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He was one of the Civil War's most enigmatic figures. Extremely intelligent, notoriously aloof, tender to his family while terrifying his subordinates with his high expectations. He was a brilliant attorney who became the nation's first specialist at practice before the Supreme Court, maintaining his law office in Washington for this purpose. His practice also included America's first ever successful use of the temporary insanity defense to get a client acquitted from murder charges. The client was the politician, later controversial general, Daniel Sickles. The victim was Phillip Barton Key, the son of the National Anthem composer. Sickles had been recklessly unfaithful to his wife for years and she retaliated by launching an affair with Key. Sickles stalked Key and shot him to death in front of the Capitol building.
His first impression of Abraham Lincoln caused him to describe the president as "the original ape", but he went on to become Lincoln's closest war adviser. When Lincoln was murdered, he wept openly and uttered the deathbed words which history has remembered. "Now he belongs to the ages." He then went on to be the leading figure in the pursuit and prosecution of the assassination conspiracy figures.
Lincoln valued him immensely, saying:
Quote:
He is the rock on the beach of our national ocean against which the breakers dash and roar, dash and roar without ceasing. He fights back the angry waters and prevents them from undermining and overwhelming the land. Gentlemen, I do not see how he survives, why he is not crushed and torn to pieces. Without him I should be destroyed.
150 years ago today the Senate confirmed Edwin Stanton as the new Secretary of War. Stanton was a pre war friend of General George McClellan and President Lincoln hopes that Stanton can leverage that friendship into prodding McClellan into action. Instead their war relationship was to end their personal friendshipwith the men bitter enemies.
The Senate was to later attempt to entrench Stanton in his office against the wishes of then President Andrew Johnson, passing the 1867 "Tenure of Office Act" which was a law aimed specifically at the Johnson. The act denied the president the power to remove any executive officer who had been appointed by a past president, without the advice and consent of the Senate. That struggle was to result in the impeachment of Johnson.
Albert Sydney Johnston had been on the west coast when the war erupted. He required several months to make the trip back East and this is probably all that stood between his appointment as commander of the Confederate forces in Virginia, and the command he actually got, the Confederate western theater.
This was a very long border, an immense amount of territory to defend, and the unfavorable geography of three rivers. The Mississippi of course was the main artery, but there were also the Cumberland and the Tennesse, both of which flowed on a North/South vector in western Tennessee, serving as avenues of invasion rather than defensive barriers as were the east/West running streams of Virginia.
President Davis had an admiration for Johnston which bordered on hero worship. They had been cadets together at West Point and the president often described Johnston as the finest soldier he had ever known.
Despite this confidence, Johnston faced a daunting challenge, how to defend a border which currently stretched from Columbus, Kentucky to the Cumberland Gap. If he concentrated his forces at one point, penetration would be easy elsewhere. If he spread his forces to try and cover all the possible strike points, he would not have enough anywhere to stop a major drive by the Union.
Johnston decided that the latter was the lesser of two poor choices, and broke his army into pieces, 12,000 at Columbus, 4,000 at Forts Henry and Donelson guarding the two rivers, 4000 at Bowling Green to defend middle Tennessee and 4000 at The Gap.
That last force was designated the Military District of East Tennessee and was under the command of Major General George B. Crittenden. His first brigade, under General Felix Zollicoffer, was advanced to the west in the hopes of establishing quick communications with the Bowling Green force, anticipating a fast combination if the need arose.
Zollicoffer decided to post his brigade at Mill Springs on the Cumberland River. He was a newspaper printer come politician whose military experience was limited to a few months service as a volunteer in the war against the Seminoles. The Southern bank of the Cumberland was lined with bluffs, making it perfect defensive terrain, the Northern bank was a low, flat plain.
150 years ago today, Zollicoffer demonstrated his inexperience by selecting the Northern bank to defend. He crossed his brigade and made camp. Orders came from his immediate superior, Crittenden, to pull back to the Southern bank. Then Johnston himself issued the same order. But Zollicoffer decided that this was too risky. Union troops were near and if they suddenly advanced while he was recrossing the river, he would be wiped out....or so he told his superiors. On the North bank he remained.
