One day in February 1862 a Colonel Pryor arrived at Beauregard’s headquarters with an important question for the Creole. It was not an auspicious time, since Beauregard had recently undergone a serious operation on his throat in Richmond and was still in some pain. History does not tell us what the throat surgery was, but even as a boy there are indications that he had trouble with his throat, and it had become so bad that the doctors had risked this operation, leaving him “swathed in bandages.”10 Colonel Pryor, a member of the Military Committee of the Confederate Congress, was close to Davis. He had come to get Beauregard’s consent to “a plan under consideration in Richmond.”
The plan was Beauregard’s transfer to the Department of the West. Pryor explained that all the higher authorities, Davis included, were deeply concerned with the situation in Sidney Johnston’s command—the defeat of Zollicoffer in Kentucky and the loss of Forts Henry and Donelson in Tennessee had shaken everyone. Johnston needed help to reverse the tide of defeat and reinvigorate the army. The consensus was that Beauregard was the man to help him do it.
Beauregard asked for time. Toombs had gotten word of the plan and advised him against it. “Once you are ordered away,” he told the Creole, “you will not be ordered back.” Beauregard considered the matter further and accepted his transfer. He might disagree with Jefferson Davis, he might even dislike him, but he refused to believe that Davis was the kind of man who would intentionally hurt the Confederate cause by sending him—or any officer—away from the place he could do the most good. Beauregard prepared immediately to depart.
After ordering the evacuation of Columbus, Kentucky, Beauregard established his headquarters first at Jackson, Tennessee, and then at Corinth, Mississippi, from where he began organizing an army to fight the great battle for the fate of the West. Johnston and his army were on their way via the Memphis and Charleston road. Beauregard immediately wrote the governors of a number of nearby Deep South states, appealing to them for new troops. Davis and the authorities in Richmond recognized that the manpower shortage was critical and ordered 10,000 men under Braxton Bragg in Pensacola to board cars for Corinth. Likewise 5,000 under Daniel Ruggles in New Orleans were pressed to Beauregard’s command. By the time Johnston reached Corinth on March 22, the Confederate force under Beauregard totaled more than 25,000, and more were arriving every day. Combined with Johnston’s 20,000, they would make a formidable force, but a hitch quickly developed. Corinth, it seemed, was groaning unhealthily under the strain of so many men. Although it was an important rail junction, it had no large sources of fresh water as had Bowling Green or, for that matter, Pittsburg Landing, and sanitary conditions rapidly deteriorated. The sick list expanded until doctors began to fear epidemics of fever, cholera, or worse.
There was, however, a brighter element in the mix. On March 8 Gen. Earl Van Dorn had lost the Battle of Pea Ridge in far northwest Arkansas but was retreating south with at least 10,000 men. Although this force might be dejected after its loss, Van Dorn had telegraphed that he was headed with all possible speed to join the Rebel army at Corinth. It was mainly a matter of getting the troops across the Mississippi where they could be transported to Corinth on the M&C cars. Johnston and Beauregard were delighted. Van Dorn’s arrival would alter the equation in their favor.
Beauregard, meanwhile, continued to erupt with innovative notions, one of which earned him a measure of ridicule from some of his fellow officers. This was the famous bells-into-cannon appeal that he made to the planters of the Mississippi River Valley. Somewhere in his military history reading Beauregard had been informed that in times of war Europeans often melted down large bronze bells to make cannons, and in times of peace the reverse was true.11
Beauregard suggested melting down church bells and courthouse bells, and in fact an artillery battery was formed after that fashion in 1861 called the Edenton Bells, out of Edenton, North Carolina. He composed an exhortation to the planters of the Mississippi valley that appeared prominently in newspapers from Memphis to New Orleans. It was pure Beauregard: “We want cannon as greatly as any people … I, your general, entrusted with the command of your army embodied of your sons, your kinsman and your neighbors, do now call upon you to send your plantation bells to the nearest railroad depot, to be melted into cannon for the defense of your plantations … Who will not cheerfully send me his bells under such circumstances?”
Surprised and delighted at this startling request, the poets went to work.
