African American troops
The Emancipation Proclamation also allowed Black men to serve in the Union army. This had been illegal under a federal law enacted in 1792 (although African Americans had served in the army in the War of 1812 and the law had never applied to the navy). With their stake in the Civil War now patently obvious, African Americans joined the service in significant numbers. By the end of the war, about 180,000 African Americans were in the army, which amounted to about 10 percent of the troops in that branch, and another 20,000 were serving in the navy.
Still, military service did not erase the bigotry that characterized Northern society at the time. African American soldiers were placed in segregated units, few of which saw action in battle, and their regiments were commanded by white men (see Robert Gould Shaw). Only a handful of African Americans achieved an officer’s rank. Most Black troops were put on guard duty or asked to build forts. (The U.S. armed forces would not be integrated until 1948.) Because they tended to be in camps, these men were at far greater risk of contracting a disease than were troops on the march. As a result, nearly three-fourths of the 40,000 African American soldiers who died in the war succumbed to either disease or infection rather than battle wounds. Initially, Black troops were paid significantly less than their white counterparts. White privates made $13 a month, and their uniforms were paid for. Blacks earned $10 a month, with $3 deducted each month for uniform costs. By June 1864 this had become enough of an embarrassment that Congress deemed that white and Black troops should be paid equally and made the action retroactive. African American soldiers were routinely issued equipment that was much older or poorly made in comparison with the equipment their white comrades received. Black soldiers also faced a threat that no white troops faced: when they were captured by the rebels, Black troops could be put into slavery, whether they had been free or slaves before the proclamation. They also suffered much harsher treatment if they were held as prisoners of war.
Despite the many disadvantages under which they laboured, Black troops who saw battle performed admirably. African Americans participated directly in fights at Milliken’s Bend, Louisiana; Port Hudson, Louisiana; Fort Wagner, South Carolina, where the famed 54th Massachusetts Regiment lost two-thirds of its officers and nearly half its enlisted men; Petersburg, Virginia; and Nashville, Tennessee. Twenty-five Black men were awarded the Medal of Honor for their bravery during the war.
Jennifer L. WeberThe war in the west
Military events, meanwhile, were transpiring in other arenas.
Trans-Mississippi theatre and Missouri
In the Trans-Mississippi theatre covetous Confederate eyes were cast on California, where ports for privateers could be seized, as could gold and silver to buttress a sagging treasury. Led by Henry Sibley, a Confederate force of some 2,600 invaded the Union’s Department of New Mexico, where the Federal commander, Edward Canby, had but 3,810 men to defend the entire vast territory. Although plagued by pneumonia and smallpox, Sibley battered a Federal force at Valverde on February 21, 1862, and captured Albuquerque and Santa Fe on March 23. But at the crucial engagement of La Glorieta Pass (known also as Apache Canyon, Johnson’s Ranch, or Pigeon’s Ranch) a few days later, Sibley was checked and lost most of his wagon train. He had to retreat into Texas, where he reached safety in April but with only 900 men and 7 of 337 supply wagons left.
Farther eastward, in the more vital Mississippi valley, operations were unfolding as large and as important as those on the Atlantic seaboard. Missouri and Kentucky were key border states that Lincoln had to retain within the Union orbit. Commanders there—especially on the Federal side—had greater autonomy than those in Virginia. Affairs began inauspiciously for the Federals in Missouri when Nathaniel Lyon’s 5,000 Union troops were defeated at Wilson’s Creek on August 10, 1861, by a Confederate force of more than 10,000 under Sterling Price and Benjamin McCulloch, each side losing some 1,200 men. But the Federals under Samuel Curtis decisively set back a gray-clad army under Earl Van Dorn at Pea Ridge (Elkhorn Tavern), Arkansas, on March 7–8, 1862, saving Missouri for the Union and threatening Arkansas.
