Gen. John Pemberton

By Phil Kohn

March 2, 1862 – March 15, 1862

Phil Kohn can be reached at USCW160@yahoo.com.

On March 2, 1862, Brig. Gen. John Pemberton takes over the Confederate Department of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida from Gen. Robert E. Lee, who returns to Richmond. In the New Mexico Territory, Confederate troops enter Albuquerque.

Maj. Gen. Henry Halleck on March 3 levels accusations at Maj. Gen. Ulysses Grant regarding Grant’s “tardiness” and other misconduct at Fort Donelson. (Halleck may have been motivated by jealousy over the adulation being heaped on Grant, whom Halleck felt was his inferior, both militarily and intellectually.) Deciding that Grant does not deserve the responsibility of further field command, Halleck appoints Brig. Gen. Charles F. Smith to lead the Union troops out of Forts Henry and Donelson on the incipient Shiloh Campaign and confines Grant to Fort Henry.

On March 4, President Lincoln, appoints — and the U.S. Senate approves — a Democrat, U.S. Senator Andrew Johnson, from Tennessee, as a brigadier general and military governor of Tennessee. Johnson is the only U.S. Senator to have retained his position in the U.S. Congress after his state had seceded from the Union. Almost 1,900 miles west of Washington, D.C., Union troops withdraw from Santa Fe, the capital of the Federal Territory of New Mexico, and head for Fort Union, some 60 miles to the northeast, as Sibley’s Army of New Mexico approaches.

At Jackson, Tennessee, Gen. Pierre Beauregard assumes command of Confederate forces in the Mississippi Valley on March 5. Federal troops begin to position themselves around Savannah, in southwestern Tennessee, while Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston’s Confederates move to prevent further Union positioning in the area. At Savannah, along the Tennessee River, Brig. Gen. C.F. Smith’s Union troops are bolstered by the arrival of three gunboats and 80 troop transports.

In Washington, D.C., President Lincoln on March 6 appeals to the states to devise ways to abolish slavery. To encourage those in the border states, he notes that federal funding is available to help finance emancipation efforts by individual states. In northwestern Arkansas, Confederate troops commanded by Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn clash with a Union force led by Brig. Gen. Samuel Curtis in some moderate fighting. Anxious to gain advantageous ground (the Union troops are well-entrenched, facing southward), Van Dorn moves his soldiers via a night march around the Federal positions, and settles in north of them, at Pea Ridge.

On March 7, a two-day battle at Pea Ridge, Arkansas, commences between around 12,000 Union soldiers under Brig. Gen. Samuel Curtis and 17,000 Confederates — including Missouri State Guards and three regiments of Native American troops from the Indian Territory — led by Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn. The clash is the Civil War’s biggest battle west of the Mississippi River. Helped by superior artillery and a series of poorly coordinated attacks by the Confederates, the Union holds the field, and the Southerners withdraw. Federal troops suffer some 1,384 casualties to Confederate losses of 800, but two CSA generals — Ben McCullough and James McIntosh — are killed during the fighting. The defeat likely means the loss of Missouri to the Confederacy and more difficulty holding the Mississippi River. From his base in Jackson County, Missouri, William Quantrill leads his band of irregulars on a raid of Aubry, Kansas.

On March 8, Capt. Sherod Hunter, leading a detachment of Arizona Rangers from Tucson, Confederate Arizona Territory, reaches the Pima Indian villages (near present-day Phoenix). There, his force captures Unionist miller Ammi White. Hunter sends a squad of 16 Rangers under 2nd Lt. John Swilling westward along the former Butterfield Overland Mail route to find and destroy caches of flour, hay and other supplies that White and others had positioned for Union troops heading eastward from California.

In Virginia, on March 9, the modern era of naval warfare begins. At Hampton Roads — the waters between Norfolk and Ft. Monroe, on the southern tip of the Virginia Peninsula — two heavily armored ironclad vessels, USS Monitor, newly arrived from New York, and CSS Virginia battle — often at point-blank range — for two hours with neither causing significant damage to the other. The battle is a draw, but both vessels withdraw because of injuries to their commanding officers. (On the previous day, Virginia — built on the recovered hull of the sunken USS Merrimack and known widely by that name — had caused havoc at Hampton Roads by engaging a squadron of federal wooden vessels, putting two out of commission and badly damaging a third.) Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, at St. Louis, Missouri, is put in charge of all Federal armies in the west.

Confederate troops enter Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico Territory, on March 10. Back East, Gen. Joseph Johnston, wary of large numbers of Union forces in the area, pulls his Confederate troops back from Manassas, Virginia, to a new line along the Rappahannock River.

On March 11, President Lincoln removes Maj. Gen. George McClellan as general-in-chief of the U.S. Army, leaving him as commander of the Army of the Potomac and allowing him to concentrate on his upcoming movement on Richmond. In the Shenandoah Valley, Union troops under Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Banks advance toward Winchester, forcing Confederates commanded by Maj. Gen. “Stonewall” Jackson to abandon the town and move southward. In Richmond, President Davis receives the reports of generals Floyd and Pillow, both of whom fled from Fort Donelson, leaving their junior, Brig. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner, to surrender to Union forces. Davis rejects both reports and removes both Floyd and Pillow from their commands.

The aggressive moves and skirmishing of Brig. Gen. John Pope’s Union troops force the evacuation by Confederates of New Madrid, Missouri, on March 13. The Federal force captures arms and provisions worth an estimated $1 million. From St. Louis, Missouri, Maj. Gen. Henry Halleck issues a proclamation that guerrillas, such as William Quantrill and his men, are to be shot rather than taken as prisoners of war.

Union forces numbering 11,000 soldiers led by Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside, supported by 14 gunboats, capture New Bern, North Carolina, on March 14, after a daylong battle with 4,000 Confederate infantry and a single cavalry regiment.

In Missouri, Maj. Gen. Halleck, in a turnabout, on March 15 exonerates Maj. Gen. Ulysses Grant on charges of misconduct in the Fort Henry-Fort Donelson Campaign. Grant resumes field command of Union forces in Tennessee, replacing Brig. Gen. C.F. Smith, who has suffered a leg injury. The Union Army begins concentrating at Pittsburg Landing, on the Tennessee River south of Savannah, Tennessee. From Fort Yuma, California, U.S. Army Col. James Carleton, commanding the California Column, dispatches a detachment of the 1st California Cavalry, commanded by Capt. William McCleave, eastward to “surprise” the Confederates reported to be at Tucson.