150 Years Ago -- Robert Anderson and the Department of the Cumberland

Image of Robert Anderson via Wikipedia

On Thursday, August 15, 1861, Union Brigadier General Robert Anderson, the hero of Fort Sumter, was appointed to command of the newly-formed Department of the Cumberland, comprising most of the states of Kentucky and Tennessee.

Anderson would relinquish command of the department to Brigadier General William Tecumseh Sherman in October.  Ill health is often cited as the reason for the change in command, but Anderson, who was reluctant to distribute arms to Kentucky Unionists, might have fallen out of favor with Lincoln.

The Department of the Cumberland would cease to exist in October, becoming a part of the Department of the Ohio, but would be resurrected in October 1862, with General William Rosecrans commanding.

150 Years Ago -- Mutiny

On Wednesday, August 14, 1861, Union General George McClellan put down a mutiny in his army by men of the 79th New York Infantry Regiment.

The 79th New York, originally organized in July 1859 as a Scottish-American fraternity in New York City, was quickly mobilized after Fort Sumter.  Some recruitment brought the unit up to strength, then they marched down Broadway to Washington.

At the Battle of Bull Run, the 79th, then a part of Colonel William Tecumseh Sherman's Third Brigade, suffered heavy casualties.  Their commander, Colonel James Cameron, brother of Secretary of War Simon Cameron, was killed in the fighting on Henry Hill.

After the battle, they were put to work building defensive works around Washington, digging trenches with picks and shovels.  One New Yorker declared, "Spades were trumps and everyman had a full hand."

On the morning of August 14, the 79th New York rebelled, refusing to do any more work until their grievances were addressed.  In addition to the back-breaking work, they were also upset that they hadn't been allowed to vote for a new colonel to lead them.  Cameron's replacement, Colonel Isaac Stevens, had been appointed to lead them.

McClellan moved quickly to quash the mutiny.  The 79th New York was quickly surrounded by a battalion of regular army troops with loaded firearms.  The 79th gave up.  Twenty-one soldiers, the ringleaders of the mutiny, were sent to prison in the Dry Tortugas.

Also on this date, in Missouri, Union General John Frémont declared martial law in St. Louis.

150 Years Ago -- Dug Springs

On Friday, August 2, 1861, the Battle of Dug Springs took place in Missouri.  Events were rapidly coming to a head in the state.

Union General Nathaniel Lyon had declared war on Governor Claiborne Jackson and Sterling Price, the commander of the state militia.  He drove them away from Jefferson City, the state capital, routed the militia at Boonville, and pursued them to the southwest corner of the state.

Now Lyon was in a precarious situation.  He was in Springfield, far from his home base of St. Louis, and outnumbered.  Price's militia had joined with Confederate troops from Arkansas under General Ben McCulloch, giving them about a 2-to-1 advantage over Lyon.  Also, many of Lyon's men were leaving or preparing to leave as their 90-day enlistments ran out.

On August 1, Lyon got the news that the large Southern force was advancing on his position.  There were said to be three columns of troops with the main column advancing up the Wire road (named for the telegraph wires that lined it). 

Lyon would have been wise to retreat, but did not want to do so without a fight.  He put his forces on the road to meet this threat.  They camped 12 miles south of Springfield that night, and continued the march the next morning.  Lyon planned to attack the main column, and if all went well, take on the other columns in turn.

Advance units from the opposing forces ran into each other at 9 a.m. on August 2 on the Wire road.  The Battle of Dug Springs lasted for about five hours, ebbing back and forth as both sides cautiously launched probing attacks to determine the size of the force they faced.  Although he was outnumbered by the combined Southern forces, Lyon had the advantage with the troops that were present for this fight.  His vanguard, composed of U.S. Army regulars, faced six companies of Missouri State Guard troops under General James Rains.

Eventually, a charge by troops from the 2nd U.S. Infantry scattered Rains's men, and they retreated back down the Wire road.  The Southerners would call the battle "Rains' Scare," and it would reinforce McCulloch's low opinion of the fighting abilities of the Missouri troops, but they would regroup and continue the advance.  Lyon would plan one more attack.  The armies would meet on August 10 at Wilson's Creek.


Also on this date, Colonel William Tecumseh Sherman was promoted to brigadier general, dated from May 17.  He was transferred to Kentucky where he was second in command under General Robert Anderson, the hero of Fort Sumter.

And, the U.S. Congress voted to impose the first national income tax.  In addition to new tariffs, the bill called for a flat tax of 3% on income over $800 to help finance the war.  President Lincoln would sign the bill into law on August 5.  The Revenue Act of 1861 would be repealed by the Revenue Act of 1862, which replaced the flat rate with a progressive scale -- 3% on income over $600 and 5% on income over $10,000.

150 Years Ago -- Sherman Rejoins the Army

Image via Wikipedia

On Tuesday, May 14, 1861, William Tecumseh Sherman rejoined the United States Army.  He was commissioned a colonel in the new 13th U.S. Infantry.

Sherman attended West Point, graduating sixth in the class in 1840.  He served as an aide to Captain Philip Kearny, then as an adjutant to Colonel Richard Mason during the Mexican War, but considered resigning because he saw little action.

General Persifor Frazer Smith convinced him to remain in the army, and made Sherman his adjutant general when he took command of the Pacific Division in San Francisco after the war.  He married Ellen Ewing in 1850, and resigned his commission as captain in 1853.

He worked in San Francisco as the agent for a St. Louis-based banking firm.  When the parent company failed in the financial crisis of 1857 he moved to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to open a law and real estate office.  In October 1859, he became the superintendent of the Louisiana State Seminary, the forerunner of Louisiana State University.

Sherman was offered a commission in the Confederate army, but declined.  He moved to St. Louis, serving as president of a St. Louis streetcar company until the Civil War began.

Related articles

• Sherman's Demons (opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com)

January 10, 1861

On Thursday, January 10, 1861, Florida became the third state to secede from the Union.  A state convention voted for secession 62 to 7.

At Pensacola, the Federal troops under Lieutenant A. G. Slemmer abandoned Fort Barrancas and moved to Fort Pickens on Santa Rosa Island.

In Louisiana, Braxton Bragg and the state militia seized Forts Jackson and St. Philip and the arsenal at Baton Rouge.  William Tecumseh Sherman, then the head of the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning and Military Academy (later Louisiana State University), called Bragg's actions "an act of war and a breach of common decency."  He resigned his post in protest but agreed to stay on until he could turn the school over to a successor.

In one of the more comic episodes of these final prewar days, the citizens of Smithville and Wilmington, North Carolina came down with secession fever and seized Forts Johnson and Caswell.  A few days later Governor John W. Ellis ordered the forts returned; North Carolina had not seceded and was not really even considering it.  The two caretakers, who had demanded receipts for the property, told the citizens they would take the forts back "if there was none of it broken, or none of the ammunition expended."