Operations in Kentucky and Tennessee
The Confederates to the east of Missouri had established a unified command under Albert Sidney Johnston, who manned, with only 40,000 men, a long line in Kentucky running from near Cumberland Gap on the east through Bowling Green to Columbus on the Mississippi River. Numerically superior Federal forces cracked this line in early 1862. First, George H. Thomas broke Johnston’s right flank at Mill Springs (Somerset), Kentucky, on January 19. Then, in February, Grant, assisted by Federal gunboats commanded by Andrew H. Foote and acting under Halleck’s orders, ruptured the centre of the Southern line in Kentucky by capturing Fort Henry on the Tennessee River and Fort Donelson, 11 miles (18 km) to the east, on the Cumberland River (both forts located in Tennessee). The Confederates suffered more than 16,000 casualties at the latter stronghold—most of them taken prisoner—against Federal losses of fewer than 3,000, and Grant’s victories at Forts Henry and Donelson marked the first real successes for the Union in the war. Johnston’s left anchor fell when Pope seized New Madrid, Missouri, and Island Number Ten in the Mississippi River in March and April. This forced Johnston to withdraw his remnants quickly from Kentucky through Tennessee and to reorganize them for a counterstroke. This seemingly impossible task he performed splendidly.
The Confederate onslaught came at Shiloh, Tennessee, near Pittsburg Landing, a point on the west bank of the Tennessee River to which Grant and William T. Sherman had incautiously advanced. In a herculean effort, Johnston pulled his forces together and, with 40,000 men, suddenly struck a like number of unsuspecting Federals on April 6. Johnston hoped to crush Grant before the arrival of Don Carlos Buell’s 20,000 Federal troops, approaching from Nashville, Tennessee. A desperate combat ensued, with Confederate assaults driving the Federals perilously close to the river. But, at the height of success, Johnston was mortally wounded. The Southern attack then lost momentum, and Grant held on until reinforced by Buell. On the following day the Federals counterattacked and drove the Confederates, now under Beauregard, steadily from the field, forcing them to fall back to Corinth, in northern Mississippi. Grant’s victory cost him 13,047 casualties, compared with Southern losses of 10,694. Halleck then assumed personal command of the combined forces of Grant, Buell, and Pope and inched forward to Corinth, which the Confederates had evacuated on May 30. With this battle and its huge losses, the people of both the Union and the Confederacy came to realize that this war would be longer and costlier than many on either side had thought in 1861.
Beauregard, never popular with Davis, was superseded by Braxton Bragg, one of the president’s favourites. Bragg was an imaginative strategist and an effective drillmaster and organizer, but he was also a weak tactician and a martinet who was disliked by a number of his principal subordinates. Leaving 22,000 men in Mississippi under Price and Van Dorn, Bragg moved through Chattanooga, Tennessee, with 30,000 troops, hoping to reconquer the state and carry the war into Kentucky. Some 18,000 other Confederate soldiers under E. Kirby Smith were at Knoxville, Tennessee. Buell led his Federal force northward to save Louisville, Kentucky, and to force Bragg to fight. Occupying Frankfort, Kentucky, Bragg failed to move promptly against Louisville. In the ensuing Battle of Perryville on October 8, Bragg, after an early advantage, was halted by Buell and impelled to fall back to a point south of Nashville. Meanwhile, Federals under William S. Rosecrans had checked Price and Van Dorn at Iuka, Mississippi, on September 19 and had repelled their attack in the Battle of Corinth on October 3–4.
Buell—like McClellan cautious and a Democrat—was slow in his pursuit of the retreating Confederates and, despite his success at Perryville, was relieved of his command by Lincoln on October 24. His successor, Rosecrans, was able to safeguard Nashville and then move southeastward against Bragg’s army at Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He scored a partial success by bringing on the bloody Battle of Stones River (or Murfreesboro, December 31, 1862–January 2, 1863). Again, after first having the better of the combat, Bragg was finally contained and forced to retreat. Of some 41,400 men, Rosecrans lost 12,906, while Bragg suffered 11,739 casualties out of about 34,700 effectives. Although it was a strategic victory for Rosecrans, his army was so shaken that he felt unable to advance again for five months, despite the urgings of Lincoln and Halleck.
Warren W. Hassler Jennifer L. Weber