The reports contain no reference to any train except the one belonging to a single division. Rosecrans dealt with this problem on the first day of the pursuit. “Halt your train, turn it out, and park it,” read the order from Rosecrans’s chief of staff. “I am told it is a mile long. Take nothing with you but ammunition and ration wagons. You have left our advance force without a support by your tardy movements. You are in the way of other divisions.” Hours after the start of the pursuit Rosecrans learned of the trouble and ordered it fixed.
The Union force was pursuing on the right road, slowed for a time by one division’s wagon train. What was the nature of this pursuit? Federal reports tell of a harried Confederate army with an enemy nipping at its heels.
Col. John Mizner commanded the cavalry division. His report, dated Oct. 19, states that his brigades “formed two flanking columns, [with one] moving on the north side [and the other] on the south side of the Chewalla road, making frequent dashes at the enemy’s flanks, harassing them, hanging continually on their skirts, and impeding their retreat….”
From McPherson’s report: “After crossing the Tuscumbia and the Hatchie…, the evidences of a most rapid retreat, almost a rout, were apparent. The road was strewn with tents, blankets, clothing, wagons, small-arms, ammunition, six caissons, and a battery-forge, some of them blown up and partially destroyed and others in good condition.”
Brig. Gen. John McArthur’s Division marched behind McPherson’s force for much of the pursuit. McArthur’s description is similar to McPherson’s. He writes of “capturing many prisoners and causing the enemy to abandon and destroy much of their property in arms, artillery, ammunition, and camp equipage,” as he followed the route to Ripley before his return to Corinth.
Return to Corinth? Yes, at 8:30 p.m. on Oct. 7 Grant ordered Rosecrans to halt the pursuit and return to Corinth.
In a midnight dispatch Rosecrans exhorted Grant to reconsider. “We have defeated, routed, and demoralized the army which holds the Lower Mississippi Valley…. All that is needed is to continue pursuing and whip them. We have whipped, and should now push to the wall and capture all the rolling stock of their railroads….. If…you still consider the order to return to Corinth expedient I will obey it and abandon the fruits of a victory, but I beseech you bend everything to push them while they are broken and hungry, weary and ill-supplied.”
Grant did reconsider, and told Rosecrans to stay in place until he consulted with General-in- Chief Halleck.
On the morning of Oct. 8 Grant sent a dispatch to Halleck advising him that “Rosecrans has followed the rebels to Ripley…. I ordered Rosecrans to go back [to Corinth] last night but he is so averse to returning that I have directed him to remain still until you can be heard from.” Later that same day Grant changed his mind, telling Halleck “On reflection I deem it idle to pursue farther without more preparation, and have ordered for the third time his return.” Halleck’s reply has an incredulous tone: “Why order return of our troops? Why not re-inforce Rosecrans and pursue the enemy into Mississippi…?” Grant sent Halleck his reasons: inability to subsist on the country; the expected arrival of Confederate reinforcements; and the troops’ exhaustion. Grant told Halleck that there was a possibility of “partial success…from farther pursuit” but predicted that “disaster would follow in the end.” Grant added: “If you say so, however, it is not too late to go on….” Halleck, quite naturally, deferred to Grant’s judgment.
In his Oct. 30 report, Grant says this about his order to halt. “When I ascertained that the enemy had succeeded in crossing the Hatchie I ordered a discontinuance of the pursuit…. This I regarded, and yet regard, as absolutely necessary to the safety of our army. They could not possibly have caught the enemy, before reaching his fortifications at Holly Springs, where a garrison of several thousand troops were left that were not engaged in the battle for Corinth. Our own troops would have suffered for food and suffered greatly from fatigue.”
We conclude with a discussion of the order referred to in Grant’s memoirs, “specific orders in advance of the battle for him to pursue the moment the enemy was repelled.”
No such order is to be found in the records, nor is there any reference to this order in after-action reports or correspondence. The silence in the records is all but conclusive, but beyond that we should ask whether an order of this kind makes any sense, and whether such an order is likely to be issued by a commander 58 miles from the scene with communication slowed because of a broken telegraph line. Specific orders. In advance of the battle. The moment the enemy was repelled. The battle had not yet begun. Neither Grant nor anyone else knew how long the fighting would last, what time of day or night it would end, how heavy the losses on each side would be, what condition the opposing forces would be in when the battle ceased, or even if the Confederates would be the ones retreating.
