Fordtunate Son

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Military Pron: The Civil War - The Nashville Campaign, Part 1 of 2

Dec 15, 2024, 1:01 AM

What else says Merry Christmas like recounting the Nashville Campaign with family and friends?
It’s a Fordt Family tradition that the kids just can’t get enough of.

I’m always on the lookout for things that might be of interest, and I had forgotten just how great this campaign was. Plus, all the signs just came together.

First, I was recently reminded of how long it’s been since I’ve dropped a MP post.
Second, The Battle of Nashville took place on this EXACT date, December 15-16, in 1864.
Third, I just watched the US military Army-Navy game on TV.
And fourth, Brownell just muffed the Memphis Tiger game, who are from Tennessee.

How many more signs does one need? I can read the mutilated cow entrails just as well as the next guy. It’s time for another post.

So first, a little background. The basic Union plan for winning the Civil War was to divide and conquer the South in three parts…the East, the West, and the Trans-Mississippi. They meant to drive one dagger down the Mississippi, another from Louisville to Savannah, and a third from Washington to Richmond. And ultimately, that’s just what they did.

That led to the creation of three Confederate armies, roughly one for each theater. The Confederates named their armies after land areas, and the Union named their armies after rivers. The Confederate army that got all the fame and glory was the Army of Northern Virginia (ANV), in the East.

But the black sheep army, the ‘other’ major Confederate army, was the one out west, the Army of Tennessee (AOT).

The Army of Tennessee had the far more difficult charge during the war. It had to defend an area maybe 20 times larger than the area the ANV had to defend. Because of the Appalachian Mountains, the ANV basically only had to defend a triangle about 100 miles deep, from Washington to Richmond, and 50 miles wide at its widest point. You know, Northern Virginia.

But the AOT had to defend the back side of the Appalachians all the way to the Mississippi River, and from the border of Kentucky down to the Gulf, aka, the West. A virtually impossible task.

Additionally, the AOT had to contend with the Union Navy in ways the ANV did not. Because of the Ohio, Cumberland, Tennessee, and Mississippi Rivers, the AOT was always at risk of getting flanked by troops coming up, or down, those waterways. Or equally as bad, getting trapped on the wrong side of a river with no way back across. Union ironclads played a huge role in the control of the West.

The USS Cairo at Vicksburg, Mississippi

Because the only navigable rivers in northern Virginia are the lower Potomac and the James, the ANV had much more freedom of movement than the AOT. Granted, the Atlantic coast was vulnerable to amphibious invasions, but logistically these were limited to small incursions, and did not pose the same threat to the ANV that the Western Rivers posed to the AOT.

The Confederate guns of Fort Donelson, TN, desperately guarding the Cumberland River from Union ironclads.

All the armies had personnel quirks and internal problems. For instance, the Army of Northern Virginia had characters like Stonewall Jackson from Virginia, who chain-sucked lemons, was a hypochondriac, and avoided fighting on Sundays.

And there was DH Hill from York, SC. Hill was a great commander early in the war, but was so acerbic that he couldn’t get along with nearly any commander in the Eastern or Western Theater. So, Lee just parked him in Richmond towards the end of the war. Before the war Hill was an algebra teacher, so that probably explains his disposition.

The ANV had its problems, but the Army of Tennessee may have been one of the most dysfunctional armies in history. Because it was, on occasion, not much shy of being an insane asylum. That was in large part due to its leader, Braxton Bragg. Bragg was a Jefferson Davis political-favorite, and he seemed to have a penchant for pixxing off everyone he came into contact with, including himself.

Mississippi’s own, Jefferson Davis

There’s an apocryphal story about how as a junior officer, Bragg submitted a request for supplies for his company. Then, in his role as camp quartermaster, Bragg denied himself his own request. He then resubmitted the request to himself again, and denied himself again. He finally took the matter up the chain to his post commander who said, “Bragg, you have quarreled with every officer in the army, and now you are quarreling with yourself!" Cray cray.

Braxton Bragg, and his personal nemesis, Braxton Bragg

Forrest got so pixxed off with Army of Tennessee leadership that he just left the army at least three times, taking his entire ‘personal’ cavalry command with him, and threatening to kill Bragg at least once. Adding:

“You [Bragg] have played the part of a dammed scoundrel, and are a coward, and if you were any part of a man I would slap your [face].” And that’s all I’ve got to say about that.

