The Western theater of the American Civil War was the theater of the American Civil War encompassing military operations between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River. The Union Army launched offensives into the South's agricultural heartland in a bid to split the Confederacy in two. The Union's capture of New Orleans, Vicksburg, and several other Mississippi River cities and ports cut off the CSA's eastern and western halves, while Confederate attempts to invade Kentucky were defeated. Ultimately, the Union armies pushed into Georgia and the Carolinas in 1864-1865, capturing Atlanta in September 1864 and forcing Joseph E. Johnston to surrender his army in North Carolina in late April 1865. By May 1865, the South's remaining field armies surrendered, bringing an end to the war.
History[]
Following the outbreak of the American Civil War in April 1861, the border states of Missouri and Kentucky became politically divided between unionists, pro-Confederate secessionists, and neutralist factions.
In Missouri, Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson sympathized with the Confederacy, but the state's secession convention failed to pass his desired resolution and affiliate itself with the Confederacy. Secessionist militiamen seized the small Federal armory in Liberty, but Captain Nathaniel Lyon, Congressman Francis Preston Blair Jr., and St. Louis's abolitionist German community prevented the secessionists from seizing the St. Louis Arsenal. A clash between German volunteers and the secessionist-leaning Missouri Volunteer Militia, the "Camp Jackson affair" of 10 May 1861, resulted in the General Assembly convening an emergency session to create the secessionist Missouri State Guard and grant Governor Jackson near-dictatorial powers to repel the US Army's "invasion" and the German Unionists' "insurrection." After a skirmish at Boonville, secessionist forces withdrew from central Missouri, leaving the state in Unionist hands and preventing secessionists from slave-owning regions north of the Missouri River from joining Sterling Price's secessionist army.
Meanwhile, Kentucky's governor Beriah Magoffin, another Southern sympathizer, declared his state's neutrality on 20 May 1861 and refused to help President Abraham Lincoln suppress the rebellion. After the Confederate general Leonidas Polk occupied the vital Mississippi River town of Columbus, Kentucky on 3 September 1861, Kentucky considered its neutrality violated, and most of the state government would remain loyal to the Union as a result. On 5 September, Union general Ulysses S. Grant seized Paducah, transforming Kentucky into another border-state battleground.
Confederate general Albert Sidney Johnston, in command of all rebel forces from Arkansas to the Cumberland Gap, was forced to defend a broad front with numerically inferior forces, but he was able to move troops rapidly where needed, and he also had a Kentucky puppet government waiting to seize control over the rest of the state from Bowling Green. Disunity of command in the Union Army led to a slow start to the Western campaigns, but Union forces began a slow advance on Nashville in January 1862, resulting in a significant victory at the Battle of Mill Springs on 19 January 1862. The Confederate defensive line's western end was broken at Mill Springs, opening up the Cumberland Gap to East Tennessee. Meanwhile, Grant moved against Fort Henry on the Tennessee River in February 1862, capturing Forts Henry and Donelson on 5 February and 15 February. Grant's victories were the first major Union victories of the war, transforming the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers into invasion highways for the Union Army.
The fall of Fort Donelson forced Polk to withdraw from Columbus and cut the Memphis and Ohio Railroad, making it harder for the rebels to move around forces. P.G.T. Beauregard assumed overall command of rebel forces between the Mississippi and Tennessee rivers in February 1862, and he planned to concentrate his forcse near Corinth, Mississippi and launch a counteroffensive. Meanwhile, Lincoln appointed Henry W. Halleck to overall Union command on 11 March, and Halleck ordered Don Carlos Buell to march from Nashville to join Grant's forcse at Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River.
On 6-7 April, the Confederates surprised Grant's unprepared army at Pittsburg Landing in the Battle of Shiloh, nearly succeeding in destroying his force before Johnston was mortally wounded and his army driven back by a Union counterattack. Grant failed to pursue the retreating enemy, but the Union advance continued as John Pope captured Island Number Ten on 7 April, opening up the Mississippi as far south as Memphis. On 28 April, Admiral David Farragut captured New Orleans, the South's largest city and main seaport, beginning the process of bisecting the Confederacy. In May 1862, the Union forces in Tennessee began to advance on Corinth, which Beauregard evacuated on 29 May. Grant replaced Halleck as commander of the Western theater as Halleck took over the role of general-in-chief, but he was too late to prevent Halleck from dispersing the Union forces across the theater as his last act.
