CHAPTER III
THE ARMIES AND THEIR LEADERS
The armies that were soon to measure strength in Middle Tennessee were not strangers. They had raced with each other to the banks of the Ohio in the previous fall, they had confronted each other,—at times,—in fractional strength upon a score of fields. It was the advance division of the Army of the Ohio, which had checked the Confederate onset on the first day at Shiloh, where Grant was all but overwhelmed, and that command, in full strength, had done its share in driving the gray-clad battalions from the field the next day. The guarding of Middle Tennessee and the taking of East Tennessee had since then been its special charge and designed function, and in token thereof it had been named anew “the Army of the Cumberland,” after the river that traverses those regions. The army was composed principally of soldiers from the old Northwest Territory,—a region dedicated to human freedom in the ordinance of 1787. But while Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin furnished the bulk of the troops, there were also regiments from Kentucky and several composed of East Tennessee Unionists. Pennsylvania had sent a contingent, and Missouri and Kansas were both represented. From the regular army of the United States, there were a formidable force of artillery, a few troops of cavalry, and a particularly fine brigade of infantry.
The Confederate Army of the Tennessee was composed largely of sons of the Commonwealth from which it derived its name, but almost every other State in the Confederacy was represented. A picturesque and romantic element was the famous “Orphan Brigade” composed of Kentuckians who fought for the South while their State adhered to the North, and who attested their heroism on many occasions during the war. The two armies were substantially equal in strength, for the Army of the Cumberland reported an available present of 43,400 men, while the Army of the Tennessee, which had the advantage of position, showed 37,700 ready for battle. The Southern Army was greatly superior in cavalry, for this arm of the service had not, as yet, received in the North the attention it warranted. On the other hand, the Northern Army was greatly superior in artillery. While the bulk of both armies was made up of veteran troops, each had considerable percentages of raw levies.
Gen. Braxton Bragg had the advantage,—somewhat doubtful in his case,—of long service with his Army of the Tennessee. He was a splendid organizer and disciplinarian, thoroughly versed in the technique of his profession, brave, honorable, devoted to his cause, and a strategist of no mean order. But he united a high, imperious temper and a saturnine disposition with a martinet’s passion for the letter of military regulation and etiquette. As a consequence, he was frequently embroiled with those near him in stations of authority,—officers who did not hesitate to accuse him of finding convenient scapegoats for his own errors. His controversies with those under him form an interesting chapter of Confederate records. It is but just to him to add that there were those that fought under him who testified to warm admiration for his soldierly abilities and who entertained high personal esteem for his qualities as a man.
Bragg’s army was divided into two corps. One of these corps was commanded by Lieutenant-General William J. Hardee, who had won a conspicuous position in the Army of the United States before he had come to offer his sword and talents to the Confederacy. He was the author of a book of tactics employed in the United States Army long after the Civil War,—a system said to have been founded on the drill regulations devised by Napoleon. The other corps was commanded by Lieut.-Gen, Leonidas Polk, who was Bragg’s pet aversion, and who spent much of the next twelve months in writing to Richmond about his superior and extricating himself from the latter’s orders of arrest.
General Polk had been educated at West Point, but had afterward entered the Episcopal Ministry. When the war broke out he was Bishop of Louisiana; but he speedily exchanged the surplice for the uniform, and attained high rank in the Southern Army. He was a man of considerable warlike talent, though perhaps short of first-grade.
One of Bragg’s division commanders was Major-General John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, who, as Vice-President of the United States, had declared the count of the electoral vote whereby Lincoln was chosen President, and who had left his seat in the United States Senate,—months after the outbreak of hostilities,—to cast his fortunes with the South. Afterward, as Confederate Secretary of War, he accompanied Jefferson Davis on his flight from Richmond, and assisted Gen. Joseph E. Johnston in arranging the terms for the surrender of the latter’s army to William T. Sherman,—terms that were repudiated by the Washington authorities.