplies, such extracurricular stealing could be controlled. Sheridan, he said, had left his troops the unpalatable choice of stealing or starving.


"Grenville Dodge and other concerned officers went to Curtis in Sheridan's behalf, a move that gained Sheridan nothing and won for his defenders the unsubtle warning that they, too, 'might possibly go the the rear with the over nice Quartermaster who must be learned what war was.' . . Sheridan asked Halleck for a transfer. It was rather hastily granted, as much perhaps to preserve the semblance of departmental unity as to placate Sheridan, and he returned to St. Louis 'somewhat forlorn and disheartened at the turn affairs had taken,' but nonetheless relieved to be away from Curtis."


Halleck "more to get him away from Curtis's reach than for any pressing administrative need . . . sent Sheridan -- with no apparent awareness of the irony involved -- on a horse-buying swing through Wisconsin and Illinois. . . He was still in Chicago, having made it the center of his horse-buying activities, when the first reports arrived of the terrible battle at Shiloh . . . Inflamed by reports from the battlefield, Sheridan hastened back to St. Louis, intent on asking Halleck for yet another favor . . . he rushed into army headquarters, only to discover he was five days late. Halleck had steamboated downriver to Pittsburg landing immediately after the battle to personally take command of the still-shaken Union forces . . . Sheridan importuned Halleck's assistant adjutant general, Colonel John C. Kelton, to send him to the front, and Kelton, who had been at West Point with him for three years consented. On April 15 he issued an order directing Sheridan to report in person to Halleck in Tennessee. That comradely bit of circumvention Sheridan would always consider the turning point in his military career, which is to say, his life."


Comment: Morris notes the irony involved in Halleck sending Sheridan on a horse-buying job after Curtis accused him of misdeeds in regard to horse-buying. Another bit of irony can be seen in what happened to Curtis after his Pea-Ridge victory " For his achievement, he was promoted to major general. After receiving his promotion, Curtis moved his army further into Arkansas and captured the city of Helena in July. In September of 1862, he was given command of the Department of Missouri; however, President Abraham Lincoln removed Curtis after Curtis stated abolitionist remarks, offending the governor of Missouri, William Gamble." [from http://www.civilwar.org/education/hi...an-curtis.html ]


One might be tempted to use the modern saying "whatever goes around comes around. Sheridan got into trouble for saying the wrong things to General Curtis. General Curtis in turn got into trouble for saying the wrong thing to the Governor of Missouri. It is not enough, he and Sheridan may or may not have learned, to have the truth; one must dish it up as an attractive and sweet smelling meal.

Sheridan's excellent beginning

Sheridan was brilliant at logistics; so much so that Halleck wished to keep him always with him, but Sheridan ached to have a field command and eventually Halleck relented and let him have one. Morris on pages 67-74 describes his first battle as a brigade commander: The cautious and fearful Rosecrans sent Sheridan's small brigade (consisting of 827 soldiers) off to be a "trip wire. Sheridan was instructed to retreat "in good order" after encountering the enemy.


Bragg meanwhile sent Chalmers to "feint an attack on Sheridan's brigade." Chalmers with a much larger force saw no reason not to turn his "feint" into the destruction of Sheridan's small brigade.

 
Picking up the battle as it commences . . .


". . . Two Rebel regiments deployed on either side of the road; it soon became apparent, Sheridan said, that Chalmers 'meant business.' So too did Sheridan. He directed Campbell to hold where he was; if forced to retreat, he was to do so as slowly as possible. Rosecrans, from headquarters, sent much the same order to Sheridan himself. But Sheridan's stubborn fighting spirit, until now more directed at his superiors than at the enemy, had been aroused. In a dispatch to Brigadier General Alexander S. Asboth at nearby Rienzi, he flatly declared, 'I will not give up my camp without a fight.'"