On 27 June 1862, the new Confederate commander Braxton Bragg decided to send Sterling Price and Earl Van Dorn to distract Grant as he shifted 35,000 men from Alabama to Chattanooga, from which he and Edmund Kirby Smith would invade Kentucky and turn back to defeat Grant. On 29-30 August, Kirby Smith took over 4,000 Union prisoners at the Battle of Richmond, and he reached Lexington on 30 August. Buell confronted the invaders at the Battle of Perryville on 8 October 1862, but both commanders proved passive and Bragg ultimately withdrew after an indecisive encounter. Meanwhile, Price and Van Dorn battled Grant at the Battle of Iuka on 19 September 1862, meeting with defeat. The two Confederate generals again attempted to attack Grant's army at the Second Battle of Corinth on 3-4 October, suffering heavy losses.
On 24 October, Grant's subordinate William Rosecrans replaced Buell in command of the Army of the Cumberland and moved against Bragg at the 31 December 1862-2 January 1863 Battle of Stones River. Bragg struck first with a surprise attack, but his ensuing assaults were decisively defeated, and he was forced to retreat to Tullahoma. Both armies suffered 12,000 losses, making Stones River the bloodiest battle of the war. Bragg was forced to yield control of Middle Tennessee as his army retreated.
Meanwhile, Lincoln ordered Grant to move south from Memphis and Nathaniel P. Banks north from Baton Rouge to capture Vicksburg and Port Hudson, the last remaining Confederate strongholds along the Mississippi. William T. Sherman's 32,000 troops and Grant's 40,000 trops moved down the Mississippi, and, while Sherman was defeated at the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou in December 1862, John A. McClernand's fresh Illinois army detoured from the Vicksburg campaign to capture Arkansas Post instead. Grant incorporated McClernand's force into his army as the year turned to 1863, and, in the spring, Grant launched a joint naval and land attack on Vicksburg. Sherman's corps held off Joseph E. Johnston's army in Jackson, Mississippi, which he captured on 14 May 1863, as Grant defeated the Confederates at the Battle of Champion Hill on 16 May and both bombarded and starved Vicksburg into surrender on 4 July. On 8 July, Banks' capture of Port Hudson left the entire Mississippi in Union hands and split the Confederacy in two.
Rosecrans' army occupied Murfreesboro for six months as Bragg established a new defensive line in Tullahoma, hoping to block Union advances against Chattanooga. Union and Confederate cavalry clashed in Streight's Raid, which was fought off by Nathan Bedford Forrest in May 1863. In June, Rosecrans moved against Bragg in the largely bloodless Tullahoma Campaign, outmaneuvering him and forcing him to retreat from Middle Tennessee. Meanwhile, John Hunt Morgan launched a raid into northern Ohio, failing to distract Ambrose Burnside's Army of the Ohio from its march on Knoxville.
In August 1863, Rosecrans moved against Chattanooga, while Bragg was reinforced by James Longstreet's corps from the Army of Northern Virginia. In September 1863, Bragg defeated the Union army at the Battle of Chickamauga, although XIV Corps commander George Henry Thomas' stand prevented a rout. Rosecrans was then besieged in Chattanooga, and, while Grant initially planned to move on Mobile, he instead took command of all armies in the West and moved to Rosecrans' relief on 17 October. Thomas replaced Rosecrans and received supplies and reinforcements from Grant's army, and fierce fighting at the Battle of Missionary Ridge on 25 November 1863 forced the Confederates to lift their siege. The concurrent failure of Longstreet's Knoxville campaign against Burnside left eastern Tennessee free of Confederate control. Union forces were able to focus on Atlanta, while Braxton Bragg, was replaced by Joseph E. Johnston.
