Piercing the Heartland: A History and Tour Guide of the Fort Donelson, Shiloh, and Perryville Campaigns

Chapter 1

The War Begins in the West: Logan’s Crossroads

At the beginning of the Civil War, Kentucky’s 1.2 million people made it the South’s second most populous state. Its strategic position dominated the Ohio River, on which flowed a great deal of the North’s iron and coal, as well as its industrial production. Because of geographic features, if Kentucky were in Union hands, Tennessee would effectively be denied to the South. If possessed by the Confederates, Kentucky could be used to split the North in half through the Great Lakes and to attack such cities as Cincinnati, and the flow of vital goods on the Ohio would be crippled. I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game, Lincoln wrote. Both sides needed the state for defensive purposes and to launch offensives in the West.

Kentucky was the birthplace of the U.S. president, Abraham Lincoln, and the Confederate president, Jefferson Davis. Historian Bruce Catton wrote that the state was emotionally a part of the South, and geographically a part of the Midwest. Kentucky loved the Union and the South, and this mix made her the champion of compromise. In the presidential election of 1860, the voters had rejected the bid of native son and vice president John C. Breckinridge for John Bell’s Constitutional Union party. Kentucky senator John J. Crittenden authored the last attempt at reconciliation before secession occurred.

The citizens of Kentucky were split between Union and Confederate sentiments. By war’s end 90,000 Kentuckians had fought for the North, while 45,000 had served the South. During the early months of the conflict, both the Federals and the Confederates actively recruited in Kentucky; but the government carefully refrained from committing military forces. Five thousand rifles were secretly slipped into the state for supporters of the North, who organized the Home Guards, while Southern men obtained weapons by joining State Guard units. Both sides began to drill for battle.

Kentucky was determined to remain neutral. When Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers for ninety days to put down the rebellion, Gov. Beriah Magoffin refused to commit any Kentuckians, stating, Kentucky will furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister Southern states. In May 1861, after an effort to call a secession convention failed, the state legislature, newly elected with a Unionist majority, announced that the state would protect itself against aggression from any quarter, Confederate or Federal. In congressional elections held in June, Kentucky sent nine Unionist representatives to Washington and only one who advocated secession. The popular vote showed ninety-two thousand voters supporting the Union, thirty-seven thousand advocating secession. Elections for the state legislature in August produced seventy-six Union members, and only twenty-four who favored secession. Governor Magoffin, who supported slavery and secession, had wanted Kentucky to be represented at the Montgomery Convention where the Confederacy was formed, but the legislature sternly refused to participate.

The Journey of Albert Sidney Johnston

In December 1860 Brigadier Gen. Johnston arrived at Fort Alcatraz, San Francisco, to command the Pacific Coast. When his adopted state, Texas, left the Union, Johnston resigned from the army. Abraham Lincoln offered him a commission of major general, but Johnston had departed before it arrived. Amid a flurry of hysteria, the people of the North feared that he would somehow seize California for the Confederacy.

Johnston had no such notion in mind. With thirty-three resigned military officers and civilians, he left California in June and began a legendary trek to the Confederacy. His party traversed hundreds of miles of inhospitable summer desert through Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, eluding hostile Indians and Federal expeditions sent out to arrest them, before arriving at New Orleans.

Johnston entrained for Richmond, a journey that was met with cheering crowds at every station. A worshipful Jefferson Davis received Johnston as a conquering hero and immediately named him General Commanding the Western Department of the Army of the Confederate States of America. e9781620453100_img_9632.gif

However much Kentucky desired to remain on the sidelines, geography condemned the state to a role in the war. The commanding general of the U.S. Army, Winfield Scott, wanted to split the Confederacy by controlling the Mississippi River; and northern control of the Ohio River was essential to facilitate east—west transportation of men and materiel to the western theater. Fortunately for the Union, two tributaries of the Ohio flow through Kentucky from the heart of Tennessee, and one dips as far south as Alabama in the South.

