Corinth: The Influence of Railroads in the Civil War

Kevin Dougherty

Civil War generals were profoundly influenced by the Swiss military theorist Baron Antoine Henri de Jomini and his concept of interior lines of operation. [1] Jomini described interior lines as “those adopted by one or two armies to oppose several hostile bodies, and having such a direction that the general can concentrate the masses and maneuver with his whole force in a shorter period of time than it would require for the enemy to oppose them a greater force.” [2] The condition of interior lines can be achieved by a force having a central position relative to the enemy or by a force having superior lateral communications relative to the enemy. The result is that the force can reinforce its separated units faster than separated enemy units can reinforce each other. [3]

In the Civil War, railroads were one way a force could gain the benefits of interior lines, and as generals pursued this strategy, the Civil War became “the first great railroad war.” [4]

It is this importance of railroads and the interior lines that they promised that catapulted the otherwise modest town of Corinth, Mississippi into center stage of the Civil War. At the time of the Civil War, Corinth was still a young town. It was settled in 1854 and had a prewar population of 1,200. Its business district consisted mostly of one- and two-story gabled, wood-frame structures. Corinth boasted the typical dry goods stores, blacksmith shops, livery stables, saloons, restaurants, drugstore, bakery, tailor shop, and picture gallery. The Aetna Insurance Company had a local office there, and there were three hotels, including the Tishomingo, renowned for its luxury of serving ice water. [5] It was all relatively routine save perhaps for the post office which, rather than the standard whitewash, was painted pink. [6]

The railroad junction at Corinthas depicted in the June 21, 1862 Harper’s Weekly

What separated Corinth from any of the hundreds of other similar-sized towns throughout the Confederate West was the railroad. At Corinth, the Memphis and Charleston Railroad met with the Mobile and Ohio line. Control of Corinth meant control of railroads from Columbus and Memphis as well as those running south into Mississippi and eastward to connect with Nashville and Chattanooga. [7] Many Federal military and political leaders believed that if the Union could occupy two points in the South, the rebellion would collapse. Obviously, one point was Richmond. The other was Corinth. [8] Ulysses S. Grant called Corinth “the great strategic position at the West between the Tennessee and Mississippi rivers and between Nashville and Vicksburg.” [9] Confederate President Jefferson Davis considered the Memphis and Charleston Railroad the “vertebrae of the Confederacy.” [10] Corinth itself was known as “the crossroads of the Confederacy.” [11] It was all important enough to cause Corinth to play a pivotal role in the preliminaries to the battle of Shiloh, to host two battles itself, and to facilitate the launching of the decisive Vicksburg Campaign.

Corinth and Shiloh. Grant’s victories at Forts Henry and Donelson in February 1862 forced Albert Sidney Johnston’s Army of Mississippi out of Tennessee. Johnston decided to concentrate his forces at the rail junction at Corinth. At the same time, Grant had assembled some 45,000 men at Pittsburg Landing, about twenty miles northeast of Corinth, where he would wait for the arrival of Don Carlos Buell’s Army of the Ohio from Nashville. In times of peace, one of the ways goods reached Corinth from the Tennessee River was along a road from the steamboat wharf at Pittsburg Landing. [12] Now Pittsburg Landing offered Grant a convenient staging area for a march south to attack Corinth.

Grant was quite sure that Corinth would be the next battlefield and that he would be the one initiating the action. He wrote one of his generals, “I am clearly of the opinion that the enemy are gathering strength at Corinth quite as rapidly as we are here, and the sooner we attack, the easier will be the task of taking the place.” [13] Indeed, attack was all Grant had in mind. He failed to prepare any defenses himself and responded to suggestions that the Confederates might themselves attack by saying, “They’re all back at Corinth, and, when our transportation arrives, we have got to go there and draw them out, as you would draw a badger out of a hole.” [14]

Thus Grant was caught completely by surprise on April 6 when Johnston attacked him at Shiloh. The first day of the fighting was a close call for Grant’s army, but the Federals recovered the second day and won the battle. In the process, Johnston, who some considered the South’s greatest general at the time, was killed, and P. G. T. Beauregard assumed command. Beauregard retreated back to Corinth and began building heavy fortifications.

