Chapter III  

e must now retrace our steps, and once again cross the Alleghenies. Sherman had captured Atlanta on August 30, 1864, and in September and October, was maturing his plans for his march through Georgia. Realizing the impossibility of maintaining a supply line running from Atlanta back to Chattanooga, (1) he determined to cut loose from it altogether, leaving General Thomas at Nashville to deal with Hood and his army of 40,000 veteran infantry and Forrest's 10,000 cavalry. In the course of reorganizing his forces in preparation for the new campaign, Sherman had acceded to Grant's suggestion (2) that he place all of the cavalry of his armies under a single command, (3) and accepted Grant's recommendation that Wilson be appointed to the job. Notifying Sherman of Wilson's assignment, Grant said that "I believe that Wilson will add fifty per cent. to the effectiveness of your cavalry." (4)

Wilson had arrived at Sherman's headquarters on October 22, and came to an immediate understanding with his skeptical but cordial chief. Leaving undecided for the time being the question of where and when the cavalry would eventually be used, the two men agreed that Wilson should collect the cavalry of the Military Division of the Mississippi, organize all of it into brigades and divisions, rearm the men with magazine rifles and carbines, and remount all the dismounted men. Orders were issued on October 24 placing Wilson in command of the cavalry and abolishing the posts of the chiefs of cavalry of the individual armies in the military division. All of the cavalry in Sherman's command was made directly subordinate to Wilson, (5) who was now enabled to proceed with his plans to make of it an effective fighting force.

The task Wilson undertook would have daunted anyone but a 27 year-old Major-General. There were nominally 82 regiments of mounted troops under his command. (6) Regiments, brigades and divisions were scattered from Central Georgia to the Missouri River, and there were dismounted men and convalescents by the thousands at "every hospital, depot and camp from Chicago and St. Paul on the north to Vicksburg and Atlanta on the south." (7) Every senior officer of sufficient rank and influence had a cavalry escort, (8) the Civil War equivalent of the private airplane of World War II. When Wilson attempted to find out just how many men he had in his command, he met a blank wall. The chiefs of cavalry could not tell him how many men they had, how many were dismounted, what arms the men had, what arms and equipment were needed and where such material was to be found; his inquiries were met with the statement that the cavalry was hardly ever in camp long enough to make strength returns, nor to make requisitions for the arms and equipment they required. Eventually Wilson learned that, as against a paper strength of about 70,000, he had approximately 30,000 troopers present with the colors. Of these, fewer than 10,000 were mounted. As to the state of discipline of his new command, an inspection report on the Second Illinois in September, 1864, illustrates a state of affairs that was only too prevalent in the western armies, although we must charitably assume that this is an extreme case: "Nothing good can be said about them. Take officers and men and they are the worst looking military organization I ever saw. The only clean and respectable place I saw in camp was that occupied by their animals." And the morale of the cavalry was just what one might expect of troops that had absorbed one disgraceful drubbing after another, over a span of three years.

Maj.Gen. James Harrison Wilson

The fact that such conditions were allowed to exist as late as the autumn of 1864, and that no real effort had been made to correct them until Wilson took the job in hand, is almost unbelievable. Wilson was to demonstrate that the situation was anything but hopeless. In little more than two months after his arrival, the fighting qualities of the despised cavalry were on a par with those of the infantry, and in less than six months altogether, Wilson had turned a demoralized, undisciplined, disorganized mob into a first-class army that, for its size, had no equal in drive and striking power until Patton's Third Army chased the Germans across France eighty years later. The conditions Wilson found can be explained only on the assumption that the Union commanders in the west, from Halleck to Sherman, finding it impossible to use cavalry in the way they had been taught to do at West Point and lacking the vision to realize that by departing from dogma they could convert their mounted troops into an essentially new weapon of war, paid their cavalry as little attention as possible. And this notwithstanding the daily demonstrations of the capabilities of cavalry that every Union commander in the West received at the hands of Forrest, Wheeler, Morgan, Van Dorn and the rest. The low estate of the Union cavalry in this theatre was therefore the result of the same causes that operated in the east to produce the same effect.

