Decisions of the Tullahoma Campaign: The Twenty-Two Critical Decisions That Defined the Operation: Command Decisions in America’s Civil War
Autor Michael Bradleyen Limba Engleză Paperback – 9 iun 2020
Decisions of the Tullahoma Campaign introduces readers to critical decisions made by Confederate and Union commanders throughout that eventful summer of 1863. Rather than offering a history of the Tullahoma Campaign, Michael R. Bradley hones in on a sequence of critical decisions confronting commanders on both sides of the clash to provide a blueprint of the campaign at its tactical core. Identifying and exploring the critical decisions in this way allows students of the campaign to progress from a rudimentary sense of the what of warfare, to a mature grasp of why.
Complete with maps and a driving tour, Decisions of the Tullahoma Campaign is an indispensable primer, and readers looking for a concise introduction to the Tullahoma Campaign can tour this sacred ground—or read about it at their leisure—with key insights into the campaign and a deeper understanding of the Civil War itself.
Decisions of the Tullahoma Campaign is the eighth in a series of books that will explore the critical decisions of major campaigns and battles of the Civil War.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9781621905660
ISBN-10: 1621905667
Pagini: 160
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 13 mm
Greutate: 0.23 kg
Ediția:1st Edition, Maps by Tim Kissel
Editura: University of Tennessee Press
Colecția Univ Tennessee Press
Seria Command Decisions in America’s Civil War
ISBN-10: 1621905667
Pagini: 160
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 13 mm
Greutate: 0.23 kg
Ediția:1st Edition, Maps by Tim Kissel
Editura: University of Tennessee Press
Colecția Univ Tennessee Press
Seria Command Decisions in America’s Civil War
Notă biografică
MICHAEL R. BRADLEY earned a PhD in History from Vanderbilt University. He taught US History at Motlow College in Tullahoma for thirty-six years. He is the author of several works on the Civil War including Tullahoma: The 1863 Campaign for Control of Middle Tennessee,The Escort and Staff of Nathan Bedford Forrest, and David Campbell Kelley: Forrest’s Fighting Preacher.
Extras
The Tullahoma Campaign took place during the last week of June and the first four days of July 1863, the same time the siege of Vicksburg was reaching a climax and the Battle of Gettysburg was being fought. Thousands of Confederates were captured at Vicksburg, and thousands of Union and Confederate soldiers became casualties at Gettysburg. Rosecrans accomplished his objective with fewer than one thousand men killed and wounded, and so his victory was obscured by the more dramatic events in Mississippi and Pennsylvania. But the results of the Tullahoma Campaign were of great importance in helping the United States gain the ultimate victory of restoring the Union.
At the time of the Civil War, accepted military doctrine held that an army needed to achieve the following objectives to emerge victorious: occupy enemy territory permanently, deprive opponents of food supplies, deprive opponents of recruits, deprive opponents of transportation facilities, and deprive opponents of industrial capacity. Many general officers were still guided by the older concept that destruction of the enemy army provided the path to victory. The criteria stated above constituted military thinkers’ “modern” ideas.
At Gettysburg, the Army of the Potomac under Gen. George Mead provided an enormous psychological boost to the Union war effort. This effect should not be discounted—the battle was the Army of the Potomac’s first victory, and it was won on “home soil” in the North. Also, the process of attrition that finally depleted Confederate manpower reserves began at Gettysburg. But Gettysburg was a defensive victory for the United States forces, and the immediate aftermath of the battle returned Virginia to the status quo. The fruits of the Union victory at Gettysburg would take a long time to ripen.
