After the twin battles of Iuka and Corinth, William Rosecrans was given full credit for the defeat of Earl Van Dorn's forces and rewarded with promotion to major general. But Grant was not happy; he had hoped Rosecrans would finish off Van Dorn instead of letting him escape to his supply base in Holly Springs, deep in enemy territory. As September 1862 ended, the Union cause was looking more solid; Robert E. Lee had retreated into Virginia after the terrible bloodbath at Antietam and Lincoln felt confident enough to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Meanwhile, the Confederate invasion of Kentucky also stalled--the region had been baked by a summer drought and provisions and water were scarce. The Kentuckians had failed to rally to the Confederate cause and Braxton Bragg estimated that he could count on one hand the number of new recruits he got for his army. "These people are too well-off and have too many fat cattle to fight," he complained.
The Army of Tennessee and Army of Ohio stumbled into each other almost by accident outside the little town of Perryville on October 8 while searching for water amongst the dried up stream beds in the area and fought a bloody but indecisive battle. The next morning, Bragg realized to his horror that he wasn't facing a detachment but the entire 55,000 man Union army when he himself had all of 16,000 men with him, so he beat a hasty retreat back into Tennessee. Most of the Army of Ohio had not been engaged in the fighting and Buell himself did not know a battle was going on until it was almost over. The army of Kirby-Smith followed Bragg back south and the campaign was over.
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If Bragg had disappointed Confederate hopes, Buell was no better; his pursuit of the retreating Army of Tennessee was sluggish which led to an exasperated Halleck saying "The president does not understand why we cannot march as the enemy marches, live as he lives, and fight as he fights unless we acknowledge that there is some very fundamental defect with our officers and soldiers." The end had come for Buell and he was relieved of his command on October 24, replaced by Rosecrans who immediately renamed the Army of Ohio to the Army of the Cumberland.
Grant had been planning to remove Rosecrans from command and some other officers such as James McPherson and Stephen Hurlbut agreed that he screwed the pooch by failing to chase Van Dorn down to destruction--Julia Grant was at army headquarters in Jackson, Tennessee for a bit in October and she heard from Grenville Dodge about her husband's plans to demote Rosecrans.
In that spirit, Grant was pleased to learn of Rosecrans's promotion to army commander. "He seems to have some ingrained resistance to obeying the orders of a superior. I think he will do well in independent command." Aside from Rosecrans's failure to chase down Van Dorn after Iuka and Corinth, Grant was also unhappy at his criticism of the division of Brig. Gen Thomas Davies, which had broken and ran at Corinth--this outfit was a pet of Grant's, having once been C.F. Smith's division at Ft. Donelson. Grant gave Grenville Dodge command of the division shortly after Corinth and remarked to him "I want you to understand that you are not commanding a division of cowards."
To think Grant got tarbrushed by Dixieboos as the butcher when Rosecrans fought two battles in a row in which his army suffered 30% casualties.
ACW battles were always kind of a mess because soldiers never had the detailed and intricate training of European armies. They for example continued to fight battles in the old line infantry style with massed volley fire and never learned how to use rifles for long distance sharpshooting.
Rosecrans also got into a momentary clash with George Thomas, who had been offered command of the Army of Ohio in late September but declined as he said the army could not possibly change commanders in the middle of an ongoing campaign and that he did not know of Buell's exact plans, nor was there time to learn them when a battle could happen at any moment. After Rosecrans got command, Thomas said that his earlier refusal didn't mean he would never accept command of the Army of Ohio period, and he was also indignant that an officer his junior in rank had been promoted over him. Thomas then wrote a carefully and well-thought out letter of protest to the War Department noting that last winter he had supported President Lincoln's desire to occupy Eastern Tennessee, could have done it if he'd been given 20,000 more troops, didn't get those 20,000 troops, and so that was that.
So as to assauge Thomas's hurt feelings, the War Department back-dated Rosecrans's promotion to major general to March 1862, thus making the latter his senior in rank. At that point, Thomas dropped his complaints, accepted that Rosecrans ranked him, and said that he was willing to serve under him.