Battle of Franklin, Tenn. November 30, 1864 (Click to enlarge)

Battle of Nashville, Tenn.  December 15 and 16, 1864 (click to enlarge)

Wilson set himself as his most urgent tasks the concentration of his badly scattered units, the appointment to brigade and divisional command of men of his own stamp, the correction of deficiencies of materiel, especially horses, and training. (10) Before everything else, however, Hood had to be beaten. This was accomplished in two steps. In the Battle of Franklin, Hood beat himself. He directed one frontal assault after another across open ground, against Schofield's XXIII Army Corps, fighting behind the protection of hastily-dug entrenchments, and in so doing, sustained a crippling loss of 6,252 out of an army of 40,000, against Schofield's loss of but 2,326. (11) Hood practically assured his own defeat by turning down Forrest's suggestion that he be allowed to flank Schofield out of his strong, but dangerously exposed, position; (12) Wilson, dismounting the 4,000 cavalry he had present, was able to drive back into the Harpeth River the one division of Forrest's cavalry that was permitted by Hood to make the attempt. (13)

The Battle of Nashville was the second step in Hood's road to ruin. In spite of the severe check he sustained at Franklin, Hood advanced to Nashville, where he dug in to await an attack by Thomas a leaf taken out of Longstreet's book and, in the circumstances, a piece of strategic stupidity unequalled in the Civil War. Once again Hood invited disaster; this time he depleted his already outnumbered forces by sending Forrest with most of his cavalry and a division of infantry on a futile expedition against Murfreesboro. Thomas was in no hurry to attack. He needed time to collect horses for a sufficient number of Wilson's men to make sure that when he defeated Hood, which he was certain he could do, he would have enough cavalry available for the pursuit to turn Hood's retreat into a smashing, final rout. (15) A further delay ensued when a three-day storm turned the roads and fields around Nashville into a glare of ice, making all movement impossible. (16) The weather began to moderate on December 13, and the next day, Thomas' attack got under way. Hood had three corps, dug in on a range of hills southeast of Nashville. Opposite Hood's right, Thomas deployed a "provisional corps" made up of tag-ends of green troops under Steedman, with orders to pin down the rebel right with demonstrations, while three more corps of Union infantry, lined up opposite Hood's center and left, were to execute a gigantic pivot behind the spearhead of Wilson's 12,000 cavalry, to envelope the Confederate left. The holding attacks on Hood's right were delivered with such dash by Steedman's quartermaster's clerks and Negro troops that Hood was forced to hold his center corps in position also, and could not use it to support his left. This placed upon the single corps on the left, the burden of repelling the flank attack led by Wilson and backed by the full power of three corps of veteran infantry. This was an impossible assignment; when Wilson's attack developed, the left caved in and was swept off the field. Darkness came an in time to save the rest of Hood's army, and he retreated to another line of hills two miles to the rear.

The key to Hood's new position was a hastily-fortified salient called Shy's Hill. In his attack the next day, (17) Thomas adhered to the same basic plan that had worked so well an the first day, but he had the additional advantage which the exposed position of Shy's Hill gave him. Thomas concentrated the enfilading fire of the artillery of two of his corps on the salient, which was then rushed from the rear by Wilson's entire cavalry corps. At the same time, the Union infantry delivered an all-out frontal attack along the full length of Hood's position, and the entire Confederate army collapsed and dissolved. Thousands surrendered - five thousand in one hour - rather than run the gauntlet of fire of Wilson's 12,000 repeating carbines behind them. In the ten-day pursuit which followed, the cavalry took 8.000 more prisoners. (18) Thomas won the most complete single victory of the war, one which has been rightly called "...the most decisive victory gained by either side. . and one of the most brilliant."(19)

With the danger to Tennessee and Kentucky averted, Wilson could now concentrate on completing the organization of his command. A camp was formed at Gravelly Springs, on the Tennessee River, and for three months, it was a hive of activity. Thirty thousand cavalrymen were collected from every part of the Military Division. Remount depots, scattered camps and stations were emptied. The shortage of horses was almost made good. Worn-out equipment and clothing was replaced. Obsolete weapons of all kinds were turned in, and the men were rearmed. All privates and 

Gen. Emery Upton

corporals were given Spencer carbines; henceforth only sergeants and officers were armed with revolvers. (20) All ranks received a new, comparatively light and manageable saber. Every possible moment, regardless of the weather, was devoted to drill. Instruction was constant, and for the first time in the history of the western cavalry, the closest attention was given to the care of the horses, camps and arms. Above all, discipline was enforced with a firm hand. (21) The men chosen by Wilson to command his divisions and brigades, Generals Edward McCook, John Croxton, Edward Winslow, Emory Upton and others, were men as young as himself or younger - Upton received his star at 24, for conspicuous gallantry in the fighting at Spottsylvania in May, 1864 – full of energy and free from text-book preconceptions about the functions of cavalry. (22) They seconded Wilson's efforts with enthusiasm and ability. (23) By March, Wilson had an army of 27,000 men organized into six divisions, well equipped, well armed, well officered, well disciplined, with excellent morale, (24) trained to fulfill the traditional screening and scouting duties of the cavalry, capable of fighting on horseback, but trained also - and especially – to fight dismounted, to take maximum advantage of the fire power of their carbines.

