Victors in Blue

How Union Generals Fought the Confederates, Battled Each Other, and Won the Civil War

Albert Castel, Brooks Simpson

• Publisher: University Press of Kansas
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780700621781
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

Make no mistake, the Confederacy had the will and valor to fight. But the Union had the manpower, the money, the materiel, and, most important, the generals. Although the South had arguably the best commander in the Civil War in Robert E. Lee, the North's full house beat their one-of-a-kind. Flawed individually, the Union's top officers nevertheless proved collectively superior across a diverse array of battlefields and ultimately produced a victory for the Union.Now acclaimed author Albert Castel brings his inimitable style, insight, and wit to a new reconsideration of these generals. With the assistance of Brooks Simpson, another leading light in this field, Castel has produced a remarkable capstone volume to a distinguished career. In it, he reassesses how battles and campaigns forged a decisive Northern victory, reevaluates the generalship of the victors, and lays bare the sometimes vicious rivalries among the Union generals and their effect on the war.From Shiloh to the Shenandoah, Chickamauga to Chattanooga, Castel provides fresh accounts of how the Union commanders—especially Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Thomas, and Meade but also Halleck, Schofield, and Rosecrans—outmaneuvered and outfought their Confederate opponents. He asks of each why he won: Was it through superior skill, strength of arms, enemy blunders, or sheer chance? What were his objectives and how did he realize them? Did he accomplish more or less than could be expected under the circumstances? And if less, what could he have done to achieve more—and why did he not do it? Castel also sheds new light on the war within the war: the intense rivalries in the upper ranks, complicated by the presence in the army of high-ranking non-West Pointers with political wagons attached to the stars on their shoulders. A decade in the writing, Victors in Blue brims with novel, even outrageous interpretations that are sure to stir debate. As certain as the Union achieved victory, it will inform, provoke, and enliven sesquicentennial discussions of the Civil War.

1

Rosecrans in West Virginia:
A Tale of a Goose, a Dog, and a Fox

(June–November 1861)

“I have not a Brig Genl worth his salt—Morris is a timid old woman—Rosecranz a silly fussy goose—Schleich knows nothing.” So wrote Major General George Brinton McClellan to his wife, Nelly, on July 3, 1861.¹ A high degree of conceit prompted his low opinion of his brigadiers, yet that conceit was understandable. Born in Philadelphia on December 3, 1826, he entered West Point when not quite sixteen; graduated second in the class of 1846, which included a gawky Virginian named Thomas J. Jackson and twenty others destined to become Civil War generals; served capably as one of Winfield Scott’s engineer officers in the Mexican War; traveled across the Atlantic with two much older officers to observe the Crimean War and report on the European armies; and even designed a saddle that would bear his name and be standard in the American army until the combustion engine rendered horses obsolete nearly ninety years later.

In 1857 McClellan found himself still only a captain despite his outstanding record, which also included conducting explorations in the Far West. He resigned his commission and within four years became president of the eastern division of the Ohio & Mississippi Railroad headquartered in Cincinnati, where he resided with his beautiful young bride, Ellen “Nelly” Marcy, who in accepting his suit rejected that of another West Pointer (class of 1847) named Ambrose Powell Hill.

The advent of civil war in April 1861 saw McClellan’s career skyrocket faster, higher, and brighter than any of the shells fired from Confederate cannons at Fort Sumter. As soon as President Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 three-month volunteers to suppress the Southern insurrection, Ohio Governor William Dennison placed the young railway executive, who had promptly proffered his military know-how, in charge of organizing and training the Buckeye State’s contribution to that number, which soon far exceeded its quota. Highly impressed by the efficiency of his former staff officer, whom he long had deemed suited for high rank in the event of a major war, Winfield Scott urged the president to appoint McClellan a major general in the regular army and assign him command of “The Department of the Ohio.” This Lincoln did, having formed a favorable opinion of his intelligence on meeting him in Illinois in 1858. Thus it was that McClellan, a mere four years after resigning his captain’s commission, became at age thirty-four second in rank only to Scott. And since “Old Fuss and Feathers” at seventy-five had become so infirm physically that he could not mount, much less ride, a horse, McClellan stood in line to replace him as commanding general. All he needed to do next was demonstrate that his talent for waging war matched his ability at preparing for it.²

Soon he had the opportunity. Late in May 1861 Scott instructed him, at Lincoln’s behest, to occupy western Virginia. Although historically part of the Old Dominion, the Alleghenies separated this region geographically, economically, and politically from the eastern portion, with the result that most of its inhabitants, few of whom owned slaves, remained loyal to the Union. Helping them to secede from secession would take the first long stride toward restoring the United States to states united, Lincoln’s prime goal and at this stage of the war his sole professed one.³