In March 1864, Grant headed east to assume command of all the Union armies, while Sherman took command in the West. Grant planned to destroy or trap Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia with three concurrent campaigns (the Overland Campaign, Bermuda Hundred campaign, and Valley campaigns of 1864), while Nathaniel P. Banks would capture Mobile and Sherman's army would destroy Johnston's army while driving toward Atlanta. The Bermuda Hundred and Valley campaigns were met with defeat, while Banks was bogged down in the Red River campaign in Louisiana and Grant settled in for a long siege of Petersburg.
However, Sherman's Atlanta campaign resulted in a series of decisive victories. In May-June, Sherman forced Johnston to retreat through mountainous terrain by outmaneuvering his defenses, suffering defeat only once at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain on 27 June. President Jefferson Davis disagreed with Johnston's frequent withdrawals and replaced him with John Bell Hood just before the 20 July Battle of Peachtree Creek. Over the next six weeks, the Confederates launched several failed attacks on Sherman's army, and he ultimately evacuated Atlanta on 1 September.
While Sherman prepared for an offensive to the east, Hood decided to cut off Sherman's lines of communications with Chattanooga. As Hood's army moved through Alabama towards Tennessee, Nathan Bedford Forrest's cavalry harried Sherman's army. Sherman, left unopposed in his March to the Sea, sent George Henry Thomas to lead the Army of the Cumberland's reserves north to intercept Hood as he began his March to the Sea. Hood planned to defeat John M. Schofield's half of the Union force as it pursued him from Atlanta before Schofield could join Thomas' forces from Nashville or Union forces retreating from the Red River Campaign. The Confederates failed to trap the Union Army at the 29 November Battle of Spring Hill and were heavily defeated at the Battle of Franklin the following day, suffering irreplaceable losses of officers and men. Schofield himself suffered heavy losses, but he was able to retreat in good order to Nashville. There, Thomas joined forces with Schofield and destroyed Hood's army at the Battle of Nashville on 15-16 December 1864. Most of Hood's remaining soldiers deserted, and Hood quit his command, with Richard Taylor succeeding him.
Meanwhile, Sherman's army left Atlanta on 15 November 1864 and brushed aside Georgia militia and home guards as he marched to Savannah, which he bombarded before entering peacefully on 22 December 1864. His campaign was marked by scorched earth warfare, his soldiers burning corps, killing livestock, and destroying civilian infrastructure such as railroads as they went. Sherman then decided to move north through the Carolinas, destroying everything of military value as he marched to join Grant's army at the Siege of Petersburg. Sherman decided to bypass Augusta, Georgia and Charleston, South Carolina and instead marched on Goldsboro, North Carolina. On 17 February, the South Carolina capital of Columbia surrendered, only to mysteriously catch fire and have its downtown area devastated. That same day, the Confederates evacuated Charleston. From 13 to 15 January, the Union assaulted Fort Fisher in Wilmington port and captured it, and the seaport surrendered to Sherman on 22 February.
Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee promptly appointed Joseph E. Johnston to take command of the Confederate forces in the Carolinas, the newly-formed Army of the South. The Confederates attempted to defeat the pursuing Union forces at the 19-21 March Battle of Bentonville, only for the Federals to fight off their attacks and force Johnston to retreat to Raleigh two days later. On 11 April, Johnston learned of Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House, inducing him to sign an armistice with Sherman at Bennett Place (near Durham) on 18 April. On 26 April, Johnston agreed to a surrender on purely military terms, surrendering the Confederate forces in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida.
Fighting would continue farther west, where Thomas dispatched Major-General James H. Wilson to destroy the last remaining Confederate industry in Alabama and Georgia. Wilson's raid into Alabama led to a victory over Forrest at the 2 April Battle of Selma, and Wilson's force continued eastward into Georgia, reaching Macon on 21 April before being ordered by Sherman to cease hostilities. General Edward Canby concurrently moved against Mobile, besieging Spanish Fort from 27 March to 8 April and forcing its garrison to flee through the swamps. On learning of Lee and Johnston's surrenders, General Richard Taylor surrendered Alabama, Mississippi, and East Louisiana to Canby on 4 May, while Forrest surrendered on 9 May. Wilson's cavalry occupied Tallahassee on 20 May, and a detachment of his cavalry captured the fugitive Jefferson Davis near Irwinville, Georgia on 10 May, bringing an end to the fighting in the West.