Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T10:36:58.676Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

9 - The Western Theater, 1862–1863

from Part I - Major Battles and Campaigns

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2019

Aaron Sheehan-Dean
Affiliation:
Louisiana State University
Get access

Summary

Ulysses S. Grant’s successful campaign against Forts Henry and Donelson in February 1862 left the western Confederacy reeling. The capture of the Tennessee and Cumberland river forts placed nearly a third of available Confederate troop strength in the theater into Federal custody. Flanked by Grant and facing Don Carlos Buell’s approaching Army of the Ohio as well, Confederate department commander Albert Sidney Johnston led a ragged, dismal, rain and sleet soaked retreat out of southern Kentucky. Plagued by desertions and stragglers, his army stumbled across Tennessee until it reached northern Mississippi. Nashville, one of the Confederacy’s most industrialized cities, fell without a fight in Johnston’s wake before the month ended, and soon with it most of Middle Tennessee’s rich farmlands. Simultaneously, John Pope’s Army of the Mississippi and Andrew Foote’s fleet of Union gunboats pursued Confederates fleeing their Mississippi River “Gibraltar” at Columbus, Kentucky. They drove down the flooded river valley until encountering the Confederate bastion at Island No. 10 opposite New Madrid, Missouri. Farther west across the river, Federal troops under Samuel Curtis already were in the act of shoving Sterling Price’s secessionist Missourians out of southwestern Missouri into Arkansas during a brutal winter campaign. Reuniting the separated Confederate forces including Price’s that had won a victory at Wilson’s Creek the previous summer, new Confederate commander Earl Van Dorn launched an ill-fated attack at Pea Ridge, Arkansas, that left his defeated army staggering southward in the cold. Not surprisingly, given the collapse of the Confederacy’s western line of defenses and its apparent implosion, many Federal soldiers gleefully anticipated a prompt end to the war after an additional season of mopping up.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Key Works

Ash, Stephen V. Middle Tennessee Society Transformed, 1860–1870: War and Peace in the Upper South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988).Google Scholar
Connelly, Thomas Lawrence. Army of the Heartland: The Army of Tennessee, 1861–1862 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1967).Google Scholar
Cooling, Benjamin Franklin. Fort Donelson’s Legacy: War and Society in Kentucky and Tennessee, 1862–1863 (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1997).Google Scholar
Cooling, Benjamin Franklin. Forts Henry and Donelson: The Key to the Confederate Heartland (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1987).Google Scholar
Daniel, Larry J. Days of Glory: The Army of the Cumberland, 1861–1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004).Google Scholar
Daniel, Larry J. and Bock, Lynn N.. Island No. 10: Struggle for the Mississippi Valley (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1996).Google Scholar
Hess, Earl J. Banners to the Breeze: The Kentucky Campaign, Corinth, and Stones River (Lincoln: The University of Nebraska Press, 2000).Google Scholar
Noe, Kenneth. Perryville: This Grand Havoc of Battle (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2009).Google Scholar
Roland, Charles P. Albert Sidney Johnston, Soldier of Three Republics (Austin: The University of Texas Press, 1964).Google Scholar
Shea, William L. and Hess, Earl J., Pea Ridge: Civil War Campaign in the West (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1992).Google Scholar
Woodworth, Steven E. Nothing but Victory: The Army of the Tennessee, 1861–1865 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005).Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×