For months the Confederates had barely restrained themselves from seizing Columbus, Kentucky, where towering bluffs commanded the Mississippi; but in September General Leonidas Polk moved into that strategic position, prompting the Union general U.S. Grant to send General C. F. Smith to occupy Paducah. Governor Magoffin denounced both actions, while the state legislature called for the Confederates to withdraw.

John C. Breckinridge, and the Election of 1860

In April 1860 a deeply divided Democratic party met in Charleston to nominate a candidate for president. Although the delegates argued with each other for weeks and cast fifty-seven ballots, no one received a majority of the delegate vote. U.S. senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois came closest, garnering 151 ½ of the required 202 votes. Finally acknowledging the stalemate, the Democrats decided to cool off for sixty days before meeting again in Baltimore.

The Republicans met in Chicago on May 16. Although William H. Seward of New York was favored and received 180 votes to Abraham Lincoln’s 102 on the first ballot (233 were needed), the Railsplitter dramatically surged to 364 votes on the third ballot.

When the Democrats reconvened in June, many southern delegates refused to attend, allowing Douglas to be nominated on the second ballot. The party tried to appease its southern wing by nominating Benjamin Fitzpatrick of Alabama for the vice presidency. When Fitzpatrick declined, Georgia’s Herschell V. Johnson was given the second slot.

On June 28 southern Democrats convened at Baltimore. John C. Breckinridge, a Kentuckian currently serving as vice president under President James Buchanan, won the nomination on the first vote.

The Constitutional Union party, dedicated to preserving the nation, ran John Bell of Tennessee as a fourth candidate for the presidency.

When the election was over, Lincoln had carried a plurality of the popular vote (1,865,000), half a million more than Douglas (1,380,000), and a majority of the electoral vote (180) to become president. Breckinridge carried eleven states, which constituted most of the future Confederacy (North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Maryland, and Delaware—all slave states). He had 848,000 popular votes and 72 electoral votes, more than Douglas and Bell.

Breckinridge took a seat in the U.S. Senate, remaining there while eleven southern states left the Union. In late 1861, with his home state effectively under Federal military rule, he left Congress and offered his services to the Confederacy. He became a Confederate general and Jefferson Davis’s last secretary of war, then fled to England when the war ended. e9781620453100_img_9632.gif

Conceding that the official state government in Frankfort was staunchly Unionist, in November Secessionist delegates from sixty-eight Kentucky counties convened at Russellville. There they abolished the legitimate government of Kentucky, which they considered occupied by Union forces, and established a provisional government, with Bowling Green as the new state capital. The provisional government seceded from the Union and requested admission to the Confederacy, which was granted in December. Representatives from Kentucky were sent to the Confederate capital in Richmond.

In the presidential election of 1860, the people of Tennessee gave sixty-nine thousand votes to John Bell’s conciliatory effort, while Breckinridge garnered sixty-four thousand votes. After southern states began leaving the Union, Governor Isham G. Harris called a special session of the legislature to consider secession. On February 9, 1861, the Tennesseans held a referendum to decide if they should leave the United States. Opposition to secession was led by William Brownlow, editor of the Knoxville Whig. With strong pro-Unionist and abolitionist sentiment in the eastern part of the state, which threatened to secede from Tennessee if it left the Union, Tennessee rejected secession.

In April, after the bombardment of Fort Sumter and Lincoln’s call for troops, Governor Harris refused the president’s request and spoke passionately about sending soldiers to assist the Confederacy. By early May the governor and other inflammatory personalities had stirred many Tennesseans into a fever pitch for secession. Confederate flags were flown in Memphis and Nashville, and on May 6 the General Assembly passed a Declaration of Independence, which the people approved on June 8 by a vote of 105, 000 to 47, 000. Harris was authorized to make a military league with the Confederacy, and Tennessee became the last state to join the Confederacy, providing 115,000 troops for the South, 31,000 for the North.

Map 2: Confederate defenses stretched from Paducah in the west to the Cumberland Gap in the east.

