Just Another Manic Monday: Don Carlos Buell and September 29, 1862

     It is hard to imagine a worse start to a work week than what Major General Don Carlos Buell faced on Monday, September 29, 1862 in Louisville, Kentucky. After completing a harsh nearly 300-mile march in the midst of a summer drought and under unrelenting pressure from Washington to drive Braxton Bragg's army out of Kentucky, General Buell had arrived in Louisville and set about getting his army and the thousands of new levies organized. But Buell's arrival in Louisville placed him square in the center of a boiling cauldron which lay at the crossroads of military strategy and politics in the days prior to a mid-term election. 

    "While Buell was in the middle of reorganizing his army, dealing with the Nelson murder, guarding against Governor Morton’s machinations, and worrying about how he was going to grapple with Bragg’s army, the hammer from Washington struck."

The following excerpt is part of my upcoming history of the Stones River campaign. 

Major General Don Carlos Buell sits at center surrounded by three key officers of his staff including his chief of staff Colonel James B. Fry seated at left. Buell had been threatened with removal in August and by late September President Lincoln directed General Henry W. Halleck to replace Buell with General George H. Thomas, but had a late change of heart. But the message cancelling Buell's removal didn't reach the officer Halleck had dispatched to Louisville and that officer delivered his message shortly after Buell learned that one of his favorite officers, William "Bull" Nelson, had just that morning been murdered at the Galt House in Louisville. 


The arrival of his dusty and bedraggled army at the army’s base of supplies at Louisville likewise breathed life into General Buell and his army. “The entrance into Louisville was the occasion of the most inspiriting scenes,” William Sumner Dodge wrote. “The streets were filled with the populace and from doors, balconies, and windows beautiful ladies and children waved handkerchiefs and tiny Union flags and hailed our soldiers as deliverers and defenders of the city! All along the streets buckets of water and baskets of provisions were placed for their refreshment and women sobbed ‘God bless you!’ Although ragged and barefoot, it was deemed no disgrace but the most honorable proof of devotion to the great cause. The ladies’ smiles and cheers and their kindly words of welcome gladdened their hearts and they felt that with so much beauty and sympathy on their side, they could not fail of success.” [1]

General Horatio Wright as department commander had collected an army of raw troops in Louisville, a force even larger than Buell’s army, and the first order of business was to establish command authority. Halleck granted Buell authority to assume command of all the forces in Louisville on September 27th (four days after dispatching an officer to relieve Buell of command as will be discussed shortly) and Buell set about the arduous task of reorganizing his force. In perhaps the most sparkling achievement of his career, Buell quickly whipped his men into shape and reorganized his entire army within a period of a few days. Louisville post commander General Jeremiah T. Boyle marveled at Buell’s energy and organizational efficiency. “I think the work of arming, shoeing, clothing, paying, and supplying them in every respect; combining the new with the old and organizing them into brigades and divisions and army corps; preparing them to march against the enemy; preparing all the provisions and supplies of subsistence and ammunition and actually moving them showed what struck me as wonderful energy, industry, and ability,” Boyle stated. [2]

General William "Bull" Nelson

Buell set about reorganizing his command structure by designating three corps, to be led by Alexander McCook, Thomas Crittenden, and “Bull” Nelson with George Thomas serving as Buell’s second in command. McCook took command of the First Army Corps consisting of three divisions led by Generals Lovell H. Rousseau, Joshua Sill, and James S. Jackson, the latter’s division consisting entirely of new troops. General Thomas L. Crittenden assumed command of the Second Army Corps consisting of three divisions led by General William Sooy Smith, Horatio P. Van Cleve, and Thomas J. Wood. General Nelson gained the Third Army Corps consisting of the divisions of Albin F. Schoepf, Robert B. Mitchell, and Phil Sheridan.  “Louisville presented a scene of unparalleled activity,” William Sumner Dodge noted. “Thousands of new troops enrolled under the July call for an additional 300,000 volunteers were encamped all around the city, rallied there to repel the threatened capture of the city. To this teeming mass of soldiery was added the veteran Army of the Ohio, hungry, ragged, and begrimed with dust. The first step was to reorganize the army and this was done by dividing it into three distinct corps each complete in infantry, cavalry, and artillery, competent to act by itself if necessity should compel a separate action.” [3]