The Federals also experienced a leadership change. In spite of the overall victory, Grant’s poor showing on the first day of Shiloh damaged his credibility, and he was replaced by Henry Halleck. Thus it would be Halleck who would lead the Federal offensive against Corinth that Grant had been anticipating before Johnston interrupted his plans.

The First Battle. Halleck would eventually provide valuable service to the Union in an administrative capacity as General-in-Chief, but he was not an impressive field commander. His approach march toward Corinth was slow and deliberate. Every night he stopped and had his men dig in. After the horrific losses at Shiloh, Halleck was in no mood to risk additional heavy combat. To make matters worse, he had to corduroy miles of roads to give him the dry, dependable, and durable surface he needed to transport supplies by wagons. Halleck inched along at a rate of less than a mile per day. [15] The consequence was that Beauregard had plenty of time to prepare his defenses and his plan.

The Confederate entrenchments formed a seven-mile line that covered the northern and eastern approaches to Corinth and extended in an arc about one and a half miles from town. They were anchored east and west on the Memphis and Charleston Railroad and included rifle pits with battery emplacements at key points. It was a formidable line. [16]

Still Beauregard knew that he was grossly outnumbered. He had withdrawn to Corinth with 30,000 of the 40,000 Confederates who fought at Shiloh, and later reinforcements brought his strength to 66,000. Halleck had begun his march from Shiloh with 90,000, and his ranks had swollen to 110,000 by the time he reached Corinth. [17] By mid-May, Halleck was astride the Mobile and Ohio Railroad north of Corinth and had cut the Memphis and Charleston Railroad to the east. [18]

Instead of subjecting himself to the lopsided siege Halleck was planning, Beauregard resorted to a ruse to play on Halleck’s cautious nature. As trains rolled into Corinth, Beauregard had his men cheer wildly as if reinforcements were arriving. Halleck took the bait and proceeded with due caution. In reality, there were no reinforcements, and instead on the night of May 29-30 Beauregard loaded his men and equipment on the trains and withdrew to Tupelo. By the time Halleck finally assaulted Corinth on the morning of May 30, Beauregard and his army were gone. [19]

Henry Halleck

Halleck had captured an important location without a fight, but he had let his enemy escape. Grant, who assuredly would have used a more aggressive strategy in attacking Corinth, described it as a “strategic” victory, but one “barren in every other particular.” [20] Nonetheless, Corinth was now in Federal hands, and it would be the Confederates who would be doing the attacking at the next battle there.

The Second Battle. On July 11, 1862 President Abraham Lincoln ordered Halleck to Washington where Halleck finally found his calling as General-in-Chief. Grant assumed Halleck’s command more or less by default and inherited a widely scattered army that lacked the centralized striking force he wanted. Moreover, Confederate forces in Mississippi under Earl Van Dorn and Sterling Price threatened Grant’s communications with Federal forces in Tennessee and represented possible reinforcements to Confederate forces there. Grant resolved to act, attacking Price at Iuka on September 19. Grant had planned to trap Price in a pincer between William Rosecrans and E. O. C. Ord, but the two Federal generals failed to act in concert and Price escaped.

Price and Van Dorn joined forces near Ripley, southwest of Corinth, on September 28. For his part, Grant ordered most of his army back to Corinth.

Still Grant’s army was relatively scattered, and Van Dorn considered Rosecran’s force at Corinth to be isolated enough to be a vulnerable target. Van Dorn planned to defeat Rosecrans, seize the railroad junction at Corinth, and use it to support a campaign into western Tennessee. It was not a particularly wellthought-out plan as events would demonstrate.

On the morning of October 3, Van Dorn struck. Rosecrans had greatly improved the already formidable defenses the Confederates had vacated, and the Federal fortifications now consisted of successive outer and inner entrenchments. After a day of hard fighting, the Federals withdrew to their inner defenses, just before dark. Now Rosecrans was at his strongest defenses consisting of batteries Robinette, Williams, Phillips, Tannrath, and Lothrop, in the College Hill area. These batteries were connected by breastworks and in some cases protected by abatis. While the Confederates had been sapping their strength fighting through Rosecrans’ defense in depth, Rosecrans was receiving a steady stream of reinforcements and improving his ability to mutually support his forces in his now contracted line.[21]

Earl Van Dorn

The next day Van Dorn continued his attack. The initial charge by Price showed promise, but the Confederates had thrown all they had at Rosecrans. The Federals had reserves and the Confederates did not. Rosecrans counterattacked and forced Van Dorn to retreat back to Ripley.

