A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [207]
The growing dissension in the camp was halted by the arrival of General McClernand; in his pocket was an order inveigled out of President Lincoln assigning all of Sherman’s troops to his command. Ever mindful of his future political career, McClernand had a grand vision to implement. He informed a stunned but helpless Sherman—who had known nothing about McClernand’s visit to Washington—that the force was going to be renamed the Army of the Mississippi, with Sherman and Morgan as the two corps leaders under him.
McClernand was not as inept as his contemporaries claimed.12 He did at least recognize a superior soldier when he saw one and was willing to listen to Sherman. At the start of the Chickasaw expedition, a Confederate raid had captured one of the Federal steamers, which was taken to Fort Hindman, some forty miles up the Arkansas River, which fed into the Mississippi. Sherman now suggested to McClernand that they capture the fortification. It held no more than five thousand troops, but its strategic location enabled the Confederates to sneak onto the Mississippi at will, wreaking havoc against Federal ships before escaping back up the Arkansas. This was the time, urged Sherman, when they had 32,000 men at their disposal, to erase this Confederate menace and claim the Mississippi north of Vicksburg.
The Federals landed three miles below Fort Hindman on January 10, 1863. Morgan ordered De Courcy to hold his brigade at the rear, guarding the boats against an ambush, while the rest of the army began its assault. Admiral David Dixon Porter’s gunboats hammered their target—which was not much more than a bastioned dugout—with continuous fire for twenty-four hours. When Sherman gave the order for an all-out attack on the following day, there was only halfhearted firing from the fort. The first advance brought the soldiers to within “hand-shaking distance of the enemy,” according to Brigadier General Morgan, but “the fight continued with sullen stubbornness.” Several times a white flag appeared only to be hastily hauled down. Realizing that a little more effort would tip the scales, Morgan sent orders for De Courcy to march his brigade into action. The troops emerged from the woods along the riverbank and charged, double file, toward the fort. Within minutes, another white flag appeared on the parapet, and this time it remained.13
The attack resulted in a thousand Federal casualties, almost ten times the number inflicted on the Confederates. But McClernand and Sherman had netted nearly five thousand prisoners, depriving Arkansas of a quarter of its troops. Although Grant initially blasted the operation as a monument to McClernand’s vanity, after a few days’ reflection he accepted that it had given a much-needed victory, both tactically and psychologically, to the army.
On January 17 a snowstorm turned the blackened terrain a dazzling white as the troopships steamed back down the Arkansas River to the Mississippi. The commanders took advantage of the quiet hours during the journey to compose their reports. In his letter to the secretary of the navy, Gideon Welles, Admiral Porter laid the entire blame for Sherman’s failure at Chickasaw on De Courcy: “But for the want of nerve in the leader of a brigade, the army should have succeeded.” Farther down the fleet, Brigadier General Morgan sat in his cabin writing precisely the opposite report: De Courcy’s “gallant brigade lost 580 men at Chickasaw Bluffs,” he observed, “and, with Blair’s brigade, bore the brunt of that hard-fought but unsuccessful day. Col. John F. De Courcy deserves promotion.”14
De Courcy tried to resign, but the request was denied. His longing to escape his present location was exacerbated by the wretchedness of camp conditions. Rain followed the snow in a gray downpour that continued day after day. The ground beneath the tents flooded, causing the camp’s rudimentary latrines to overflow