The Uncivil War: Irregular Warfare in the Upper South, 1861-1865

by Robert R. Mackey

Overview

The Upper South—Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia—was the scene of the most destructive war ever fought on American soil. Contending armies swept across the region from the outset of the Civil War until its end, marking their passage at Pea Ridge, Shiloh, Perryville, and Manassas. Alongside this much-studied conflict, the Confederacy also waged an irregular war, based on nineteenth-century principles of unconventional warfare. In The Uncivil War, Robert R. Mackey outlines the Southern strategy of waging war across an entire region, measures the Northern response, and explains the outcome.

Complex military issues shaped both the Confederate irregular war and the Union response. Through detailed accounts of Rebel guerrilla, partisan, and raider activities, Mackey strips away romanticized notions of how the “shadow war” was fought, proving instead that irregular warfare was an integral part of Confederate strategy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780806148045
Publisher:	University of Oklahoma Press
Publication date:	08/04/2014
Series:	Campaigns and Commanders Series , #5
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	329,396
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

Robert R. Mackey, a Major in the U.S. Army, has been an army officer since 1988 and now serves as a strategic plans and policy specialist at the Pentagon.

Read an Excerpt

The Uncivil War

Irregular Warfare in the Upper South, 1861â"1865

---

By Robert R. Mackey

UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS

Copyright © 2004 University of Oklahoma Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8061-4804-5

---

CHAPTER 1

THE CONFEDERACY'S SELF-INFLICTED WOUND

The Guerrilla War in Arkansas, 1862–1865

The people of Arkansas are united and prepared for any sacrifice necessary to establish Confederate nationality.

Governor Henry M. Rector of Arkansas to Governor W. F. Pickens of South Carolina, April 11, 1862

Carl von Clausewitz wrote in On War that guerrilla warfare in the nineteenth century was "a broadening and intensification of the fermentation process known as war." Clausewitz, a member of the Prussian nobility, explained that the rise of popular guerrilla warfare, which he called "people's war" and contrasted with organized partisan warfare, led to the "breaking down of barriers." The social, political, and military bulwarks that had held the world of the Enlightenment crumbled in the revolutionary age, as the lower classes were called to arms. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Clausewitz saw a guerrilla war as a method to mobilize the complete resources of a nation to victory. "Any nation who uses it intelligently will, as a rule, gain some superiority over those who disdain its use," he surmised, adding, "the question only remains whether mankind at large will gain by this further expansion of the element of war." Clausewitz the theorist would have had his question answered in Arkansas in 1865, as a brutal people's war left Arkansas in ruins, made many of its citizens homeless, and led others to welcome the invading army (see map 2).

Arkansas, despite its location on the periphery of the Confederacy, provides an excellent example of a people's war as described by Clausewitz and Jomini. This frontier state, with its rich alluvial bottomland, nearly impenetrable hill country, and politically divided population, was the scene of the Confederate government's only planned and executed guerrilla conflict. Following the example of the Spanish guerrillas fighting the French army from 1808 to 1813, the Rebel leadership hoped to slow or inhibit the Federal invasion of Arkansas. Despite the efforts of Confederate military and civilian leaders, and the irregulars themselves, the attempt at a guerrilla war was an abject failure. The Rebels lacked a cohesive strategy to employ their guerrilla companies, denied them needed logistical support, and did not provide the conventional military leadership needed for success. The people's war in Arkansas ultimately failed as the Rebel government abandoned the guerrillas to a steadily improving Federal antiguerrilla campaign.

The evening of March 8, 1862, was the darkest in the short history of Confederate Arkansas. The scattered remains of the once-vaunted Army of the West, under the command of General Earl Van Dorn, unsuccessfully attempted to fight a delaying action against the Union Army of the Southwest, led by Major General Samuel R. Curtis. Van Dorn's army, consisting of units from Texas, Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, and Native American tribes from the Indian Territory, slowly disintegrated throughout the night. For the Union army, the pursuit was relatively easy, as Federal cavalrymen followed "the trail of the defeated, disorganized army littered with discarded clothing, weapons, cartridge boxes, knives, coffee pots, and even flags," the flotsam and jetsam of a routed enemy.