On Apr. 22, 1865, Rosecrans appeared before the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. He testified on the Confederates’ condition after the Battle of Corinth and the subsequent pursuit. “The enemy was exhausted; his cavalry, eighteen regiments strong, gave way everywhere to our four little [cavalry] regiments. Numbers of deserters and stragglers were scattered through the woods in all directions, and were constantly being picked up by our men….” Numerous indications led Rosecrans to the conclusion that “the enemy considered himself thoroughly whipped…. Mississippi was in our hands.”
“Mississippi was in our hands,” said Rosecrans, when Grant ordered a halt.
Irony abounds. Grant, known for his aggressiveness, was critical of Rosecrans for not being sufficiently aggressive in failing to pursue “the moment” the Confederates were repulsed. On Oct. 8, over his subordinate’s strong protests that continued aggressive pursuit would reap great benefits, he ordered Rosecrans to return. Furthermore, Grant tells Halleck, “your call,” but phrases the choice in such a way that Halleck really had no choice. If the man on the scene (or at least close to the scene) predicts disaster how can a commander in Washington say “go ahead”? At the same time Grant does not defer to the judgment of the general who is in immediate command of the troops chasing Van Dorn. Rosecrans judged his men too tired to begin the pursuit on Saturday afternoon. He was wrong. Four days later, Rosecrans reckoned his men fit for continuing the chase, and judged the Confederates unable to stop the Federals. Wrong again.
As time passed and Grant was writing his memoirs, Rosecrans got even wronger.
Further reading: The reports and dispatches referenced— and much else that is relevant to the topic—are in the Official Records, Series I, Vol. XVII, Parts I and II. Rosecrans’s testimony on the battle and pursuit is found on pages 20-24 of “Rosecrans’s Campaigns” in Joint Committee on the Conduct
of the War at the Second Session Thirty-Eighth Congress. His article “The Battle of Corinth” is in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War. All of these documents are easily found online. There are two biographies of Rosecrans: The Edge of Glory: A Biography of General William S. Rosecrans, U.S.A. by William M. Lamers (Louisiana University 1999) and William S. Rosecrans and the Union Victory: A Civil War Biography by David G. Moore, (McFarland & Company, 2014). General Grant and the Rewriting of History, by Frank P. Varney (Savas Beatie, 2013) was reviewed in the February 2019 issue of Civil War News. The subtitle of Varney’s book best describes its contents: “How the Destruction of General William S. Rosecrans Influenced Our Understanding of the Civil War.”
GEORGIA’S CONFEDERATE MONUMENTS In Honor of a Fallen Nation Gould B. Hagler, Jr.
online at
This unique work contains a complete photographic record of Georgia’s memorials to the Confederacy, a full transcription of the words engraved upon them, and carefully-researched information about the monuments and the organizations which built them. These works of art and their eloquent inscriptions express a nation’s profound grief, praise the soldiers’ bravery and patriotism, and pay homage to the cause for which they fought.
To the east, a full moon is about to lift itself above the horizon. Already, the thin cloud cover glows with pregnant light, signaling an imminent arrival.
I recently re-watched The Wolfman—not the great Lon Chaney Jr., version but the lessgood Benicio Del Toro version— so on some unconscious level, this full moon is the source of mild alarm to me. The cigar I’m smoking to ward away the bugs is apt to do me little good against a werewolf should one come prowling. I’m sitting on my back porch, enjoying this smooth Macanudo and a bourbon barrel-aged Allagash beer, in an attempt to carve out a little quiet time in what has already been an insanely busy month, and it’s only 2/3 over. May always brings so much to do because the anniversaries of Chancellorsville (1863) and the Overland Campaign (1864), keep me particularly busy; some of my other colleagues focus on the opening of the Atlanta Campaign, the battle of New Market, or the Bermuda Hundred Campaign. No one gives the Red River Campaign any love, I guess, poor Nathaniel Banks! ECW has so much already this month that I can barely think in bullet points, let alone full sentences. For me, May also marks the ending of a semester with all its attendant grading. No matter how well-prepped I try to be going into the home stretch, I always have a ton to do.
And, of course, to add one final insult to injury, the lawn, “the green demon,” as my colleague Dan Welch refers to his, somehow needs mowing about thirteen times in the month’s first three weeks. While mowing earlier today, I came across a four-leaf clover. It’s my ninth one this month. (Seriously!) If you saw the first day of our Facebook LIVE with the Trust, I found one during our broadcast from Germanna Ford, and then I found seven the next day in the Widow Tapp Field (live on camera, so there are witnesses).
