The Civil War in the West: Victory and Defeat from the Appalachians to the Mississippi

11 Administering the Western Conquests

199 11 } Administering the Western Conquests Q uartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs estimated that Federal forces in the West reclaimed 50,000 square miles of “revolted territory” in 1863. Added to the 150,000 square miles recovered in 1861–62, that amounted to “a territory as large as Austria or France or the Peninsula of Spain and Portugal.” As the war progressed and the Union army continued to advance, problems associated with administering the conquered territory increased in importance and visibility. A different kind of war was fought behind the lines in the South than the one that captured the public imagination along the active battle lines.1 By 1863, the vast majority of Union officers and soldiers agreed that the only solution to the rebellion was military force rather than “compromise and offers of peace,” as Halleck wrote Sherman. The general in chief had no faith in “civico-­ military government, under civilians,” such as had been created by Andrew Johnson in Tennessee . “It merely embarrasses the military authorities without effecting any good.” Until some process of political reconstruction could be found, the Union army had to govern the former Confederate territory as best it could.2 One of the chief problems for the military government was protecting supply lines to the front and keeping open the navigation of the Mississippi to civilian commerce. The Confederates denied Northerners complete freedom to use the river by mounting many small-­ scale attacks on steamers for the remainder of the war. Secretary of War James A. Seddon pushed for the detachment of units as large as a brigade to operate along the riverbank, and many guerrilla bands roamed independently of any government authority. In November 1863 a regularly organized battery under Captain T. A. Faries again placed guns behind the levee along the lower Mississippi and engaged steamers and ironclads for two days before retiring . Bands of up to fifty guerrillas ambushed boats when they landed to take on wood or make impromptu repairs. In December Confederate artillery fire riddled the steamer Henry Von Phul five miles north of Bayou Sara, killing its captain, two crew members, 200 Administering the Western Conquests and three passengers before ironclads and other steamers came to its rescue. Two weeks later two women passengers were killed on the Brazil by musketry and artillery fire, reportedly from a brigade of Confederate cavalry.3 Perhaps more frustrating than the attacks conducted from the banks of the river were the mysterious agents who continued to set boats on fire. Federal authorities had no doubt that boat burnings were the work of “an organized band of incendiaries” financed by the Confederate government. By October 1863 fourteen “first-­ class boats” had been destroyed in this way, representing something like 10 percent “of the whole river transportation.” Union officials identified some of the leaders of this movement. Among them was a man named Frazer; he and his fellow conspirators burned three steamers at the St. Louis levee on October 4. Halleck advised the quartermasters in charge of river transportation to place detectives on every boat operating for the government; the War Department offered a reward of U.S. gunboat Brown, Mississippi River Fleet. One of many Federal gunboats that tried to suppress guerrilla attacks on Union steamers along the Western river system. (Library of Congress, LC-­USZ62-­62362) Administering the Western Conquests 201 ten thousand dollars for information leading to a conviction. Anyone arrested would be tried by a military commission rather than a civil court. Further precautions against boat burners included prohibiting all rowboats on the river near the levees at night and keeping tugs with steam up to tow a burning boat into the river. The latter tactic would prevent the flames from spreading to the line of steamers tied up along the levee.4 In addition to these efforts to deny Northerners unobstructed use of the river, the Confederates invested a great deal of energy to communicate across the Mississippi. “Chapters could be written on the expedients to which we were driven to get the mails back and forth across the Father of Waters,” wrote Postmaster General John H. Reagan. Secretary Seddon worked with Joseph E. Johnston to set up a system for passing dispatches and money across the river at a point south of Memphis, cooperating with the troops under Kirby Smith in the Trans-­ Mississippi. Agents used rowboats to cross the stream on prearranged schedules. Kirby...