Van Dorn's defeat at Pea Ridge produced important consequences in the conduct of the Civil War in the trans-Mississippi West. The battle ensured that the Union would control Missouri for the indefinite future and threatened Arkansas with Union occupation. Although it seemed to many leaders in Richmond that Arkansas had few strategic advantages, the state actually possessed a large body of untapped white manpower and a healthy agricultural economy. Geographically, it was situated in an excellent position to menace Federal states and territories throughout the western frontier. The defeat at Pea Ridge also brought Major General Thomas C. Hindman to the command of Confederate forces in Arkansas. An antebellum Arkansas politician and planter, Hindman would change the nature of the conflict in the state by ordering its inhabitants to launch the only organized people's war in the short history of the Confederacy.

For the Rebels, Arkansas was an excellent battleground for guerrilla warfare. First, the state's presence on the periphery of the Confederacy—both politically and geographically—made it acceptable for Rebel leaders to fight that type of conflict. Simply put, the Confederate high command saw Arkansas as expendable, a backward and relatively isolated region that could be sacrificed to buy time for the decisive battles in Tennessee and Virginia. Brutal guerrilla warfare, which could not be fought in places like Richmond, Nashville, or Atlanta without seriously damaging support for the Confederate government, could be conducted in Arkansas with little expectation of political repercussions. A perfect example of the Confederate government's attitude toward Arkansas occurred in March 1862, when Van Dorn withdrew his battered army across the Mississippi River to join General Albert Sidney Johnston's Army of Tennessee. Although Van Dorn arrived too late to help at the Battle of Shiloh on April 6–7, his forces were absorbed into the Army of Tennessee, never to return to Arkansas or the trans-Mississippi. Arkansas's Confederate leadership, especially Governor Henry M. Rector, strongly denounced the Confederate high command's decision. Stripped of most regular troops, Arkansas's leaders resorted to many desperate measures, including guerrilla warfare, to save their state from Union occupation.

Second, the state's terrain supported irregular warfare. The geographic division of the state into highlands, lowlands, and delta, and the concordant economic and political alignment of the region, gave the Confederates a clear delineation of friendly and unfriendly territory. The delta and lowlands regions were relatively guerrilla free (except where Union forces existed) compared with the pro-Union hill country. Lastly, the Confederate defeat at Pea Ridge in March 1862 led the Rebel leadership to turn to irregular warfare to buy time for rebuilding and deploying a new conventional field force. The Battle of Pea Ridge did more than shape the military outcome in the trans-Mississippi Confederacy; it planted the seed of defeat needed to force the Rebel leadership to turn to guerrilla warfare.

Jefferson Davis, faced with the decision to either abandon Arkansas or lose Tennessee, chose to defend the latter and ordered the transfer of Confederate troops and supplies out of Arkansas. After Van Dorn's army departed, Governor Rector demanded a new army and a competent leader to stop the approaching Yankees. Davis responded by attempting to reassure Rector that all possible measures were being taken for the state's defense; however, the Richmond government continued to pull men and munitions out of the state to assist in the defense of Mississippi and Tennessee. Frustrated by Davis's rebuff, the governor turned to the newspapers for action.

In a widely publicized address, Rector castigated Davis: "Arkansas lost, abandoned, subjugated, is not Arkansas as she entered the confederate government." He threatened to make a separate peace with the Union: "nor will she [Arkansas] remain a confederate state, desolated as a wilderness; her children fleeing from the wrath to come, will build them a new ark and launch it on new waters, seeking a haven somewhere, of equality, safety and rest." Calling for all able-bodied men to volunteer for the state's defense, Rector guaranteed they "will not be transferred to confederate service under any circumstances without their consent, and on no account, unless a confederate force, sufficient to prevent invasion, is sent into the State." Governor Rector had issued a challenge that Jefferson Davis could not ignore.

