History of Morgan's Cavalry

by Basil Wilson Duke

Let the historian recall the situation, and reflect upon the influences which in the, then, condition of affairs were likely to control the destinies at stake, and he will declare, that with this retreat the pall fell upon the fortunes of the Confederacy.

All the subsequent tremendous struggle, was but the dying agony of a great cause, and a gallant people. At that period the veteran Federal army of the West was numerically much inferior to what it ever was again; and even after the accession of the recruits hastily collected at Louisville, it was much less formidable than it subsequently became.

The Confederate army was composed of the veterans of Shiloh, and the soldiers formed in the ordeal of Corinth. It was as nearly equal to the Federal army, in numerical strength, as there was any chance of it ever being, and the character of its material more than made up for any inequality in this respect. No man, who saw it in Kentucky, will doubt that it would have fought up to its full capacity. Never was there a more fiery ardor, a more intense resolution pervading an army, than that one felt, when expecting a battle which should decide whether they were to hold Kentucky, or march back again, carrying the war once more with them to their homes and firesides. Not even on the first day of Shiloh, when it seemed that they could have charged the rooted hills from their bases, were those troops in a temper to make so desperate a fight. But a doting Æolus held the keys which confined the storm. It will be difficult for any one who will carefully study the history of this period, to avoid the conclusion that it was the crisis of the war. First let the military situation be considered. While at almost every point of subordinate importance the Confederates were holding their own, they were at those points, where the war assumed its grand proportions, and the issue was vital, carrying every thing before them.

The Confederate Government had at length adopted the policy of massing its troops, and the effect was instantly seen. In Virginia, General Lee's onset was irresistible. His army burst from the entrenchments around Richmond, like the lava from the volcano, and the host of McClellan, shrank withered, from its path. Driving McClellan to his new base, and leaving him to make explanations to his soldiery, "Uncle Robert" fell headlong upon Pope, and Pope boasted no more. Forcing the immense Federal masses disintegrated and demoralized back to Washington, General Lee crossed the Potomac and pushed into Maryland. Jackson took Harper's Ferry, while General Lee fought the battle of Antietam with forty thousand men, and again crippled McClellan.

Although the Confederate army recrossed the Potomac on the 18th of September, McClellan did not follow, but remained inactive and by no means certain (as his dispatches show) that his great adversary would not return to attack him. It was not until late in October, that the Federal army again advanced, and its march was then slow and irresolute. It will be seen then, that on the 17th, the day on which Bragg took Munfordsville, General Lee was fighting in Maryland. Ought not General Bragg to have risked a battle (with his superior force) in Kentucky, which (if successful), would have ruined the army opposed to him and have laid the whole Northwest open to him, unless McClellan had furnished the troops to oppose him, and have placed himself at the mercy of Lee?

General Bragg did not (of course) know, on the 17th of September, 1862, that the battle of Antietam was being fought, but he knew that General Lee had achieved great successes, and that he was marching into Maryland. Again, what effect are we at liberty to suppose that a decisive victory won by General Bragg, at Perryville, on the 6th of October, would have had upon the general result. General Buell, pressed by Bragg's entire army, would have had some trouble to cross the Ohio river, after reaching Louisville; and the defense of the Western States would have been then intrusted with many misgivings to his shattered army. And yet the West would have been left with no other defense, unless the army of the Potomac had (in the event of such a necessity) been weakened and endangered, that reinforcements might go to Buell. It may be said that all this is hypothetical. Of course it is. But what General ever yet inaugurated and conducted a campaign, or planned and fought a battle, and banished such hypotheses altogether from his calculations? Why then should they be forbidden in the criticism of campaigns and battles? It is not infallibly certain that General Bragg could have defeated Buell. Nothing is positively certain in a military sense, not even the impregnability of a work built by a West Pointer, and pronounced so by a committee of his classmates. War is a game of various and varying chances. What I mean to urge, is, that General Bragg should, under all the circumstances, have, by all the rules of the game, risked the chances of a battle. But if there were strong military reasons why an effort should have been made to accomplish decisive results in this campaign, there were other and even stronger reasons for it, to be found in the political condition, North and South. The Confederacy, alarmed by the reverses of the winter and spring, had just put forth tremendous and almost incredible efforts. The South had done all that she could be made to do by the stimulus of fear. Increased, aye, even sustained exertion could have been elicited from her people, only by the intoxication of unwonted and dazzling success. No additional inducement could have been offered to the soldiers, whom pride and patriotism had sent into the field, to remain with their colors, but the attraction of brilliant victories and popular campaigns. No incentive could have lured into the ranks the young men who had evaded the conscription and held out against the sentiment of their people, but the prospect of a speedy and successful termination of the war. But there are few among those who were acquainted with the people of Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi, and their temper at that time, who will not agree with me, that a great victory in Kentucky, and the prospect of holding the State, perhaps of crossing the Ohio, would have brought to Bragg's army more Tennesseeans, Alabamians and Mississippians, than were ever gotten into the Confederate service, during the remaining two years and a half of the war. Such a victory would have undoubtedly added more than twenty thousand Kentuckians to the army, for accurate computation has been made of that many who were ready to enlist, as soon as Bragg had won his fight. Five thousand did enlist while it was still uncertain whether the Confederate army would remain in the State. It is not perfectly certain that more than five thousand volunteers were ever obtained, in the same length of time, in any seceded State. All of these men, too, followed the army away from Kentucky. Some of General Bragg's friends have assigned, as one reason, why he left Kentucky without an effort to hold her, that he was disappointed in not receiving more recruits from the State. It is highly probable that such was the case. If an able General had marched into his enemy's territory, depending upon fighting an early and hardly contested battle against a veteran army, with the assistance of recruits just obtained, and whom he could not have yet armed, his friends would have concealed (if possible) his design, or if unable to do so, would have confessed it a weakness unworthy of their chief, for which they blushed. But it is not difficult to believe that General Bragg entertained just such a plan. The Kentuckians had not the confidence in the ultimate success of the Confederate cause, to induce them to enlist in the Confederate service, risking every thing, immediately sacrificing much, as they did so, when they saw a magnificent Confederate army decline battle with a Federal force, certainly not its superior. General Bragg was not only a very shrewd judge of human nature, but even he might have known that the irresolution and timidity he showed from the first day he put foot in Kentucky, was not the way to inspire confidence in any people—it certainly was the worst method he could have adopted to win the people of Kentucky.

