November 5, 1864---The Fort Smith Expedition; The Debate Over Confederate Emancipation Goes On

NOVEMBER 5, 1864:        

The Fort Smith Expedition. Truly tired by the constant reappearance of General Sterling Price C.S.A.’s ineffective but harassing column, a Union column from Fort Smith begins beating the bounds for Price. A number of skirmishes occur with scattered C.S. forces, and Brigadier General Lewis Cabell C.S.A. is captured, along with a wagon train of Confederate civilians trying to flee further south. Price’s column manages to elude the Union force. At this point Price’s column has passed into Indian Territory searching for food for its men and fodder for its horses, both of which are desperately short.

Harper’s Weekly publishes a cartoon lampooning Confederate efforts to enlist blacks in the C.S. armies.

Since the Augusta Conference of October 17^th the idea of enlisting slaves to fight for the Confederacy has been gaining ground. Robert E. Lee has endorsed the idea in conversations with Jefferson Davis, and Lee has quietly begun laying the groundwork for admitting slaves into the army. Quite remarkably, in the midst of the Siege of Petersburg, Lee conducts a straw poll of the men in the Army of Northern Virginia. The response to the idea of having slaves fight is overwhelmingly positive. Heartened, Lee solicits comments, which run the gamut from the articulate (“Now is no time to be ruled by our primitive prejudices” writes a Virginia Colonel) to the crude but heartfelt (“Let the coons fight!” wrote a Mississippi Private). Several men want to know if they will be furloughed to go home once the black soldiers arrive, and a handful recommend turning the fighting entirely over to the slaves. Lee has no intention of doing so, but unlike the Union army’s segregated U.S.C.T. units he anticipates a series of integrated units in which his battle-hardened veterans can help train, assist, and supervise (read “oversee”) the African-Americans. Expecting that the Confederate Congress will respond with alacrity to ease the dire manpower needs of the Southern armies, Lee writes up a plan to induct 300,000 slaves into the army (all of whom will be conditionally emancipated). It is a revolutionary plan on many levels, not least because if Lee gets the numbers he wants the black soldiery will outnumber the whites nearly two-to-one. Lee submits his plan to Jefferson Davis. And waits . . .

November 4, 1864---The Siege of Fayetteville, Arkansas

NOVEMBER 4, 1864:        

The Siege of Fayetteville, Arkansas. 

William “Buck” Brown, a notorious Confederate guerrilla attacked Union-held Fayetteville on October 25 with a force of 500 men and artillery. Brown began an indiscriminate and intermittent shelling of the town that continued for ten days. Civilians were killed, putting an end to any Confederate sympathy in Fayetteville. On November 4^th, Brown finally decided to break the siege and attack the town with an assist from General Sterling Price C.S.A.’s battered and almost-pointlessly wandering force, which had been in and out of Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, and the Indian Territory in just the last two weeks. Price was hoping to redeem himself by taking Fayetteville, and his 5,200 men, along with Brown’s 500 made three successive infantry charges, each of which was beaten back by the 1,000 Federal defenders. The Confederates lost 100 men killed and captured. The Union suffered 9 wounded. After the third charge, Price pulled out, and Brown’s irregulars gave up the siege leaving Fayetteville a Union city.

November 3, 1864---THe Battle of Johnsonville, TN

NOVEMBER 3, 1864:        

The Battle of Johnsonville. Nathan Bedford Forrest, his troopers, and his scratch navy, attack the Union supply depot and Johnsonville, Tennessee. Forrest is forced to scuttle his “flagship” the C.S.S. (lately U.S.S.) UNDINE ending his brief naval “career.” Other than that the Johnsonville Raid is a magnificent success. Forrest reported only 2 men killed and 9 wounded. He described the Union losses as 4 gunboats (including the U.S.S. KEY WEST, which was sunk), 14 transports, 20 barges, 26 pieces of artillery, $6,700,000 worth of property (ammunition, food, and supplies), and 150 prisoners. The supply depot was destroyed in a sheet of flame by his artillery bombardment, and control of the Tennessee River became contested. General George H. Thomas U.S.A.’s Army of The Cumberland, which had been shadowing John Bell Hood, found its main supply source cut off. This slowed, but ultimately did not stop Union actions in the Tennessee River region. As for Forrest, he and his men set off a three week rampage through the area. 

November 2, 1864---Pardon me . . .

NOVEMBER 2, 1864:       

Albert Hobbs, a New York State Assemblyman, requested and received from President Lincoln a pardon for his nephew Nathan Wilcox, whom General Grant had ordered hanged for desertion. 

In late 1864, desertion was a plague on the Confederate armies --- at one point in the ongoing Franklin-Nashville Campaign General John Bell Hood C.S.A. was leading only 4,500 effectives  in his Army of Tennessee (rated at 40,000 on paper). This was an extraordinary desertion rate; however, a number of these men quit Hood’s army to join Lee’s army or to become itinerant self-styled partisans. Then too, desertion was not an irrevocable act. Men returned to combat sometimes, after visiting their families or having a change of heart. Many of these deserters were summarily pardoned, especially given the Confederacy’s desperate manpower needs. Field officers often issued pardons, as did Jefferson Davis. Others re-enlisted under pseudonyms. Often, weather conditions and the prospect of victory or defeat had a tremendous impact on the desertion rate. At this point in the war, there was an almost constant leakage of men from the Southern ranks, a leakage which had not yet reached its flood tide.

Essentially the same conditions applied for the Union. During the war, at least 200,000 men walked off the blue line. Late in the war, men often decided for themselves that the war was won, and that they need not risk themselves any more. Some of these men had been fighting since 1861.  By 1864, ordered hangings and shootings for desertion in the Union army had become far more common, because of the available manpower pool, than in the Confederate army, but executions were often deferred or cancelled for reasons of unit morale or because pardons were routinely issued by President Lincoln, and more occasionally by his field commanders. Edwin M. Stanton, Lincoln’s waspish Secretary of War, was driven to distraction by Lincoln’s constant habit of issuing pardons. Lincoln was often derided as “weak” on army discipline. In reality, he had just grown exhausted from all the bloodletting and wanted to commit no more.  In all, only 147 men were executed for desertion by the Union during the war.

November 1, 1864---The Emilie Davis Diaries

NOVEMBER 1, 1864:      

The new Constitution of Maryland comes into effect, ending slavery in the State. African-Americans throughout the North (and restored South) rejoice. Emile Davis, a black woman living in Philadelphia, writes in her diary:

 

to day is a holliaday with most everyone the Colored soldiers are in and everything seemes cherful i went to meeting quite a nice little meeting after meeting we went   to see the [indecipherable] at head quarters I have had no letter from nell this week she is [indecipherable] in a hury to answer my letters

Emilie, who was a domestic, kept three small pocket diaries, covering the years 1863, 1864, and 1865. They are an invaluable source as to what an “average” African-American in the North was experiencing during the Civil War. Due to Emilie’s use of different writing implements and her idiosyncratic spelling some of the text is unreadable.