The Smoke at Dawn: A Novel of the Civil War (71 page)

On November 29, Sherman begins his march toward Knoxville, his troops destroying the railroad along the way, preventing any possibility that Longstreet might yet return to assist Bragg’s defeated army. Sherman is told that Burnside’s desperate plea for aid comes not only from the threat by Longstreet’s assaults, but by the effectiveness of Longstreet’s siege of the city, which has reduced supplies, especially rations, to starvation levels. When Sherman arrives in Knoxville, he is stunned, and annoyed, to discover that, days before, Burnside has defeated Longstreet’s army, driving the rebels away, that Longstreet has withdrawn completely from his siege of the city, retreating eastward toward Virginia. In addition, Burnside welcomes Sherman by offering an elaborate feast, giving lie to the claims of imminent starvation that Burnside has used to gather support for his plight. Disgusted, Sherman withdraws his army back toward Chattanooga.

For the first time in the war, the Confederate forces hold no significant position anywhere in the state of Tennessee.

In the east, Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia is still recovering from their crushing defeat at Gettysburg, and the Federal War Department looks to the new year by anticipating what could become a last-gasp campaign by Lee to preserve his army. But if any significant offensive is to be carried out, it will naturally involve George Meade’s Army of the Potomac. Few in Washington have confidence that Meade has the aggressiveness to drive southward, that no matter Meade’s victory at Gettysburg, Lee is still a dangerous foe. A frustrated Abraham Lincoln has grown weary with the parade of sluggish or inept commanders in the East, and the meteoric rise in the reputation of Ulysses Grant inspires Lincoln to make a radical change in the Federal army’s hierarchy. In March 1864, Grant is rewarded for his successes in the West with a promotion to lieutenant general, a rank previously held by only two men: George Washington and Winfield Scott. Grant is called to Washington, and meets with Lincoln, who pointedly gives Grant responsibility for the entire Federal army, with the assurances that, as long as Grant is aggressive in his pursuit
of the enemy, no one in Washington will interfere. Grant is impressed by Lincoln’s candor, and accepts the promise that he will be free to conduct the war his way. Ironically, with the promotion, he now outranks his nemesis, Henry Halleck, who remains in Washington as a titular chief of staff.

To no one’s surprise, Grant names William T. Sherman as his successor in command of the armies in the West. While Grant plans for the spring offensive in the East, the pursuit and destruction of Lee’s army, Sherman plans the campaign designed to drive a hard wedge into Georgia, with the goal of capturing the critical rail and supply hub of Atlanta.

Since the conquest of Vicksburg, in July 1863, the Federal army and navy maintain uncontested control of the Mississippi River, which severs the Confederacy in two. Richmond is helpless to support those troops west of the river (the Trans-Mississippi Department), while the Confederate government reluctantly accepts, even if their president does not, that the enormously valuable natural and human resources from Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas are simply lost. Between the river and the inevitable pursuit of Lee in Virginia lies the dwindling hopes for supply and reinforcement for the battered Confederate armies. The Confederate hierarchy understands the value of Atlanta as well, and with winter settling upon both armies, preparations are made for the defense of the city, the Confederate command keeping alive a faint optimism that Sherman’s army can be destroyed. Both sides are well aware that Grant’s pursuit of Lee is of critical importance to the survival of the Confederate government in Richmond. But if Sherman conquers Georgia, the Confederacy will be divided once again, what will most likely end the war.

Arrives at his new base of command in Dalton, Georgia, on November 27. Still eager to place blame for every failure, Bragg issues a note to his senior commanders, requesting lists of names of those officers who were found wanting during the campaign, writing to Joseph
Johnston, “The disastrous panic … is unexplainable.” But explain he does, in a letter to Jefferson Davis, in which he accuses General John Breckinridge of continuous drunkenness, labels General Benjamin Cheatham “dangerous,” and requests “an investigation into the causes of the defeat.” No formal inquiry is convened.

