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The Army of the Tennessee was a Union army in the Western Theater of the American Civil War, named for the Tennessee River. It should not be confused with the similarly named Army of Tennessee, a Confederate army named after the State of Tennessee. The Army of the Tennessee was composed of divisions in the District of Cairo, Department of Missouri, renamed the Army of West Tennessee and then Army of the Tennessee. Ulysses S. Grant commanded this army under the three names from shortly after the start of the war until after his victory at Vicksburg in 1863. Under other generals, the army fought from Chattanooga, through Georgia, to The Carolinas and the end of the war.
History
Up the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers
On December 23, 1861, Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant was appointed to command the District of Cairo, Department of Missouri. The army was created from units of the district and divided into three divisions for the campaign to drive up the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers. The divisions were commanded by Brig. Gen. John A. McClernand (1st Division), Brig. Gen. Charles F. Smith (2nd), and Brig. Gen. Lew Wallace (3rd). Smith's and McClernand's divisions sailed down the Cumberland River to Fort Henry. The fort surrendered to U.S. Navy Flag Officer Andrew H. Foote, commander of the Western Flotilla, before the army could attack. A few days later the two divisions at Fort Henry marched overland to Fort Donelson where they joined with Wallace's division, which was formed there from new regiments that had sailed down the Tennessee River. The Battle of Fort Donelson began on February 12 and the garrison surrendered on February 16.Shiloh and Corinth
Five days after the victory at Donelson, on February 21, 1862, now-Major General Grant was given command of the District of West Tennessee. His army was reinforced by three more divisions and renamed the Army of West Tennessee. However, professional jealousies led Grant's superior, Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, the commander of the Department of the West, to sideline Grant from command of the river expedition; from March 2 to March 17, C.F. Smith had operational control. After personal intervention from President Abraham Lincoln, Halleck restored Grant to command.In April the army was in its first real engagement under its new name at the Battle of Shiloh. On the first day of the battle the army fought desperately and suffered many casualties. The heroic sacrifice of Benjamin Prentiss's 6th Division in the Hornet's Nest allowed the rest of the army to form a strong defensive line and repulse the last of the Confederate assaults. The next day the Army of the Ohio, under Don Carlos Buell, arrived to reinforce Grant. Bolstered by Buell and Maj. Gen. Lew Wallace's 5th Division, Army of West Tennessee (which had been out of the action the first day), Grant counterattacked and drove the Confederates from the field.
On April 30, 1862, Halleck consolidated all the Union armies in the west to form an Army Group of over 100,000 men from the Army of West Tennessee, Army of the Mississippi, and the Army of the Ohio, with Halleck in overall command. Halleck appointed Grant to be his second-in-command, a position with no formal responsibilities. The forces of the department were reorganized into three "wings", with George H. Thomas in command of the Right Wing, containing the 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 6th Divisions the Army of West Tennessee and Thomas's division from the Army of the Ohio. Grant remained nominally in command of an army that temporarily did not exist in practice; both Halleck and Thomas gave orders directly to the division commanders assigned to the Right Wing. After the Siege of Corinth, the reorganization was rescinded and Grant returned to effective command of the army on June 10.
Vicksburg
On October 16, 1862, the army was transferred to the Department of the Tennessee, becoming the Army of the Tennessee. By December the army was reorganized into four corps—the XIII, XV, XVI, and XVII—each containing two or three divisions and detachments of artillery and cavalry.In December 1862, the XV Corps under Sherman made an attack against Vicksburg, but was repulsed in the Battle of Chickasaw Bluffs. John A. McClernand used his political influence with Abraham Lincoln to obtain command of the expedition against Vicksburg, setting himself up as a competitor to Grant. McClernand was given command of both his XIII Corps and Sherman's corps. He redesignated these two corps the Army of the Mississippi and succeeded in capturing Fort Hindman on the Arkansas River. Since this objective was seen to be a distraction and unrelated to a campaign against Vicksburg, Grant used this as a justification to reassert his command of the expedition personally and McClernand's force was reincorporated into the Army of the Tennessee.
Working well with the Western Flotilla under David D. Porter, Grant led the XIII, XV, and XVII Corps through the Vicksburg Campaign, a masterful campaign of maneuver against two Confederate armies. After capturing Jackson, Mississippi, and defeating the Confederates in the Battle of Champion Hill, initial assaults against the Confederate entrenchments at Vicksburg were unsuccessful, so Grant reluctantly laid siege to the city. During the siege the army received significant reinforcements. A division from the late Army of the Frontier under Francis J. Herron was added to the XVII Corps on June 11. A detachment of two divisions from the XVI Corps under Cadwallader C. Washburn joined on June 12. The IX Corps under John G. Parke (8,000 men from Ambrose Burnside's Army of the Ohio) joined the siege on June 14. Grant replaced McClernand in command of the XIII Corps with Maj. Gen. Edward O. C. Ord. The city surrendered on July 4 and Generals Herron, McPherson, and Logan were the first to lead troops into the city. Immediately after the fall of Vicksburg, Sherman took command of an expeditionary force composed of the IX, XIII, and XV Corps plus elements of the XVI and XVII Corps. This force captured Jackson on July 17 and returned to Vicksburg shortly after.