". . . While Chalmer's Confederates deployed on either side of the road for a frontal assault on Campbell's position, Sheridan brought up the Second Iowa to act as reserve. Attacking across an open field, the Rebels were met by withering fire at a distance of less than thirty yards. The shower of bullets from the Colt revolvers staggered the attackers, allowing the Yankees to fall back toward Booneville. Chalmers had foreseen the difficulties of attacking head-on; double columns of mounted men were left on either flank. After a second frontal attack was beaten back -- literally -- by Campbell's defenders, Chalmers commenced a flanking movement, attempting to intersperse his cavalry between the Union defensive line and Sheridan's camp. A more panicky commander might have wilted under pressure. Sheridan did not. Instead . . . he 'determined to take the offensive.'"


Sheridan sent Captain Russell Alger with his 90-man regiment to circle around behind Chalmers to attack him from the rear in about an hour. While Sheridan waited a two-car supply train steamed into Booneville with grain for Sheridan's horses. The men in ranks knew that Sheridan had called earlier for reinforcements and thought they had arrived. They sent up a cheer. "Cannily, Sheridan augmented the noise by having the engineer blow his whistle to let the enemy know that a train had arrived. The combined cacophony of train whistles, enemy yells, rapid-fire rifles, and, presently, the ominous swish of sabers at their backs produced in the Rebels a profound sense of disquiet. In 'the utmost disorder,' they broke and ran. Throwing aside rifles, knapsacks, coats, and anything else that could slow them down, they hastened west down the Blackland Road."


"Disdaining Rosecrans's panicky order to retreat, [Sheridan] had demonstrated in his first independent command a coolness and resolve that were rare commodities in any officer, let alone one so new to the job."


Chalmers aide-de-camp made light of what had happened, calling it an "insignificant skirmish," but "there was no gainsaying the totality of his triumph, especially as viewed by his immediate superiors. The day after the battle, Rosecrans issued a general order praising 'the coolness, determination, and fearless gallantry displayed by Colonel Sheridan and the officers and men of his command.' . . . More to the point, Rosecrans recommended to Halleck . . . that his erstwhile quartermaster-commissary be made a brigadier general . . . Halleck wasted little time in passing along a similar recommendation to Secretary of war Edwin Stanton . . . on July 6. . . ."


After the campaign for Corinth was over "Sheridan's pickets roamed from Jacinto, nine miles east of Rienzi, to the Hatchie River, eleven miles west. Not much was going on militarily . . . still Sheridan kept busy, regularly sending his troops out on scout. . . Late in July his activity paid off. Colonel Hatch, at the head of a four-hundred-man force, raided the town of Ripley, where the 26th Alabama Regiment was . . . staying."


The Rebels got away but they left behind a "cache of their letters" which Sheridan read through and discovered that "the Confederates were moving large numbers of troops to intercept Buell at Chattanooga." He immediately forward this information up his chain of command. "The day after he alerted his superiors . . . five of them, Generals Rosecrans, Granger, Elliott, Asboth, and Jeremiah C. Sullivan, telegraphed Halleck in Washington: 'Brigadiers scarce. Good ones scarcer. . . . The undersigned respectfully beg that you will obtain the promotion of Sheridan. He is worth his weight in gold. His Ripley expedition has brought us captured letters of immense value.' The wheels of preferment were turning faster. And at army headquarters U. S. Grant, who forgot very little, had been given good cause to remember Phil Sheridan.

Saturday, August 25, 2012

Wittenberg & Warren

Having an extremely poor opinion of historians who seek to be politically correct at the expense of objectivity, and after discovering what seems to be a lie on the first page of his book on Sheridan, I will have difficulty reading anything else by him. Maybe this is something like being down on Sheridan for saying the only good Indians are dead, but it doesn't feel the same. Perhaps someone would need both Wittenburg's book and Hutton's to be able to see what I've seen, but I did quote the salient parts and I would be very interested in reading a defense of the words I quoted from Wittenburg's first page -- by an admirer of Wittenburg.


As to Warren, Grant observed a pattern that he didn't like and warned Sheridan of it. Sheridan removed Warren when he didn't see Warren doing what he was told during battle. He didn't court-martial him, he removed him and put someone in his stead whom he had more confidence in. Warren asked for a court of inquiry claiming he didn't do anything wrong. In reading Grant's critique of Warren, one can see how Warren would hold that belief, and even Grant's words don't put it in those terms, i.e., that Warren does wrong things. Warren dithered over a multitude of "right things" which meant (1) that he wasn't always performing as quickly as his commanders would like and (2) his analysis of what other commanders ought to be doing was not his responsibility.

