Karl Marx: The American Civil War, Part 2

By Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

This is one in a series of articles featured on the Political Spectrum as part of Secession Week.

Written: between March 7 and 22, 1862;

First published in Die Presse, 85, March 26 and 27, 1862.

Chapter 1, part 2

Click to view Chapter 1, part 1

After the reconquest of Missouri and West Virginia, the Union opened the campaign with the advance on Kentucky. Here the secessionists held three strong positions, fortified camps: Columbus on the Mississippi to their left, Bowling Green in the centre, and Mill Springs on the Cumberland River to the right. Their line stretched for 300 miles from west to east. The extent of this line prevented the three corps from rendering each other support and offered the Union troops the chance of attacking each individually with superior forces. The great mistake in the disposition of the secessionists sprang from their attempt to occupy all the ground.

A single fortified, strong central camp, chosen as the battlefield for a decisive engagement and held by the main body of the army, would have defended Kentucky far more effectively. It was bound either to attract the main force of the Unionists or put them in a dangerous position, had they attempted to march on, disregarding so strong a concentration of troops.

Under the given circumstances the Unionists resolved to attack those three camps one after another, to manoeuvre their enemy out of them and force him to fight in open country. This plan, which conformed to all the rules of the art of war, was carried out with energy and dispatch. Towards the middle of January a corps of about 15,000 Unionists marched on Mill Springs, which was held by 10,000 secessionists. The Unionists manoeuvred in a manner that led the enemy to believe he only had to deal with a weak reconnoitring body. General Zollicoffer at once fell into the trap, sallied from his fortified camp and attacked the Unionists. He soon realised that a superior force confronted him. He fell and his troops suffered as complete a defeat as the Unionists at Bull Run. This time, however, the victory was exploited in quite another fashion. The defeated army was hard pressed until it arrived broken, demoralised, without field artillery or baggage, in its encampment at Mill Springs. This camp was pitched on the north bank of the Cumberland River, so that in the event of another defeat the troops had no retreat open to them save across the river by way of a few steamers and river boats. We find in general that almost all the secessionist camps were pitched on the enemy side of the river. To take up such a position is not only according to rule, but also very practical if there is a bridge in the rear. In such a case, the encampment serves as the bridgehead and gives its holders the chance of throwing their fighting forces at will on both banks of the river and so maintaining complete command of these banks. Without a bridge in the rear a camp on the enemy side of the river, on the contrary, cuts off the retreat after an unsuccessful engagement and compels the troops to capitulate, or exposes them to massacre and drowning, a fate that befell the Unionists at Ball’s Bluff on the enemy side of the Potomac, whither the treachery of General Stone had sent them.

When the beaten secessionists reached their camp at Mill Springs, they at once understood that an enemy attack on their fortifications must be repulsed or capitulation must follow in a very short time. After the experience of the morning, they had lost confidence in their powers of resistance. Accordingly, when the Unionists advanced to attack the camp next day, they found that the enemy had taken advantage of the night to cross the river, leaving the camp, the baggage, the artillery and stores behind him. In this way, the extreme right of the secessionist line was pushed back to Tennessee, and east Kentucky, where the mass of the population is hostile to the slaveholders’ party, was reconquered for the Union.

At about the same time — towards the middle of January — the preparations for dislodging the secessionists from Columbus and Bowling Green commenced. A strong fleet of mortar vessels and ironclad gunboats was held in readiness, and the news was spread in all directions that it was to serve as a convoy to a large army marching along the Mississippi from Cairo to Memphis and New Orleans. All the demonstrations on the Mississippi, however, were merely mock manoeuvres. At the decisive moment, the gunboats were brought to the Ohio and thence to the Tennessee, up which they sailed as far as Fort Henry. This place, together with Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River, formed the second line of defence of the secessionists in Tennessee. The position was well chosen, for in case of a retreat beyond the Cumberland the latter river would have covered its front, the Tennessee its left flank, while the narrow strip of land between the two rivers was sufficiently covered by the two forts mentioned above. But the swift action of the Unionists broke through even the second line before the left wing and the centre of the first line had been attacked.

In the first week of February the Unionists’ gunboats appeared in front of Fort Henry, which surrendered after a short bombardment. The garrison escaped to Fort Donelson, since the land forces of the expedition were not strong enough to encircle the spot. The gunboats now sailed down the Tennessee again, upstream to the Ohio and thence up the Cumberland as far as Fort Donelson. A single gunboat sailed boldly up the Tennessee through the very heart of the State of Tennessee, skirting the State of Mississippi and pushing on as far as Florence in northern Alabama, where a series of swamps and banks (known by the name of the Muscle Shoals) prevented further navigation. The fact that a single gunboat made this long voyage of at least 150 miles and then returned, without experiencing any attack, proves that Union sentiment prevails along the river and will be very useful to the Union troops should they push forward as far as that.

The. boat expedition on the Cumberland now combined its movements with those of the land forces under generals Halleck and Grant. The secessionists at Bowling Green were deceived over the movements of the Unionists. Accordingly they remained quietly in their camp, while a week after the fall of Fort Henry, Fort Donelson was surrounded on the land side by 40,000 Unionists and threatened on the river side by a strong fleet of gunboats. Just as in the case of the camp at Mill Springs and Fort Henry, the river lay beyond Fort Donelson, without a bridge for retreat. It was the strongest place the Unionists had attacked up to the present. The works had been carried out with greater care; moreover, the place was capacious enough to accommodate the 20,000 men who occupied it. On the first day of the attack the gunboats silenced the fire of the batteries trained towards the river side and bombarded the interior of the defence works, while the land troops drove back the enemy outposts and forced the main body of the secessionists to seek shelter close under the guns of their own defence works. On the second day, the gunboats, which had suffered severely the day before, appear to have accomplished but little. The land troops, on the other hand, had to fight a long and, in places, hard battle with the columns of the garrison, which sought to break through the right wing of the enemy in order to secure their line of retreat to Nashville. However, an energetic attack by the Unionist right wing on the left wing of the secessionists and considerable reinforcements received by the left wing of the Unionists decided the victory in favour of the assailants. Various outworks had been stormed. The garrison, pressed back into its inner lines of defence, without the chance of retreat and manifestly not in a position to withstand an assault next morning, surrendered unconditionally on the following day.

Continued in Part 3

Image used courtesy of Communiststudents.org.uk.