And he was right that Union troops were nearby. General George Thomas was dispatched with a brigade to drive Crittenden's army back into Tennessee, and his first target would be Zollicoffer's isolated force on the Cumberland. He advanced from Lebanon, Kentucky toward that end.
The stage was now set for the Battle of Mill Springs, three days away.
General George Thomas' 4400 strong Division arrived at Logan's Crossroad, just a few miles from Mill Springs where General Zollicoffer had inexplicably chosen to make a stand. Thomas was to wait there until joined a a brigade led by General Albin F. Schoepf. When united, they planned to attack.
Zollicoffer's superior, General Crittenden arrived in person, noted the poor defensive posture of the defenders and decided that the only redemption lay in going over to the attack themselves, before Schoepf's troops arrived and threw the balance against them. 150 years ago today they made a miserable night march in cold, damp conditions in order to be in a position to attack on the morning of the 19th.
Unaware that some of General Schoep's troops had already arrived to reinforce General Thomas' position at Mill Springs, General Zollicoffer's men slogged nine miles through muck to be in place to make a dawn attack. However, the first Confederate arrivals were detected by pickets from Union Colonel Woolford's regiment, and the firefight which erupted ended any chance of surprising Thomas'
entire command.
However, the rebels were a sudden shock to Woolford's men who were asleep in their tents when the firing started. Woolford collected them as best as he could and had them fall back on the next Union regiment in the line, the 4th Kentucky. The Confederates advanced until they came upon a ravine which ran parallel to the Union defense line. Employing this as a natural trench, they occupied it and opened a severe fire on the Yankees who had no such protection. The commander of the 4th Kentucky, an excitable Colonel named Speed Fry, jumped out in front of his men and screamed at the Confederates to come out of the ravine and fight like men. He somehow managed to survive the volley of shots which followed this hubris.
The rebels were getting the best of this encounter when the hapless Zollicoffer made the last mistake of his life. Along with inexperience, Zollicoffer were extremely nearsighted. He decided to take a closer look at the action on the rebel left flank, just as Fry was deciding to take a look at the action on the Union right flank. Zollicoffer wound up riding directly to Fry and believing him to be a rebel officer, started scolding him for allowing his troops to fire on fellow Confederates.
From the rear came shouts to Zollicoffer that he was in conference with the enemy. Finally wising up, Zollicoffer turned his horse to flee, but before he was able to do so, he was shot out of the saddle and killed by Fry.
During the rebel confusion which followed the loss of their commander, Thomas arrived with reinforcements. Attacks and counter attacks by both sides followed, the balance was tipped when Union regiments delivered perfectly coordinated twin attacks on the rebel flanks. Their line gave way and retreat rapidly turned into a full skeedadle, artillery and camp baggage abandoned.
The Confederates fell back toward the Cumberland Gap, leaving most of Eastern Kentucky in unchallenged Union control. It was to stay this way until General Bragg's invasion that summer.
President Lincoln was feeling frustrated. He wanted the Federal armies to march into action. He was under pressure from the radicals of his own party to get the men moving. Newspapers editorials were mocking the absense of any effort by these large armies which had been formed. Despite all of Lincoln's urgings, pleadings and suggestions, neither General McClellan, Buell nor Halleck, the commanders of the three largest Union forces, had budged an inch throughout the fall and early winter.
The president decided that perhaps a direct, unambiguous order would work where cajoling had not. To that end, 150 years ago today he issued "General War Order Number One." Lincoln had selected George Washington's birthday, February 22nd, as the day for "..a general movement of the Land and Naval forces of the United States against the insurgent forces."
And this did not work either. The responses from the three generals ordered to move out on February 22nd, were lengthy, exhausting explanations as for why that would not be possible. The desiginated day was to come and go with no activity shown by any of them, save for continuing to prepare to move when they were good and ready, whenever that might be.
There was an exception. In Missouri, General Grant was already set to go, and lacked only permission from his theater commander, Halleck, to launch a combined Army/Navy assault on the Confederate forts which guarded the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers. In five more days Grant would get his green light and immediately demonstrate how different he was from the other Union commanders.
