Union Victories in the Western Theater

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Section Chronology

While most eyes focused on events in the East, the decisive early encounters of the war were taking place between the Appalachian Mountains and the Ozarks (see Map 15.2). Confederates wanted Missouri and Kentucky, states they claimed but did not control. Federals wanted to split Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas from the Confederacy by taking control of the Mississippi River and to occupy Tennessee, one of the Confederacy’s main producers of food, mules, and iron — all vital resources.

Before Union forces could march on Tennessee, they needed to secure Missouri to the west. Union troops swept across Missouri to the border of Arkansas, where in March 1862 they encountered a 16,000-man Confederate army, which included three regiments of Indians from the so-called Five Civilized Tribes — the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, Seminole, and Cherokee. The Union victory at the battle of Pea Ridge left Missouri free of Confederate troops, but guerrilla bands led by the notorious William Clarke Quantrill and “Bloody Bill” Anderson burned, tortured, scalped, and murdered Union civilians and soldiers until the final year of the war.

Even farther west, Confederate armies sought to fulfill Jefferson Davis’s vision of a slaveholding empire stretching all the way to the Pacific. Both sides recognized the immense value of the gold and silver mines of California, Nevada, and Colorado. And both sides bolstered their armies in the Southwest with Mexican Americans. A quick strike by Texas troops took Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the winter of 1861–62. Then in March 1862, a band of Colorado miners ambushed and crushed southern forces at Glorieta Pass, outside Santa Fe, effectively ending dreams of a Confederate empire beyond Texas.

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Figure false: Battle of Glorieta Pass, 1862

The principal western battles took place in Tennessee, where General Ulysses S. Grant emerged as the key northern commander. Grant, a West Point graduate who had served in Mexico, was a thirty-nine-year-old dry-goods clerk in Galena, Illinois, when the war began. Gentle at home, he became pugnacious on the battlefield. “The art of war is simple,” he said. “Find out where your enemy is, get at him as soon as you can and strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on.” Grant’s philosophy of war as attrition would take a huge toll in human life, but it played to the North’s superiority in manpower. Later, to critics who wanted the president to sack Grant because of his drinking, Lincoln would say, “I can’t spare this man. He fights.”

CHAPTER LOCATOR

Why did both the Union and the Confederacy consider control of the border states crucial?

Why did each side expect to win?

How did each side fare in the early years of the war?

How did the war for union become a fight for black freedom?

What problems did the Confederacy face at home?

How did the war affect the economy and politics of the North?

How did the Union finally win the war?

Conclusion: In what ways was the Civil War a “Second American Revolution”?

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Check what you know.

In February 1862, operating in tandem with U.S. Navy gunboats, Grant captured Fort Henry on the Tennessee River and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland (see Map 15.2). Defeat forced the Confederates to withdraw from all of Kentucky and most of Tennessee, but Grant followed.

On April 6, General Albert Sidney Johnston’s army surprised Grant at Shiloh Church in Tennessee. Union troops were badly mauled the first day, but Grant remained cool and brought up reinforcements throughout the night. The next morning, the Union army counterattacked, driving the Confederates before it. The battle of Shiloh was terribly costly to both sides; there were 20,000 casualties, among them General Johnston. Grant later said that after Shiloh he “gave up all idea of saving the Union except by complete conquest.”

battle of Shiloh

image Battle at Shiloh Church, Tennessee, on April 6–7, 1862, between Albert Sidney Johnston’s Confederate forces and Ulysses S. Grant’s Union army. The Union army ultimately prevailed, though at great cost to both sides. Shiloh ruined the Confederacy’s bid to control the war in the West.

Although no one knew it at the time, Shiloh ruined the Confederacy’s bid to control the theater of operations in the West. The Yankees quickly captured the strategic town of Corinth, Mississippi; the river city of Memphis; and the South’s largest city, New Orleans. By the end of 1862, the far West and most — but not all — of the Mississippi valley lay in Union hands. At the same time, the outcome of the struggle in another theater of war was also becoming clearer.

Major Battles of the Civil War, 1861–1862

> Major Battles of the Civil War, 1861–1862

April 12–13, 1861 Attack on Fort Sumter
July 21, 1861 First battle of Bull Run (Manassas)
February 6, 1862 Battle of Fort Henry
February 16, 1862 Battle of Fort Donelson
March 6–8, 1862 Battle of Pea Ridge
March 9, 1862 Battle of the Merrimack (the Virginia) and the Monitor
March 26, 1862 Battle of Glorieta Pass
April 6–7, 1862 Battle of Shiloh
May–July 1862 McClellan’s peninsula campaign
June 6, 1862 Fall of Memphis
June 25–July 1, 1862 Seven Days Battle
August 29–30, 1862 Second battle of Bull Run (Manassas)
September 17, 1862 Battle of Antietam
December 13, 1862 Battle of Fredericksburg