Terrible Swift Sword (8 page)

For his conduct at Stones River, Sheridan was promoted to major general of volunteers. General Ulysses Grant later told newspaperman and author John Russell Young that Sheridan's fighting withdrawal and gallant stand in the cedar brakes on Wilkinson Pike was “a wonderful bit of fighting. It showed what a great general can do even in a subordinate command; for I believe Sheridan in that battle saved Rosecrans's army.”
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THREE MONTHS EARLIER, SHERIDAN had fought in his first major battle as a division commander at Perryville, Kentucky. His frustrating experience reflected the leadership problems that pervaded the then named Army of the Ohio.

Upon reaching Louisville from Mississippi on September 14, 1862, Sheridan reported to Major General William “Bull” Nelson. Nelson gave him command of 1,500 infantrymen—the Pea Ridge Brigade, veterans of their namesake Union victory in southwestern Missouri, where Sheridan had played a supporting role. It was composed of the 2nd and 15th Missouri, and the 36th and 44th Illinois. Nelson told Sheridan that Major General Don Carlos Buell, who was shadowing Braxton Bragg's army through Kentucky, might assign more regiments to Sheridan's brigade.

But the command structure changed when Brigadier General Jefferson C. Davis shot Nelson dead in a hallway of the Galt House. The shooting climaxed a dispute that had swiftly metamorphosed from hot words to action, with Davis flinging a balled-up calling card in Nelson's face and Nelson backhanding Davis. Davis had then borrowed a pistol from a bystander and shot Davis in the chest, killing him. Placed under house arrest, Davis was never prosecuted. He commanded the right wing division beside Sheridan's at Stones River.
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Buell was appointed the Army of the Ohio's commander and overhauled the command structure. One change rankled with Sheridan—Buell's promotion of
Captain Charles Gilbert to major general with command of III Corps. Sheridan argued that he deserved at least a division if an officer whom he ranked in tenure got a corps. Buell agreed and assigned Sheridan the 6,500-man 11th Division.
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Officers and enlisted men were united in their dislike of Gilbert and Buell. War correspondent William F. G. Shanks of the
New York Herald
described Gilbert as a “martinet of the worst sort.” Gilbert rummaged through his men's baggage for contraband, and he had arrested a colonel for allowing his men to climb some persimmon trees. At one point, Gilbert ordered everyone in III Corps to stand at attention every morning from 3 a.m. until daylight.

Buell, openly contemptuous of the volunteer units, tried to impose army regulations on the independent-minded Westerners. Consequently, he made powerful enemies, including Andrew Johnson and Oliver Morton, the war governors, respectively, of Tennessee and Indiana. One night, two dozen officers met secretly to sign a petition to President Abraham Lincoln seeking Buell's removal for incompetence and disloyalty.
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BUELL AND BRAGG REACHED the battleground north of Perryville on October 7, both operating under huge misconceptions. Bragg believed he faced only a fragment of Buell's army, when in fact he faced Buell's entire 58,000-man force, while Buell was under the impression that he faced Bragg's 45,000-man Army of the Mississippi, when Bragg had only 20,000 men with him. Bragg confidently planned to attack; Buell cautiously resolved to stay on the defensive until his entire army had assembled and then to attack on October 9.

October 8 began with one of Sheridan's brigades, commanded by Colonel Daniel McCook—one of Ohio's “Fighting McCooks”—seizing Peters Hill in front of Doctor's Creek, thereby providing fresh water for the thirsty army. The Rebels counterattacked two hours later but were flung back. Sheridan's men drove them south across Chaplin Creek and captured the next hill.

But Gilbert feared that Sheridan's aggressiveness might bring on a general engagement before Buell was ready for one. He ordered Sheridan to pull back to Peters Hill. Sheridan's men dug rifle pits there. Throughout the late morning and into the afternoon, Gilbert sent Sheridan a stream of nagging signals from the rear reminding him not to advance.
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While Gilbert handcuffed Sheridan's division and the rest of III Corps, I Corps, commanded by another “fighting McCook,” Major General Alexander McCook, was in Bragg's bull's-eye on III Corps's left flank.

Bragg attacked I Corps as it was forming a battle line and getting drinking water, driving it back a mile. There, a desperate battle raged all afternoon. III Corps and II Corps, positioned to III Corps's right, did not assist McCook, except for Sheridan's artillery batteries, which raked the Rebel columns.
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THE EXTRAORDINARY SITUATION ON the Union side was due to the fact that Gilbert and Buell were absent and uninformed of developments. Buell had fallen from his horse the previous day and could not ride. He and Gilbert were at the army headquarters camp three miles in the rear. Because of an acoustical anomaly due to the wind and the rolling Chap in Hills, they were unaware that the army was fighting a major battle.

Both were in their tents—Buell on his cot, reading—when the sound of heavy cannonading brought them outside at 2 p.m. Buell told Gilbert to put a stop to “that useless waste of powder.” He then invited Gilbert to stay for dinner. It was leisurely. The two men discussed the next day's battle, unaware that it was being fought there and then.

At about 4 p.m., they heard more loud gunfire, and Gilbert finally rode off to find out what was happening. Along the way, he met couriers who told him that McCook's corps faced annihilation. Gilbert promptly ordered one of his idle III Corps divisions—not Sheridan's—to reinforce McCook. Then, a message from Sheridan arrived: Rebel infantry was poised to attack Peters Hill.
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AFTER BEING REPEATEDLY THROWN back by I Corps, the Confederates had finally broken McCook's lines and forced I Corps's withdrawal to secondary positions, where the Yankees were now under severe attack.