And now, to consider the effect which such a Confederate success would have in the North: I do not allude to the effect it would have had upon the wishes and plans of President and Cabinet, upon the views of the Congress, nor upon the arrangements of politicians and the patch work of their conventions, but to the direction it might have given the popular mind and the popular feeling. Men who were then serving in the Confederate army, know little, of course, of the temper of the Northern people, at that time, but many were impressed with the idea, then, strengthened by conversation with Northern men since, that, if ever the Northern people doubted of subjugating the South, it was at that period.

Immense efforts had been made, immense sums had been expended, immense armies had been sent against them, and still the Southern people were unconquered, defiant, and apparently stronger than ever. Would it have been possible to strengthen this doubt into a conviction that the attempt to subdue the Southern people was hopeless, and the war had better be stopped? Volunteering was no longer filling the Federal armies. Now, if the Confederate arms had been incontestably triumphant, from the Potomac to the Ohio, if Northern territory had been in turn threatened with general invasion, and if the option of continuing a war, thus going against them, or making peace, had been submitted at the critical moment to the Northern people, how would they have decided? Would they have encouraged their Government to draft them—or would they have forced the Government to make peace? The matter was, at any rate, sufficiently doubtful to make it worth while to try the experiment. When that scare passed off, it is the firm conviction of more than one man who "saw the war out" that the last chance of Confederate independence passed away.

The Northern people then learned, for the first time, their real strength; they found that bounties, and the draft, and the freedmen, and importations from the recruiting markets of the whole world, would keep their armies full, and nothing could have made them despond again. The war then became merely a comparison of national resources. Something was undoubtedly gained by the march into Kentucky, but how little in comparison with the golden opportunity which was thrown away. Had the combatants been equally matched, the result of this campaign might have been a matter for congratulation; but when the Confederacy was compelled, in order to cope with its formidable antagonist, to deal mortal blows in every encounter, or come out of each one the loser, the prisoners, artillery, and small arms taken, the recovery of Cumberland Gap and a portion of Tennessee, and the supplies secured for the army, scarcely repaid for the loss of prestige to Confederate generalship, and the renewal of confidence in the war party of the North.

When Bragg moved out of Kentucky, he left behind him, uncrippled, a Federal army which soon (having become more formidable than ever before) bore down upon him in Tennessee. The inquest of history will cause a verdict to be rendered, that the Confederacy "came to its death" from too much technical science. It is singular, too, that the maxims which were always on the lips of the military savants, were often neglected by themselves and applied by the unlettered "irregulars." The academic magnates declared in sonorous phrase that struck admiration into the very popular marrow, the propriety of a General "marching by interior lines, and striking the fragments of his enemy's forces with the masses of his own;" while Forrest, perhaps, after doing that very thing, would make it appear a very ordinary performance, by describing it as "taking the short cut, and getting there first with the most men."