Grant, Sheridan and G.K. Warren

I have seen criticisms of Sheridan for "ruining G. K. Warren's career." The following from pages 701-702 of Grant's Memoirs provides insight into why Warren was relieved:


"I was so much dissatisfied with Warren's dilatory movements in the battle of White oak Road and in his failure to reach Sheridan in time, that I was very much afraid that at the last moment he would fail Sheridan. He was a man of fine intelligence, great earnestness, quick perception, and could make his dispositions as quickly as any officer, under difficulties where he was forced to act. But I had before discovered a defect which was beyond his control, that was very prejudicial to his usefulness in emergencies like the one just before us. He could see every danger at a glance before he had encountered it. He would not only make preparations to meet the danger which might occur, but he would inform his commanding officer what others should do while he was executing his move.


"I had sent a staff officer to General Sheridan to call his attention to these defects, and to say that as much as I liked General Warren, now was not a time when we could let our personal feelings for any one stand in the way of success; and if his removal was necessary to success, not to hesitate. It was upon that authorization that Sheridan removed Warren. I was very sorry that it had been done, and regretted still more that I had not long before taken occasion to assign him to another field of duty."

Sheridan now politically incorrect

I've encountered this in other fields of history; so it didn't surprise me to read in Robert M. Utley's foreword (to Morris' book) that liking Sheridan is no longer politically correct. What he actually wrote was, "In the last two decades [his foreword was written in 1999] American Indians have asserted their cultural heritage and ethnic identity within the American nation, and scholars have flooded the historiography of the westward movement with Indian studies. Public awareness has been enriched. No longer are Indians mere foils in the saga of sturdy white pioneers carving civilizations out of the wilderness. Robust civilizations already existed in the wilderness, and we may now vicariously identify with them and watch the overpowering advance of the newcomers.


"Neither in the burgeoning literature nor in public perceptions have the Indian-fighting soldiers fared well. Motion pictures and television, popular works, and even scholarly studies have portrayed them as the villains of the story and often as bloodthirsty butchers. The image is no more accurate than the earlier public image of Indians as savages barring the path to civilization. The U.S. Army played a significant role in the Indian wars, one entitled to the same canons of scholarship that should govern all examinations of the past.


"In Phil Sheridan and His Army, Paul Andrew Hutton applied those canons rigorously, at a time when Indian studies were gaining momentum. . . ."

Comment:
What does Sheridan's Indian-Fighting activities have to do with his Civil-War actions? It ought not to have anything to do with it, but it doesn't seem to work that way. We have seen that Longstreet's belief that one ought to embrace the Restoration and show support for it by joining the Republican Party affected his reputation retroactively -- at Gettysburg for example. If he could become X; then he must have been X-like even in his earlier career. It is hard not to fall into that trap especially when one is reading about someone who coined the phrase, "the only good Indian is a dead Indian" [although what he actually said was probably "the only good Indians I've ever seen have been dead."]


The historian, if he is to true to his craft, must strive to put himself back into the time, place or person he is writing about. He is not permitted to let either his own prejudices, the prejudices of the department he is working in, or the prejudices of the people he hangs out with influence his writing. Utley tells us that Hutton lives up to that standard.


Can someone who is inherently Liberal and Politically Correct, like anything about the antebellum South? Apparently they can, especially Virginia. As with Lee, it didn't really favor secession, didn't really like slavery and is only fought on the side of the South for honor's sake -- or so it goes. But there doesn't seem to be a way to like Sheridan and other Indian fighters unless they were like Crook and respected the Indian ways with a modern-like respect.


My own impression of Sheridan thus far is that Sheridan deserves to be ranked with Sherman and Grant at the very top. Sherman and Grant both thought so and the record supports their view. Sheridan was as well liked by his men as either Grant and Sherman were. In fact he may have been better liked. He was able to turn a rout into a victory by his very presence; which is something neither of the other two managed.