Vicksburg brought economic and political benefits to the Lincoln administration by opening the route by which midwestern farmers sent their grain to market. As long as the Mississippi River was closed to commercial traffic, grain crops from the Midwest had to depend on two railroads, the Baltimore & Ohio and the New York Central, to haul their crops to market. The B&O was an unreliable route through territory that was sometimes controlled by the Confederates and at other times susceptible to raids from Southern forces. The NYC could not handle the amount of traffic the farmers produced, making navigation of the Mississippi crucial. Once Vicksburg was captured, midwestern grain could reach Europe and the East Coast of the United States. Solving this economic problem also lessened the appeal of antiwar groups. A series of resolutions adopted by the Minnesota legislature on January 19, 1861, illustrates the economic motive for the Union’s military focus on Vicksburg. The seventh of these resolutions reads, “Resolved: That we never will consent or submit to the obstruction of the free navigation of the Mississippi River, from its source to its mouth, by any power hostile to the Federal Government.”[1]
While many students of the Civil War argue that the fall of Vicksburg deprived the Confederates of necessary supplies, the argument will not stand scrutiny. The Confederacy survived the loss of Vicksburg because very little in the way of manpower or supplies was crossing the Mississippi from the west. Neither did the capture of Vicksburg give the US forces control of farmland, pools of recruits, vital transportation networks, or industrial capacity. Soon after its capture, Vicksburg became a backwater from which no major US campaign was mounted, with the single exception of Sherman’s Meridian Campaign.
The Mississippi Central Railroad and the Mobile & Ohio Railroad continued to provide transportation for the Confederacy until the end of the war. Confederate recruits were gathered in by Nathan Bedford Forrest and his subordinate commanders until the collapse of the Confederacy. Mississippi continued to supply food to the Army of Tennessee throughout the Atlanta Campaign and to local Confederate forces until the end of the fighting. As for industry, there was none in the area. Many of the men who surrendered to Grant at Vicksburg in July were back in the ranks and fighting Rosecrans at Chickamauga in September. Thus Grant’s victory at Vicksburg gave a psychological boost to the US war effort and helped the Lincoln administration both economically and politically, but it was of limited value militarily.
In the Tullahoma Campaign, William S. Rosecrans achieved objectives of immediate value to the Union. The fertile food-producing land of Middle Tennessee was permanently lost to the Confederacy, and a deep pool of recruits was abandoned (and many from the area already in the ranks began to desert). Important transportation facilities came under US control, and these facilities provided the support for Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign the following year. Finally, the Southern war effort lost factories that provided a great deal of cloth, iron, and gunpowder.
Rosecrans’s success in the Tullahoma Campaign shifted the focus of the Union war effort from the Mississippi River area to the corridor traversed by the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad and the Western & Atlantic Railroad. General Sherman would follow this route to Atlanta in 1864. Although largely lost sight of, Rosecrans brought the US closer to a final victory, and his efforts should not be overlooked for Meade’s and Grant’s.
My knowledge about what happened in the Tullahoma Campaign, developed in the research already described, led me to ask another question—Why did the campaign happen? The methodology for answering this question involves examining critical decisions. This type of analysis allows someone who has an understanding of “what happened” to move to the next level and ask why something happened and what caused it. When the critical-decision concept is understood, it can be applied to any battle or campaign in any war.
During the Tullahoma Campaign events occurred as they did because of the decisions made at all levels of command on both sides of the conflict. Clearly, both Rosecrans and Bragg made a number of choices during the six-month period between the end of the Battle of Stones River and the beginning of the Tullahoma Campaign. Some decisions were the normal ones made during any campaign or battle. Others, however, were more important. I wanted to know what decisions were so crucial that they influenced the rest of the campaign, shaping the way that it unfolded. These were the critical decisions.
Critical decisions cover the entire spectrum of war: strategy, operations, tactics, and organization. Some decisions that initially appear to be minor ultimately become critical and have a major impact on subsequent events. It is important that you, the reader, understand the concept of a critical decision. Without this understanding this book will appear to be only a short and select narrative of events during the Tullahoma Campaign. This work is not intended as such. It employs the new concept of exploring why battles and campaigns developed as they did—the why instead of the what.