Rector's proclamation infuriated the Confederate president, infamous for his personal vendettas against political opponents. Davis ignored Rector's pleas, writing directly to Van Dorn in May, stating that the "recent proclamation of the Governor of Arkansas ... which may operate injuriously on our cause" made it "apparent that an impression prevails that the defense of the State of Arkansas ... has been abandoned by the Confederate government." Davis advised Van Dorn to write to the Arkansas leadership that his army's absence was only temporary and, following the repulse of the Union forces in Mississippi, it would return to the defense of Arkansas. It is revealing to note that Davis himself never wrote directly to Rector, nor were any Confederate forces transferred west to the defense of the trans-Mississippi region. The sole reinforcement for the defense of Arkansas was one man—Major General Thomas C. Hindman.

The defeat at Pea Ridge, the Confederate withdrawal from Arkansas, and Hindman's arrival in May 1862 brought sweeping changes to the state. Recovering from wounds received at Shiloh, he assumed command of the entire Trans-Mississippi District, which covered a huge swath of the southwest, from Missouri to Louisiana north of the Red River. Hindman's mission was staggering in its scope; he was "charged with their [the states of Texas, Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, and the Indian Territory] defense, and is fully authorized and empowered to organize their troops."

He arrived to find Little Rock in turmoil. Civilians were fleeing the capital in expectation of the Federal army's arrival, plantation owners were burning their crops, and the handful of Confederate troops in the area were without strong leadership. One of Colonel W. H. Parsons's Texas cavalrymen, halted on their journey to Mississippi by the authorities in Little Rock, said that "most every farm was seen smoking with burning cotton. More than 50,000,000 dollars worth has been burned along the Arkansas and Mississippi rivers during the last month [May 1862]." Van Dorn had done little to defend the city. Considering the capital of Confederate Arkansas untenable, he had ordered troops to evacuate military stores, destroy bridges, and tear down the newly constructed Little Rock–Fort Smith telegraph line, leaving his successor without soldiers, logistical support, or even a working communications system.

Undaunted, Hindman set to work immediately. En route to his new command in Little Rock, he stopped in Memphis and impressed every firearm he could find, and he seized nearly one million dollars in funds from banks to pay his army. When he arrived at his headquarters on May 30, he discovered that the few organized troops that had remained after Van Dorn left for Mississippi had been withdrawn to the Indian Territory under the command of General Albert Pike, a prewar political foe. Hindman gathered a handful of unarmed state militia and Parsons's Texas cavalry and prepared to face Curtis's victorious Army of the Southwest, which was staging in southeast Missouri for the invasion. For Hindman and the Arkansas Confederate government, the future looked bleak indeed.

The military situation in early June 1862 left Hindman several options, few of them promising. He could remove the Confederate government and what little military supplies he had to a safer region of the state, continuing Van Dorn's withdrawal (and violating the implicit agreement between President Davis and Arkansas's political leadership that the state would not be abandoned), or he could fight. Hindman, an avid admirer of Napoleon, planned to make Arkansas a costly conquest for the Union army and chose the latter. He imposed martial law in the state, seizing munitions and supplies wherever possible. He also ordered the rationing of goods and enforced conscription laws in order to raise a new conventional army. Lastly, Hindman ordered the raising of independent guerrilla companies to operate behind enemy lines and to serve as de facto law enforcement officers in the rest of the state. This act, which later became known as the "Bands of Ten" order, put Arkansas on the path toward widespread guerrilla warfare.

When the war erupted, C. C. Danley, editor of the Arkansas Gazette and influential state leader, warned "now that the war is upon the country some of the more thoughtless and hot-headed of our citizens seem to be made mad by the very idea of it." He made a plea to the higher motivations of civilized men. "If there were no profit to us in the adoption of such a course [guerrilla warfare]," he continued, "as civilized men we should not lose our civilization and become savages." Ironically, it was to these men that Hindman appealed for a people's war. On June 17, 1862, the headquarters of the newly formed Trans-Mississippi District issued General Orders Number 17 (see appendix B). In this order, Hindman instructed the people of Arkansas: "for the more effective annoyance of the enemy upon our rivers and in our mountains and woods, all citizens from this district ... are called upon to organize themselves into independent companies" of ten men, led by an elected "captain," to conduct guerrilla warfare "without waiting for special instructions." Within a single year, Arkansas Confederates went from adherence to the laws of civilized warfare to an unrestrained guerrilla conflict. Hindman's objective was direct and simple—to slow down the Union armies long enough to rebuild a conventional force. The "Bands of Ten" order was not intended to be the beginning of a war of national liberation, as in the twentieth century, but meant to mobilize the populace to resist the invader. It was, in effect, an attempt by Hindman to give the Yankee army a taste of what Napoleon's army experienced in Spain.