Despite nurturing his own blamelessness, Bragg understands the inevitable, and on November 28, in a gesture that Bragg concedes is entirely appropriate, he writes to Davis, formally accepts responsibility for the disaster at Chattanooga, and asks to be relieved of command. This request has gone to Richmond before, but to Bragg’s surprise, this time Jefferson Davis does not stand in his corner. On November 30, Adjutant General Samuel Cooper replies to Bragg, “Your request to be relieved has been submitted to the president, who … directs me to notify you that you are relieved from command.” Bragg is shocked by the speed with which Davis accepts his resignation, considers it a form of betrayal, a Bragg hallmark.

He leaves the army on December 2, joins his wife, Elise, at Warm Springs, Georgia, where he spends the winter months in angry reflections on the various injustices inflicted upon him. His wife, as always, is his greatest advocate, insisting that the president must certainly be aware “that only [Bragg] alone can repair this great disaster.” Davis does not agree, and appoints William Hardee as Bragg’s successor. Hardee accepts only reluctantly, but by year’s end relinquishes the command to his superior, Joseph Johnston.

In the months following his removal, Bragg continues to insist that he is the victim of a conspiracy, writing in a letter to a friend, “The whole clamor against me was by a few individuals of rank and their immediate partisans, who were actuated by … ambition and revenge.”

But Bragg has his supporters, and in February 1864, when he petitions for service (“any service”) in the army, Davis appoints him to the informal post of military adviser to the president, allegedly placing Bragg in command of “the conduct of military operations in the armies of the Confederacy.” The appointment pleases those in the army who still support Bragg, but infuriates much of official Richmond, and a great number of Southern civilians, who fill newspapers with vitriolic editorials. But the position is symbolic at best, Davis
making the appointment as a flicker of loyalty to his friend. General William Mackall, Bragg’s former chief of staff, acknowledges this when he writes, “Bragg … is in honorable exile.”

Bragg is allowed to return to the field in late 1864, when he commands the garrison at Wilmington, North Carolina, and then as a corps commander under Joseph Johnston in the war’s final campaign in North Carolina. He is blamed for defeat once more, after the fall of Fort Fisher, on the Atlantic coast, and accomplishes no real success against Sherman’s advancing army.

At the war’s end, Bragg joins the fugitive Jefferson Davis in South Carolina, and like Davis, is captured by Federal troops in Georgia on May 9, 1865. Unlike Davis, Bragg is paroled by Federal authorities. He moves to New Orleans, where his skills as an engineer land him the lucrative position as chief of that city’s water utilities. But Bragg still demonstrates a remarkable talent for making enemies, and when forced to resign that position, he considers leaving the country, when he is offered a military command by the government of Egypt. Though tempted, Bragg will not make such a radical change, and he relocates instead to Mobile, Alabama, and then, in 1874, to Galveston, Texas, where he serves as chief engineer for the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railway.

Always the unreconstructed Confederate, Bragg resists any relationship with anyone who wore blue, and writes viciously negative commentaries for the Southern Historical Society Papers, continuing the mostly one-sided feuds with anyone in either army who opposed him.

He dies in Galveston in 1876, at age fifty-nine, and is buried in Magnolia Cemetery in Mobile.

In a perfect display of the contradictions that surround Bragg and his career, Confederate general Arthur Manigault, whose troops anchor the ill-fated center of Missionary Ridge, writes in his memoirs,

In contrast, a Richmond newspaper offers in its editorial, “An army of asses led by a lion is better than an army of lions led by an ass.”

Referring to President Davis’s loyalty to Bragg, and to other officers who were elevated in rank by their friendship to Davis rather than any skills on the battlefield, Ulysses Grant writes in his memoirs, “Mr. Davis had an exalted opinion of his own military genius. On several occasions during the war he came to the relief of the Union army by reason of his superior military genius.”