However, Buell’s arrival in Louisville also delivered the numerous Indiana regiments of his command into the waiting embrace of Governor Oliver P. Morton. The governor circulated among the troops who plied him with denunciations of their commanding general who some derisively called Granny Buell. “I have followed General Buell in all his wanderings through Dixie for ten long months and have never, nor has our division fired a musket at the foe,” one soldier from the 17th Indiana complained. “When General Buell’s command left Louisville on the 10th day of December last, it was in as fine condition as any department of the Union. But what is it today? We are without tents, blankets, or camp equipage, and the haggard countenances tell how fearfully the physical condition of the soldiers has been impaired. I make the assertion that if General Buell commands this department two months longer, there will be more than 10,000 desertions. Let the government give us clothing, rations, camp equipage and above all, a General, and we will return to the Gulf is necessary to put down this rebellion. We want a man to lead us who has the will to provoke an engagement within ten months’ time!” [4]

Governor Oliver P. Morton
Indiana

Those comments fell on fertile ground: Morton welcomed the ammunition as he already had an axe to grind with Buell and his key subordinate “Bull” Nelson. In late August, at the request of the War Department, Morton had agreed to release several raw Indiana regiments for use in defending northern Kentucky from Kirby Smith’s invasion. These troops were placed under the command of Nelson and camped at Richmond, Kentucky where Nelson set about the work of fashioning the raw levies into soldiers. Morton incurred Nelson’s ire when he sent state agents to Richmond to arrange bounty matters against Nelson’s orders. A few days later these regiments were decimated trying to halt Kirby Smith’s invasion in the disastrous Battle of Richmond. Nelson, never one to mince words, blamed General Mahlon Manson’s disobedience and the raw Indiana troops for the disaster. Nelson’s attacks on his Indiana troops provoked a reaction from the Indiana press who labeled Nelson as “brutal and barbarous.” Nelson was sent to Louisville to help General Wright organize and train the thousands of raw troops being sent into the city, but he again ran afoul of Governor Morton. The War Department had sent another Indiana brigadier, Jefferson C. Davis of Fort Sumter fame, to Louisville where Nelson put him in charge of mustering the city’s citizen defenders. Davis bungled the assignment (in Nelson’s view) and so enraged the Kentuckian that Nelson ordered Davis out of his department in typically abusive terms. In Morton’s view, Nelson had thrice insulted the honor of the state of Indiana, insults that the touchy governor would not absorb stoically. [5]

Brigadier General Jefferson C. Davis

Brigadier General Jefferson Columbus Davis, a proud man of demonstrated courage and competency, burned at Nelson’s insulting treatment and finding Governor Morton in the lobby of the Galt House in Louisville on Monday morning, September 29, 1862, he asked the governor to join him when he confronted Nelson. Spying Nelson entering the hotel, Davis demanded an apology but Nelson dismissed him with “Go away you damned puppy. I don’t want anything to do with you.” Davis flipped a wadded-up hotel registration card into Nelson’s face; Nelson, a 300-pound giant of a man, promptly backhanded the diminutive Davis and sent him sprawling. After Nelson asked Governor Morton if he was present to see Nelson insulted, the Kentuckian stormed off to his office while the humiliated and seething Davis asked bystanders for a pistol. An English made Tranter revolver was foolishly given to him. Gun in hand, Davis headed towards Nelson’s office and upon finding the general, Davis promptly put a bullet through Nelson’s heart. Nelson, a man of legendary strength, staggered up a flight of hotel stairs before collapsing from the wound. A clergyman was called for who then baptized the general, and by 8:30 that morning, it was all over. The burly Kentuckian who Buell had just tapped to be corps commander was dead and would be buried the following day. A shaken General Buell had Davis arrested then tapped an untried Charles Gilbert as Nelson’s replacement; it proved to be a superbly wrong choice in the campaign which followed. [6]

