Johnny Reb re-enactors at Mill Springs
Confederate soldier reenactors participate in an educational lecture on the Battle of Mill Springs in the Mill Springs Battlefield National Monument Visitors Center at Nancy, Kentucky. The winter weather outside was uncertain so the event was brought inside.
HISTORY: At the Battle of Mill Springs, the United States routed reb troops under the command of Confederate General George Crittenden. Kentucky as a whole contributed many more of its sons to fight for the United States rather than the Confederacy. The Battle of Mill Springs had an especially large number of U.S. troops from their native Estill, Marion, and Pulaski counties in Kentucky. These Kentuckians were under the command of U.S. General, West Point instructor, and native Virginian, George Thomas.
General Thomas' clever strategy was to outsmart the Confederate commanders by arranging his tired and hungry Union men to entice and trick the Confederate commanders into moving their troops off their landing and protective earthworks at Beech Grove on the Cumberland River to fight in the open, whether north towards them or even south. "Thomas apparently hoped to provide a target inviting enough to lure the Confederates out of the Beech Grove trenches," writes Jack Hurst in his American Heritage article, "The Importance of Mill Springs." It was known among keen strategists that Confederate General George Crittenden, a fellow West Point graduate and Army career officer like Thomas, had a bad experience with his troops bunched together with their backs against a river in the Mexican-American war, a war that Thomas had also participated in. So Crittenden obliged Thomas. The Confederates took the bait and under the sub-command of General Felix Zollicoffer, they extended themselves north into the open, rather than southern open ground back to Tennessee.
Despite the Union's disadvantages, U.S. troops were able to defeat the Confederates after a few well-orchestrated tactical maneuvers from Thomas and the officers under him. Thomas would arrive with additional forces to also outflank the Confederates.
Confederates would argue that a significant reason why they lost at Mill Springs was not because they were outsmarted by Union command but because southern muskets were less advanced than their enemy's and did not perform well in the rain.
Mill Springs became the first U.S. battle victory in the Civil War.
Historian Jack Hurst writes of a brief discussion between General Thomas and fellow Army veteran Colonel Speed Fry, a native of Kentucky from the Danville area, on the chaotic retreat of Confederate troops and in after-thought why a surrender wasn't demanded of the enemy: “'General, why didn’t you send in a demand for surrender last night?' Col. Fry asked Thomas, noting all the evidence of Confederate panic. The Union commander looked up, hesitated, and then admitted a mental lapse.
'Hang it, Fry,' he said. 'I never once thought of it.'”
That wasn't a bad idea. It had merit. Thomas, a highly regarded career military man, a war veteran, an elite West Point military instructor, a close friend of the then school superintendent Robert E. Lee, and a military educational leader who helped form the military playbook that now both sides used, hadn't thought of it. It was his superior generalship that had helped turn the greater numbers of Confederate troops into a win for the Union. Yet, it wasn't just him that had not demanded the surrender of the opposing army. Confederates also would route Union forces through the Civil War, even marching U.S. soldiers en masse to Confederate prison camps.
Countries surrender. Places surrender. For example, Fort Sumter was surrendered. But huge roaming field armies?!? Armies are defeated. And now at this first win of the Union, a successful route of Confederate troops was had, although now there was a thought of the possibilities of something more than defeat. Surrender. Battling for total surrender would somewhat change the ending tactics of a battle, and quicken the pace so that the enemy could not slip away. Winning a battle and having your foe flee the battlefield in chaos would not be good enough. Not if the war was to be shortened.
Author Hurst observes the strategic implication of Mill Springs's loss was recognized by the Confederate's western high command. "Johnston [Gen. Albert Sydney Johnston] wrote Richmond, 'If my right is thus broken as stated, East Tennessee is wide open to invasion—or, if the plan of the enemy be a combined movement upon Nashville, it is in jeopardy...'”
Prescient. Nashville was indeed about to fall.
The U.S. victory at Mill Springs would be followed three weeks later, further to the west, by the Confederate fall of Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, and Nashville, Tennessee under an upstart, General Ulysses S. Grant. Nashville and Western Tennessee would be occupied by the United States for the remainder of the war. On a side note, Nashville's mayor first tried to surrender to one of Grant's generals who was inside the city, Kentuckian William "Bull" Nelson, but the mayor was directed by Nelson to seek out and surrender to the senior commanding general instead, Maj. General Buell, who was on the opposite side of the river from Nashville.
Having been born on the other side of the Ohio River from Kentucky, attended school in Kentucky, and had family in Kentucky, Ohioan Grant did not just believe in routing the enemy. Grant made entire field armies officially SURRENDER to him–e.g. The unconditional surrender of General Pillow's Confederate Army of Central Kentucky at Donelson to U.S. Grant's Army of Tennessee; Confederate General Pemberton's surrender of the Army of Mississippi to Grant at Vicksburg, Mississippi; and finally Confederate General Robert Lee's official surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia to Grant at Appomattox, Virginia. To Grant and his new-fangled war ways, routing the enemy's army was not enough. There was a strategic benefit to be gained in an army's total surrender, not just a place's.