The criterion for a critical decision is that its magnitude shaped the events that followed and the campaign from that point onward. If these critical decisions had not been made, or if a different decision had been made, subsequent events in the Tullahoma Campaign would have been significantly different, perhaps even altering the course of the war.
As the aforementioned hierarchy indicates, some decisions were the sort that any commander would have made in any campaign. Others were more significant, influencing the outcome of a skirmish or deciding the direction taken by a major unit of the army for a day or so. Even so, these choices had limited influence on the troops’ operations. Those critical decisions that shaped the development and outcome of the Tullahoma Campaign need to be examined and, along with their results, analyzed from an accurately focused historical viewpoint.
This is not another history of the Tullahoma Campaign covering all the events of the ten days of operations and the six months leading up to them. Readers who need such information should consult one of the sources listed in the endnotes.[2] There they will find detailed narratives of the campaign and varied interpretations as to its meaning. This book concentrates on the critical decisions and presents some basic facts providing a relatively clear view of a complex situation. Without neglecting important details, this account offers the reader a coherent and manageable blueprint as to why the campaign developed as it did.
The criteria for defining these critical decisions have been developed by Larry Peterson in his Decisions at Chattanooga, by Matt Spruill and Lee Spruill in their Decisions at Stones River, and by Matt Spruill and Matt Spruill IV in their Decisions at Second Manassas.[3] The authors state that a critical decision impacts events directly following it as well as the subsequent course of the fighting. Without these critical decisions the sequence of events for the entire campaign would have been different. Some of these decisions were easily reached because of the nature of existing conditions such as road networks, but others were reached with more difficulty and required analysis and evaluation of changing conditions.
Two commanding officers located in separate towns made the critical decisions that determined the course of the Tullahoma Campaign. William S. Rosecrans led the Army of the Cumberland from his headquarters in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, while Braxton Bragg oversaw the Army of Tennessee at his headquarters in Tullahoma, about forty miles east and south of Murfreesboro. The generals were both guided and hampered in their decision-making by directions received from their respective war departments. Moreover, both had to deal with dissension in the ranks of their commands, and both were at the mercy of the weather. In many cases, the importance of what proved to be a critical decision took several weeks to emerge.
Most Civil War battles lasted only one day, a few two or three. Other than during sieges, officers had to make critical decisions rapidly during combat. This book deals with a different situation—a ten-day campaign preceded by six months of preparation for action. The officers involved had time to consider their options and review their decisions before implementing them.
Little combat occurred during the Tullahoma Campaign; therefore, this work contains no discussion of critical decisions made on the battlefield. The ten days of the campaign were filled with maneuvers in which soldiers shed a great deal of sweat but spilled very little blood. The weather did play a major role in the campaign, as it rained heavily at some point during each of the ten days. This rainfall deteriorated the roads so seriously that some units found maneuvering impossible.
The critical decisions discussed in this book concern strategy, operations, tactics, organizations, logistics, and personnel. Of the decisions reached during the Tullahoma Campaign, two were strategic, two were tactical, one was logistical, and one concerned personnel. Organizational concerns played a role in some of these determinations but was not the major factor in any of them.
Furthermore, the critical decisions affecting the Tullahoma Campaign occurred in three distinct time periods—before, during, and following the campaign.