After the unexpected Confederate victory at Chickamauga Creek in Northwest Georgia, Forrest was so incensed over Bragg not advancing that he raged, "What does he even fight battles for?" And at Chattanooga Forrest finally declared, "you [Bragg] might as well not give me any orders, for I will not obey them."

By that point, command structure in the AOT might be best characterized as “loose.”

Nathan Bedford Forrest, first Grand Wizard of the Klan.

So, the AOT lived under a perpetual dark cloud of impossible expectations and personal discord. Nevertheless, it slowed the Union advance in the West for three years from Louisville, to Nashville, to Murfreesboro, to Chattanooga, and finally to tiny Atlanta, population 9,000.

Which is where our story really begins. With the Union Army at the gates of Atlanta, Confederate President Jefferson Davis had a change of heart. A bad one. He decided to change AOT leadership, again.

Bragg led the AOT from mid-1862 until his disastrous defeat at Chattanooga around Thanksgiving, 1863. But instead of canning his friend Bragg, Davis kicked him upstairs and promoted him to military advisor.

Davis’s pool of experienced (and eligible) commanders to replace Bragg in the AOT was extremely limited. The South only had 7 full generals during the whole war. Bragg was #6, and #7 didn’t exist yet. Plus, they didn’t have ZipRecruiter back then.

With #1 ranked Samuel Cooper being too old for field duty, #2 Albert Sidney Johnston being killed at Shiloh in 1862, and #3 Robert E Lee in command of the ANV, #5 Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, the guy who fired on Fort Sumter, was a possibility.

Beauregard had briefly commanded the AOT before Bragg and fought in both the ANV and the AOT as a corps commander. And, he had successfully defended Charleston Harbor in 1863 against Union attack. So he was very capable and experienced. And he had such a cute mustache. Oui! Oui!

Beau was a real mover and shaker, with lots of strategic and technological ideas on how to win the war. Plus, in his free time he designed the swanky Confederate Battle Flag, and that looks good on anyone’s resume.

But Beauregard drew the ire of Davis when, as commander of the AOT, he went on medical leave without permission from Davis. As I mentioned, AOT command was kinda lax. So Davis decided that hell would freeze over before he ever gave Beau top command again.

Davis’s other choice was the #4 guy in the Confederate Army, Joseph Johnston, who actually led the Army of Northern Virgina before Lee did. It was only JJ’s wounding at the Battle of 7 Pines outside Richmond in 1862 that gave Lee a shot at the job. JJ went to the hospital, and Lee went on to glory.

Joseph Eggleston Johnston

After the war Joseph Johnston opened a successful chain of fried chicken restaurants.

But Davis still had a problem, because he hated Johnston’s guts, too.

“The President detests Joe Johnston, and General Joe returns the compliment with compound interest. Johnston’s hatred of Jeff Davis amounts to a religion. So much so that it colors all his decisions.”

—Diarist Mary Chesnut (from Camden, SC)

But hard times lead to hard decisions, and Davis was out of qualified applicants. So, near Christmas, 1863, Joseph Johnston became the new commander of the AOT. And, he did a GREAT job.

Johnston used the mountainous terrain west of Atlanta to devilish advantage. Though he was outnumbered roughly 2-1 by Sherman’s army, he made Sherman pay for every inch of rugged ground all the way between Chattanooga and Atlanta.

The Atlanta Campaign was a masterpiece of Fabian Defense, and it would have made the old Roman proud. Fabius wore Hannibal’s advance down in exactly the same way during the 2nd Punic War. And Joe Stalin did the same thing to Hit ler in WW2. You trade space, for time.

Fabius Maximus.

It took the entire Winter, Spring, and Summer of 1864 for Sherman to go the 100 miles from Chattanooga to Atlanta. That’s less than 1 mile a day, a snail’s pace by almost anyone’s measure. Barely more than mobile trench warfare.

Sherman: “Are we EVER going to get out of these GD mountains?”

To show how crazy the Civil War really was, Johnston and Sherman harangued, and harassed, and battled each other toe-to-toe for 7 months in the rugged Georgia mountains.

And after the war, Johnston died of pneumonia. It was pneumonia that he caught standing in the rain at his dear friend’s funeral, William Tecumseh Sherman.