The battle for Corinth was costly for both sides. Federal casualties were 3,090 and the Confederates suffered 4,467, but securing Corinth was a major victory for the Federals. [22]

Corinth and Vicksburg. With Corinth safely in Federal hands, Van Dorn and Price could no longer reinforce Confederate forces in Tennessee. Grant was now free to concern himself with greater ventures. He explained, “The battle relieved me from any further anxiety for the safety of the territory within my jurisdiction, and soon after receiving reinforcements I suggested to the general-in-chief a forward movement against Vicksburg.” [23] The railroad had made Corinth worth fighting for, but, having won it, Grant was ready to move on. Grant now held significant portions of the Mobile and Ohio, Mississippi Central, and Memphis and Charleston railroads. He wanted to get out of the business of guarding railroads and depots and go on the offensive. “By moving against the enemy,” Grant explained, “into his unsubdued, or not yet captured, territory, driving their army before us, these lines would nearly hold themselves; thus affording a large force for field operations.” [24] The object of these “field operations” was to be Vicksburg.

Conclusion. Corinth had already brought together the two great armies that clashed at Shiloh. In turn the Confederates and Federals had defended and attacked it, struggling for its control. Now possession of thissmall railroad town was about to make possible one of the Civil War’s most decisive campaigns. Corinthstands as a multi-faceted demonstration of how railroads influenced operations and strategy in the Civil War.

Bibliography

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NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005.

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[1] General J. D. Hittle declared, “Many a Civil War general went into battle with a sword in one hand and Jomini’s Summary of the Art of War in the other.” David Donald, Why the North Won the Civil War (NY: Collier Books, 1960) 38.

[2]Baron Antoine Henri de Jomini, The Art of War(London: Greenhill Books, 1996) 102.

[3]John Alger, Definitions and Doctrine of the Military Art: Past and Present (West Point, NY: Department of History, USMA, 1979) 48.

[4]Russell Weigley, History of the United States Army (NY: MacMillan Publishing Company, Inc, 1967) , 222.

[5] Jerry Korn, War on the Mississippi: Grant’s Vicksburg Campaign (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1985) 46.

[6]Larry Daniel, Shiloh: The Battle that Changed the Civil War (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1997) 68.

[7]Archer Jones, Civil War Command & Strategy: The Process of Victory and Defeat (NY: The Free Press, 1992) 57-58.

[8]Robert Doughty, American Military History and the Evolution of Western Warfare (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath and Company, 1996) 123.

[9] Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant (NY: Da Capo Press, Inc, 1982), 170.

[10]David Nevin,The Road to Shiloh (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1983) 157.

[11] Daniel, Shiloh, 68.

[12]Charles Bracelen Flood, Grant and Sherman: The Friendship that Won the Civil War (NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005) 91.

[13] Flood, 99.

[14]Larry Daniel, Days of Glory: The Army of the Cumberland, 1861-1865 (Baton Rouge: LouisianaStateUniversity Press, 2004) 78.

[15]Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones, How the North Won: A Military History of the Civil War (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1983) 171 andGeorge Reaves, “Corinth,” in The Civil War Battlefield Guide, Frances Kennedy, ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990) 89.

[16] George Reaves, 87.

[17]Mark Boatner, The Civil War Dictionary (NY: David McKay Company, Inc, 1959) 176.

[18] Reaves, 89.

[19]Michael Ballard, Civil War Mississippi: A Guide (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2000) 12-13 and Richard Beringer, et al. Why the South Lost the Civil War (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1986) 133.

[20] Beringer 133. Grant claimed, “For myself, I am satisfied that Corinth could have been captured in a twodays’ campaign….” Jones, 58-59.

[21] Reaves, 90 and William Rosecrans, “The Battle of Corinth,” in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, vol II, Edison, NJ: Castle Books, nd, 740-741 .

[22] Ballard, 33.

[23] Grant, 218.

[24] Grant, 220.