Among the I Corps dead was Brigadier General William Terrill, the West Point cadet whom Sheridan had memorably fought—and with whom, a few days earlier, he had reconciled. The night before the battle, Terrill, Brigadier General James Jackson, and a Colonel Webster had been overheard speculating about their chances of being killed or wounded. None survived the battle.
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At about 4 p.m., as Sheridan watched from atop Rienzi, Confederate infantry charged up Peters Hill, the Rebel commander unaware that he faced not only Sheridan's division but also two others behind it. Unsurprisingly, the assault and two subsequent attempts to take the hill failed. “We found ourselves confronted with more than ten times over our numbers,” wrote Colonel William Dowd of the 24th Mississippi, one of the four regiments that stormed the hill.

The unsuccessful late-afternoon Rebel attacks marked the end of the day's fighting, and the Confederates withdrew toward Perryville. To Sheridan's disappointment, no orders came for a general counterattack.

 

GILBERT INVITED SHERIDAN TO Buell's headquarters, and he stayed for supper. Listening to Buell and his staff officers discuss the day's events, it dawned on the amazed Sheridan that they “were unconscious of the magnitude of the battle that had just been fought.” Indeed, Buell's army had lost 4,200 men, and Bragg's, 3,400.
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Later that night, Buell issued orders to II and III Corps to attack Perryville at first light. I Corps, severely depleted by losses, was excused. In the meadows where I Corps had stood off the Rebel attacks all afternoon, so many dead men lay on the ground “that one could walk on them for rods and not touch the ground,” wrote Emerson Calkins of the 8th Wisconsin Battery. Under a full moon, the living slept among the dead, amid the piercing cries of the wounded.
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BY DAYBREAK, THE REBELS were gone. They had left during the night and were marching south, back to Tennessee. Buell did not pursue them.

The Union army at Perryville turned back the Confederate invasion of Kentucky, but if an energetic leader had been in command, the Army of the Ohio might have destroyed Bragg's army. In his
Personal Memoirs
, Sheridan wrote, “The battle of Perryville remains in history an example of lost opportunities.”
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In the first report of the battle sent to Northern newspapers, Sheridan was listed among the dead. Concerned that his family in Ohio might see the false report, he eagerly read the newspapers that reached the army a few days later—and was relieved to find “that the error had been corrected before my obituary could be written.”
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In the battle's aftermath, Buell and Gilbert were sacked. Neither held field command again during the war.

Buell's successor, General William Rosecrans of the Army of the Mississippi, pursued Bragg into Tennessee. He rechristened his force the Army of the Cumberland, reflecting its new theater of operations.
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AFTER STONES RIVER, DURING the 169 days between January 9 and June 23, 1863, the Army of the Cumberland did little active campaigning. It remained in its camps near Murfreesboro. Bragg's army occupied positions thirty miles to the south along the Duck River, straddling the roads and railroads connecting Nashville and Chattanooga. Bragg's chief operating base was Tullahoma, fifty-five miles northwest of Chattanooga and a primary Rebel supply depot.

Confederate officers clamored for Bragg's removal. At Perryville, he had attacked when he should not have, and at Stones River, he had retreated when he should have stood fast. Despite the dissident officers' best efforts to get Bragg fired, he remained in command.
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Because Stones River was heralded as a great Union victory, Rosecrans and his command escaped criticism for having allowed Bragg to catch the army napping—Sheridan's 3rd Division excepted—and narrowly avoiding a crushing defeat.

After fighting two major battles in three months, the Army of the Cumberland had time to recuperate. During the long hiatus, Rosecrans made some organizational changes; for one thing, he renamed the center and the right and left wings. Alexander McCook's right wing became XX Corps; George Thomas's center was now XIV Corps; and Thomas Crittenden's left wing was renamed XXI Corps.
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The divisions also underwent changes, some superficial, some substantial. Sheridan's 3rd Division remained under McCook's XX Corps, but with new brigade commanders to replace the men killed at Stones River: Brigadier General William Lytle and Colonels Bernard Laiboldt and Luther P. Bradley.

 

WHEN HE BECAME A division commander weeks before Perryville, Sheridan had to learn quickly how to manage his 6,500 men. After Stones River, Sheridan was able to school himself properly in divisional command, and he applied himself with his habitual intensity. “I had to study hard to be able to master all the needs of such a force, to feed and clothe it and guard all its interests,” Sheridan wrote. “When undertaking these responsibilities I felt that if I met them faithfully, recompense would surely come through the hearty response that soldiers always make to conscientious exertion on the part of their superiors.”

Toward that end, Sheridan dedicated himself to their comfort, inasmuch as it was possible for an army in the field to be comfortable. He selected good campsites and made sure that his men had enough food, forage for the livestock, good clothing, and proper equipment to do their jobs. His background as a quartermaster and commissary general—and even his Texas experiences as a hunter—proved valuable. His men approved of his efforts.
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In return, Sheridan expected obedience and discipline. Mistakes he might tolerate but never cowardice—especially in his officers. In such cases, he did not hesitate to make a “mortifying spectacle” of their disgrace.