STRUGGLE FOR THE HEARTLAND: THE CAMPAIGNS FROM FORT HENRY TO CORINTH, by Stephen D. Engle. University of Nebraska Press, 2001. 275 pp. Illustrations, maps, endnotes, bibliographical essay, index. $34.95.
LOOKING AT KNOWN EVENTS from a different perspective can often provide new insights into the past. Such is the case with Stephen D. Engle's "Struggle for the Heartland: The Campaigns from Fort Henry to Corinth," a volume in the excellent "Great Campaigns of the Civil War" series published by the University of Nebraska Press.Engle has chosen to view the campaigns of 1861 and early 1862 west of the Alleghenies and east of the Mississippi, in large part, in terms of their effect upon the states of that region.
To be sure, he does not ignore the orders and comments that reached Union and Confederate commanders from Washington and Richmond, respectively.
However, he focuses primarily upon the situations that confronted the commanders in their own theaters and upon how they coped with developing events there. The resulting narrative gives the reader new insight into a struggle whose outcome would contribute greatly to eventual Union victory.
The geography of the region was heavily stacked against the Confederacy. The Tennessee and the Cumberland rivers, which together drain much of Kentucky, Tennessee and northern Mississippi and Alabama, flow into the Ohio River opposite the Illinois shore. In prewar years, river traffic had fostered trade between the Midwest and the Southern states in question, in the process creating communities in both regions that would contain large minorities (Unionists, Copperheads) sympathetic to the enemy in time of war. When secession progressed into military conflict, the two rivers became natural invasion routes for the Union armies.
Tennessee was one of the last Southern states to leave the Union, and providing for its defense was complicated by Kentucky's decision to remain neutral in the conflict. Confederate forces consequently erected forts just inside the Tennessee state line on both the Tennessee and the Cumberland. Unfortunately, the position selected for Fort Henry on the Tennessee was subject to flooding, which would contribute significantly to its capture on Feb. 6, 1862.
However, it was not geography but mistaken confidence in incompetent leaders that precipitated the Confederacy's river defeats of February 1862. Confederate President Jefferson Davis appointed his West Point roommate Leonidas Polk, who had abandoned the Army for the Episcopal Church before he rose beyond the rank of second lieutenant, a Confederate major general and placed him in charge of western Tennessee defenses. Polk's immediate subordinate was Gideon J. Pillow, a political general who had served in the Mexican War. In September 1861, Polk sent Pillow to occupy Columbus, Ky., an important Mississippi River town between Memphis and Cairo, Ill. This action violated Kentucky's neutrality and gave the Federals an excuse to occupy Paducah, a strategically more important town at the mouth of the Tennessee River that Polk could have taken first.
Davis appointed Albert Sidney Johnston commander of the South's western armies. Johnston, a Texan who had made his reputation in the Mexican War and as a cavalry commander out west, was regarded by many as one of the old army's best officers, but he had never commanded a unit larger than a regiment. The Texan seems to have had trouble making the transition to command of entire armies. When Union Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant captured Fort Henry in February 1862 and headed eastward to assault Fort Donaldson on the nearby Cumberland, Johnston could have ordered his own troops at Bowling Green and Polk's troops at Columbus to converge on Grant and crush his force with their superior numbers. Instead, Johnston reinforced Fort Donaldson with insufficient troops to ensure its proper defense, then retreated to Nashville. Other Confederate generals of even less competence saw to it that the fort on the Cumberland fell to Grant with a large number of prisoners.
With the Tennessee River open to Union gunboats as far as northern Alabama and the Cumberland open to the Federals above Nashville, Johnston soon realized that he could not hold the Tennessee capital. He retreated farther south to Murfreesboro before realizing that his defenses should be placed farther to the west in order to support the remaining Confederate strongpoints along the Mississippi. The logical point of concentration was Corinth, Miss., at the junction of two of the South's major railroads. With the help of President Davis, Johnston began to gather major elements of the region's military forces there. The Confederate commander already had the help of Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard as his second in command, and shortly acquired more in the form of Maj. Gens. Braxton Bragg and William J. Hardee and former Vice President John C. Breckinridge. Polk also brought his force to Corinth.
On the Union side, Grant's capture of the river forts brought his commander, Maj. Gen. Henry Halleck, authority over the entire war effort in the West, including control of Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell's Army of the Ohio. Halleck removed Grant from command for insubordination (he had gone to Nashville to confer with Buell without asking permission), but had to restore him to his former post as Union forces on the Tennessee headed upriver toward Corinth. Grant debarked most of his troops at Pittsburg Landing on the river's west bank and settled down to await the arrival of Buell's army.
Knowing that the combined Union force would far outnumber his army, Johnston resolved to strike Grant before Buell could arrive. Despite their slow and inept approach, the Confederates somehow managed to surprise Grant's army, which in turn had made hopelessly inadequate efforts at defense, on the morning of Sunday, April 6, 1862. Late in the morning, with Bragg directing the Confederate attack against a Union position known as the Hornet's Nest (in typical Bragg fashion, feeding in brigade after brigade, as into a meat grinder), Johnston opted to lead a bayonet charge by a Tennessee unit. Struck in the leg, an artery severed, he bled to death before his staff realized the gravity of the situation.
Beauregard continued to press forward in piecemeal fashion, and at the close of day claimed to have won a great victory. The Confederates made no effort to reform their scattered units that night, and on the following day were forced to retreat before the combined strength of Grant's and Buell's armies. Beauregard returned to Corinth and fortified the city in expectation of an impending Federal assault. However, Halleck arrived to command the combined Union armies in person, and Federal progress southward became slow, but defensively perfect.
The Union forces approaching Corinth outnumbered the Confederates roughly two-to-one. Realizing that he could not hope to hold the town, despite its strong defenses, against such numbers, Beauregard orchestrated a withdrawal southward by rail that totally deceived the enemy. The Confederate commander hailed this retreat as the equivalent of a major victory, but Jefferson Davis rightly saw in it the surrender of western Tennessee to Union control. When Beauregard subsequently went on medical leave without informing Richmond, Davis dismissed him and gave the army to Bragg. Some would say everything went downhill after that.
Engle, Buell's biographer, has much to say about the changing Federal policy with regard to occupation of the South, and his efforts provide much food for thought. If there is any weakness in this book, it relates to writing style. Poor grammar occasionally makes it hard to understand what Engle is saying. However, on balance, "Struggle for the Heartland" is an excellent account of the early war in the West.
DANE HARTGROVE is a freelance writer living in Stafford County.