Before the Campaign
Bragg Holds the Line of the Duck River—January 5
Rosecrans Secures His Line of Supply—January 11
Rosecrans Strengthens His Cavalry—January 14
Rosecrans Creates a Mounted Infantry Force—February16
Bragg Arrests Gen. John McCown—February 18
Wilder Equips His Command with Technologically Advanced Rifles—March 20
Rosecrans Uses His Mounted Infantry Against John Hunt Morgan’s Position—April 2
Jefferson Davis and Bragg Disperse Men from the Army of Tennessee—May 23
No Replacement Is Named When Forrest Is Disabled—June 14
Bragg Strips His Right Flank of Cavalry—June 14–20
During the Campaign
Wilder Disregards Orders to Fall Back and Holds the Mouth of Hoover’s Gap—June 23
Rosecrans Alters His Plan to Adapt to the Changed Circumstances—June 25
Bragg Evacuates Shelbyville—June 27
Rosecrans Does Not Pause at Manchester but Continues to Maneuver—June 27
Bragg Evacuates Tullahoma—June 30
Bragg Abandons Middle Tennessee—July 2–3
Following the Campaign
Rosecrans Pauses to Refit and Resupply His Army—July 10
Bragg Opts to Remain on the Defensive—July 13
These decisions were not divinely foreordained; either commanding general could have made other choices at any point. Had other determinations been reached, the results of the campaign might well have been different and the future of the entire war altered. For example, had Rosecrans been stopped or forced back to Murfreesboro, there would have been no Battle of Chickamauga. In addition, the Atlanta Campaign of 1864 would have started from Middle Tennessee instead of Dalton, Georgia, and the capture of Atlanta might not have taken place prior to the November 1864 elections. It is not the purpose of this book to present an alternative history. However, readers can apply their minds to visualizing that the results of the Tullahoma Campaign, and the war, were not inevitable. They were the result of critical decisions. This work is an invitation to think about the Tullahoma Campaign, and all other Civil War campaigns, in a different way. In addition to learning what happened, ask why something happened.
At the time of the Civil War, accepted military doctrine held that an army needed to achieve the following objectives to emerge victorious: occupy enemy territory permanently, deprive opponents of food supplies, deprive opponents of recruits, deprive opponents of transportation facilities, and deprive opponents of industrial capacity. Many general officers were still guided by the older concept that destruction of the enemy army provided the path to victory. The criteria stated above constituted military thinkers’ “modern” ideas.
At Gettysburg, the Army of the Potomac under Gen. George Mead provided an enormous psychological boost to the Union war effort. This effect should not be discounted—the battle was the Army of the Potomac’s first victory, and it was won on “home soil” in the North. Also, the process of attrition that finally depleted Confederate manpower reserves began at Gettysburg. But Gettysburg was a defensive victory for the United States forces, and the immediate aftermath of the battle returned Virginia to the status quo. The fruits of the Union victory at Gettysburg would take a long time to ripen.
Vicksburg brought economic and political benefits to the Lincoln administration by opening the route by which midwestern farmers sent their grain to market. As long as the Mississippi River was closed to commercial traffic, grain crops from the Midwest had to depend on two railroads, the Baltimore & Ohio and the New York Central, to haul their crops to market. The B&O was an unreliable route through territory that was sometimes controlled by the Confederates and at other times susceptible to raids from Southern forces. The NYC could not handle the amount of traffic the farmers produced, making navigation of the Mississippi crucial. Once Vicksburg was captured, midwestern grain could reach Europe and the East Coast of the United States. Solving this economic problem also lessened the appeal of antiwar groups. A series of resolutions adopted by the Minnesota legislature on January 19, 1861, illustrates the economic motive for the Union’s military focus on Vicksburg. The seventh of these resolutions reads, “Resolved: That we never will consent or submit to the obstruction of the free navigation of the Mississippi River, from its source to its mouth, by any power hostile to the Federal Government.”[1]
While many students of the Civil War argue that the fall of Vicksburg deprived the Confederates of necessary supplies, the argument will not stand scrutiny. The Confederacy survived the loss of Vicksburg because very little in the way of manpower or supplies was crossing the Mississippi from the west. Neither did the capture of Vicksburg give the US forces control of farmland, pools of recruits, vital transportation networks, or industrial capacity. Soon after its capture, Vicksburg became a backwater from which no major US campaign was mounted, with the single exception of Sherman’s Meridian Campaign.
