The Kentucky brigade and the two hundred and fifty Texans had set the standard. Their comrades would accept the measure. They had outlined the manner of conflict that Sherman’s army must expect. It was to be a series of battles where “Greek would meet Greek,” and there would not be a single mile of the entire distance to Atlanta traversed without the copious shedding of the blood of brave and true men.
Chapter IV
GENERAL JOSEPH WHEELER’S RAID INTO
TENNESSEE, FALL OF 1863
General Joseph Wheeler’s raid into Tennessee in October, 1863, has few parallels in cavalry campaigns. Removed from the excitement and delirium of war, many of its happenings appear incredible, and were it not for official reports of both sides, the account of it when read would be declared unbelievable, and deemed the result of highly wrought imaginings, or the Munchausen stories of some knight errant, whose deeds could not measure up to the creations of his ambitious fancy.
Half a century between these occurrences and their narration only increases our wonder and admiration at the exploits of these courageous horsemen, who seemed to have known neither fatigue nor fear in the pursuit and punishment of their country’s foes. Viewed from either a strategic point, or considered in relation to the losses inflicted upon those who opposed them, this raid stands out in military history as one of the wonders of war, and assigns its masterful leader and its no less masterful men a very high place among the world’s cavalry heroes. Hard riders, fierce fighters, insensible to fear, they hesitated at no undertaking assigned them, and they never questioned, but were glad to go where their gallant leader bade them march.
Wheeler, himself, seemed immune from death. Engaged in two hundred battles and in six hundred skirmishes or smaller conflicts, he escaped injury. Like Forrest, he led wherever he was present, and he never hesitated to charge any line or assail any force that came his way.
A partisan cavalry leader can never know fear or doubt. His chiefest hope of success is based on the surprise of his foes, and quick, reckless dash and bold onslaughts make up oftentimes for lack of numbers. A soldier, who at twenty-five years of age had risen to be a brigadier general, at twenty-six, a major general and commander of a corps, and a lieutenant general at twenty-eight, and achieved such great success and renown as General Wheeler, could neither be the product of favoritism nor the output of accidental promotion. Behind such rapid advancement, there must have been magnificent genius, coupled with the fullest improvement of every opportunity that crossed his path. He had no real failure in his career. Victory after victory came to him as if sent by a biased fate; and a calm review of his life by a just and impartial critic must force to the conclusion that he was one of the most remarkable men of the wonderful period in which he acted.
The Battle of Chickamauga, one of the fiercest of the great conflicts of the war, was marked by an unyielding courage, a sullen and intense obstinacy on both sides. That engagement again proclaimed the determination of both sides to fight out the issues which the war involved, until one or both antagonists, in the awful destruction of men and resources, should be unable to longer continue the struggle. The results, beyond the immediate relief from pressing invasion, certainly did not compensate the Confederate armies for the dreadful loss Chickamauga involved. Whether the Confederate leaders thoroughly improved the partial advantages gained will remain an open question, but the outcome imposed upon the Confederate cavalry new and greater labors, which all history will declare were met with a courage and enterprise, which added new laurels to their hitherto nobly earned fame.
With Chattanooga still in possession, and with the Tennessee River behind them, the Federal armies now were to face one of war’s most dreadful foes. Hunger is a most potent general that no antagonist chieftain can ignore. Supplies for the Federal armies were to reach them either by the Tennessee River, or by the wagon trains starting from points on the railroad, operated from the territory north in Tennessee, and against these slow and tedious methods of feeding an army, the Confederate cavalry were now turned loose, to burn, scatter and destroy.
General Wheeler was given the entire command of the Southern horsemen operating in this territory. Barely twenty-seven years of age, wisely or unwisely, he was given prominence over Forrest and other cavalry leaders, who had on many fields demonstrated dazzling genius and exhibited sublime courage. Brave and patriotic as were the armies of the Tennessee Department, yet as always where human ambitions and services are involved, jealousy is bound to arise, and no sixty thousand men can be aligned under a flag for any cause, where some differences will not occur and where in leadership and assignments some animosities will not arise. Some men are born to lead and some to follow, and neither in Virginia, Tennessee, nor in the farther West were the soldiers of the Confederacy exempt from those ills that ever attend army organizations. This was somewhat intensified in the army of Tennessee, which by the summer of 1863 had developed three great cavalry leaders, Wheeler, Morgan and Forrest. General Wheeler’s youth made against him in the consolidation of the cavalry by General Bragg. His real virtues were obscured by the suggestion that his almost unparalleled advance over the older men was the result of official partiality, and not the just outcome of military skill and his achievements. For a long while, this unfortunate condition hampered both Generals Forrest and Wheeler. General Bragg saw the solution of this most serious problem later and removed it so far as he could, but there are those who think he unduly delayed action in so critical a period and where transcendent opportunities were at hand. With such a leader as General Forrest, at the time of the October raid (which was led by General Wheeler), also turned upon the enemy’s line of communication, it appeared to the men of that time that only one result could have come to Rosecrans’ army, and that would have been practical starvation and annihilation.
These personal differences were at the most acute stage when General Wheeler was assigned a difficult and almost impossible task. It is but fair to General Wheeler to say that, under these trying circumstances, he acquitted himself with most commendable modesty and delicate tact and, except in so far as he was required by unpleasant orders, he did nothing to add to the seriousness of the complications then existing. He was to accomplish a Herculean task, one involving supreme risks to his own command and to General Bragg’s entire army. The capture of General Wheeler’s cavalry at that time meant calamitous results to the cause of the Confederacy,—reckless courage, untiring work and supreme daring, with quickest perception and thorough comprehension of surrounding conditions, made the call upon the young general such as had never come to a man of his age before.