She was constucted by Continental Iron Works at the Greenport section of Brooklyn, although parts for the ship were built by an array of nine companies elsewhere. She was utterly unique for the time, an armoured deck which barely protruded above the waterline and was awash when she was in motion. Sitting on this deck was a revolving turret housing side by side 11 inch Dahlgreen guns, the turret was covered by nine layers of one inch iron plating. Both turret and ship were driven by steam engines which rotated the screw propeller, another invention of the ship's designer, the Swede John Ericsson.
Ericsson was a brilliant ecentric, a man whose scientific focus often caused personality conflicts with those to whom he was vending his inventions. He had begun by designing improvements to existing steam engines, developed the first steam powered fire engine, invented a way to use a ship's boilers to purify seawater for drinking, crafted an accurate depth finder, and his biggest success was the screw propeller which was soon to be adopted universally for steam powered ships.
Less successful was his personal life. He was too distracted to pay any attention to money matters, and was frequently in serious debt despite money gushing in from his patents. His marriage to a 19 year old woman failed almost immediately, and the couple lived their lives apart, although never divorcing.
After a falling out with British Royal engineers, Ericsson relocated to the United States in 1839 and began working with Robert Stockton on the development of America's first screw propeller warship, the USS Princeton. He had designed some of the ships guns himself, and accepted, with grave reservations, a few guns designed by Stockton. It took three years to build and when complete, the Princeton was the fastest warship in the world, winning competitions against other ships which had advanced this claim. Unfortunately, Ericsson came to grief with this vessel.
In 1843, the Princeton hosted an array of Washington dignataries, including US Secretary of State Abel Upshur, and Naval Secretary Thomas Gilmer. During a demonstration firing of its guns, one of the ones designed by Stockton exploded, killing eight of the visitors, the two cabinet officers among them. Although the accident was in no manner Ericsson's fault, he lacked the political sophistication to avoid being blamed while Stockton was well connected and astute about such matters. It left Ericsson infuriated and bitter, especially when the government refused to honor their contract for the Princeton and Ericsson was stuck holding the bag for the construction costs. He withdrew from all dealings with governments.
When the Union Ironclad Board solicited designs and bids, one of accepted ones was for a conventional iron covered warship, the Galena, built by Cornelius Bushnell. Bushnell wanted to consult with another engineer on the quality of his design, so he went to see Ericsson in New York. After examing the model Bushnell had brought along, Ericsson pronounced it fit, and brought out a model he had been tinkering with himself, a flat decked ship with a rotating turret. Bushnell instantly saw that the Swede's design was vastly superior to his own and urged Ericsson to submit his plans to the Ironclad Board. Ericsson was reluctant as a consequence of his previous experiences with governments, but did agree to let Bushnell take the model to Washington and attempt to promote it to the Board.
The Board was impressed and offered Ericsson a contract...although as a consequence of Ericsson's reputation, it was an all or nothing sort of deal. Ericsson would be paid only if and when his design took to the waters and proved itself in combat.
Ready for the water test in just ninety days, ten days earlier Ericsson had decided on a name for his steam powered, armoured battery. It was to be the Monitor, and in Greenpoint, the betting was heavy as to whether or not the 776 ton iron ship would sink to the bottom as soon as she cleared her launch. Those who wagered on success were rewarded, the Monitor slid smoothly down the planks, splashed into the river and bobbled on the surface, her decks just clear of the water as planned.
Confederate spies had been among the crowd which had gathered to watch the spectacle, and in rapid order, sketches of this new fangled naval weapon were on their way to Norfolk, Virginia, where the rebels were working on their own ironclad.
Also on this day, after their adventure filled delay, Confederate commissioners Mason and Slidell finally arrived at their destination in England.
150 years ago today, General Grant received permission from theater commander General Halleck, to commence operations against the rebel forts which guarded the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, close to where they emptied into the Ohio.
Grant did not explain to Halleck why he would need more time to get ready, he did not insist that he needed a larger force or more supplies and transports or more pack animals. He sent out a flurry of clear, unambiguous orders which had his 15,000 men aboard transports and underway the next day.This behavior could not have contrasted more starkly when compared to Generals McClellan and Buell who never seemed convinced that enough preparation had been made.
The first target was to be Fort Henry which sat on the Eastern bank of the Tennessee in what was to prove an extremely poor location choice. It was a five sided earthern fort whose function was to interdict river traffic with there being little hope that it could withstand any sort of infantry assault, although six of the fort's seventeen artillery pieces were shifted to meet a land attack. Around 3500 poorly armed soldiers were in support.
