Civil War Photo Friday: A Duel Between Confederate Generals

"You're a coward!"

Remember Confederate General John Sappington Marmaduke? He was best known for raiding Missouri, although he had some fatal flaws as a cavalry commander.

This didn't stop him from being judgmental about his fellow officers. After the Battle of Helena, Marmaduke felt General Marsh Walker had let the side down. He accused him of "avoiding danger", basically saying he was a coward. The fact that Walker was later given some of Marmaduke's troops didn't help matters.

That was in July of 1863, but in September, 150 years ago this month, Marmaduke began to be vocal about Walker's supposed cowardice. Walker heard of this and, being a Southern gentleman, demanded satisfaction.

Both were in command of troops defending Little Rock, Arkansas, from an advancing and considerably larger Union army, but they didn't let little things like a military crisis from standing in the way of their egos.

"Wanna fight?"

At dawn on September 6, the two met at a plantation seven miles north of the city. With a crowd of officers looking on, the two men stood back to back with drawn pistols. They then marched fifteen paces, spun, and fired. Both missed. Marmaduke was the first to get another shot off, putting a bullet into Walker's side. The general staggered back, firing off a shot that went wild as he fell to the ground.

Walker lingered for a whole day, during which time he wrote a statement to his friends and family that they should forgive Marmaduke and not do him any harm. Soon after, Walker died, a gentleman to the last.

Marmaduke's commander General Sterling Price could have had him court marshaled and shot, but with the enemy at the gates he kept him in command. The Union army pushed the rebels out of Little Rock on September 10 and as the Confederate army retreated everyone seemed to forget about Marmaduke's deed. He continued to command troops until he was captured in the autumn of 1864.

When you take away a cavalryman's horse, he ain't happy

In a previous post I talked about the 30th Arkansas Infantry, a Confederate unit. That name is a bit misleading because the regiment actually began life as cavalry.

There were chronic supply problems in the Trans-Mississippi Theater, however, and in June of 1863, Major General Hindman realized he didn't have enough fodder for all the horses under his command. In a letter dated June 19, 1863, he wrote, "The scarcity of supplies now caused great distress. Nearly two months must yet elapse before the new crop would ripen. To lessen the consumption of corn, I found it necessary to dismount four regiments of Texans and three of Arkansians. This produced much dissatisfaction, and there were many desertions in consequence."

One of those units was the 30th Arkansas, and the records show a spike of desertions at this time. Cavalry considered themselves superior to infantry, they fancied themselves knights riding into battle rather than commoners slogging through the mud. To lose one's horse was insulting, and many simply went home rather than be turned into infantry.

The Fatal Flaw of many Confederate Cavalry Raiders

On this date 150 years ago, Confederate Colonel Joseph Porter was dying. He had been fatally wounded at the Battle of Hartville, Missouri, a few days before while supporting General Marmaduke's cavalry raid.

Marmaduke was now retreating back to Arkansas, having caused a fair amount of trouble for the Union forces in Missouri. His raid could not be called a success, however. Marmaduke blundered badly at the Second Battle of Springfield when he attacked an entrenched position with little artillery and no numerical superiority. The rule of thumb is that you need at least 3-1 superiority in numbers to take an entrenched position.

The Battle of Hartville was another stand-up battle. While the rebels won this time, they lost many men and all they really achieved was an escape route out of Missouri.

Cavalry raids were most effective when they moved quickly and hit the enemy's weak spots. In between these two battles, Marmaduke's men burnt bridges, cut telegraph wires, and snapped up small Union outposts. They should have stuck with that. Getting into set-piece battles is not what a cavalry raid is for.

Porter should have learned that lesson before he ever joined Marmaduke in 1863. The year before, he'd been given the duty of raising troops and causing trouble in northeastern Missouri. His ranks swelled to some 2,000 men. While about half had no weapons, Porter fought a series of skirmishes and battles with Union forces that whittled away his numbers and led to a mass desertion of some 500 men in a single day. His ranks much reduced, he fled south and ended up under Marmaduke's command.

My books American Civil War Guerrilla Tactics and Ride Around Missouri: Shelby's Great Raid 1863 delve more deeply into this subject. I'm hoping to do another book on guerrillas in the Civil War this year. We shall see!

Since no photos of Porter are known to exist, here's a Wikipedia image of the flag he flew under, the state battle flag of Confederate Missouri.

The Battle of Hartville and the death of Colonel Porter

Two days after losing the Battle of Springfield, Confederate General Marmaduke and his cavalry raiders were still causing trouble in southern Missouri.