In reading about Sheridan I noticed that he was able to get rid of his weak lieutenants in a way that would have been the envy of Bragg. It seems to be a characteristic of weak lieutenants that they don't view themselves as their commanders do, and a large percentage of them (if not all) hold grudges. I am inclined to give the benefit of doubt to the commander bent on making his force as effective and powerful as possible. Maybe Sheridan didn't always get these "defective" lieutenants right, but he got his army right.

Sheridan's mission near Trevilian

I quoted Stackpole to say, ". . . and [Sheridan] was never willing to admit defeat, regardless of the odds."


Viperlord responded with "Would this refer to Sheridan's deceitful report on the Battle of Trevilian Station, where despite numerical and technological superiority, he was firmly halted and failed to accomplish any of his objectives, was pursued and nearly run down by Confederate cavalry, and tried to sacrifice Gregg's division to enable Torbert and his supply train to get away without a fight?"


The goal posts have been moved a bit. Stackpole said Sheridan was never willing to admit defeat, regardless of odds." That was the original point in question. The Battle of Trevilian occured, Sheridan won it, but perhaps Sheridan was "defeated' in regard to the orders he received from Grant. Let's check:


According to Morris (p 175 of Sheridan, The Life and Wars of General Phil Sheridan) the following describes Grant's orders to Sheridan:


"Despairing of winning a decisive victory north of Richmond, Grant now began shifting his forces south of the city, intending to besiege the critical railroad junction at Petersburg, thirty miles below Richmond. To deny supplies and reinforcements to Lee, he determined to send Sheridan's cavalry on another raid around Lee's army, this time in the direction of Charlottesville, with orders to tear up as much of the Virginia Central Railroad as possible. Besides disrupting Rebel supplies from the verdant Shenandoah Valley, the raid would have the effect of drawing off the enemy cavalry while Grant's army completed its crossing of the James River east of Richmond.


After that Morris describes the Battle of Trevilian Station quoted at some length in one of my previous notes. On page 177, Morris tells us that "The next morning Sheridan had his troopers out tearing up track between Trevilian and Lousia Court House, while Torbert's division felt for a way back across the North Anna River. At Mallory's Cross Roads, near the river crossing of the same name, Torbert's men attempted to budge the entrenched Rebels from their breastworks behind a railroad embankment, but instead left the ground littered with several hundred of their own. Low on ammunition and fearing an influx of enemy infantry, Sheridan grudgingly decided to leave the same way he had come, by way of Carpenter's Ford farther east. The resultant retreat took twice as long to accomplish -- eight days back, as opposed to four days forward -- and was further complicated by the nearly eight hundred Rebel prisoners and Union wounded he was forced to take with him. . . ."


"Finally, on June 21, Sheridan reached the Union supply base at White House. Grant had already transferred the bulk of his supplies to City Point, across the James, and Sheridan's dog-tired troops were left the unpalatable task of escorting the remaining nine hundred supply wagons across the river to the new base. . . ."


Comment: Even if we speculate about how well Sheridan fulfilled Grant's orders (and it is doubtful Stackpole had them in mind when he made his statement), it seems that Sheridan fulfilled Grant's orders pretty well. Grant didn't describe the impediments the Confederates might put in Sheridan's way, and Sheridan wasn't ordered to avoid them. Those details were left to his own discretion. He defeated the Confederate force at Trevilian, tore up some track and fought his way home again. Sheridan had stalled the Confederates long enough for Grant to get most of his supplies across the James.

Trevilian Station

Here is what Roy Morris, whom Wittengberg quotes with approval if not always accuracy, has to say about the Trevilian Station raid (pp 175-178:


". . . Sheridan followed the north bank of the North Anna River, intending to strike the railroad first at Trevilian Station, twenty-eight miles due east of Charlottesville. The ever-vigilant Lee, hearing that Sheridan was moving in his rear, dispatched Hampton and Fitzhugh Lee in close pursuit. Taking a more direct route, the two southerners reached the vicinity of Trevilian Station ahead of Sheridan and bedded down for the night. The next morning, June 11, Sheridan sent Torbert and Merritt clattering down the road toward the station, supported by Devin's brigade. At the same time, Hampton had his gray-clad force in motion, planning to strike the Yankees at Clayton's Store, a strategic crossroads three miles northeast of Trevilian.