While Buell was in the middle of reorganizing his army, dealing with the Nelson murder, guarding against Governor Morton’s machinations, and worrying about how he was going to grapple with Bragg’s army, the hammer from Washington struck. A week prior, General Halleck had dispatched Colonel Joseph C. McKibbin to Louisville with orders to relieve Buell from command and turn the army over to George H. Thomas. After McKibbin set out on his mission, information describing Buell’s rapid march to Louisville and preparations to attack Bragg arrived in Washington and produced a change of heart from Lincoln who then directed Halleck to recall McKibbin. Halleck sent telegrams to recall McKibbin but these never reached the officer. On the morning of September 29th McKibbin delivered the dispatch to Buell; Buell contacted General Thomas and accordingly turned over command of the army to him. [7]

Colonel Joseph C. McKibbin

This put Thomas in a thorny position. Buell’s relations with Thomas had been more proper than warm, and even with a campaign upon them, Buell did not devise his plans in concert with his senior subordinate. To be sure, Thomas was quite in the dark as to Buell’s intentions. “General Thomas had, through the force of circumstances, been taken into the confidence of Buell and although he did not approve of his commander’s judgment of the late campaign, he saw that the error of judgment did not sanction the cruel injustice,” wrote Donn Piatt.[8] Thomas telegraphed Halleck and asked that the order be suspended. “General Buell’s preparations have been completed to move against the enemy, and I therefore respectfully ask that he may be retained in command,” Thomas wrote. “My position is very embarrassing, not being as well informed as I should be as the command of this army and on the assumption of such responsibility.” [9]

Buell had one solid block of supporters and that was the Kentucky politicians. Upon learning of Buell’s removal, four of the state’s political leaders sent President Lincoln an urgent message informing the President of General Nelson’s death and asking that Lincoln retain Buell. “These two events have caused great regret and something of dismay,” the message stated. “General Buell has, in a very high degree, the confidence of this state and of the army. His removal, especially at this critical moment, will be dispiriting to the people and to the army. In our judgment, the removal of General Buell will do great injury to the service in Kentucky.” [10] With Thomas unwilling to assume command and the Kentucky power structure in an uproar at the prospect of Buell’s imminent removal, now it was the government’s turn to be embarrassed: Halleck promptly sent a dispatch suspending Buell’s removal but Thomas’ action wouldn’t set well with many in the administration. It may be noted that this was the second time that Buell had been directly threatened with removal since late August.


[1] Dodge, op. cit., pg. 332

[2] Chumney, James R. Don Carlos Buell: Gentleman General. Rice University: dissertation, 1964, pgs. 161-62

[3] Dodge, op. cit., pgs. 335-336

[4] “A Private Soldier on Buell’s Campaign,” Burlington Hawk-Eye (Iowa), October 11, 1862, pg. 5. This letter was originally published in the Cincinnati Commercial, a prominent anti-Buell newspaper.

[5] Stampp, op. cit., pgs. 153-155

[6] Fry, James B. Killed by a Brother Soldier: A Chapter in the History of the War. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1885, pgs. 5-7. Ironically, Nelson had planned to visit his old division that morning and present a new stand of colors to the 9th Indiana Infantry whom Morton had just visited. The inscription on the colors read “Shiloh: General Nelson to the Ninth Regiment Indiana Volunteers” but were not given to the Hoosiers until after Chickamauga a year later.  Nelson’s old command was incensed at his demise. “Had the homicide appeared within reach of the Fourth Division that day, there is every reason to believe that neither the restraints of discipline nor authority could have prevented a violent and summary retaliation on the part of that infuriated command,” observed Ebenezer Hannaford of the 6th Ohio.

[7] O.R., volume 16, pt. 2, pg. 554. McKibbin messaged Halleck at 12:45 p.m. stating that he had delivered the dispatches and reported “fortunate that I obeyed instructions. Much dissatisfaction with General Buell.”  

[8] Piatt, op. cit., pgs. 170-172

[9] Fry, James B. Operations of the Army Under Buell from June 10th to October 30, 1862, and the “Buell Commission.” New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1884, pgs. 49-50. Thomas’ message was sent at 11:45 a.m., an hour before McKibbin’s note to Halleck. It is worth noting that Thomas was officially made second in command by Special Orders No. 159 issued on September 30th.

[10] O.R., volume 16, part 2, pg. 557-558. The message was signed by the state’s two senators John J. Crittenden and Garrett Davis, and by two Congressmen, Robert Mallory representing the 7th District and George Washington Dunlap representing the 6th District.

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