The Mississippi Central Railroad and the Mobile & Ohio Railroad continued to provide transportation for the Confederacy until the end of the war. Confederate recruits were gathered in by Nathan Bedford Forrest and his subordinate commanders until the collapse of the Confederacy. Mississippi continued to supply food to the Army of Tennessee throughout the Atlanta Campaign and to local Confederate forces until the end of the fighting. As for industry, there was none in the area. Many of the men who surrendered to Grant at Vicksburg in July were back in the ranks and fighting Rosecrans at Chickamauga in September. Thus Grant’s victory at Vicksburg gave a psychological boost to the US war effort and helped the Lincoln administration both economically and politically, but it was of limited value militarily.
In the Tullahoma Campaign, William S. Rosecrans achieved objectives of immediate value to the Union. The fertile food-producing land of Middle Tennessee was permanently lost to the Confederacy, and a deep pool of recruits was abandoned (and many from the area already in the ranks began to desert). Important transportation facilities came under US control, and these facilities provided the support for Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign the following year. Finally, the Southern war effort lost factories that provided a great deal of cloth, iron, and gunpowder.
Rosecrans’s success in the Tullahoma Campaign shifted the focus of the Union war effort from the Mississippi River area to the corridor traversed by the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad and the Western & Atlantic Railroad. General Sherman would follow this route to Atlanta in 1864. Although largely lost sight of, Rosecrans brought the US closer to a final victory, and his efforts should not be overlooked for Meade’s and Grant’s.
My knowledge about what happened in the Tullahoma Campaign, developed in the research already described, led me to ask another question—Why did the campaign happen? The methodology for answering this question involves examining critical decisions. This type of analysis allows someone who has an understanding of “what happened” to move to the next level and ask why something happened and what caused it. When the critical-decision concept is understood, it can be applied to any battle or campaign in any war.
During the Tullahoma Campaign events occurred as they did because of the decisions made at all levels of command on both sides of the conflict. Clearly, both Rosecrans and Bragg made a number of choices during the six-month period between the end of the Battle of Stones River and the beginning of the Tullahoma Campaign. Some decisions were the normal ones made during any campaign or battle. Others, however, were more important. I wanted to know what decisions were so crucial that they influenced the rest of the campaign, shaping the way that it unfolded. These were the critical decisions.
Critical decisions cover the entire spectrum of war: strategy, operations, tactics, and organization. Some decisions that initially appear to be minor ultimately become critical and have a major impact on subsequent events. It is important that you, the reader, understand the concept of a critical decision. Without this understanding this book will appear to be only a short and select narrative of events during the Tullahoma Campaign. This work is not intended as such. It employs the new concept of exploring why battles and campaigns developed as they did—the why instead of the what.
The criterion for a critical decision is that its magnitude shaped the events that followed and the campaign from that point onward. If these critical decisions had not been made, or if a different decision had been made, subsequent events in the Tullahoma Campaign would have been significantly different, perhaps even altering the course of the war.
As the aforementioned hierarchy indicates, some decisions were the sort that any commander would have made in any campaign. Others were more significant, influencing the outcome of a skirmish or deciding the direction taken by a major unit of the army for a day or so. Even so, these choices had limited influence on the troops’ operations. Those critical decisions that shaped the development and outcome of the Tullahoma Campaign need to be examined and, along with their results, analyzed from an accurately focused historical viewpoint.
This is not another history of the Tullahoma Campaign covering all the events of the ten days of operations and the six months leading up to them. Readers who need such information should consult one of the sources listed in the endnotes.[2] There they will find detailed narratives of the campaign and varied interpretations as to its meaning. This book concentrates on the critical decisions and presents some basic facts providing a relatively clear view of a complex situation. Without neglecting important details, this account offers the reader a coherent and manageable blueprint as to why the campaign developed as it did.
The criteria for defining these critical decisions have been developed by Larry Peterson in his Decisions at Chattanooga, by Matt Spruill and Lee Spruill in their Decisions at Stones River, and by Matt Spruill and Matt Spruill IV in their Decisions at Second Manassas.[3] The authors state that a critical decision impacts events directly following it as well as the subsequent course of the fighting. Without these critical decisions the sequence of events for the entire campaign would have been different. Some of these decisions were easily reached because of the nature of existing conditions such as road networks, but others were reached with more difficulty and required analysis and evaluation of changing conditions.