They'd been riding east, picking off small Union garrisons, burning bridges, and cutting telegraph wires. About 60 miles east of Springfield at the small town of Hartville, they came across their first significant resistance.

Col. Samuel Merrill and about 800 Union troops were on a forced march to reinforce Springfield. Instead came across the rebels sooner than expected. Merrill's pickets west of Hartville spotted the Confederate advance column at around 3 am and fired on them.

At dawn the rebels pushed forward. For a time the Union troops held them, but the rebels outnumbered them three to one and soon outflanked the Union line to the south.

This was precisely what Marmaduke needed to secure his retreat to Arkansas. That wasn't all he wanted, however. He wanted to defeat the Yankees and take the town. The Union troops hurried back to Hartville with the rebels in pursuit. Merrill positioned his men on a thickly wooded hill northwest of town. He had his men lie down just inside the treeline readied his artillery.

Moments later, the rebels formed up south of town and charged at the Yankees. Just as they drew near, Merrill ordered his men to rise and fire. As Union veteran and author Wiley Britton put it, "the flash and roar of the discharge of eight hundred Federal muskets burst forth from the dark recesses of the wood, announcing that a storm of leaden hail had been sent forth winged with death and woe."

Civil War Photo Friday: Confederate General John S. Marmaduke

I'm back safely from Iraq and while I've been blogging about my trip, it's time to get back to some Civil War and Wild West stuff! My Iraq series for Gadling will be starting shortly and I'll announce it here.

This week's Civil War photo is of John Sappington Marmaduke, a Confederate commander from Missouri. Born to a wealthy plantation family in Arrow Rock, he went with the South when his uncle, Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson, planned the state's secession from the Union. Marmaduke commanded the rebel troops and tasted defeat at the Battle of Boonville, one of the first battles of the Civil War.

Marmaduke rose in the ranks and was appointed a Brigadier General 150 years ago this month. He's most famous for two raids he conducted into Union-dominated Missouri in 1863 in an effort to reduce pressure on Confederate-held Arkansas. The first raid saw him in a bitter fight in Springfield. The second saw him causing havoc in southeast Missouri. Neither raid was particularly successful. His career was further tarnished when he challenged a fellow officer to a duel and shot him dead.

Marmaduke's career ended at the Battle of Mine Creek on October 25, 1864. This was near the end of General Price's disastrous invasion of Missouri, the background for my Civil War novel A Fine Likeness. Marmaduke positioned his artillery and men poorly and the Union army cut him off from the rest of the rebel army and captured him and some 800 of his men. I'll cover all of these events in more detail as their 150th anniversaries come up.

Despite his failings as a commander, Marmaduke remained a popular figure and served as governor of Missouri from 1885 to his death in office in 1887.

Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

Civil War Photo Friday: Cherokee Confederates Reunion, 1903

This fascinating photo shows a reunion of Cherokee Confederates that took place in New Orleans in 1903. Like many other Native American tribes, the Cherokee were split in their loyalties. Some sided with the Confederacy since they were slaveholders and wanted to get back at a Federal government that had treated them horribly. Others sided with the Union in the hope that their loyalty would be rewarded with better treatment for their people. Well all know how well that worked out.

Native Americans fought in many battles and campaigns in the Trans-Mississippi Theater. Stand Watie, a Cherokee, became a brigadier general in the Confederate army. He was the last Confederate general to surrender, not giving up until June 23, 1865, more than two months after Lee had surrender at Appomattox.

The Indian Territory (modern Oklahoma) was torn apart by rival factions backing opposing sides and by Union and Confederate campaigns. In addition to battlefield casualties, many civilians died from starvation and exposure when they had to flee their homes. It's safe to say the Indian Territory suffered as bad as any place in the Civil War.

Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Civil War Photo Friday: The Aftermath of the Battle of Pea Ridge

On this day 150 years ago, the Confederacy west of the Mississippi was reeling from its defeat in what was arguably the most important battle of the Civil War in the Trans-Mississippi Theater.

The Battle of Pea Ridge was fought from March 6-8 in northwestern Arkansas. Several good accounts of this battle are already online and in print, so I'm just going to look at its ramifications.

The Confederate thrust into Missouri by a rebel army led by Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn and numbering more than 16,500 had been stopped by Brig. Gen. Samuel Curtis' Union force of only 10,500. The Confederates suffered about 2,000 casualties during the battle, most notably the death of Brig. Gen. Benjamin McCulloch, pictured here.

Van Dorn had left his supplies far behind, and so for a week his troops, weary from forced marches and hard fighting, shambled their way south with little to eat but what they could scrounge or steal from the locals. Men deserted by the thousands.