Friendships aside, with Sherman at the gates of Atlanta in July 1864, Davis had enough of retreating armies. Even if it meant saving the army to fight another day. And he made one of the most controversial, and ultimately disastrous, decisions of the war for the South. He replaced Johnston.

Davis said he wanted a more aggressive commander, and boy did he ever get one. Aggressive to the point of utter destruction. This guy, John Bell Hood.

To get around the rank requirements, Davis appointed Hood to be a temporary full General, at age 33. He was never confirmed by the Confederate Senate, and he was the youngest man on either side to have full control of an entire army during the entire war.

So the Army of Tennessee has its back to the wall, the Battle of Atlanta is on, and the crazy path of the AOT on its way into history is coming up next time, in Part 2.

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>Hood was the worst major general

That would be a good discussion. I think there were worse generals on the Union side, and Bragg was pretty bad for the CSA, but I do agree that Hood was just over his head as a Major General. He was an outstanding subordinate, as I'll cover in my next post.

But I don't think he was cut out for high command, and he was placed in a terrible, if not impossible situation. Just the wrong man for the job. I mean, a tractor does great on the farm, and an F1 does great on the track, but a tractor is terrible on the track, and an F1 has no place on a farm.

People are a lot like that. Gotta find the right man for the moment, and Hood simply wasn't that. I'd put that more on Davis than on Hood, actually. Either JJ or Beau would have done better in the job, and Davis let personal opinions color objective qualifications. Both of those guys had prior, legit success at army command level, and Davis sandbagged both of them.

>Have you read Jefferson Davis and His Generals? Very good book that actually painted Bragg in a more sympathetic light than most histories.

I have not but it sounds very interesting. I do like alternative views and again, success depends on so many variables. Bragg did achieve one of the South's greatest victories at Chickamauga, but it was prompted by a colossal Union error that he (or Longstreet) took advantage of. I kind of feel like Bragg was more successful behind a desk as a military advisor, which he ultimately became, and Hood more successful if he had stayed in Corps command.

The thing that made Lee's Command so successful, imo, was balance. He had Jackson as his wild hammer, and Longstreet as his steady anvil. Both men had their good and bad days, but Lee managed them well and kept both from going too extreme either way. And that was a two-way street, too. Lee was on occasion a bit too complex with his plans, and a bit too unclear with his commands.

A great example is at Culp's Hill at Gettysburg. Lee gave Ewell (who replaced Jackson after his death) the orders to take the hill, "...if practicable." Jackson would have understood that order as, "Take that GD hill if it means you fight all day to do it!" But Ewell interpreted it exactly as it was spoken, and chose not much more than a probing attack. And that untaken hill helped hold the Union right flank through the whole battle.

>BTW, the Vicksburg memorial park is so well done

I agree. I spent a day there back in the late 90's. It was still very good, but they didn't have the Cairo restored and on full display yet, if I recall. It's definitely on my return visit list. A full day wasn't enough time even back then.

Military Pron: The Civil War - The Nashville Campaign, Part 1 of 2

Re: Military Pron: The Civil War - The Nashville Campaign, Part 1 of 2

My Great great grandfather.....

You any relation to them Just More BBQ Quattlebaums?

Lots of Quattlebaums...

Its German for "four assses" isnt it?***

Re: Its German for "four assses" isnt it?***

I loved Just More BBQ. I could put a hurting on a BBQ buffet.***

WAY too long for my attentions span. I'm thinking we lost, anyway.

We won.

Which reminds me of one of my favorite Onion articles

Re: Which reminds me of one of my favorite Onion articles

Saw a bumper sticker down in Charleston years ago. "North 7, South 0: Halftime.

Excellent I was listening to a podcast that reminded me of Shermans bowties

Re: Excellent I was listening to a podcast that reminded me of Shermans bowties

Re: Excellent I was listening to a podcast that reminded me of Shermans bowties

I've been up and down Edisto River in kayak.....

I may know him.....

Re: Military Pron: The Civil War - The Nashville Campaign, Part 1 of 2

Cowpens was the Revolutionary war.***

Theres my dumasss post quota for the week.***

Re: Military Pron: The Civil War - The Nashville Campaign, Part 1 of 2

Great start to the story.

Great stuff as always.

Re: Great stuff as always.

Re: Great stuff as always.

excellent work as always, Fordt... good stuff

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