Melt the bells Melt the bells
… That the invader will be slain
By the bells.
… And when foes no longer attack
And the lightning cloud of war
Shall roll thunderless and far
We will melt the cannon back,
Into bells.
Braxton Bragg was disdainful, saying they already had more metal in New Orleans than they could use, which was not really so, since the Confederates were reduced to using cotton bales instead of iron plate to protect their gunboats (“cottonclads”). Stories circulated that some 500 bells were found in the former U.S. customs house when New Orleans fell to Union forces, and that they were sent to Boston by the Yankee commander Gen. Benjamin “Beast” Butler to be auctioned off. Documents uncovered later, however, suggest that far fewer bells were collected.
When Sidney Johnston arrived in Corinth and was briefed on the military situation, he immediately agreed with Beauregard that they must strike Grant at Pittsburg Landing before Buell came up with his army of 25,000. Reports from scouts and spies had Buell about two weeks’ march from Grant. Then Johnston did a strange thing. Noting the dark cloud of opprobrium that surrounded him after the loss of Kentucky and Tennessee, he offered Beauregard command of the army.
Beauregard naturally was surprised at this turn of events, and he declined the offer. He later said in his memoir of the battle that Johnston made the gesture “to restore the confidence of the people and the army, so greatly impaired by reason of the recent disasters.”
In a letter to Johnston’s son Preston after the war Beauregard recounted his conversation with Johnston on the subject of command.
“I came to help you,” Beauregard said, “not to supersede you. You owe it to your country, and to your own reputation, to remain at the head of this army. We are now concentrated and can strike a decisive blow. The enemy is not prepared for it. This is not the time to resign. One great victory and everything will be changed for you.”
Beauregard then said that Johnson agreed. “Well, be it so, Together we will do our best to insure success.”
Preston Johnston in his biography disputes this version and says Beauregard “misinterpreted the spirit and intention” of his father’s offer. Preston Johnston says his father offered Beauregard the army because he was already presiding over most of it at Corinth and knew more of the ground firsthand and of the enemy lying at Pittsburg Landing. “The truth was that, coming into this district which he had assigned to Beauregard, Johnston felt disinclined to deprive him of any reputation he might acquire from a victory,” the younger Johnston wrote.
Whatever the reasons, the matter was settled. Beauregard would act as second in command and also be responsible for drawing up the attack order against Grant. To this latter task Beauregard detailed his chief of staff, Colonel Jordan, who had organized and operated the Rose Greenhow spy ring in Washington, D.C., and had been Cump Sherman’s West Point roommate. Like Beauregard, Jordan was a student of Napoleon Bonaparte, and thus the battle plan he drew was essentially Napoleonic in its character and design. It was said that he kept on his desk a copy of Napoleon’s marching orders at the Battle of Waterloo—not, perhaps, a good sign.
First, the army was to be reorganized into four division-size corps. The I Corps was composed of 9,136 men under the bishop general Leonidas Polk; the II Corps, 13,589 under Braxton Bragg, who would also serve as Johnston’s chief of staff during the planning; III Corps, 6,789 under the tactician William Hardee; IV Corps, 6,439 u
nder John Breckinridge of Kentucky, formerly the Vice President of the United States. All were West Pointers except Breckinridge, a Princeton man who was also a lawyer.12
The plan itself was straightforward. The corps would make their way north toward Pittsburg Landing by various country roads and, once there, assemble in successive lines of battle across the front of the mouth of the cornucopia, inside which Grant’s army was blissfully encamped. Hardee’s III Corps would strike first along the three-mile front, followed closely by Bragg’s large II Corps and, behind that, Polk’s 9,000-man I Corps. Breckinridge’s IV Corps would be held in reserve to take advantage of enemy weaknesses or to shore up, if necessary—these latter movements to be directed by Beauregard.
The main thrust of the attack was to fall on the Union left, the object being to drive a wedge between Grant’s army and the river, rolling up the Yankee army northwestward until it was floundering in irretrievable disorder in the miry wastes of Owl Creek, cut off from the landing and any hope of escape. That, anyway, was the plan on paper.