Hindman and the Arkansas Confederate leadership realized the problems inherent in controlling an irregular war. From the beginning, commanders feared that the guerrillas would turn to banditry. Just prior to Hindman's assuming command in Arkansas, the departing Van Dorn authorized Brigadier General John S. Roane, whom he left in command of the state in May 1862, to "appoint partisan officers, subject to the approval of the President, and in conferring these appointments he desires you to be careful that none but men of respectable character are appointed."

In light of the concerns over controlling the guerrillas, Hindman issued General Orders Number 18 on June 18, 1862. The order outlined the organization and command relationships of the independent companies authorized by General Orders Number 17. Guerrilla companies were ostensibly placed under the command of county provosts marshal, or military law enforcement officers, and had to submit to inspections and reports by the provosts. However, no evidence exists that these reports were ever filed. Hindman, in the guise of General Orders Number 18, attempted to address command and control issues for the guerrilla units raised in Arkansas. In practice, there was no real organization or control over these units, despite the issuance of the new directive. Unlike General Orders Number 17, General Orders Number 18 did not receive widespread distribution; instead, only parts of it were published, those specifically dealing with martial law and the appointment of provosts marshal to enforce it. Vital sections of this crucial order concerning equipping, supplying, and commanding the guerrillas were omitted from the newspapers. In effect, the Rebels authorized the mobilization of a guerrilla army but without providing for the command and control needed to oversee the independent companies.

In a display of remarkable determination, Hindman managed to raise a force of 18,000 conventional troops and an estimated 5,000 irregular troops by August 1862. In theory, the arrayed forces, both conventional and unconventional, came under his direct command; conventional forces were contained in standard military organizations (battalions, regiments, and divisions), while local provosts marshal controlled the company-size irregular detachments. Seemingly, in the summer of 1862, the system worked, to the pleasure of Hindman and the dismay of the Union army.

The first test of Hindman's guerrillas came during the White River Expedition in June 1862. Curtis's Army of the Southwest, having traveled across Missouri and reentered Arkansas in April, found itself without adequate logistical support to continue the conquest of Arkansas. To overcome the scarcity of supplies, Generals Curtis and Grant (preparing to begin the offensive toward Vicksburg, Mississippi) planned to open the White and Little Red Rivers to Union steamboats. A joint expedition was launched, under the overall command of Colonel Graham N. Fitch. Fitch's small force was accurately estimated by the Confederates as numbering between 1,000 and 1,500 men, supported by the ironclads St. Louis and Mound City, the wooden gunboats Lexington (a veteran of Shiloh) and Conestoga, the tug Tiger, and three transports. To counter the Union assault, Hindman established a battery of the heaviest guns he possessed, two rifled thirty-two-pounders and four field pieces, on a bluff commanding the river near St. Charles. Additionally, he ordered detachments of Confederate sharpshooters to support the defense of the battery.

(Continues...)

---

Excerpted from The Uncivil War by Robert R. Mackey. Copyright © 2004 University of Oklahoma Press. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

Contents

List of Illustrations,
Acknowledgments,
Introduction: Civil War Irregular Warfare in Theory and Practice,
1. The Confederacy's Self-Inflicted Wound: The Guerrilla War in Arkansas, 1862–1865,
2. Fire, Provosts, and Tories: The Federal Counterinsurgency Campaign in Arkansas,
3. John Singleton Mosby and the Confederate Partisan War in Virginia,
4. Misreading the Enemy: The Union Army's Failed Response to Partisan Warfare in Virginia,
5. The Heyday of Raiding Warfare: Morgan and Forrest in Tennessee and Kentucky, 1862,
6. Great Raids, Great Reforms, and Great Disasters: The 1863 Spring and Summer Raiding Campaign,
Conclusion: The End of the Uncivil War,
Appendix A: The Partisan Ranger Act,
Appendix B: General Orders Number 17,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Index,