The Crittendens: A Divided American Family

During his long public career, John J. Crittenden was governor of Kentucky, a U.S. senator, and attorney general of the nation. During the critical years preceding the Civil War, he followed the policies of his mentor, Henry Clay, in advocating compromise to keep the nation united. As war clouds gathered, he drafted a number of measures designed to prevent sectional strife. Specifically, he wanted to reestablish the line of the Missouri Compromise, which divided the nation into free and slave states. For this concession from the South, he asked the national government to support slavery where it existed. Unfortunately, the destructive course of the nation was set.

The Crittenden family is a perfect example of America during the Civil War, where brothers and fathers and sons frequently fought in opposing armies. When Crittenden sponsored a peace rally in Russellville, Kentucky, his youngest son, Thomas, attended; his older boy, George, conspicuously stayed home.

George, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, soon resigned to accept the rank of a brigadier general in the Confederate army. For the defeat at Logan’s Crossroads and alleged drunkenness at Corinth, George was censured and arrested. He resigned from the service but spent the remainder of the war as a civilian volunteer on the staff of a Confederate general.

Thomas left his law practice in Louisville and rose to the rank of brigadier of U.S. Volunteers. He served bravely at the savage battles of Shiloh, Stone’s River, and Chickamauga. e9781620453100_img_9632.gif

Tennessee was vital to the Confederacy. In addition to being an important breadbasket for the South, the state possessed extensive deposits of iron, copper, saltpeter, and lead. One of two railroads to Virginia passed through Chattanooga, Knoxville, and eastern Tennessee; four strategic railroads connected in the Chattanooga area and three at Nashville, which became a central storehouse and arms manufacturer for the Confederacy. The loss of Tennessee would open a route into the heart of the deep South: Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi.

To defend the Confederate West, President Jefferson Davis turned to General Albert Sidney Johnston. Davis’s nearly worshipful attitude toward Johnston led to his appointment as commander of the Confederate West on September 10, 1861. Johnston established a 430-mile defensive line that stretched from the Mississippi River in Kentucky to the Appalachian Mountains. At the left of the line, Leonidas Polk had 11,000 men to fortify the Mississippi River bluffs at Columbus, Kentucky. The position was so strong that Union general Henry W. Halleck felt it could be taken only with great loss of life.

The Bishop General e9781620453100_img_9632.gif Leonidas K. Polk

Polk was born into a prosperous North Carolina family in 1806. He had intended to follow a military career, but only six months after graduation from West Point in 1827 he resigned his commission to enter the ministry. He was soon an Episcopal priest and served throughout the South and Southwest, becoming the bishop of Louisiana in 1841 and helping to found the University of the South (Sewanee) in 1861. His duties brought him into contact with Jefferson Davis, who had been one year behind Polk at West Point; and the two men became fast friends.

When the Civil War started, Davis offered Polk the rank of major general and a post in the West, commanding Department Number 2, which stretched along the Mississippi River region from Paducah to the Red River. The bishop accepted the position, then concentrated all his resources to protect the Mississippi, ignoring the possibility of being flanked via the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. Polk fought in all the momentous battles of the Army of the Mississippi (later the Army of Tennessee): Shiloh, Perryville, Stone’s River, Chickamauga, and the Atlanta campaign. While his courage was never questioned, his military aptitude was frequently disparaged. His failure to launch a coordinated attack at Stone’s River may have cost the Confederacy a complete victory. After Polk failed to attack at Chickamauga, Braxton Bragg threatened to dismiss him from command and court-martial him, but Davis’s patronage saved his career and, ironically, sealed his doom. Polk was dispatched to Mississippi during the siege of Chattanooga, but returned in time for the Atlanta campaign.

In June 1864 Polk was observing Union movements from Pine Mountain in the company of Joseph Johnston and William Hardee when William T. Sherman took personal umbrage at their activity and had a battery of cannon fire on the distant figures. The portly, dignified churchman refused to hasten to safety, and a shell passed through his chest, killing him instantly.

Polk remained buried in Augusta, Georgia, until 1945, when he was reinterred at Christ Cathedral in New Orleans.