1 In those days it was known as Washington City, presumably to distinguish it from Washington Territory.
2 Here he alludes to the disgraceful behavior of Generals Floyd and Pillow. By the time of Johnston’s letter to Davis both Floyd and Pillow had been suspended pending an investigation.
3 It is noteworthy that after the white flag had been run up Beauregard remained in his room and sent a subordinate to accept the Union surrender, rather than humiliate Maj. Robert Anderson, his former artillery instructor at West Point and a good friend from the old army.
4 In that day to “filibuster” was to take over a nation by force.
5 The code had been devised by Col. Thomas Jordan, Beauregard’s chief of staff, who will figure prominently in the Battle of Shiloh.
6 Rose Greenhow, 1814–64, a Marylander from a slaveholding family, became a secessionist through her friendship with South Carolina’s John C. Calhoun. In 1864 she drowned off the entrance to North Carolina’s Cape Fear River as the small boat she was in was being pursued by a Federal blockade vessel.
7 Notable in this victory was the arrival of the brigade under Thomas J. Jackson, who earned the sobriquet “Stonewall” that day by standing firm against a Union charge.
8 In the South—or at least in Virginia—being an FFV (First Family of Virginia, i.e., those whose ancestors colonized Jamestown and similar sites) is the equivalent of having arrived on the Mayflower.
9 This became the well-known Confederate battle flag that today symbolizes the conflict, as distinguished from the official flag of the Confederacy, which was two red bars on a field of white with a wreath of stars on a blue square.
10 Any operation was hazardous in those times, but anything to do with internal surgery carried special risks because antibiotics had yet to be invented.
11 In 1528, for example, the tsar of Russia melted down the world’s largest bell to make the world’s largest cannon to protect the gates of the Kremlin.
12 There are many various troop strength figures afloat. Illness, details, and other distractions make any exact count meaningless. These numbers come from the Official Records (OR).
CHAPTER 8
I WOULD FIGHT THEM IF THEY WERE A MILLION
EVEN AS MORE REBEL TROOPS ARRIVED IN CORINTH, Beauregard’s throat had not yet healed and continued to cause him trouble and pain, and he was often unable to provide anything but advice and consultation. Still, he insisted on being informed of any important intelligence. In the late hours of April 2, a Wednesday, the commander of a detachment at Bethel Station on the Mobile and Ohio line, about 25 miles north of Corinth, telegraphed headquarters that a mass of Union soldiers had been maneuvering for what appeared to be an attack toward Memphis. Since Bethel Springs was north and east of Pittsburg Landing, the Union troops undoubtedly belonged to the division of Lew Wallace, who was camped at Crump’s Landing about five miles north of Grant’s main body.
From his sickbed Beauregard scribbled a note on the bottom of the telegram saying, “Now is the moment to advance, and strike the enemy at Pittsburg Landing.” He had Colonel Jordan personally deliver it to General Johnston. Johnston consulted Bragg, who, when aroused from sleep in his quarters across the street, studied the message and Beauregard’s recommendation and gave it his approval as well.
Still, Johnston wasn’t so sure. The soldiers needed more instruction, he said, and he wanted to wait for Van Dorn, who would add 10,000 battle-tested men to his army. None of Johnston’s soldiers had been in battle, as at least some of Grant’s had at the river forts. Many did not yet understand the drill commands, so critical in combat, or for that matter a sense of discipline and duty and, worse, total commitment to honor and to the cause. They were green, all right; some had been recruited barely a week earlier.
Bragg pointed out that every day they waited, they ran the risk that Buell’s army would arrive, or that Grant would himself recognize the danger he was in and begin to fortify. Johnston relented and told Jordan to see that each of the troops was issued a hundred rounds of ammunition and three days’ cooked rations. Green or not, they would prepare to march on Pittsburg Landing by 6 a.m.1
This was far easier ordered than done, for heavy rains had muddied the two narrow dirt roads between Corinth and the landing so as to make them almost impassable for troops, let alone artillery, ammunition trains and supply wagons, and the thousands of other vehicles and animals that would have to pass over them during the 20-mile march.