"While the two sides were closing with each other, tawny-haired Custer was marching his Michigan brigade around the Rebel right, screened from the enemy by thick-growing trees. Hampton had dismounted one of his brigades for the frontal attack . . . Without hesitating, Custer sent Colonel Russel Alger and the Fifth Michigan Cavalry charging into the Rebel camp. Alter quickly snatched up all the horses, prisoners, and supplies he could find, and with 'pardonable zeal' followed the remaining fugitives north toward Gordonsville. Meanwhile, Fitzhugh Lee's division, riding toward the sound of the guns, crashed into Custer from the east, separating him from Alger's men. Hampton rapidly disengaged a part of his attacking force and sent it hurrying back to Trevilian to help.

"Nearly surrounded, Custer pulled his men into a circle, frontier-fashion, and grimly held his ground. Lee's troops grabbed back everything Alger had seized, along with their would-be Union captors. Alger and a handful of men escaped, rejoining the command later that day. The battle swirled on in the staggering summer heat, Sheridan reinforcing his flanks and eventually breaking through the enemy front. Custer, who earlier had grabbed his regimental standard from a fallen color-bearer and concealed it inside his jacket, led his Wolverines forward to meet Sheridan, capturing some four hundred Rebels who had found themselves trapped between the two blue lines. Custer's longtime cook and servant, 'Aunt Eliza' Brown, seized during the kaleidoscopic melee, stole home that night through enemy lines, proudly lugging the general's personal suitcase.


"Hampton broke off the engagement late that afternoon, going into camp west of Trevilian. Although he later claimed a victory in the fight, the fact that Sheridan now held the station, along with hundreds of Rebel dead and wounded left behind on the battlefield, effectively contradicted Hampton's boast. . . ."


Comment: Obviously, Hampton would have disagreed with the assertion that Sheridan won all his battles, but Roy Morris holds a persuasively contrary view. The fog of war seemed to have been especially dense at Trevilian. No one was perched high on a roof observing everything that happened, but even if there had been such an one, when it was all over and the observer climbed down, he would have found Sheridan in possession of the station and Hampton no where to be found. He might be excused for thinking Sheridan the victor.

Wittenberg, the trial lawyer

Wittenberg, in the preface of his Little Phil, A reassessment of the Civil War Leadership of Gen. Philip H. Sheridan makes a virtue of his experience as a trial lawyer, but do lawyers strive to arrive at the truth or win their cases?


On the first page of Wittenberg's book is something that looks awfully like a lie, Wittenberg's not Sheridan's. Wittenberg writes "Roy Morris Jr., Sheridan's most recent biographer, points out that Sheridan harbored presidential ambitions. 'He purposely obscured his foreign birth to protect his putative presidential aspirations, in which case he must have been unusually ambitious, since by this reasoning he began to lie when he was seventeen,' observed Morris, 'and unusually persistent, since he stood by the story in his posthumous memoirs, long after he had passed beyond such transient glories."


Wittenberg's reference for the above quote is "Roy Morris Jr., Sheridan: The Life and Wars of General Phil Sheridan (New York: Crown Publishing, 1992), 10-11.


But when I turned to pages 10-11 of the book Wittenberg references, here is what Morris actually wrote:


"It has been suggested that he purposely obscured his foreign birth to protect his putative presidential aspirations, in which case he must have been unusually ambitious, since by this reasoning he began to lie when he was seventeen, and unusually persistent, since he stood by the story in his posthumous memoirs, long after he had passed beyond such transient glories. Probably, he just never knew."


Comment: I reread the two versions several times and could not arrive at a theory that leaves Wittenberg an honest historian bent upon arriving at the truth. I can much more readily see a trial lawyer twisting the truth in order to support his case.

