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.

Book Review: With Porter in North Missouri

With Porter In North Missouri: A Chapter In The History Of The War Between The States by Joseph A. Mudd
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This memoir by a Confederate veteran is a flawed yet still valuable look at an interesting part of the Civil War in Missouri.

The author rode with Colonel Porter in 1862 as they fought their way across Union-held northeast Missouri, gathering recruits, drawing bluecoats away from more important theaters, and generally causing havoc. There are few published memoirs from either side for this region so Mudd's book is intrinsically valuable.

Where it falls down, however, is its starry-eyed view of Porter. In Mudd's eyes the man could do no wrong. In fact, Porter made several basic tactical blunders, such as getting into a series of set-piece battles with larger and better-armed Union forces. It seems Porter thought of himself more as a general leading an army rather than a cavalry raider doing hit-and-run strikes. This led to his downfall and eventual death.

Further undermining the credibility of this volume are the lengthy quotes attributed to Porter, some running more than a page. Since this book was published in 1909, it's obvious that these conversations are made up. The content, however, generally corresponds with what we know of Porter's personality and tactics, thus only a few grains of salt are needed to get through these passages.

For serious students of the Civil War, this book is a worthwhile historic curio. Those with only a passing interest in the Civil War in Missouri or Confederate cavalry raiders would do best to look elsewhere.


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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."

Marmaduke's First Missouri Raid and the Second Battle of Springfield

The year 1863 started with a bang in Missouri. On December 31, 1862, Confederate Brigadier General John Sappington Marmaduke rode out of Arkansas at the head of 3,000 cavalry to hit Union supply lines.

For the first few days, they rode in three separate columns through the sparsely populated Ozarks without the Union command being any the wiser. That changed on January 7 when the rebels fell upon Union outposts at Ozark and Fort Lawrence. Most of the garrison managed to flee. Some of the supplies were taken away or burned, and some fell into Marmaduke's hands.

That same evening Brig.-Gen. Egbert Brown, pictured here, was alerted. He was based in Springfield, the Union's base of operations for southwestern Missouri. He heard Marmaduke was coming straight for him with 6,000 men. For some reason Union reports consistently overestimated rebel numbers and this led to much unnecessary panic and retreating.

Not so with Gen. Brown. He decided to stick, even though he only had 2,100 men, many of them untested militia and a "Quinine Brigade" of convalescents from the military hospital; and five cannon, three of them on slapped-together mountings of old wagon wheels. The town was surrounded by four forts. Even though none were completed they were better than nothing.

Marmaduke desperately wanted the supplies stored in Springfield. All three of his columns were supposed to attack the town on this date, but only two showed. Col. Porter, with 800 men, didn't make it on time, thus Marmaduke was attacking an entrenched position without numerical superiority.