By 10 a.m. next morning, Thursday, April 3, Jordan was still working on the marching order. Johnston, however, decided to start the troops anyway, without waiting for the written order. Utter disarray quickly descended upon the endeavor, owing to the obstinacy of General Polk.
Polk had resigned his officer’s commission almost immediately after graduating from West Point, some 35 years previous, to go into the ministry, and apparently he had not absorbed a sufficient appreciation of real-world military problems beyond his student days—or, as one of his fellow officers put it, “He had been in the cloth too long.” Polk’s corps, it seems, was encamped in the narrow streets of Corinth, through which led the only roads to Pittsburg Landing, with its artillery, baggage, supplies, and thousands of troops clogging the way. By late afternoon it was discovered that Polk had idiotically refused to move without a written order, resulting in gridlock that reminded one officer of “the temple scene in Orlando furioso.”2 Thus Polk prevented the departure of Hardee’s corps, scheduled to attack first, and Bragg’s, which was next. When it was finally sorted out the shadows were long lengthened and Hardee’s people, marching in the dark, would not reach their appointed destinations that night, further disordering the plans.
The expression “confusion reigned supreme” is rarely, if ever, more apt. Brigades, divisions—indeed, whole corps—detoured down wrong roads and paths or encamped in places where other brigades, divisions, and whole corps needed to pass. The plan had been for the army to be on the march at 3 a.m. on April 4, so as to attack at sunrise on the fifth, but along with the marching order foul-up, a torrential all-night downpour drowned these hopes. Streams swelled their banks and covered bridges; roads washed out; men became “anxious to keep their powder dry.”
Units consistently became lost—even guides became lost. Entire trains of overloaded baggage wagons and artillery had to be manhandled to the sides of roads to let troops pass. Sergeants argued with teamsters mired in axle-deep mud, staff officers yelled at unit commanders, and the air became blue with frustrated profanity. Hardee somehow reached his line of departure on time and deployed in line of battle, but Bragg’s corps became entangled with Pope’s and Breckinridge’s, and the end result was a delay of 24 hours, which was probably fatal.
By midmorning, April 4, as Johnston prepared to leave his Corinth headquarters in Mrs. William Inge’s “Rose Cottage,” the hostess approached him, saying, “General, will you let me give you some cake and a couple of sandwiches?”—to
which he replied with a bow, “No thank you, Mrs. Inge, we soldiers travel light.” Sixty years later she remembered, “I curtsied, but I did not say anything. Nobody ever contradicted General Johnston. But I quietly went out into the kitchen and wrapped up two sandwiches and put them in his coat pocket.”
Cavalry scouts were still reporting that the Yankees had not fortified, and there were no signs that Buell had arrived. After spending the night on the road, Johnston and Beauregard arrived on the field in front of Grant about seven next morning, April 5, expecting to launch the attack. But Bragg was short an entire division, which he could not find. After waiting most of the morning Johnston looked at his watch and cried in disgust, “This is perfectly puerile! This is not war!” He rode to the rear, where he found Bragg’s lost division once more obstructed by Polk’s troops. By the time that was sorted out it was past two, and past four by the time Polk got in line, and Breckinridge was still bringing up the rear.
Both Johnston and Beauregard agreed that it was too late to launch the attack that day, and that evening Beauregard got cold feet about the whole plan. About 4 p.m., as Polk was placing his men into a line of battle behind Bragg, he was told that Beauregard wanted to see him immediately. When he reached Beauregard’s headquarters Polk found the second in command talking excitedly with Bragg, and soon Breckinridge rode up. “I am very much disappointed at the delay,” Beauregard “said with much feeling,” according to Polk, who replied, “So am I sir,” and began to explain what he saw as the reasons for his tardiness (namely Bragg). But that was not what Beauregard meant.
“He said he regretted the delay exceedingly,” Polk remembered, “as it would make it necessary to forgo the attack altogether; that our success depended on our surprising the enemy; that this was now impossible, and we must fall back to Corinth.” Polk was in shock. Here they were within a mile and a half of the enemy camps and Beauregard wanted to call it off?