Sheridan & some of his detractors

I bought 4 books on Sheridan & decided to read the earliest one first (which I just completed), Sheridan in the Shenandoah, 2nd Edition by Edward J. Stackpole. I can't find the date for the original Stackpole publication, but gather it was sometime in the 1950-1960 time frame. D. Scott Hartwig wrote a commentary, included at the end & published in 1992 to make a few corrections based on later scholarship.


One of Hartwig's comments has to do with Crook's criticism of Sheridan published long after the fact. ". . . in General Stackpole's words, 'Sheridan had deliberately withheld proper credit from those to whom it belonged and had assumed for himself undue credit not justified by the circumstances.' To a degree, this was probably true, but did Crook feel this way in 1862, or was his opinion of Sheridan soured as a result of professional jealousies and differences of opinion and philosophy that arose between the two men during the Indian Wars?"


Hartwig sites Paul Hutton's book, Phil Sheridan and His Army with approval. Hartwig invokes Hutton when he writes, "It was Crook's command of the Department of Arizona, which he assumed in 1882, that destroyed the once strong friendship of these men and turned Crook into a bitter enemy of Sheridan. The dispute arose over Crooks' methods, specifically the use of Apache scouts, to bring the Apache Geronimo to bay and the generous terms Crook offered Geronimo when the Apache was at last forced to negotiate a surrender -- one he later managed to back out of. Crook offered to resign and Sheridan accepted. Geronimo was eventually captured and imprisoned in Florida along with many of the Chiricahua Apache scouts who had served Crook so faithfully, but who Sheridan though had been of dubious loyalty. Crook, wrote Hutton, 'never forgave Sheridan, and their long but stormy relationship came to a sad close.' The Ohioan's sharply critical words for Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign, which General Stackpole cites, were all written with the memory of Sheridan's handling of the Apache problem fresh in Crook's mind (Hutton, [p. 368).


"What the stories of Crook, Sheridan, and Gordon illustrate is that while postwar reminiscences have their value, using them solely to support a conclusion is unwise. They must be balanced by the statements of other eyewitnesses and by wartime correspondence and records."


While I have, but have not yet read Wittenberg's book on Sheridan, I did notice in an assessment on Wittenberg's site that he argues that Sheridan took credit for the achievements of his men, the implication being that perhaps he deserved little credit of his own. On page 397 Stackpole writes, "In comparing the quality and effectiveness of several corps and division commanders serving with the respective armies, generalization is dangerous, but in the aggregate it appears that Early was more fortunate than Sheridan. Some of the best and most distinguished Confederate generals served under Early -- Gordon, Breckinridge, Ramseur, and Rodes for example. Neither Wright nor Emory on the Union side were considered top-flight commanders, and Crook certainly did not increase his stature at Cedar Creek.


"On the score of military judgment, Sheridan was clearly superior. Early was criticized by Lee for fighting his army by divisions. Sheridan made no such mistake. After being defeated and put to rout at Winchester by being outflanked, Early failed to profit by the lesson and was again outflanked in a similar manner at Fisher's Hill because he neglected to secure his vulnerable left flank. At Cedar Creek, in Sheridan's absence, Early sprang a complete surprise on the Union army under Wright and should by all the rules of war have exploited his initial success to achieve a complete victory. But he hesitated too long and was overwhelmed by a determined adversary who reached the battlefield in time to restore the fortunes of his own confused and discomfited army. In retrospect, weighing the factors that contributed to Union victories and Confederate defeats, Early's gross underestimate of the capabilities of his opponent was perhaps his most egregious error, a cardinal military sin that he compounded by persisting in his opinion even after being badly defeated three times in a row."


"Stubborn in defense, aggressive in attack, Sheridan possessed the will to win in far greater measure than most Union generals, and was never willing to admit defeat, regardless of the odds. He never lost a battle, a unique distinction in itself. More importantly, he took such pains in advance to assure the best possible chance of victory by his deliberate, meticulous preparation for battle, logistically and tactically, committing his troops only when he was satisfied that all was ready, that on the record he seems to have earned the smiles with which Fortune favored him. When he struck, it was with his full force. Finally, because the world loves a winner, whatever errors of omission or commission may be charged to Phil Sheridan pale into insignificance when contrasted with his accomplishments. Without question he was a tenacious bulldog with a dynamic personality and a fighting heart, and deserved the plaudits and gratitude of the Nation which he had done so much to deserve."