Cleburne and his division are recognized for their extraordinary defense of Tunnel Hill, and the successful defense at Ringgold Gap, with an Official Resolution of Thanks from the Confederate Congress, and the “Stonewall of the West” becomes one of the Confederacy’s brightest stars. Many in the Confederate high command, including William Hardee and Robert E. Lee, consider him the finest field commander in the Army of Tennessee.

He spends the winter in a defensive posture near Dalton, Georgia, anticipating another Federal campaign. But the Federal army around Chattanooga and Ringgold makes good use of the winter for the same refit and rest so desperately needed by the Confederates. Cleburne’s division does not see combat until May 8, 1864, when he is attacked at Mill Creek Gap, just outside Dalton. The fight begins a campaign that will push both armies toward the city of Atlanta. The fights that take place throughout the next few weeks are bloody and in some cases, indecisive. But the Confederate commander, Joseph Johnston, adopts a strategy of tactical retreat in a way that infuriates Richmond, where it is believed that Johnston has conceded too much
open ground to Sherman’s forces without exacting the proper toll in blood. In July 1864, Jefferson Davis’s frustrations with Johnston’s lack of success against Sherman’s army come to a head, and Johnston is relieved. He is replaced by John Bell Hood.

The change does not improve Confederate fortunes. Cleburne is elevated to corps command, but under Hood, his skillful handling of troops does not measure up to what Cleburne had accomplished the year before. By September, Hood loses the battles for Atlanta, and thus he loses the city. Unable to dislodge Sherman’s forces from their new strongholds, Hood attempts to pull Sherman away by attacking Sherman’s supply lines northward into Tennessee. But Sherman remains in Atlanta, and to counteract Hood’s “invasion” of Tennessee, George Thomas is given command of the enormous Federal forces positioned at Nashville. Despite grossly inferior numbers, and questionable tactics, Hood drives northward in a fanciful effort to recapture Nashville.

Cleburne, who has never found favor with Hood, returns to division command. On November 30, 1864, during the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee, Cleburne loses two horses to enemy fire, and thus leads his troops against the staunch Federal defenses on foot. He is shot through the heart and dies immediately. He is thirty-six years old.

Cleburne’s legacy spreads far beyond the battlefield. During the winter camps in 1863–64, Cleburne authors what he believes is a significant solution to the South’s shortage of manpower. With the same passion that he exhibits in the field, Cleburne insists that the South possesses an enormous untapped resource, and proposes that the slaves be freed, in return for their service in the Confederate army. To stunned officers who question this principle, Cleburne responds “they could be induced to fight as gallantly as the Yankees.” He argues vociferously that any costs involved in ending slavery would be offset by the enormous triumph of independence. “As between the loss of independence and the loss of slavery, we assume that every patriot will freely give up the … Negro slave rather than be a slave himself.” It is a lofty ideal, but not one that finds a receptive audience in Richmond, nor throughout most of the army, including a response from General William Bate that Cleburne’s notions are “hideous and objectionable
 … the serpent of abolitionism.” To salvage Cleburne’s well-earned reputation, the proposal is quietly put aside, and he is allowed to continue his military career.

His premature death is marked by an additional tragedy. In January 1864, Cleburne attends the wedding of his commander, William Hardee, during which Cleburne is introduced to Sue Tarleton. The two become utterly infatuated with each other and within short weeks, they are engaged. But the duties of the army prevent the luxury of a wedding, and upon learning of Cleburne’s death, Sue goes into mourning for more than a year. Though she marries another Confederate officer three years later, her health never recovers, and she dies in 1868, at age twenty-eight.

After a fund-raising effort by many, including his former staff officer and law partner, Learned Mangum, a monument is created, and Cleburne is memorialized at the Evergreen Cemetery in Helena, Arkansas. Confederate general George Gordon eulogizes Cleburne with these words: “A truer patriot or knightlier soldier never fought and never died. Valor never lost a braver son or freedom a nobler champion. He loved his country, its soldiers, its banners, its battle-flags, its sovereignty, its independence. For these he fought, for these he fell.”