[LIBRARY OF CONGRESS]

Polk, a stubborn and sometimes even a childish general, had been greatly loved by the troops. He had imparted a sense of decency and morality to the soldiers, and even the leaders of the army had been favorably affected by his presence.While Polk’s loss was less than irreparable to the cause, as Davis lamented, it seemed a symbol of declining Confederate fortunes. e9781620453100_img_9632.gif

Huts sheltered Confederate soldiers during the winter of 1862. [HARPER’S WEEKLY]

In the center of his line, Johnston sent General Simon Bolivar Buckner on September 15, 1861, to fortify Bowling Green, Kentucky, a position made naturally strong by the Green and Barren rivers. By September 18 Bowling Green was occupied by 4, 500 men, with 500 soldiers guarding a vital railroad bridge at Munfordville.

The right of the line lay at Cumberland Gap, along the borders of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. East Tennessee, a Unionist stronghold, was in a state of near rebellion against the Confederacy. Troops from Nashville and Richmond, led by General Felix Zollicoffer, a former Nashville newspaper editor, led 4,000 men to pacify the area and fortify the vital gap.

The Federals were alarmed by Confederate strength in the region, but Johnston lacked the men and arms to hold the area against a serious Union offensive. To compensate for his weaknesses, Johnston sent cavalry raiding across the region. They destroyed small Union positions and briefly captured several Kentucky towns. Johnston had hoped to enlist men for the Confederate cause during these forays, but recruitment proved slow.

When Polk occupied Columbus in September, Federal authorities had occupied Louisville. General Richard Anderson, who had defended Fort Sumter, briefly commanded Union forces in Louisville, but in October William T. Sherman assumed control. Sherman was expected to capture Bowling Green and Cumberland Gap, but he suffered from unreasonable fear of a Confederate offensive in Kentucky and demanded 300,000 troops to meet the threat. A month later Sherman was relieved, not only for his failure to attack but for an apparent mental breakdown. His replacement was General Don Carlos Buell, a cautious, methodical man who soon built a force of 45, 000 men.

The confused, fierce fighting at Logan’s Crossroads, Kentucky, where Zollicoffer was killed. [HARPER’S WEEKLY]

Albert Sidney Johnston e9781620453100_img_9632.gif A General of Three Nations

Johnston was born in Kentucky in 1803 and attended Transylvania University in Lexington before entering West Point, from which he graduated in 1826. He served in the Black Hawk War, then resigned from the army in 1834.

Two years later Johnston enlisted as a private in the fight for Texas independence. He soon rose to the rank of brigadier and served as the secretary of war for the Republic of Texas until 1840.

Johnston was a volunteer in the war with Mexico, then rejoined the regular army in 1849. In 1855 he commanded the Second Cavalry with such subordinate officers as Robert E. Lee, William Hardee, and George Thomas. He served on the Texas frontier until 1856 and a year later led the expedition against the Mormons; brevetted a brigadier, he administered the Department of Utah for two years. When the Civil War broke out, he was commanding the Department of the Pacific.

Johnston made an adventurous journey east to offer his services to the Confederacy. Jefferson Davis, who wrote, I hoped and expected that I had others who would prove generals, but I knew I had one, and that was Sidney Johnston, made him a full general with command of the Confederate West. During his brief tenure, Johnston was unable to hold the initial line, which stretched from the Mississippi River to Cumberland Gap. After Fort Donelson fell, Johnston was convinced to concentrate Southern resources at Corinth for a strike against the Federals advancing down the Mississippi River. He died at Shiloh while personally leading a charge.

Albert Sidney Johnston is one of the leading martyrs of the Lost Cause school of Confederate history, but a dispassionate examination of his service reveals a man who was overwhelmed by his responsibilities. In short, he was a typical Confederate general in the West. e9781620453100_img_9632.gif

[DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN PORTRAITS]

In October Union general George Thomas was given a division of Buell’s troops, consisting of 5,000 men in eight regiments, to attack Cumberland Gap, break the railroad to Virginia, and occupy East Tennessee, if practical. In early January 1862 Thomas marched from Lebanon, Kentucky, and covered 106 miles in two weeks through a constant cold rain that sickened and killed many of his green troops and turned poor roads into impassable tracks of axle-deep mud. At Somerset Thomas paused to rest his exhausted men.