Friday, August 24, 2012

Sheridan & some of his detractors

I bought 4 books on Sheridan & decided to read the earliest one first (which I just completed), Sheridan in the Shenandoah, 2nd Edition by Edward J. Stackpole. I can't find the date for the original Stackpole publication, but gather it was sometime in the 1950-1960 time frame. D. Scott Hartwig wrote a commentary, included at the end & published in 1992 to make a few corrections based on later scholarship.


One of Hartwig's comments has to do with Crook's criticism of Sheridan published long after the fact. ". . . in General Stackpole's words, 'Sheridan had deliberately withheld proper credit from those to whom it belonged and had assumed for himself undue credit not justified by the circumstances.' To a degree, this was probably true, but did Crook feel this way in 1862, or was his opinion of Sheridan soured as a result of professional jealousies and differences of opinion and philosophy that arose between the two men during the Indian Wars?"


Hartwig sites Paul Hutton's book, Phil Sheridan and His Army (one I don't have) with approval. Hartwig invokes Hutton when he writes, "It was Crook's command of the Department of Arizona, which he assumed in 1882, that destroyed the once strong friendship of these men and turned Crook into a bitter enemy of Sheridan. The dispute arose over Crooks' methods, specifically the use of Apache scouts, to bring the Apache Geronimo to bay and the generous terms Crook offered Geronimo when the Apache was at last forced to negotiate a surrender -- one he later managed to back out of. Crook offered to resign and Sheridan accepted. Geronimo was eventually captured and imprisoned in Florida along with many of the Chiricahua Apache scouts who had served Crook so faithfully, but who Sheridan though had been of dubious loyalty. Crook, wrote Hutton, 'never forgave Sheridan, and their long but stormy relationship came to a sad close.' The Ohioan's sharply critical words for Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign, which General Stackpole cites, were all written with the memory of Sheridan's handling of the Apache problem fresh in Crook's mind (Hutton, [p. 368).


"What the stories of Crook, Sheridan, and Gordon illustrate is that while postwar reminiscences have their value, using them solely to support a conclusion is unwise. They must be balanced by the statements of other eyewitnesses and by wartime correspondence and records."


While I have, but have not yet read Wittenberg's book on Sheridan, I did notice in an assessment on Wittenberg's site that he argues that Sheridan took credit for the achievements of his men, the implication being that perhaps he deserved little credit of his own. On page 397 Stackpole writes, "In comparing the quality and effectiveness of several corps and division commanders serving with the respective armies, generalization is dangerous, but in the aggregate it appears that Early was more fortunate than Sheridan. Some of the best and most distinguished Confederate generals served under Early -- Gordon, Breckinridge, Ramseur, and Rodes for example. Neither Wright nor Emory on the Union side were considered top-flight commanders, and Crook certainly did not increase his stature at Cedar Creek.


"On the score of military judgment, Sheridan was clearly superior. Early was criticized by Lee for fighting his army by divisions. Sheridan made no such mistake. After being defeated and put to rout at Winchester by being outflanked, Early failed to profit by the lesson and was again outflanked in a similar manner at Fisher's Hill because he neglected to secure his vulnerable left flank. At Cedar Creek, in Sheridan's absence, Early sprang a complete surprise on the Union army under Wright and should by all the rules of war have exploited his initial success to achieve a complete victory. But he hesitated too long and was overwhelmed by a determined adversary who reached the battlefield in time to restore the fortunes of his own confused and discomfited army. In retrospect, weighing the factors that contributed to Union victories and Confederate defeats, Early's gross underestimate of the capabilities of his opponent was perhaps his most egregious error, a cardinal military sin that he compounded by persisting in his opinion even after being badly defeated three times in a row."


