Podcasting

Thanks to Nick Thony of the Capital District Civil War Round Table for this 51-minute intelligent interview about both the Grant and Granger books. I'm happy with it except for one thing: I can't stand people saying "you know" when yakking on radio or TV, and there I am doing it. Next time I will better guard my tongue. It was recorded earlier this month at the Civil War Weekend.

Mick Jagger, Chris Mackowski and Levon Helm (updated)

 

This is not, in fact, the moment during today's talk by Chris Mackowski at Grant Cottage when he imitated the Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger singing Under My Thumb, in describing newly promoted Lt.-Gen. Grant's relationship with his erstwhile superior, Maj.-Gen. Henry Halleck.

No, this was earlier in the engaging presentation about Civil War turning points, maybe when he talked about Grant's decision en route to Fort Donelson "not to thread telegraph wire" behind him so as to avoid Halleck's close supervision. Or  it could have been when he sketched out Grant's finessing Halleck's timid order, after the victory at Donelson, not to take Nashville, by getting Brig.-Gen. Don Carlos Buell to take it, instead.

Mackowski, prolific and trenchant author and editor-in-chief of Emerging Civil War, is always worth listening to (i.e. not just when he is gracious enough to plug my book), and he set out Grant-related turning points from Donelson to Chattanooga and Wilderness. But he wound up with the key one at Vicksburg, and I wouldn't argue with that -- though I do think he was a little hard on Halleck, and, in this Grant-hallowed place, scanted the significance of Meade's great defensive victory at Gettysburg. Turning points crop up all over. But Mackowski is right that it was soldiers under Grant's orders who, through four years of warfare, Drove Old Dixie Down.

Update August 27: I don't mean to imply that Mackowski's talk was unserious. He properly noted, for example, the shock and horror felt through the nation at the news of the war's first mass-casualty battle, Shiloh.

Paducah, Kentucky

Newly appointed Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant did not yet possess the uniform on this date in 1861, his 13th wedding anniversary. Stationed in Jefferson City, Missouri, he was soon summoned, still lacking the proper uniform, to St. Louis by Major General John Fremont, who appointed him to the crucial command post of Cairo at the southern tip of Illinois, just north of where the Ohio River meets the Mississippi. 

August 22 was an eventful day on the Ohio at Paducah, Kentucky, where the Union Navy seized a boat used by the Confederates, but the rebels retaliated by seizing a larger Yankee one, and taking it south up the Tennessee River.

In early September, after the Confederates violated Kentucky's purported neutrality by moving north to occupy Columbus, Grant moved rapidly east, on his own authority, to seize Paducah. The Ohio River was now under Union control, and Abraham Lincoln registered his approval. 

In November, Grant's army would move down the Mississippi to fight a battle at Belmont, Missouri, across from Columbus. Early the next year, it moved again by boat, this time southeast up the Ohio, Tennessee and Cumberland rivers with the Navy to attack Confederate forts Henry and Donelson. Their capture (along with the rebel army after a battle at Donelson) forced the Confederates to withdraw from Columbus and many other places they would not recover, including Clarksville and Nashville, Tennessee.

The Dakota Sioux Uprising ...

… in Minnesota began on this date in 1862. It resulted, on Dec. 26, in the largest mass hanging in American history. Lincoln commuted most of the 303 death sentences, but allowed the 38 pictured above to proceed.

The Indians had killed many civilians, and one vivid perspective on the war, sympathetic to both sides, can be seen in the Swedish film The New Land.  The film is a sequel to The Emigrants, and equally impressive. Both date from the early 1970s, co-written and directed by Jan Troell, starring Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann, and based on novels by Vilhelm Moberg.

After the Dakota War, the surviving Sioux were expelled west, where some may have encountered Custer in 1876.

The Second Battle of Dalton ...

… was concluded on this date in 1864, when James Steedman (above), US major general of volunteers, brought down a relief force by train from Chattanooga to drive off the 4,000 Confederate cavalry raiders under Joseph Wheeler who were besieging Dalton in northwestern Georgia. Confederate General John Bell Hood hoped Wheeler's raid would lift the ongoing siege of Atlanta by sufficiently disrupting Major General William T. Sherman's supply line -- which it failed to do.

Steedman was a colorful character with a combat record dating back to West Virginia in 1861, and including the heroic relief of George Thomas at the Battle of Chickamauga in 1863. After Dalton, in December 1864, he would lead a division under Thomas at Nashville. While that battle was an overwhelming victory, Steedman's African-American troops suffered heavy casualties.

 In-between, still at Chattanooga, Steedman encountered an unimpressed regular, Major General David Stanley, who wrote in his memoirs:

 "At the time he was living in very high style, holding a gay court. The Princess [Agnes] Salm Salm was his guest and occasionally the Prince, who was colonel of a New York regiment stationed about twenty miles from headquarters, dropped in. The Princess was a very beautiful woman, afterwards mixed up with the tragedy of Maximillian. Steedman was dead in love with the woman and such an idiot that I could not get any work out of him. In fact he was so taken up with making love to the Princess and drinking champagne that it was difficult to see this great potentate of Chattanooga." 

General Powell Clayton

"How come I never heard of this guy?" must be a constant refrain of those of us researching Civil War history -- in this case, mostly using The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture.

A volunteer from humble origins in Pennsylvania, Clayton did most of his fighting before being promoted to US brigadier general in August 1864. He was a captain at the Battle of Wilson's Creek in Missouri in 1861, but spent most of the war in Arkansas.

Colonel Clayton commanded the right wing cavalry in the successful defense of Helena on July 4, 1863. Then, when Major General Frederick Steele moved from Vicksburg to Helena to command Union forces, Clayton helped him capture Little Rock.

Given independent command at Pine Bluff, on Oct. 25, 1863, he successfully defended it with the assistance of freed slaves against far superior Confederate numbers led by Brigadier General John Marmaduke. The next spring, Clayton led a raid from Pine Bluff in support of Steele's Camden Expedition, itself a part of the Red River Campaign. While the wider campaign was not successful, US forces escaped from disaster, in part due to the positive role of Clayton's force. 

After the war, he was a Reconstruction governor and US senator, then moved with his family to the resort town of Eureka Springs, which he helped develop. Under Presidents McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt, Clayton served as ambassador to Mexico.

Back in the Saddle Again

No, not me, literally, but I will be back up at DA Collins on Ballard Road, Wilton, NY, for conclusion of Civil War Weekend. The Grant Cottage-sponsored event includes re-enactors, music, food and more. I'll show up by noon with books to sell and sign.

(Photo from yesterday by Mike Lesser)

Update: I made it into  Jason Subik's Daily Gazette story:https://dailygazette.com/article/2018/08/11/civil-war-weekend-raises-money-for-cottage