>with George Thomas, who had been offered command of the Army of Ohio in late September but declined as he said the army could not possibly change commanders in the middle of an ongoing campaign and that he did not know of Buell's exact plans, nor was there time to learn them when a battle could happen at any moment.
Meade did it just prior to Gettysburg, what was his excuse?
IRRC, Meade was told not asked. If he'd been asked he probably would have made the same objection.
Rosecrans significantly improved the AOTC's organization and logistics and also got the army mostly equipped with modern weaponry like Springfield/Enfield rifles instead of the mottle of old junk they'd been toting--at Stones River they were still using a lot of smoothbore muskets and European castoff weapons while the down time from January to June 1863 was used to totally reequip the army.
Rosecrans wrote a magazine article in 1884 in which he attacked Grant for calling off the pursuit of Van Dorn.
>"We were about six days' march from Vicksburg"
When the pursuit ended, Rosecrans was at Ripley.
It is almost 200 miles in a straight line from Ripley to Vicksburg.
There were several notable river crossings that would likely not be intact when they got there.
There would be the need to keep the army supplied on the way.
For that to be six days march would mean an average of 35+ miles per day for six straight days.
Consider that it took him around three days to march from Corinth to Ripley, which is 28 miles. Was he mentally moronic to think he could get to Vicksburg in just six days of marching?
It was this among other quotes that made me lose a lot of respect for Old Rosey. That he wrote it so long after the war when he had been doing his best to piss on Grant at every opportunity makes me look at the man as a bitter man who knew what his mistakes cost him.
This statement bears more on Rosecrans's character than his generalship. He brings Vicksburg into the conversation not because he had proposed to go there, but because he saw this an opportunity to take a steaming dump on Grant.
Agreed, many had an axe to grind and wanted to salvage their reputations.
Grant did tell everyone Stones River was a Confederate Decisive Victory.
Grant was an incredibly petty, vindictive frick. Anyone who buys the humble image of him pushed by modern historians is an idiot.
what a douche
An ancestor of mine served in the 5th Minnesota. The poor saps spent months chasing Sterling Price around Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, and Indian Territory in 1864 in horrible conditions with very little food and then were called east to join the Army of the Cumberland. Rosecrans didn't provide any railroad transportation for the regiment so they had to march all the way across the state on foot before finally reaching St. Louis and boarding trains to Tennessee. The 5th didn't make to the battle of Franklin but were present at the battle of Nashville.
Price’s invasion of Missouri was wild considering the Confederates hadn’t done much there since 1862 apart from partisan warfare. I mostly know about it from reading about the future James/Younger gang’s involvement.
the issue is that the 5th MN was marching through largely unsettled wilderness where there were no towns, farms or food
Another example of WR homosexualry.
>gets assigned to command in Missouri after being dropped from AOTC
>Grant sends him a dispatch asking why he didn't send certain troops that were supposed to reinforce Sherman
>Rosecrans protests that he can't because there are secessionist guerillas hiding behind every haystack and barn in the state and he can't spare a single man
>Grant is not impressed with this excuse and finally gets him to send Sherman the damn troops already while remarking that if it was up to him he'd have Rosecrans court martialed for disobeying orders
Chickamauga was just an inexcusable disaster.
man WC was so petulant and whiny post-war
The reason why Rosecrans shit the bed at Chickamauga is that he foolishly marched into an area in northern Georgia that he had no maps of. It should be noted that after Bragg's army disintegrated at Chattanooga, Grant didn't bother chasing him because he didn't have maps or know the terrain out there. Sherman delayed the advance into Georgia in May 1864 by five days so his staff could get the lay of the land and he said in his memoirs that he would not have even considered entering the Peach State without it.
It should be worth noting that the Gettysburg campaign was also fought pretty much blindly with neither Lee or Hooker/Meade having any decent maps of Pennsylvania. Even the governor's office in Harrisburg had nothing except maps showing county borders.
A great deal of logistical preparation would have been necessary before Rosecrans could have done anything ambitious. It was George Thomas’s topological unit, arguably the best in the world, so there is no reason the maps would not have been a priority.
In any case it was almost December and the campaign season was over. Both Rosecrans & Johnston would have done exactly what happened historically. It was a time for reorganization, rest & preparation for the spring.