Gen. Edward McCook

While the work of creating the new cavalry went forward, Wilson was in correspondence with Grant, to obtain the latter's consent to employ the cavalry as Wilson thought it should be used. He had in mind a new element in war; an independent, self-sufficient army of cavalry – nominally so, inasmuch as the men traveled on horseback - but actually something more than a "fast motorized column of infantry, with the difference that the transport ran on oats instead of gasoline" (25) as one writer has called it. The "something more" was a new factor, which Wilson had the wit to recognize – a factor which Forrest, Morgan and Stuart never had, which Sheridan did have but failed to assess at its true importance - namely, fire power. Wilson's cavalry army had it, to a degree that enabled it to hold its own against anything the Confederacy was able to muster to oppose it. This was not merely a difference in degree from, and beyond, the strategic capabilities of Forrest's and Morgan's cavalry, but, in a very real sense, a difference in kind, and of sufficient importance to bear emphasis. One of Forrest's expeditions, even when made in strong force, and with Forrest's great skill to raise to a higher power the mere numerical strength of his command, was nevertheless only a raid and nothing more: advance, destroy and retreat to base. Wilson's idea was something far more basic, and as much of an advance over a Morgan or Forrest raid as it was over a Sheridan cavalry operation. Wilson's horses were to enable him to "get thar fustest"; his relative fire power was so great that, it not only gave him "the mostest" in a sense far beyond Forrest's ken, but – and this is the crucial point - it made it possible for him to stay wherever he chose to go. This was more than Fletcher Pratt's motorized infantry. It was the prototype of the tank army of World War II, but without the disadvantage of a logistical rope tying it to a base. Except for increased speed and fire power and the addition of mechanical and electronic frills, the strategic effect of cavalry used as Wilson intended to use it and of a World War II tank army, was precisely the same. And we repeat that, this was not an accidental development, or a theory propounded to explain pre-existing facts, but a design consciously planned by Wilson as a new pattern of tactics and strategy.

The virtual destruction of Hood's army at Nashville ended any possibility of offensive operations on the part of the Confederates, but there was still a nucleus of Confederate strength in the Gulf states under the departmental command of Richard Taylor. Forrest, belatedly made a Lieutenant-General on February 28, 1865, (26) was in direct command of the troops, mostly cavalry, in this area, and was hard at work raising, organizing and arming additional forces to meet the storm that he and Taylor knew would break in the spring. Wilson proposed to Rawlins, for Grant's approval, that his cavalry army be "...(hurled) into the bowels of the Confederacy in such masses that the enemy could not drive them back..." (27) It is a good indication of contemporary military thought, and of the novelty of Wilson's ideas, that even at this late date in the war, Grant, who had been very thoroughly exposed to Wilson's powers of persuasion, directed him merely to "...fit out an expedition of five or six thousand cavalry for the purpose of making a demonstration upon Tuscaloosa and Selma in favor of General Canby's operations against Mobile and Central Alabama." (28) Fortunately, however, Wilson was given the widest discretion in the planning and execution of the operation, and he took full advantage of it to perform a "demonstration" that was a far cry indeed from what Grant had in mind.

Having been forced to transfer to other armies three of his newly organized divisions, and lacking sufficient horses for all the men in the three divisions remaining to him, Wilson decided to proceed with a total force of only 13,500 men. From the standpoint of meticulous planning, organization and staff work, the expedition stood head and shoulders above even the remarkably high standards that prevailed in the Union armies in the last year of the war. The route of each division as far as Selma was worked out in detail, timetables were established, and the degree of discretion allowed to each divisional commander was clearly spelled out. (29) Logistics were equally precise. Each of the 12,000 mounted troopers was to carry five days' light rations in haversacks, a pair of extra horseshoes and one hundred rounds of ammunition. Pack mules were loaded with five days' rations of hard bread and a ten-day supply of sugar and salt; the train of 250 wagons carried 1,500 dismounted men (whom it was intended to mount on captured horses), forty-five days' supply of coffee, twenty days' sugar, fifteen days' salt and eighty rounds of ammunition per man. There were, in addition, a canvas pontoon train of thirty boats and three batteries of artillery. (30) The first objective was the town of Selma, about 150 miles distant, the one arsenal remaining to the Confederacy in the Gulf states. Wilson's "demonstration" was to begin with the capture of this city and the destruction of Forrest's command of 10,000 cavalry and attached troops, consisting of small bodies of Confederate infantry and local militia.(31)