Two commanding officers located in separate towns made the critical decisions that determined the course of the Tullahoma Campaign. William S. Rosecrans led the Army of the Cumberland from his headquarters in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, while Braxton Bragg oversaw the Army of Tennessee at his headquarters in Tullahoma, about forty miles east and south of Murfreesboro. The generals were both guided and hampered in their decision-making by directions received from their respective war departments. Moreover, both had to deal with dissension in the ranks of their commands, and both were at the mercy of the weather. In many cases, the importance of what proved to be a critical decision took several weeks to emerge.
Most Civil War battles lasted only one day, a few two or three. Other than during sieges, officers had to make critical decisions rapidly during combat. This book deals with a different situation—a ten-day campaign preceded by six months of preparation for action. The officers involved had time to consider their options and review their decisions before implementing them.
Little combat occurred during the Tullahoma Campaign; therefore, this work contains no discussion of critical decisions made on the battlefield. The ten days of the campaign were filled with maneuvers in which soldiers shed a great deal of sweat but spilled very little blood. The weather did play a major role in the campaign, as it rained heavily at some point during each of the ten days. This rainfall deteriorated the roads so seriously that some units found maneuvering impossible.
The critical decisions discussed in this book concern strategy, operations, tactics, organizations, logistics, and personnel. Of the decisions reached during the Tullahoma Campaign, two were strategic, two were tactical, one was logistical, and one concerned personnel. Organizational concerns played a role in some of these determinations but was not the major factor in any of them.
Furthermore, the critical decisions affecting the Tullahoma Campaign occurred in three distinct time periods—before, during, and following the campaign.
Before the Campaign
Bragg Holds the Line of the Duck River—January 5
Rosecrans Secures His Line of Supply—January 11
Rosecrans Strengthens His Cavalry—January 14
Rosecrans Creates a Mounted Infantry Force—February16
Bragg Arrests Gen. John McCown—February 18
Wilder Equips His Command with Technologically Advanced Rifles—March 20
Rosecrans Uses His Mounted Infantry Against John Hunt Morgan’s Position—April 2
Jefferson Davis and Bragg Disperse Men from the Army of Tennessee—May 23
No Replacement Is Named When Forrest Is Disabled—June 14
Bragg Strips His Right Flank of Cavalry—June 14–20
During the Campaign
Wilder Disregards Orders to Fall Back and Holds the Mouth of Hoover’s Gap—June 23
Rosecrans Alters His Plan to Adapt to the Changed Circumstances—June 25
Bragg Evacuates Shelbyville—June 27
Rosecrans Does Not Pause at Manchester but Continues to Maneuver—June 27
Bragg Evacuates Tullahoma—June 30
Bragg Abandons Middle Tennessee—July 2–3
Following the Campaign
Rosecrans Pauses to Refit and Resupply His Army—July 10
Bragg Opts to Remain on the Defensive—July 13
These decisions were not divinely foreordained; either commanding general could have made other choices at any point. Had other determinations been reached, the results of the campaign might well have been different and the future of the entire war altered. For example, had Rosecrans been stopped or forced back to Murfreesboro, there would have been no Battle of Chickamauga. In addition, the Atlanta Campaign of 1864 would have started from Middle Tennessee instead of Dalton, Georgia, and the capture of Atlanta might not have taken place prior to the November 1864 elections. It is not the purpose of this book to present an alternative history. However, readers can apply their minds to visualizing that the results of the Tullahoma Campaign, and the war, were not inevitable. They were the result of critical decisions. This work is an invitation to think about the Tullahoma Campaign, and all other Civil War campaigns, in a different way. In addition to learning what happened, ask why something happened.