Johnny Reb re-enactors at Mill Springs
Confederate soldier reenactors participate in an educational lecture on the Battle of Mill Springs in the Mill Springs Battlefield National Monument Visitors Center at Nancy, Kentucky. The winter weather outside was uncertain so the event was brought inside.
HISTORY: At the Battle of Mill Springs, the United States routed reb troops under the command of Confederate General George Crittenden. Kentucky as a whole contributed many more of its sons to fight for the United States rather than the Confederacy. The Battle of Mill Springs had an especially large number of U.S. troops from their native Estill, Marion, and Pulaski counties in Kentucky. These Kentuckians were under the command of U.S. General, West Point instructor, and native Virginian, George Thomas.
General Thomas' clever strategy was to outsmart the Confederate commanders by arranging his tired and hungry Union men to entice and trick the Confederate commanders into moving their troops off their landing and protective earthworks at Beech Grove on the Cumberland River to fight in the open, whether north towards them or even south. "Thomas apparently hoped to provide a target inviting enough to lure the Confederates out of the Beech Grove trenches," writes Jack Hurst in his American Heritage article, "The Importance of Mill Springs." It was known among keen strategists that Confederate General George Crittenden, a fellow West Point graduate and Army career officer like Thomas, had a bad experience with his troops bunched together with their backs against a river in the Mexican-American war, a war that Thomas had also participated in. So Crittenden obliged Thomas. The Confederates took the bait and under the sub-command of General Felix Zollicoffer, they extended themselves north into the open, rather than southern open ground back to Tennessee.
Despite the Union's disadvantages, U.S. troops were able to defeat the Confederates after a few well-orchestrated tactical maneuvers from Thomas and the officers under him. Thomas would arrive with additional forces to also outflank the Confederates.
Confederates would argue that a significant reason why they lost at Mill Springs was not because they were outsmarted by Union command but because southern muskets were less advanced than their enemy's and did not perform well in the rain.
Mill Springs became the first U.S. battle victory in the Civil War.
Historian Jack Hurst writes of a brief discussion between General Thomas and fellow Army veteran Colonel Speed Fry, a native of Kentucky from the Danville area, on the chaotic retreat of Confederate troops and in after-thought why a surrender wasn't demanded of the enemy: “'General, why didn’t you send in a demand for surrender last night?' Col. Fry asked Thomas, noting all the evidence of Confederate panic. The Union commander looked up, hesitated, and then admitted a mental lapse.
'Hang it, Fry,' he said. 'I never once thought of it.'”
That wasn't a bad idea. It had merit. Thomas, a highly regarded career military man, a war veteran, an elite West Point military instructor, a close friend of the then school superintendent Robert E. Lee, and a military educational leader who helped form the military playbook that now both sides used, hadn't thought of it. It was his superior generalship that had helped turn the greater numbers of Confederate troops into a win for the Union. Yet, it wasn't just him that had not demanded the surrender of the opposing army. Confederates also would route Union forces through the Civil War, even marching U.S. soldiers en masse to Confederate prison camps.
Countries surrender. Places surrender. For example, Fort Sumter was surrendered. But huge roaming field armies?!? Armies are defeated. And now at this first win of the Union, a successful route of Confederate troops was had, although now there was a thought of the possibilities of something more than defeat. Surrender. Battling for total surrender would somewhat change the ending tactics of a battle, and quicken the pace so that the enemy could not slip away. Winning a battle and having your foe flee the battlefield in chaos would not be good enough. Not if the war was to be shortened.
Author Hurst observes the strategic implication of Mill Springs's loss was recognized by the Confederate's western high command. "Johnston [Gen. Albert Sydney Johnston] wrote Richmond, 'If my right is thus broken as stated, East Tennessee is wide open to invasion—or, if the plan of the enemy be a combined movement upon Nashville, it is in jeopardy...'”
Prescient. Nashville was indeed about to fall.
The U.S. victory at Mill Springs would be followed three weeks later, further to the west, by the Confederate fall of Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, and Nashville, Tennessee under an upstart, General Ulysses S. Grant. Nashville and Western Tennessee would be occupied by the United States for the remainder of the war. On a side note, Nashville's mayor first tried to surrender to one of Grant's generals who was inside the city, Kentuckian William "Bull" Nelson, but the mayor was directed by Nelson to seek out and surrender to the senior commanding general instead, Maj. General Buell, who was on the opposite side of the river from Nashville.
Having been born on the other side of the Ohio River from Kentucky, attended school in Kentucky, and had family in Kentucky, Ohioan Grant did not just believe in routing the enemy. Grant made entire field armies officially SURRENDER to him–e.g. The unconditional surrender of General Pillow's Confederate Army of Central Kentucky at Donelson to U.S. Grant's Army of Tennessee; Confederate General Pemberton's surrender of the Army of Mississippi to Grant at Vicksburg, Mississippi; and finally Confederate General Robert Lee's official surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia to Grant at Appomattox, Virginia. To Grant and his new-fangled war ways, routing the enemy's army was not enough. There was a strategic benefit to be gained in an army's total surrender, not just a place's.