What better reminder could there be of how lucky I am to be able to get to do what I love, every single day, whether that be mentoring young writers in the classroom, sharing stories of the Civil War with so many interested people, or writing, writing, writing.
I may not really be superstitious about the full moon, but I can’t deny my great good fortune. I am a lucky man, indeed.
We have twelve tickets left for our upcoming ECW Symposium, Aug. 2-4, 2019, at Stevenson Ridge on the Spotsylvania Battlefield. Yep, just twelve. Tickets are $155 each and include ten speakers, a keynote address by A. Wilson Greene, and a Sunday tour of the North Anna battlefield with Bert Dunkerly and Chris Mackowski, plus all the other usual cool fun we always have at the Symposium!
Sarah Kay Bierle hunkered down at the Library of Congress for a few days at the end of May following a successful series of appearances related to the launch of her new book (see the ECW Bookshelf for details). She signed books at the Virginia Military Institute Museum on Remembrance Day (May 15), spoke to the Powhatan Civil War Roundtable, then gave a series of talks at the New Market battle reenactment, where she also signed books, May 18-19.
James Brookes has an article in the most recent edition of The Journal of American Studies, published by Cambridge University Press: “Images in Conflict: Union Soldier-Artists Picture the Battle of Stones River, 1862–1863.” You can read that article here: https://tinyurl.com/y246acjk
Meg Groeling surprised everyone when she showed up at Manassas National Battlefield on May 11 with a walker, but she made it most of the way through the woods “In the Footsteps of the 69th NY.” Of course, she straggled, but she was such a good sport about it all that no one complained within her hearing distance. Meg reports, “Historian Damian Shiels was just as charming as possible, as was Harry Smeltzer. John Hennessey was a true gentleman.” Meg says she’s thrilled at the opportunity to write about 11th New Yorker (and Ellsworth aide-de-camp) John Wildey for Mr. Shiels’ blog, “The Irish in the American Civil War.” She hopes to use Shiels’ methods of examining government documents to piece together stories of some men in the 11th New York, adding to her already copious interest in “Ellsworth’s Lambs.”
Kevin Pawlak spent a couple of days in the National Archives recently researching miscellaneous Army of the Potomac files. We can’t wait to see what he has found.
Dan Welch will be heading back to Gettysburg this summer as a seasonal Park Ranger with the National Park Service. Look for him on the battlefield or at the visitor center.
Did you catch ECW’s teamup with the American Battlefield Trust to commemorate the 155th anniversary of the Overland Campaign? If not, you can still see the videos on the Trust’s Facebook page (even if you don’t belong to Facebook). Kris White hosted the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, and North Anna, while Garry Adelman hosted Cold Harbor. Among familiar ECW faces who joined in the fun were Doug Crenshaw, Dan Davis, Phill Greenwalt, Steward Henderson, and Chris Mackowski.
The 33rd book in the Emerging Civil War Series is now out: Call Out the Cadets: The Battle of New Market by Sarah Kay Bierle. The book features a foreword by Col. Keith Gibson, director of the VMI Museum in Lexington, Va.
Sarah’s book tells the story, among others, of the VMI cadets called into Confederate
Also, new in audio this month: Let Us Die Like Men: The Battle of Franklin by Lee White and Fight Like the Devil: The First Day at Gettysburg, July 1, 1863 by Chris Mackowski, Kris White, and Dan Davis. Both books are available at Audible.com.
I think it’s a great way to get historical information out to people, whether they’re professional historians or just casually interested in the Civil War era. The reach of social media allows us to communicate information to people everywhere. The number of people who will go out and buy a book (or check it out of the library) or attend a symposium is small, but tools like Facebook and Twitter give us the potential to reach millions. Even if only a handful of them end up reading an article at EmergingCivilWar. com or getting interested in doing their own research, we’ve still made a major impact.
By necessity, really. About ten years ago it was becoming clearer and clearer that social media was a powerful force in how people received and consumed information, be it about what’s going on in the world, popular culture, or even history. We needed someone to start working with Twitter and Facebook at my workplace, and I just started playing around with it and seeing what worked and what didn’t. That eventually led to Instagram and blogging as well. Surely there are many other social media platforms out there by now that I really don’t know anything about, so I’m far from an expert. But I’ve definitely had fun with it and had at least some success.