It seems that after the battle the Confederate high command pretty much gave up on the region. Van Dorn and his Arkansas troops were transferred east of the river, and were shortly followed by General Price and his Missouri troops. There would be no major Confederate threat to Missouri for the rest of the war, unless you count Price's ill-fated 1864 raid/invasion, which provides the background to my Civil War novel.

The war west of the Mississippi was not finished, however. The Union high command was also hungry for troops to throw into the killing fields. Northern states west of the Mississippi were drained of many of their men, making what could have been a short campaign south through Arkansas and Louisiana a long and arduous struggle that was never completed.

With each side too weak to make a decisive impact on the other, much of the region was overtaken by guerrillas and bandits. The Battle of Pea Ridge was a victory for the Union, but a defeat for civilians of both sides.

Civil War Photo Friday: Sterling Price

This week 150 years ago was an important one for the Civil War in Missouri.

General Sterling Price's Missouri Confederate army had enjoyed success the previous year, culminating in the Battle of Lexington, when his forces briefly held a portion of the Missouri River in the center of the state. Supply problems and a precarious position with Union armies to the east and west soon forced him to move south, and he eventually in and around Springfield in the southern part of the state. Now, in February 1862, a large Union army under General Samuel Curtis marched south to push him from the state entirely.

Price realized he was outnumbered and abandoned Springfield on February 12, leaving a rearguard to skirmish with the advancing bluecoats at several points. They held out at creeks, where the thick underbrush reduced the effectiveness of the Union artillery and the creek impeded any Yankee charge. None of these skirmishes lasted very long, however. Their purpose was to slow down the Union advance. Once Union troops and artillery appeared in large numbers, the rebel rearguard would retreat to the next creek and set up another defense.

This rearguard action bought Price some time to close up with a Confederate force marching out of Arkansas under General Van Dorn. All these maneuvers would culminate in the Battle of Pea Ridge on March 6-8. I'll post more on that when the time comes. A good online summary and driving tour of the Pea Ridge campaign can be found at The Civil War Muse.

Price is one of the many historical figures who get a walk-on role in my Civil War novel A Fine Likeness. Jimmy and his band of bushwhackers meet him as he's passing through Boonville during his doomed 1864 campaign to retake the state. There's an excellent biography of this interesting general titled General Sterling Price and the Civil War in the West. You can read my review of it here.

The Civil War in Missouri at the start of 1862

A hundred and fifty years ago today, Missourians had finished their subdued Christmas and New Year’s celebrations and were looking ahead with trepidation to a new year of war. Everyone was asking the same questions—how long would the war last, and who would win?

Secessionists hoped for a quick rebel victory. Back East, the Confederacy had won a string of battles, the most spectacular being the First Bull Run. The new government hoped to gain international recognition and maybe even military aid from the British Empire and other European powers.

In Missouri, the situation looked bleaker for the South. While there had been major victories at the Battle of Wilson’s Creek and the Battle of Lexington, the Union held key positions such as the Missouri River, which flows from west to east and cuts the state neatly in half. The main rebel force, under General Sterling Price, was currently in the south of the state at Springfield. Potential recruits were having a hard time making their way from counties north of the Missouri River south to join Price. He couldn’t move north to help him because he had chronic supply problems and was outnumbered by Union forces.

In the central part of the state, rebel guerrillas were cutting telegraph wire, burning bridges, and generally causing mayhem. Union detachments had been successful at defeating and dispersing large groups of rebels, but these smaller bands were proving to be an even greater problem. They would continue to be until the end of the war.

In these early months of the war, few thought it would last another three-and-a-half years. If everyone knew what they were in for, perhaps they would have lobbied their leaders, North and South, to sit down at the negotiating table.

The war would end all too soon for these two Union recruits. Daniel and Joseph Budd both died in 1862. Daniel died of smallpox at the age of 16. Joseph, 18, was killed at the Battle of Vassar Hill on July 18, near Memphis, Missouri. This photo is courtesy Frank Furillo, who is the great-great nephew of both men.

Mud mortars of the Civil War

By mid-December of 1861, things had calmed down somewhat in Missouri. The Union command still worried that General Price would return from the southwestern portion of the state with his Confederate army, but there was no real sign he would do so. So while they waited, Union troops busied themselves with sweeps through northern and central Missouri to capture bands of secessionists harassing the area or heading down to join Price.

