Never Call Retreat by Bruce Catton Page A

Kentucky, he had planted his advance base at Holly Springs, Mississippi, thirty miles north of his army's position near Oxford, and he supposed that the garrison of 1500 men he had posted there was strong enough to protect it. But on December 20, just when Forrest was doing his worst a hundred miles to the north, Earl Van Dorn with all of Pemberton's cavalry, 3000 men or more, slipped by the Federal patrols and came storming in to Holly Springs and demanded that the town be surrendered. The Union commander was a Colonel R. C. Murphy, and he caved in at once, surrendering without more than token resistance. Van Dorn's soldiers went through the supply dumps like a swarm of locusts, destroying everything Grant's army possessed— $1,500,000 worth of food, ammunition, and equipment, by Van Dorn's estimate, including three solid freight trains waiting to be unloaded. A jubilant Southern reporter saw panicky Yankees in flight "clothed very similarly to Joseph when the lady Potiphar attempted to detain him," and wrote breathlessly of "tents burning, torches flaming, Confederates shouting, guns popping, sabres clanking, abolitionists begging for mercy, 'rebels' shouting exultingly, women en deshabile clapping their hands frantic with joy, crying 'Kill them! Kill them!' " Grant announced "the disgraceful surrender" with "pain and mortification," and said Holly Springs could easily have been held; and scapegrace Colonel Murphy was dismissed from the service. 14 Van Dorn got away unharmed, and Grant's army, finding itself with no supplies and no means of getting any more, went dejectedly northward in retreat.
    Between them, Forrest and Van Dorn destroyed any chance that the amphibious expedition might succeed, whether with or without McClernand. This operation had been keyed to the expectation that Grant's advance would keep Pemberton from reinforcing the Vicksburg garrison, and when Grant's advance became a retreat Pemberton had no problem. Sending reinforcements on ahead, Pemberton reached Vicksburg on December 26 to find Sherman's men disembarking along the Yazoo River. When the Federal assault was made on December 29, on low ground along Chickasaw Bayou just north of Vicksburg, Pemberton's men beat it off without difficulty. Sherman lost more than 1700 men, accomplished nothing at all, and withdrew to a cheerless camp at Milliken's Bend, on the west side of the Mississippi twenty miles above the Confederate stronghold. There, at last, McClernand caught up with him, assuming command of a force which had just had to confess a humiliating failure. 15

    4. In the Mists at Stone's River
    WINTER IN TENNESSEE (said a man who campaigned there) "means cold, and snow, and rain, and boundless mud," and neither the Federals at Nashville nor the Confederates at Murfreesboro really wanted to be active before spring. The main bodies of the armies were only thirty miles apart, but this was more of a distance than the map showed because the country between them was firmly held by Braxton Bragg's cavalry. Bragg's new cavalry chief, Major General Joseph Wheeler, was young and somewhat full of himself— he had a gay way of telling his staff, when he had a raid in the making: "The War Child rides tonight!"—but he was diligent and active, and he was providing a solid cavalry screen behind which Bragg's infantry could remain quietly on the defensive.
    Bragg wanted to remain on the defensive as long as possible because he felt too weak to do anything else. On General Johnston's orders he had lately sent a solid infantry division, 9000 men under Major General C. L. Stevenson, off to Mississippi to help General Pemberton; General Johnston believed that helping Pemberton thus might eventually cause the loss of both Tennessee and Mississippi, but President Davis insisted and Johnston issued an order which both he and Bragg disliked very much. So Stevenson's division was gone, probably for good; Forrest's men were off to the west, harrying the Mobile & Ohio