"Stubborn in defense, aggressive in attack, Sheridan possessed the will to win in far greater measure than most Union generals, and was never willing to admit defeat, regardless of the odds. He never lost a battle, a unique distinction in itself. More importantly, he took such pains in advance to assure the best possible chance of victory by his deliberate, meticulous preparation for battle, logistically and tactically, committing his troops only when he was satisfied that all was ready, that on the record he seems to have earned the smiles with which Fortune favored him. When he struck, it was with his full force. Finally, because the world loves a winner, whatever errors of omission or commission may be charged to Phil Sheridan pale into insignificance when contrasted with his accomplishments. Without question he was a tenacious bulldog with a dynamic personality and a fighting heart, and deserved the plaudits and gratitude of the Nation which he had done so much to deserve."

Sunday, August 19, 2012

The will of Union Soldiers to fight

From page 44 of McPherson's What they Fought for 1861-1865: " . . . in letters to his mother, an Irish-born sergeant in the 2d New Jersey Infantry declared that neither the 'horrors of the battlefield [nor] the blind acts of unqualified generals' had 'chilled my patriotism in the least.' 'We are still engaged in the same holy cause,' he wrote on the third anniversary of his enlistment, 'we have yet the same Country to fight for.'


"Not all Union soldiers felt this strongly, of course. For every one who did, there was a bounty jumper or draftee or substitute or straggler or beat who cared more for money or for his own skin than he did for the cause. Such is always true of armies -- but it seems to have been less true of Civil War armies. The iron resolve of genuinely dedicated Union veterans underlay the message conveyed by a dispatch from the American correspondent of the London Daily News to his paper in September 1864. 'I am astonished,' he wrote, by 'the extent and depth of the determination [of the northern people] to fight to the last. . . . They are in earnest in a way the like of which the world never saw before, silently, calmly, but desperately in earnest; and they will fight on, in my opinion, as long as they have men, muskets, powder . . ."


"This was chilling news to southerners who had counted on a waning of the northern will to fight. Those southerners might have experienced an even colder chill could they have read the letters of northern soldiers confirming the observation of the Daily News Correspondent. "We must succeed," wrote an intensely Unionist Missouri officer to his wife in August, 1864. 'If not this year, why then the next, or the next. And if it takes ten years, why then ten years it must be, for we can never give up, and have a country and Government left.' . . ."


Comment: I have been in debates with pacifists and argued that a nation that can not produce enough young men to defend itself cannot stand. Of course this didn't mean that everyone needs to be willing to join the military but "enough" need to. As big as our nation is we can afford backwaters of "beats" who want to drop out or hide or escape, but we can't afford for everyone to be like that.


I read quite a lot about the Vichy period in France and about what led up to it. Before the turn of the century (1900) many of the most influential intellectuals were attracted to anarchistic ideas. Pacifism was the quietistic version of anarchy for many, and the horrors of World War I seemed to validate their fears; such that there was a great turning away from war and consequently from a desire or willingness to defend France. Not everyone in France was a pacifist, but too many were and there weren't enough willing to fight. There weren't enough French leaders who knew how to intelligently command an army the way that Lincoln and Davis (more or less) did. There may come a day when spears are beaten into plow shares and swords into pruning hooks, but for a nation to unilaterally do that -- when that nation's enemies are not similarly employed is disastrous. The lesson of French degradation during the Vichy period is there for any modern-day pacifist to read, if he will read it.


I am encouraged, on the other hand, by the modern-day military man who seems as willing as the soldiers McPherson writes about to fight for our nation's interests. Osama bin Laden assumed that American and British fighting men wouldn't have the stomach to fight and bleed on the ground. He thought we couldn't do much more than drop a few bombs from high up in the sky. Few Islamists would say that today.


I think also of Hitler, declaring war on the U.S. after the Japanese did without the slightest fear that the U.S. might represent a serious threat to him. He thought something akin to the ideas of the Southern Aristocrat: they are a nation of shopkeepers and haven't the will or the ability to fight as we can. Winston Churchill said to someone, perhaps Roosevelt, something along the lines of "I knew you would fight. I read about your Civil War."