One of these sweeps is detailed in the Official Records. Major George C. Marshall's command, composed of 300 men of the regiment Merrill's Horse and three companies of regular cavalry, moved through Saline County on December 3-12. They fought several skirmishes and took prisoners almost daily. Some were rebels who had skirmished with them, others were not so designated and were probably civilians suspected of supporting the South. Searching houses as they went, the Union cavalry found several caches of gunpowder and other items of war.

On December 5 they proudly encamped on the farm of the secessionist Missouri governor Claiborn Fox Jackson (who had long since fled with Price), "and raised the Stars and Stripes over the traitor's house."

December 9 found them near Waverly, home to J.O. Shelby, who had not yet made a name for himself as one of the Confederacy's greatest cavalry raiders. As the Union troops camped that night, "Shelby brought his company down that night to try to annoy us by firing at our pickets and to try to scare us by bombarding us with a 10-inch mortar loaded with mud. Lieutenants Kelly's and Gordon's companies were called out, and soon scattered them and silenced their formidable battery."

I've never heard of a mortar being packed with mud. I would assume Shelby was a victim of the nagging ammunition shortage of the Confederacy, and simply used whatever he had at hand. One would think rocks or gravel would prove more effective! In my book on Shelby, I describe how the raider used many tactics to fool his enemies. Once he held up shipping on the Missouri River with a sinister-looking log. Not a hollowed-out log converted into a cannon like at the Battle of Athens, Missouri, just a log.

The next day the Union troops proceeded on into Waverly and "found 9 kegs of powder concealed under a platform in Shelby's store. The celebrated mortar was found and taken."

And thus ends the saga of the Civil War mud mortar.

Photo courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Civil War Photo Friday: The Last of Shelby's Men

I first saw this gravestone more than ten years ago at the Confederate retirement home in Higginsville, Missouri, and it has always stuck in my mind. Many old warriors came here to live out their days, and the last one to die was John T. Graves. He joined J.O. Shelby's famous Iron Brigade of Missouri cavalry raiders, survived the war, and lived through half of the twentieth century.

Remarkably, he wasn't the "last of Shelby's men". Joseph Hayden Whitsett was still alive in Texas and made it to 1951.

Of course I put this image in my book Ride Around Missouri: Shelby's Great Raid 1863. Shelby's Iron Brigade made numerous grueling raids into Union-occupied Missouri. His "ride around Missouri" was the most ambitious, and led the Union troops on a merry chase through the entire state.

It's amazing to look at these old gravestones and realize that some Civil War veterans lived so long. Albert Woolson, a Union drummer boy and the last surviving Civil War veteran whose story is confirmed, lived until August 2, 1956! There must be old folks around today who remember some of these guys. The Civil War wasn't so long ago after all. 

Civil War Photo Friday: The sinking of the General M. Jeff Thompson

The Confederate navy was outnumbered and outgunned from the start of the Civil War. Despite this, they put up a spirited fight right until the end. One of the more interesting naval theaters of the war was on the Mississippi River, where North and South fought for control of this vital waterway.

The engraving above shows Battle of Memphis on June 6, 1862. The rebels were soundly beaten, losing almost all the ships they then had on the river. One of them was the General M. Jeff Thompson, shown sinking on the left. Actually it ran aground under heavy enemy fire and a blaze on board set off the magazine, blowing the ship to pieces.

The General M. Jeff Thompson was a side-wheeled steamboat converted into military use by fortifying it with a double layer of pine beams. The space between this layer was stuffed with bales of cotton. "Cottonclads" were warships made cheap, but cotton bales could stop bullets and even cannonballs. Sometimes only bales of cotton were used in a pinch, especially on troop transports. There were also "tinclads" made with thin sheets of metal (not always tin) and of course the more fearsome "ironclads".

The General M. Jeff Thompson was commissioned in April 1862 and fought with distinction at the Battle of Plum Point Bend on May 10. The Battle of Memphis was its second and last engagement. Although like many ships it was fitted with a ram, it never got to use it.

The ship was named after the Confederate Brigadier General of the same name, who became famous as the "Swamp Fox of the Confederacy" for his hit-and-run actions in southeast Missouri. The region there was mostly swamp before being drained by the Army Corps of Engineers in the 20th century, and his little army hid in "Swampeast Missouri", popping out at unexpected times and places to hit the Union forces.

Thompson was no stranger to steamboats. He briefly commanded some Confederate rams in 1862 and like other commanders in the Trans-Mississippi theater, often targeted enemy shipping. On this day 150 years ago, he seized the steamer Platte Valley at Price's Landing, MO. 

Both photos courtesy Wikimedia Commons.