Rhea Cole
Major
- Joined
- Nov 2, 2019
- Location
- Murfreesboro, Tennessee
CAVALRY RAIDS DESTROYED THE CONFEDERACY.
How & Why Did That Happen?
Map of Louisville KY University of Louisvillle
During the Civil War, Louisville KY was the tip of a funnel. Everything that the Army of the Cumberland needed from mules to paper that an army needed flowed into Louisville from all points northward. Up the Ohio River, Cincinnati was the source of massive amounts of meat. Via the Erie Canal, a steady flow of war material from New England was shipped. The rich black soil of the Midwest produced mountains of hay & grain that supplied the daily 26 pound ration that every horse required. Regiments of infantry reported to Louisville for transport. Like a funnel, all this bounty flowed out one way, the Louisville & Nashville Rail Road.How & Why Did That Happen?
Map of Louisville KY University of Louisvillle
1863 Rail Road Map of Kentucky. Library of Congress
Map of Nashville 1863.
The L&N crosses the Cumberland River from the north. The N&C exits southeast.
The Union Army connected the two lines & constructed the Nashville & Northwestern RR.
Library o fCongress
Construction of the N&C was a heroic piece of engineering. Starting at Chattanooga, the line snaked along the Tennessee, crossed at Bridgeport, Alabama & confronted Cumberland Mountain. A 2,200 foot long tunnel was driven through the mountain using slave labor. Slaves did not do the blackpowder blasting, they were far too valuable for that. Irish emigrants were hired for dangerous jobs. Adds in paper offered jobs to "Irish N---gers"... 19th Century bigotry never disappoints. The line reached Murfreesboro, 30 miles south east of Nashville on July 4, 1851. In February 1854, the line was opened. N&C President made a personal trip to England to purchase rails that saved the company $50,000 dollars over domestically manufactured rails. At Chattanooga, service to Atlanta via the Western & Atlantic Rail Road completed the connection with the deep South.
2,200 foot long Cumberland Mountain Tunnel, is also called the Cowan Tunnel through Montagle, Tennessee.
Today, the tunnel & the line to Nashville is still has a single track.
CSX trains shunt onto the siding in Murfreesboro just like they did during the Civil War.
Cumberland River rail road bridge built by the Union Army. Note the guard towers, gate & wall with gun ports.
Not so obvious is that the center section balances on the drum shaped pier & can swing open to allow boats to pass.
April 14, 2020 the river is over the boy on the horse's head. A bridge master still mans the swinging RR bridge today.
The war over the rail road was something that the world had never seen before. The rail connection to Nashville was just over one year old. Both the AoT & the AoC were starting from zero. Both armies would fall back on their strengths to find a solution. For the AoT it was almost a no brainer. The one military asset they had that was superior to their opponent was cavalry. In 1862, the cavalry of the AoC was small in number, poorly led & lacked basic equipment. Some of the cavalrymen had no weapons of any kind.
Thousands of men, following the Confederate practice, arrived at recruiting centers with their own horses & tack. A large, well mounted cavalry force grew organically. All over the great horse country of Middle Tennessee, squadrons of mounted men formed units with fanciful names & elected their officers. Organizing that gaggle of often eccentric horsemen into a disciplined military force was no easy task. In some fundamental ways, it was an impossible one.
From time out of mind, mounted men had hit & run the supply lines of opposing armies. Sending the large force of mounted men against the L&N was perfectly logical & rational in a military sense. Beyond that, it generated wonderful press & bigger than life heroes. The image of Morgan & his feathered hat making fools out of the Yankees as he burn bridges all along the L&N was the living confirmation of the superiority of Southern manhood over the pinch chested Yankee. The doctrine of using calvary to destroy rail roads was born in the spotlight of celebrity raiders like Morgan.
Blockhouse guarding the rail road near Chattanooga 1863. Library of Congress
The AoC fell back on the depth of engineering skill belonging to the men in its ranks. The pressure put on the rail road by both man & nature cannot be exaggerated. Anybody with flint & steel could burn a rail road bridge. Seasonal torrents washing out multiple bridges was a common occurrence. In the kind of time compressing effort that only war provokes, an entire branch of military was created. Rail road regiments ran & maintained the rolling stock. Engineering units deployed prefabricated bridge sections of a standard design that could be erected in an astonishingly short time. As Joe Johnston observed, Union rail road repair units could repair a brake in the line faster than one of Wheeler's officers could report it had happened.
The insurmountable problem faced by Confederate cavalry leaders was a fundamental law of interdiction. It is not enough to destroy a bridge one time, it has to be destroyed over & over again. Cavalry was incapable of actually doing fatal damage to the rails. Any break they made was repaired very quickly & the trains went on running. Cavalry raids were like what happens when a person only takes enough antibiotic to kill off the weak germs. What is left are super bugs that are immune to the drug.
Bridges are obviously vulnerable, so every bridge had its own blockhouse strong enough to withstand anything but a formal assault with artillery. When Wheeler tried to cut the L&N between Nashville & Murfreesboro in 1863, he couldn't even damage a single bridge. When guerrilla bands attacked the line, every house within miles of the attack were burned & the occupants ejected from the area. The spindly thread of the L&N/N&C became a sold backbone that no mere cavalry raid could harm. After the spring of 1863, no matter what they did Confederate cavalry raiders were incapable of interdicting the vital supplies that made the Nashville to Atlanta campaign possible.
Unfortunately for the Confederate cause, the infatuation with cavalry raids long outlasted their ability to do more than annoy Union rail roaders. Tens of thousands of irreplaceable men & horses were wasted on raids that did nothing to stop the flow of supplies that fueled not only the Army of the Cumberland but the Army of the Tennessee & Army of the James that became Sherman's army group. Every man & horse that participated in the repeated cavalry attacks on the rail road was dead loss to the Confederate army. It is not an exaggeration to say that the engineers & logicians of the AoC triumphed over the cavaliers with the feathers in their hats. By continuing to fling themselves at the rail road long after it was obvious that they were doing no harm the Confederate cavalry destroyed any chance the Confederacy had to winng the war.
Note:
Sherman, of all people, demonstrated what it took to destroy a rail road beyond repair. After he left Atalanta on his March to the Sea, the men withdrawing to Chattanooga took up the rails & ties as they went. They left nothing but graded earth in their wake. When the war was over, the same material was used to rebuild it.
Last edited: