Читать книгу Life and Military Career of Major-General William Tecumseh Sherman - P. C. Headley - Страница 12

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General Sherman goes to Kentucky—Muldraugh’s Hill—His army weakened—General Buckner’s superior force—Succeeds General Anderson—Writes General McClellan—Interview with Secretary Cameron—Paducah.

WAY on the borders of Kentucky the tramp of war was heard. The hero of Sumter, General Anderson, was in command of the department. With the advent of autumn, the Union Home Guards of Kentucky, with other troops, had gathered to the banks of the Rolling Fork of Salt River—a branch two hundred feet wide and only three feet deep. Two miles from the road crossing lie the Muldraugh’s Hills, rising in romantic outline. Half way upon the ascent runs the railroad, whose bridge is trestle-work ninety feet high; it then enters Tunnel Hill, emerging into an open plain.

General Buckner, the rebel commander, was at Bowling Green, looking toward Louisville, where he boasted he would spend the winter. General Sherman was sent to join General Anderson, the second in command, and moved his force to Muldraugh’s Hills. Buckner had burned the bridge; the Home Guards were withdrawn; and the enemy’s troops numbered twenty-five thousand. To retire to Elizabethtown with the five thousand Union soldiers was the best that General Sherman could do.

At this crisis General Anderson resigned his command on account of ill health, and the mantle of authority fell on General Sherman; no very desirable honor at that time, for “most of the fighting young men of Kentucky had gone to join the rebels. The non-combatants were divided in sentiment, and most of them far from friendly. He lacked men, and most of those he had were poorly armed. He lacked, also, means of transportation and munitions of war; and if the rebel generals had known his actual condition, they could have captured or driven his forces across the Ohio in less than ten days. He applied earnestly and persistently for reënforcements, and, at the same time, took every possible precaution to conceal his weakness from the enemy, as well as from the loyal public. At that time newspaper reporters were not always discreet, and often obtained and published the very facts that should have been concealed. He issued a stringent order excluding all reporters and correspondents from his lines. This brought down upon him the indignation of the press. More unfortunately still, he failed to impress the Secretary of War with the necessities of his position and the importance of holding it. On the 3d of November he telegraphed to General McClellan the condition of affairs, with the number of his several forces, showing them to be everywhere, except at one single point, outnumbered, and concluded his despatch with the emphatic remark, ‘Our forces are too small to do good, and too large to be sacrificed.’

“In reply, General McClellan asks, ‘How long could McCook keep Buckner out of Louisville, holding the railroad, with power to destroy it inch by inch?’—giving no hint of a purpose to send reënforcements, but looking to the probable abandonment of Kentucky. Previous to this, General Sherman had had an interview with Secretary Cameron, in presence of Adjutant-General Thomas, at Lexington, Kentucky, and fully explained to him the situation of his command, and also of the armies opposed to him; and, on being asked what force was necessary for a successful forward movement in his department, answered, ‘Two hundred thousand men.’ By the 1st of November, Adjutant-General Thomas’s official report of this conversation, in all its details, was published in most of the newspapers of the country, giving the enemy full knowledge of many important facts relating to General Sherman’s department. He was too weak to defend his lines; and the enemy knew it. He had no hope of reënforcements, and, withal, was evidently in discredit with the War Department, as being too apprehensive of the power, strength, and resources of the enemy. He, therefore, felt he could not successfully conduct the campaign, and asked to be relieved. He was succeeded by General Buell, who was at once reënforced, and enabled to hold his defensive positions until Grant, the following spring, should advance down the Mississippi and up the Cumberland.

“General Sherman was now set down as ‘crazy,’ and quietly retired to the command of Benton Barracks, near St. Louis. The evidence of his insanity was his answer to the Secretary of War—that to make a successful advance against the enemy, then strongly posted at all strategic points from the Mississippi to Cumberland Gap, would require an army two hundred thousand strong! The answer was the inspiration or the judgment of a military genius; but to the mind of Mr. Secretary Cameron it was the prophecy of a false wizard.

“It has been said of the Spaniards, ‘that they generally managed to have an army when they had no general, and a general when they had no army;’ and during the first years of the war we surpassed in folly their example. It was vainly expected the rebellion could effectually be put down without either a general or an army, by a mere flourish of trumpets—as if the foundations of the Confederacy, like the walls of Jericho, would yield and fall at the blowing of a ram’s horn. Subsequent events have sufficiently vindicated General Sherman’s opinion expressed in his reply to the Secretary of War.

“Meantime General Halleck succeeded to the command of the Department of the West, and General Sherman was not long allowed to remain in charge of a recruiting-rendezvous at St. Louis. When General Grant moved on Fort Donelson, Sherman was intrusted with the forwarding to him of reënforcements and supplies from Paducah. General Grant subsequently acknowleged himself ‘greatly indebted for his promptness’ in discharging that duty. After the capture of that stronghold, General Sherman was put in command of the fifth division of Grant’s army at Pittsburg Landing. At the same time Beauregard was industriously collecting the rebel forces at Corinth, a strong strategic point, well fortified, thirty miles distant. Grant had moved up from Fort Donelson, and Buell was on his way.”

How grandly General Grant and Commodore Foote did their work at Forts Henry and Donelson! What deeds of valor were performed by our Western boys, whose couch at night was the snowy earth, reddened with the blood of carnage!

But while that storm of conflict was raging, an officer who had no superior, and longed to enter its perils and glory for his native land and his own loyal West, was patiently, and “without observation,” sending, with an intelligent appreciation of what was needed, and remarkable promptness, supplies for the heroes of the great border battles. General Grant knew the value of that service, and warmly expressed in his despatches his “indebtedness to General Sherman” for his activity, his timely and indispensable aid, apart from the bloody field.

My reader will recollect that the fall of Fort Donelson, about the middle of February, 1862, startled the whole of “rebeldom.” The strongest fortress in the West was taken. The next position in importance was Corinth, because at the junction of the Memphis and Charleston and the Mobile and Ohio Railroads. Memphis, the enemy knew, must soon be the prize for which our victorious troops would strike.

“Corinth must be defended!” was the cry from the South. General Beauregard, the hero of Sumter and Bull Run, hastened to the field of conflict, to lend the power of his name and generalship to the cause of treason.

General Grant had moved the gunboats after the surrender of Fort Donelson down the Cumberland and up the Tennessee River to Pittsburg Landing, making Savannah, ten miles distant, his own headquarters.

General Buell, with the Army of the Ohio, was marching toward this point to join him, from the pursuit of General Johnston through Nashville. The rebel officers decided to concentrate their forces, by the railroads in their possession, unexpectedly upon the Union army before Buell could get there, and after annihilating it, turn upon him and scatter his battalions. The enemy kept his counsels well, while preparing to hurl his legions upon our columns.