McClellan responded to Scott’s directive by assembling several regiments under Brigadier General Thomas Morris of the Indiana militia at Grafton. From there Morris advanced and drove a much smaller Confederate force southward in the “Phillipi Races,” thereby securing control of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, the main land link between Washington, D.C., and the Midwest. In turn the Confederates sent reinforcements westward over the mountains to regain what had been lost, whereupon McClellan proceeded by rail to Parkersburg in western Virginia with 7,000 Ohio and Indiana volunteers. This gave him a field army of around 11,000, including Morris’s brigade but excluding 9,000 troops assigned to guarding the Baltimore & Ohio and a brigade of three-year recruits being readied at Camp Dennison near Cincinnati for an expedition up the Great Kanawha River to the south.⁴

Never before had McClellan commanded so much—or so little—as a squad in combat. Yet he had no doubt he would succeed. Why should he? Throughout his short life he had gone from success to success. He had done so by taking care never to fail. This he would continue doing. “I shall be,” he assured Scott on arriving at Parkersburg, “cautious in my movements.”⁵

The main obstacles to success, as he saw it, were his generals and his soldiers. The latter consisted almost entirely of three-monthers and militia, so ill-trained and undisciplined that anything or nothing at all might cause them to flee in wild panic on encountering the enemy. As for the former, we already know his opinion: none was “worth his salt.” And in truth all of them, with one exception, were nonprofessionals who owed their rank to political connections rather than tactical know-how, with the prime example being Brigadier General Jacob D. Cox, commander of the troops slated for the Kanawha River expedition. A thirty-one-year-old lawyer-politician totally devoid of previous military training or experience, Cox’s sole apparent qualification for his position was being a close friend of Governor Dennison.⁶

The lone exception was that “silly fussy goose” Rosecranz—or, to give his full and correctly spelled name, William Starke Rosecrans. A tall, lean, forty-one-year-old native of Ohio, he was a West Point graduate, class of 1842, wherein he ranked fifth. He had served in the elite Corps of Engineers until 1854, when, like McClellan, he resigned from the army to seek a more rewarding career in business. By 1861 he, along with two partners, operated a kerosene factory in Cincinnati and upon the outbreak of war again donned a uniform, one soon adorned with the bright silver star of a brigadier general in the regular army.

He wanted the two stars of a major general and command of an army. Serving with McClellan in western Virginia provided a chance to obtain them. In fact, he had no practicable alternative to doing so. As June gave way to July in 1861, the only other place where an imminent prospect of significant military action existed was in northern Virginia. There the head of the main Federal force, Irvin McDowell, who was about to launch an “on to Richmond” thrust, was a brigadier general too and had no openings for another one.

Besides, McClellan possessed an attribute that Rosecrans so far in his career, both military and civilian, had lacked: abundant luck. Despite his 1842 graduation from West Point, Rosecrans saw no action in Mexico, whereas McClellan of the class of 1846 went there to serve on Scott’s staff and gain his favor and favoritism. Then, after leaving the army to enter business, Rosecrans lived comfortably but fell far short of McClellan’s financial success. He also suffered the misfortune of having an experiment with a kerosene “safety lamp” he had invented literally blow up in his face, inflicting a permanent burn scar on his right cheek. Finally, and most irksome of all, it was McClellan who received the credit for Ohio’s rapid mobilization and with it the major generalship, even though it was Rosecrans, as “Chief Engineer,” who did much of the actual, practical work of quartering, provisioning, and arming the eager Buckeye volunteers. Small wonder, therefore, that when on the eve of the western Virginia campaign a journalist told him that he intended “to join my fortunes in this war to yours,” Rosecrans replied, “I shall connect my fortune with McClellan,” adding, “You had better join Mac’s to yours—Mac is a lucky dog.”⁷

The “lucky dog” disliked Rosecrans—disliked him because he distrusted him. What he wanted in subordinates were men who lacked either the desire or the ability, or both, to be other than subordinates and therefore content to remain such while advancing his own aspirations by doing what he ordered them to do—this and nothing more nor less. His characterization of him as a “silly fussy goose” notwithstanding, McClellan realized that Rosecrans was not that kind of man. Manifestly, he possessed a keen mind, high professional credentials, great energy and enterprise, and strong ambition—qualities quite likely to cause him to disregard orders if he thought it necessary or, worse, act without any orders whatsoever. This, from McClellan’s standpoint, made him dangerous, even potentially calamitous, for he believed, so he wrote Nellie, that “everything”—by which he meant becoming what he hoped to become—“requires success in my first operations” as a commander.⁸ When on June 27 his army began moving east toward Buckhannon, near where the Confederates reportedly were concentrating, he resolved to seize on the first occasion available to teach Rosecrans a lesson in subordination.

It came on the evening of the very next day. Learning that Rosecrans had camped his brigade beyond the point instructed, McClellan sent him a sharp reprimand, asserting that he had thereby exposed the advance to enemy detection. Rosecrans replied on the twenty-ninth, explaining that there had been insufficient space for a camp at the place designated and that in any case he had ascertained that there were no Confederates at Buckhannon, which one of his regiments would occupy before nightfall.⁹ He then declared:

No one, my dear general, among your general friends, has more disinterested and earnest wishes for the success of your efforts than the writer of this letter. None under your command are more loyally, cheerfully ready to conform to the duties of a subordinate position, and I even flatter myself I understand the position as well as most of your brigadiers. Review, if you please, that letter which you have put on record, and say whether, after you receive this, both private feelings and public interest are likely to be the better for it.

The sentiment expressed in the first sentence merely signifies that Rosecrans knew, as we have seen, that he could not hope to succeed should McClellan’s campaign fail; the second sentence reeks of sarcasm; and the third is a thinly veiled warning that unless McClellan withdrew the reprimand from the record Rosecrans would make it both a personal and official issue. Either McClellan was deceiving himself or his wife, Nelly, when he wrote to her on July 2 that Rosecrans “is very meek now after a very severe rapping I gave him a few days since.”¹⁰ The record offers a different tale: McClellan’s reprimand does not appear in the Official Records, only Rosecrans’s letter, suggesting the original letter had been withdrawn by McClellan. He had learned what others holding official authority over the scar-faced Ohioan would discover during the next two years: attempts to intimidate him tended to result in the reverse.

By early July the Confederate contingent in northwestern Virginia numbered approximately 5,000 troops under the command of Brigadier General Robert S. Garnett and was deployed atop Laurel Hill to the north and Rich Mountain to the south of the Staunton-Parkersburg Pike, the principal road connecting this area to the rest of Virginia. Garnett hoped to hold these heights until he received sufficient reinforcements to launch a counter-offensive. McClellan planned to drive him back across the Alleghenies or, better still, trap and destroy him west of them. At the same time Cox was to cross his four regiments by means of steamboats from Gallipolis to Point Pleasant, then advance up the Kanawha River Valley, thereby bringing all of western Virginia under Union control.¹¹

Both Laurel Hill (actually a small mountain) and Rich Mountain were strong positions; a frontal attack against either would almost certainly fail, or if it somehow succeeded, then at inordinate cost. Realizing this, on July 5 McClellan telegraphed Scott’s adjutant, Colonel E. D. Townsend, that he intended to move against the enemy on Rich Mountain, where “I shall, if possible, turn the position to the south. . . . If possible I will repeat the maneuver of Cerro Gordo.”¹² It was at Cerro Gordo in 1847 that Scott, finding his army confronted by an impregnable enemy front, sent a column circling around its southern flank to rout the Mexican forces and open the way for the eventual capture of Mexico City—the “Halls of Montezuma.”

McClellan’s version of the maneuver called for Morris’s brigade to “amuse” Garnett’s main body atop Laurel Hill while his other three brigades seized Rich Mountain, which he calculated could be accomplished without excessive casualties because, according to his estimate, the defenders numbered about 3,000 whereas he had 7,500 troops, giving him a more than two-to-one advantage. Then he would occupy Beverly, a small town located a mile east of the mountain on the Parkersburg-Staunton Turnpike, thus cutting Garnett’s supply line and forcing him to abandon Laurel Hill in an attempt to escape back across the Alleghenies into the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. No “prospect of a brilliant victory,” he assured Scott through Townsend in his July 5 telegram, “shall induce me to depart from my intention of gaining success by maneuvering rather than fighting. I will not throw these raw men of mine into the teeth of artillery and entrenchments if it is possible to avoid it.”¹³

Two days later McClellan’s column set out for Rich Mountain and on July 9 arrived two miles from it at Roaring Creek. Although not particularly high, the mountain proved to be rugged, cover...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Halftitle
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Maps and Illustrations
• Preface
• Prologue: On Judging Civil War Generals
• 1. Rosecrans in West Virginia: A Tale of a Goose, a Dog, and a Fox
• 2. Grant in Missouri and Tennessee: A Tale of How a Nobody Became a Somebody
• 3. Grant, Halleck, and a Failure to Communicate
• 4. Grant at Shiloh: How to Win by Not Losing
• 5. Grant Advances by Staying Put
• 6. Nobody at Antietam
• 7. Grant and Rosecrans at Iuka and Corinth: The Birth of a Rivalry
• 8. Rosecrans at Stones River: How a Near Disaster Became a Much-Needed Union Victory
• 9. Meade at Gettysburg: How to Win by Staying Put
• 10. Grant Victorious at Vicksburg: How to Win by Causing Your Enemies to Defeat Themselves
• 11. Rosecrans Takes Chattanooga and Grant Takes a Fall
• 12. Rosecrans and Thomas at Chickamauga: The Fortunes and Misfortunes of War
• 13. Grant at Chattanooga: How to Win a Battle Contrary to Plan
• 14. While Grant Fails to Defeat Lee, Sherman Invades Georgia: Circling around to Move Forward
• 15. Grant Remains Stymied, Sherman Takes Atlanta: Decision in the West
• 16. Sheridan in the Shenandoah
• 17. Sherman Marches to the Sea, Schofield Repulses Hood, and Thomas Vanquishes Hood at Nashville
• 18. Death Blows: Grant, Sheridan, and Sherman Win the War, but the Union Generals Fight On
• Epilogue: The Victors in Blue—Who and Why
• Notes
• Index
• Photo Gallery
• Back Cover