>In any case it was almost December and the campaign season was over
Rosecrans's goal was to be in Atlanta by January or February and the South has mild winters, it wouldn't have been that bad.
Rosecrans had no experience as a combat officer when the ACW started. His prewar army experience was limited to engineering and teaching at West Point and he'd never been in the Mexican War or assigned to the West Coast. I wonder if he never fully recovered from having a lamp explode in his face.
It doesn't really matter by the timeframe of 1863, he already had a lot of military experience by that point, including one of the very first campaigns of the war in west Virginia. He was just getting too wienery because most rebel resistance scattered infront of him during his march and Chattanooga was easily captured even though it was an extremely important objective to the confederates.
marching into Georgia with no maps was asking for a Darwin Award and as was noted before Grant and Sherman were not moronic enough to try that
Rosecrans cooked his own goose when he didn't set up a proper supply base in Chattanooga.
In March 1863, Halleck sent Grant, Rosecrans, and Hooker an offer--whichever of the three scored a battlefield victory first would get promoted to major general in the regular army.
The state of cartography in the US at that time really sucked. There were very few accurate maps of anything.
next to WR going into Georgia without maps, he also pooh pooh-ed intelligence reports that Longstreet was on his way to join Bragg. frick, what a moron.
Rosecrans had two of McClellan's worst faults--reluctance to move until everything was absolutely perfect and arguing with the War Department. As Grant noted, the man just seemed to hate taking orders from other people.
Lincoln had already had problems with McClellan and Buell being damn near impossible to get moving. Rosecrans was similar but at least he did try to chase down the enemy when he felt ready while McClellan was never ready. Grant was always sitting and contemplating how to get at the enemy even when given no direction from above. Rosecrans spent the whole first half of 1863 lounging in camp at Murfreesboro while demanding this and that. Grant thought he could have tried to help out during the Vicksburg campaign and put some additional pressure on the enemy.
As to what kind of a man WR was, journalist Henry Villards interviewed him in camp at Murfreesboro in early 1863 and he went on and on about how much Halleck and Stanton were gigantic homosexuals who had to be removed from office for the good of the nation. Rosecrans also intimated that he alone could save the nation and despite all this braggadocio, he assured Villards that he was a modest man who did not seek self-promotion.
Rosecrans mostly had a beef with Stanton, but it was probably Lincoln who prevented him from getting a major field command again--after James McPherson was killed during the Atlanta campaign nobody proposed bringing Rosecrans back from exile in Missouri to take over the Army of the Tennessee.
as was mentioned before he had a real problem with obeying orders from above. he believed he was more important than other department commanders and would get into arguments with them over various crap. he certainly wasn't the type of guy to come to another general's aid--he certainly had no desire to assist Grant in the Vicksburg campaign.
Even at Corinth he slow-walked support to his reinforcements. He knew that Hurlbut was coming up behind the Confederate retreat, but he failed to give support. He also fricked shit up in Missouri where he failed to properly support Samuel Curtis hoping the latter would fail and he would ride on a white horse to save the day.
other than at Corinth, he never executed a proper follow-up plan. if he'd broken camp earlier than June 15 he might have gotten to Chattanooga before Bragg could collect reinforcements.
Rosecrans should have realistically started his offensive in April, even May would have still been ok but waiting until mid-June severely reduced what he could have done while Lee was in Pennsylvania.
yeah that was bullshit. he wasted valuable warm season campaign time by his reluctance to move until the middle of June. In Chattanooga there were various problems causing delay in opening a shorter supply line, not the least of which was that the second shallow draft steamboat wasn't ready until well into October. Stanton was the guy who really fired Rosecrans and just used Grant to issue the order and make it seem more military. Democrat generals had a short leash on getting on the right side of politics. McClellan, Buell, and Rosecrans never pulled it off although the latter was given a lot more chances.
James Garfield wrote that WR's slowness to break camp was the result of the yes men around him predicting he would be president someday. It seems to corroborate Henry Villards's impression that Rosecrans had delusions of grandeur. He made it clear that he had no intention of assisting any of his fellow generals.