145 Years Ago Today

[richard]

On this date 145 years ago, General Rosecrans made is exit from Murfreesboro and started his campaign to remove the Army of Tennessee from the state across the Tennessee River. This campaign removed the largest Confederate army from the state thus giving the Union almost complete control of the rail system in the state.

The campaign began when Col. John T. Wilder led his bragade south along the Manchester Pike and charged through Hoover's Gap. There his men met General Bate's Division and held them off for over 6 hours in a driving rain storm that lasted for 13 days.

Though over looked by many, this operation along with the fall of Vicksburg and Gettesburg happened within the same week. With the fall of Middle Tennessee and its large stores of grain and other supplies needed by the the southern armys, this was a major blow. Wartrace and Shelbyville were major supply depots for the Army of Tennessee. The rail line from Atlanta to Shelbyville was taken away by this action.

Though bloodless compaired to Getteysburg and Vicksburg, this campaign was just as important as those afore mentioned.

[ole]

Thanks for bringing that up, Richard. With all the excitement over Gettysburg and Vicksburg, we tend to forget campaigns of equal importance.

ole

[5fish]

I simple request:

What was the name(s) of the engagement(s) during this 13 day period....I assume they were small on scale compared to Gettysburg and Vicksburg...


IIlumnation needed...

[30th_il]

If I am not mistaken, I think it was the Tullahoma Campaign

[richard]

The two major engagments were at Hoovers Gap and then just a few miles west and north at Liberty Gap. There was some fighting at Shelbyville. But the major outcome of the campaign was that it opened up the whole of Middle Tennessee to the Union. This extended east to and included Chattanooga. The only rail transportation that the Confederets had was the line from Atlanta to Chattanooga. All roads north from Chattanooga were blocked at Chattanooga or Knoxville.

[larry_cockerham]

Would the Nashville-Decatur line not have been open? Of course, Nashville was occupied by US Army by then.

[richard]

Larry, as you stated the Nashville-Decatur RR was under the hand of the Union at Nashville. Doing a quich search I discovered that a Union Garrison was at Decatur on July 19th 1863. That means that the Nashville-Decatur and also the Memphis-Charleston RR was also Union in union hands.

Just a short off topic fact. In October of 1864, John Bell Hood attempted to take Decatur with his Army of Tennessee. General Robert Granger with only 5000 troops sent Hood packing as they tried to cross the river and head toward Nashville. Confederate losses were about 500 in that action. Hoods Failure at Decatur forced him to move ****her west and loose valuable time.

[Jules362]

At the Potomac crossings near Harper's Ferry, Longstreet and A.P. Hill headed into Maryland. There was a short, brisk skirmish in the vicinity of the old Antietam battlefield.

Rosecrans was doing well in his attack on Bragg in middle Tennessee and Grant was receiving reinforcements and putting more pressure on Pemberton inside Vicksburg.

In Washington, Rear Admiral Dahlgren at the Navy Yard was ordered to sea to replace Admiral Du Pont at Port Royal, S.C., as commander of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron.

[Jules362]

General Lee gave JEB Stuart permission to leave the Army of Northern Virginia, giving up his role of being the eyes of the commander, and to join Lee on the other side of the Potomac. Lee didn't see Stuart again until the middle of the Battle of Gettysburg.

In middle Tennessee, Bragg had his hands full with Rosecrans. Jefferson Davis tried to get Bragg to send troops to General Joe Johnston, who was trying to relieve Vicksburg. Bragg declined, citing his own problems.

Someone named Corporal Butler of Company D, 15th Illinois Volunteer Infantry, at Vicksburg, Mississippi, wrote in his journal:

"The next day we were ordered to hold ourselves in readiness for action. The artillery received orders to look to their ammunition. On the morrow, at four o'clock A.M., a general cannonading along the whole line was ordered and to be kept up until ten o'clock A.M. The 15th lay just in the rear, supporting several heavy siege guns and some twenty-pound Parrott guns. We waited with impatience for the ball to open.

"Soon the signal gun was fired; then, as if by magic, the hoarse notes of hundreds of pieces of artillery shook the ground. It seemed as though the very earth was going to open and swallow us up...We lay where we could note the effect of this cannonading. Our solid shot would strike the rebel works, filling the air with a cloud of dirt. The air was full of screeching shells, crossing each other's track and finally bursting in town or in the rebel camp. For six hours this terrible cannonading was kept up but it failed to elicit a response from the rebels. They remained quiet as the grave.

"While our regiment was on picket one day, Company I caught eleven rebs trying to steal through our lines. They had two hundred thousand percussion caps and a dispatch from Johnston to Pemberton in cipher....Occasionally we would succeed in getting hold of a paper printed in Vicksburg. It was printed on wall paper and with a miserable type, fit emblems [note: that's what it says] of the waning fortunes of the Confederacy. This paper would have flaming editorials telling about Johnston, how that, at the proper moment, he would attack and annihilate Grant...Desertions became quite frequent from the rebel lines. They would have deserted by regiments if they could have gotten away...."

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Information on this post, and the one just above this is taken from "The Civil War Years: A Day by Day Chronicle" by Robert E. Denney