Chattanooga
After William S. Rosecrans's Army of the Cumberland was defeated at the Battle of Chickamauga, it retreated to Chattanooga, where it was besieged by Braxton Bragg's Army of Tennessee. Grant was ordered by Washington to travel to Chattanooga, assume command of all forces there, and bring up reinforcements to relieve them and defeat Bragg. William T. Sherman assumed command of the Army of the Tennessee and participated in some of the fighting there. The XV Corps under Maj. Gen. Frank P. Blair, Jr., and the 2nd Division of the XVII Corps, led by Brig. Gen. John E. Smith, assaulted the right flank of Bragg's army on November 25, 1863. In the Battle of Chattanooga, Sherman's army was intended to play the major role by making this assault, but it was unsuccessful and the major credit for breaking the Confederate line is generally given to the Army of the Cumberland, now under Maj. Gen. George Henry Thomas, who assaulted up Missionary Ridge.Atlanta
Now that Chattanooga had fallen, an avenue of invasion had opened into the heart of the Deep South. Braxton Bragg was relieved of command of his defeated army, replaced by General Joseph E. Johnston. Ulysses S. Grant was promoted to lieutenant general and given command of all Union armies in March 1864. Sherman assumed command of the Military Division of the Mississippi, in control of all armies in the Western Theater. Command of the Army of the Tennessee was given to Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson, who had started his Civil War career as a lieutenant colonel and the chief engineer in Grant's army at Fort Donelson.The army performed well under McPherson in the Atlanta Campaign, in which multiple columns of Union armies under Sherman attempted to maneuver around Johnston. In the Battle of Atlanta on July 22, 1864, McPherson's army was the main target of a strong assault by Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood, who replaced Johnston. McPherson was killed while he was observing the fighting. He was replaced temporarily by Maj. Gen. John A. Logan, and then by Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard. The army eventually prevailed and Hood evacuated Atlanta on September 1.
Georgia and the Carolinas
Howard led the Army of the Tennessee through the end of the war. Following Atlanta, Sherman's March to the Sea saw Howard leading the left wing of the two-column advance through Georgia, eventually capturing Savannah, Georgia. Sherman continued his destructive march, now to the north, in the Carolinas Campaign. Howard's army was the right wing of a three-column invasion. At the final major battle, Bentonville, the majority of the fighting fell on Sherman's other armies. But it had been a physically demanding campaign, with the armies marching 425 miles in 50 days. On April 26, 1865, General Joseph E. Johnston surrendered to Sherman all of the Confederate armies in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. On May 19, John A. Logan became the final commander of the Army of the Tennessee.Disbandment
The Department of the Tennessee participated in the Grand Review in Washington, D.C. It marched as part of Sherman's Great Western Army. The Army of the Tennessee was officially disbanded on August 1, 1865.Command history
District of Cairo
| Commander | From | To | Major Battles |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant | December 23, 1861 | February 21, 1862 | Fort Henry, Fort Donelson |
| Commander | From | To | Major Battles |
|---|---|---|---|
| Major General Ulysses S. Grant | February 21, 1862 | April 30, 1862 | Shiloh |
| Major General Ulysses S. Grant | April 30, 1862 | June 10, 1862 | Siege of Corinth |
| Major General Ulysses S. Grant | June 10, 1862 | October 24, 1862 | Corinth (detachment only) |
| Commander | From | To | Major Battles and Campaigns |
|---|---|---|---|
| Major General Ulysses S. Grant | October 16, 1862 | October 24, 1863 | Vicksburg Campaign, Siege of Vicksburg |
| Major General William T. Sherman | October 24, 1863 | March 26, 1864 | Chattanooga, Missionary Ridge, Meridian |
| Major General James B. McPherson | March 26, 1864 | July 22, 1864 | Atlanta Campaign, Atlanta |
| Major General John A. Logan | July 22, 1864 | July 27, 1864 | Atlanta |
| Major General Oliver O. Howard | July 27, 1864 | May 19, 1865 | Ezra Church, Jonesborough, March to the Sea, Bentonville |
| Major General John A. Logan | May 19, 1865 | August 1, 1865 |
Notes
- For a brief period (September 28 – December 9, 1862) there was also a Confederate Army of West Tennessee, commanded by Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn, organized from the Army of the West. Confederate authorities ruled that this was an improper name and Van Dorn's forces were merged into the Army of Mississippi.
- Grant was promoted to major general on February 16, 1862.
- During this period Grant served as second-in-command of the Department of the Mississippi under Halleck. The major units of three armies in the department (the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the West Tennessee) were shuffled into a new organization that included three "wings". The Right Wing, which included four divisions from the Army of West Tennessee and one division from the Army of the Ohio, was commanded by George H. Thomas. Although the army effectively ceased to exist during this brief period, the Official Records do not show any interruption in Grant's command of the Army of West Tennessee.
- Grant was not present at the second battle of Corinth, but a detachment of two divisions from the Army of the Tennessee were engaged at Corinth under the overall command of Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans, Army of the Mississippi.
References
- Eicher, John H., & Eicher, David J., Civil War High Commands, Stanford University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8047-3641-3.
- Woodworth, Steven E., Nothing but Victory: The Army of the Tennessee, 1861 – 1865, Alfred A. Knopf, 2005, ISBN 0-375-41218-2.
External links
"Army of the Tennessee"