The Eastern bank was chosen because Fort Donelson on the Cumberland, was located on the West bank, thus land communications could be maintained between the two fortifications. Unfortunately, the Eastern bank of the Tennessee was composed of low, swampy ground, overlooked by hills on the opposite bank. Fort Henry was a sitting duck.
It did have a unique defensive feature, the first ever employment of "torpedos" which was what they called mines in those days. These were water tight kegs of explosives which were anchored in the main shipping channel. They were equipped with contact fuses and would be set off by a bump from a passing vessel. As it turned out, none of them exploded. Rains caused the river to rise so that the mines were no longer high enough to reach the passing keels.
150 years ago today, General Grant's army arrived at their destination near Fort Henry and disembarked. One division was positioned by Grant on the high ground across the Tennessee River opposite the fort, the other on the Eastern bank to attempt to cut off any escape by the rebels.
Escorting and protecting Grant's flotilla had been seven Union gunboats under the command of Flag-Officer Andrew H. Foote. Foote was a West Point cadet in 1822 when he decided to leave the army in favor of an appointment as a midshipman in the US Navy. He stayed with the service and rose through the ranks. During the 1850's he had spent most of his time with that portion of the US Navy which was attempting to shut down the African slave trade. Foote had been serving aboard a US warship in Chinese waters which was attacked by a shore battery during the Opium Wars. Foote led a shore party which assaulted and captured the battery.
For that action he was promoted to commander of the Brooklyn Naval Yard, the center of America's fighting navy at the time. He was at this post when the war began.
Foote and Grant hit it off right away. Foote found Grant understanding and cooperative, Grant found a kindred spirit in Foote's focus on the job nature. They conferred and decided on a simultaneous assault. Foote's gunboats and Grant's artillery across the river would open a bombardment on the morning of the 6th, after which the infantry on the Eastern bank would attack.
Inside the fort, its commander, General Lloyd Tilghman, recognized his position was hopeless. Heavy rains had swollen the Tennessee to the point where his lower casemate guns were now awash and only nine remained available for action. Tilghman had been a bottom of his class West Point graduate in 1836, who resigned his commission after only three months service and had devoted his life to railroad construction in the private sector, using his engineer's education which he had received at the Point.
He determined that the best course of action would be to try and save as much of his command as possible by evacuating it to Fort Donelson while leaving behind a skeleton force to work the guns and provide the illusion of a viable defense being mounted.
As it would turn out, Grant's infantry would not be needed, nor would, had the battle been delayed two more days, Foote's gunboats.
150 years ago today, 11 am....kaboom. Fleet Commander Foote's seven gunboats opened the bombardment of Fort Henry. General Tilighman had remained with just 78 defenders to delay the Union triumph while the bulk of his command marched to Fort Donelson. Despite the mismatch, the rebels kept up a spirited fire for as long as they could, inflicting damage on two of the US warships. After ninety minutes the last of the Confederate guns had been blown out of action and Tilighman ran up the white flag, Foote accepting his surrender. Shortly thereafter the Union troops arrived at their attack jump off positions, and found themselves redundant.
The Confederates had lost just five killed and eleven wounded along with those who surrendered. The assault had cost Foote eleven killed and thirty one wounded, most of those sailors aboard the USS Essex which had the misfortune to be struck by a shot in its boiler, exploding it and scalding the nearby crewmembers. Had the attack been delayed for two more days, there would have been no Fort Henry to assault. The rising Tennessee claimed it on the 8th, the entire fort was underwater.
Granst sent a typical minimalist message to General Halleck.. "Fort Henry is ours. I shall take and destroy Fort Donelson on the 8th and return to Fort Henry." Anxious to take credit for the accomplishment, Halleck flowered the message up a bit before passing it on to Washington.." "Fort Henry is ours. The flag is reestablished on the soil of Tennessee. It will never be removed."
While Grant was in a characteristic hurry to get at Fort Donelson, practicalties would intervene to delay his attack for several days past the 8th. Though Donelson was just twelve miles to the East by land, Foote needed to refit his gunboats, and had to get them back up to the Ohio and East toward its confluence with the Cumberland and then down to Fort Donelson.
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