On March 22, 1865, the Cavalry Army, formerly known as the "futile and discredited" cavalry service, (32) but now a body of men "...in magnificent condition, well armed, splendidly mounted, perfectly clad and equipped..." (33) left its encampments under the command of Wilson, who, at 27 was and still remains the youngest army commander in American history. His opening moves were carefully planned to befuddle Forrest about his real intentions and objectives and caused that master of the art of confusing others to scatter his forces, as he had many times caused his Union opponents to scatter theirs. (34) The initial contact was made on March 31 at Montevallo, 50 miles north of Selma. During the next two days, in an almost uninterrupted running fight, Forrest was swept back as by a tidal wave. "Wilson's men went at their work with a dash and a power that knew no stopping"; (35) years later, when Wilson wrote his reminiscences, he was still gleeful about the way his men turned Forrest's own rules of war against him. (36) Selma is located on the north bank of the Alabama River. Because of the importance of the ordnance works located there, it had been well fortified. The fortifications consisted of a continuous system of earthworks running for a distance of about three miles in the shape of a "V" pointing north, from river above the city to the river below it. The ramparts were from eight to twelve feet high, protected on the outside by deep and wide ditches partly filled with water, and by palisades of sharpened stakes. Twenty-four mutually-supporting bastions, mounting one to three guns each, were sited at intervals along the perimeter. Midway between this line of works and the northernmost streets, there were four large redoubts, so placed as to cover with their artillery all the main roads into town. The outer face of the earthworks on the east (the Confederate right) was protected by swamps, and the west face by an almost impassable creek which ran into the river above the town. (37) The garrison consisted of between 6,000 and 7,000 men, mostly veterans, with Forrest in command.

Battle Map of Selma, Alabama April 2,1865 (Click to enlarge)

At four o'clock in the afternoon of April 2, the same day that saw Lee evacuating the Richmond - Petersburg defenses, Wilson with two of his divisions, (38) about 8,000 men with eight guns, arrived in front of Selma. Having previously obtained a fairly accurate description of the defenses, Wilson made his approach march in such a way that his troops reached the fortification at the points where he wanted them for the assault. Long's division was opposite the western face of the defenses near the apex of the "V" and Upton's on the extreme (Union) left, behind the swamp. Upton was to make the principal attack where, because of the protection thought to be afforded by the swamps, the defenses were the weakest. Long was to attack as soon as Upton had breached the defenses on his side.

Within an hour after their arrival the men were in position, the reconnaisances had been made, and everything was ready for the assault, when chance intervened. Chalmers' division of Forrest's cavalry arrived on the scene and launched an attack against the regiment protecting the rear of Longs' division. Most commanders in Long's position, in the Civil War or in any other war, would have given up all thought of proceeding with their own attack and would have faced about to defend themselves against the threat from the rear. (39) But not Long. He detached a second regiment to help stop Chalmers, and then, without waiting for Upton's attack, led the rest of his men, 1,550 dismounted troopers, in a headlong rush across the 600 yards of open ground in front of the works, in the teeth of the artillery and muskets of 1,500 men of Forrest's best brigade. Upton advanced as soon as he heard Long's guns, and the two divisions almost simultaneously breached the defenses in front of them. The inner redoubts, with Forrest personally in command, held up the Union drive, but only momentarily. Led by Wilson himself, four regiments, the Fourth Ohio and the Seventeenth Indiana among them, smashed their way through, and the Confederates became a mob, pursued through the town and captured in droves by the one Union regiment whose horses were near enough for immediate use. Forrest himself, some of his generals and a fraction of his force managed to escape in the darkness, but 2,700 officers and men, 31 field guns and immense quantities of stores were captured, at a cost to the Union of only 40 killed and 260 wounded. (40) Strong fortifications, adequately manned by good troops, had been carried by cavalry alone in a single assault lasting barely an hour. The assault succeeded because of the rate of fire of three or four thousand Spencer carbines in the hands of men who were not to be stopped by anything.

With the dispersal of Forest command, Wilson's campaign was to all interests and purposes finished. (41) General Canby was already besieging Mobile and had ample forces at his disposal; there was no need for Wilson's cavalry army there. Not knowing that Lee, in Virginia, was already at his last gasp, Wilson decided to march his command to join Grant, doing the Confederacy as much damage as possible on the way. (42) After destroying the mills, factories and "public property" at Selma, Wilson captured Montgomery, the first capital of the Confederacy, then Columbus, Ga., and had just taken Macon when, on April 21, he received orders from Sherman to suspend hostilities. The last service rendered by his command to the cause of the Union was the capture of Jefferson Davis on May 10 by a detachment of the Fourth Michigan Cavalry, one of the regiments which had made the assault on the inner redoubts at Selma. It was entirely fitting that this final, symbolic act of the Civil War should have been performed by a cavalry unit - and a volunteer cavalry unit that.

After traveling a long road, sometimes grim, sometimes depressing, sometimes inspiring, we too have come to the end of our campaign. In our own limited field, we have seen a meeting of a romantic, glamorous past with an ominously material future. We have witnessed a long step forward in the replacement of human muscle by the machine, of the sabre by the repeating carbine, as a determinant in war, but we have also seen that human courage and the human brain are rare important than either.

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