Because the roads around Cumberland Gap were in such miserable condition that maneuver was extremely limited, Zollicoffer was ordered to advance seventy miles to Mill Springs on the south side of the Cumberland River. Zollicoffer exceeded his order by crossing to Beech Grove on the north bank, leaving a flooded river at his back. The Confederate War Department sent General George B. Crittenden (brother of Union general Thomas Crittenden and son of U.S. senator John J. Crittenden) to take command of this force, but Zollicoffer was able to convince Crittenden to remain in this dangerously exposed position.

The Death of Felix Zollicoffer,

The battle of Logan’s Crossroads, Kentucky, was the initial major clash of arms in the West. Green troops and inexperienced officers made this as confused an affair as First Manassas had been several months earlier. Several Confederate units wore blue uniforms, and the battle was fought in a driving rain amid drifting fog and the thick smoke of combat. The terrain was broken by forests that rendered artillery useless and broke up formations.

Confederate colonel E. C. Walthall of the Fifteenth Mississippi mistook the Federal Fourth Kentucky for a Southern unit, recognizing his mistake just before joining them. Shortly afterward, General Felix Zollicoffer, who was nearsighted, also misidentified the Fourth Kentucky and rode into their lines. Seeing them shooting at Confederates, Zollicoffer approached a Union officer and ordered him to cease fire.

The best account of many conflicting versions of Zollicoffer’s death was written by Union colonel Speed S. Fry of the Fourth Kentucky Infantry, who may have fired the shot that killed the Confederate general. Fry was riding along the line formed by his regiment when, he later wrote, I saw an officer riding slowly down the road on a white horse. . . . His uniform was concealed with a long green overcoat. His near approach to my regiment, his calm manner, my close proximity to him, indeed, everything I saw led me to believe that he was a Federal officer belonging to one of the Federal regiments just arriving. So thoroughly was I convinced that he was one of our men, I did not hesitate to ride up to his side so closely that our knees touched. He was calm, self possessed, and dignified in manner. He said to me, ‘We must not shoot our own men,’ to which I responded, ‘Of course not, I would not do so intentionally.’ Then he turned his eyes to the left and pointing in the same direction he said, ‘Those are our men.’

Fry could not identify the unit indicated, so he rode off for a better view of the obscured battlefield. Looking back, he spotted a second officer riding up to the one he had just spoken to. This man leveled a pistol at Fry and fired, wounding his horse. Not until this time was I aware that I had been in conversation with an officer of the opposing army, Fry wrote. Believing that the Confederate had attempted to lure him into an ambush, Fry angrily drew his revolver, aimed, and fired in concert with several of his soldiers. Zollicoffer fell, pierced by three bullets.

There were persistent stories that his body was mutilated by vengeful Union soldiers. Union chaplain W. H. Honnell, who was immediately on the scene, stated that several privates tore off pieces of clothing for souvenirs, and a lock of hair had been plucked out; but it did not disfigure his looks, he noted. The body was removed from the battlefield, covered, and guarded.

After the battle, Union general George Thomas substituted his own civilian clothes for Zollicoffer’s torn and muddied uniform. The body was prepared at Somerset, then sent to Nashville for burial. e9781620453100_img_9632.gif

An Ode to Zollicoffer

The shocking loss of Felix D. Zollicoffer brought about considerable grieving in the South. As the first general officer of the Confederacy to die in battle, he was deified. Harry Flash, a southern newspaperman, wrote this poem to commemorate Zollicoffer’s death:

Zollicoffer

First in the fight, and first in the arms

Of the white-winged angel of glory,

With the heart of the South at the feet of God

And his wounds to tell the story.

For the blood that flowed from his hero heart

On the spot where he nobly perished

Was drunk by the earth as a sacrament

In the holy cause he cherished.

In heaven a home with the brave and blest,

And for his soul’s sustaining

The apocalyptic smile of Christ—

And nothing on earth remaining

But a handful of dust in the land of his choice

And a name in song and story—

And Fame to shout with her brazen voice:

He died on the field of glory. e9781620453100_img_9632.gif

On January 18 Confederate scouts reported that