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A Day Late and a Dollar Short: The Fate of A. J. Smith?s Command during Price?s 1864 Missouri Raid
Major General Andrew Jackson Smith, commanding the Right Wing of the 16th Army Corp, is on his way east to join Major General William T. Sherman’s Atlanta campaign.The Federal commander in Missouri, Major General William S. Rosecrans keeps hearing reports that Confederate Major General Sterling Price is planning to invade Missouri.Much to Sherman’s annoyance, Rosecrans convinces the US War Department to divert A. J. Smith’s command into Missouri to counter the Confederate cavalry raid. Smith’s objectives are to bring Price’s Army of Missouri to battle and destroy it.This book tells the story of how A. J. Smith’s command is diverted to Missouri to defend the state against Sterling Price. Find out if Smith's operations against Price in the fall of 1864 are successful. Learn about the difficulties in managing a campaign in 1864 Missouri. Understand some of the personalities of the Federal commanders who are the key decision makers in Missouri during Price's raid.
138 pages, Paperback
First published September 26, 2014
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December 1, 2014
The thing is, Abraham Lincoln had a bad first term as President. This whole Civil War business had spiraled out of control, and Northern generals seemed to lack the wisdom and/or inclination to reliably conduct and win battles. Things looked better for the North out west, but who cared about out west? No one. Robert E Lee had been driven out of Pennsylvania and back into Virginia, but at such an appalling cost that it was difficult to see Gettysburg as a victory. True, Vicksburg had fallen too, and the Mississippi River was in Union hands, but all that could be tucked away conveniently into a folder called the "uninteresting western struggle" and be casually ignored. By the time that the election was approaching in the fall of 1864, Sherman's army was bogged down in static siege conditions around Atlanta, and thousands of boys had become corpses as Grant had ramrodded his way through the Wilderness campaign, digging into another static siege at Petersburg, with only legions of dead to show for his progress. In political terms, it all added up to poor hopes for a Lincoln reelection, and should Lincoln lose and George McClellan become the new President, the direction of the war would surely be radically altered. The stakes were substantial.
In these terms we must view Price's raid into Missouri lest we forget that the forces which contributed to its inception, organization, and conduct were not strictly military goals, but were mixed with political goals: the wider goals of the Confederacy, and the political goals of Sterling Price personally, for example. Price did not necessarily have to successfully capture St Louis or Jefferson City to be successful. If he could merely continue putting pressure on the Yankee Army so that Northerners were sufficiently discouraged to not vote for Lincoln, he could claim some success. Alas for Price and the South, Sherman would capture Atlanta early during Price's raid, and the resulting rising spirits in the North would insure a Lincoln landslide.
Price was then compelled to conduct a campaign that was primarily of a military, not a political, nature. Unfortunately, as always, Price's troops were insufficiently armed, insufficiently fed, insufficiently clothed, and insufficiently disciplined. He conducted a rabble into Missouri. Fortunately for Price, at least until he reached Westport, the Union Army, sufficiently armed, fed, clothed, and disciplined, was unable to do him much harm, excepting in a few limited encounters.
Dick Titterington considers primarily the Union response directed by William Rosecrans out of St Louis in this book. Although Titterington calls himself an amateur historian, he certainly knows his chops and he can be counted on to get his facts straight, to dot every i and cross every t, and to provide excellent documentation all along the way. Moreover, when presenting a broad story like this one with so many characters and changing places, Titterington does something which is difficult: he organizes his tale in an order that is easy to follow. That takes some real storytelling skill, particularly when you're dealing with nonfiction which can't be rewritten to heighten dramatic effect.
This book aims to show Rosecrans' field officers in a better light than that in which they are usually remembered, to provide an accounting for why they kept not quite catching up and closing with Price, to emphasize how absence of reliable military intelligence encouraged a conservative approach to tangling with Old Pap. I've read other accounts of this raid, and the analyses put forward by others, and I confess I'm unpersuaded by Titterington's thesis. In military terms, Price made numerous errors during his raid, and the Union Army was almost never in a position to capitalize on them. I have a feeling we would be less willing to forgive Grant or Sherman for paralysis due to absence of intelligence as we are asked to do for Rosecrans. Nevertheless, although my interpretation is not the same as Titterington's, the events he documents are unshakably solid.
Some might find fault with Titterington's unwillingness to move away from absolute historical objectivity and reveal some of his own interpretive and subjective opinions about the people involved. I myself understand exactly why he does not do this, as it necessarily would taint the objectivity of the story he's setting down. What I do think would help, however, would be to add a layer of sensation: to better show the country and the weather, the cold and the rain of the surroundings, to hear the wagon wheels creak and the mules bray, to smell the ears of corn cooking and feel the campfire smoke burning in our eyes, to make us feel we as readers are more present in the world of 1864. Just a few paragraphs of such strategically placed throughout a text like this can work wonders.
As far as books about Price's raid go, this is a very good one, and one told with a different emphasis than I've seen before. I'd like to have seen more of the action around Westport and beyond, but no doubt that's for a later book in the series. I'd recommend this concise and absorbing story to everyone interested in the western conflicts of the Civil War, and to everyone who lives in the region now.
In these terms we must view Price's raid into Missouri lest we forget that the forces which contributed to its inception, organization, and conduct were not strictly military goals, but were mixed with political goals: the wider goals of the Confederacy, and the political goals of Sterling Price personally, for example. Price did not necessarily have to successfully capture St Louis or Jefferson City to be successful. If he could merely continue putting pressure on the Yankee Army so that Northerners were sufficiently discouraged to not vote for Lincoln, he could claim some success. Alas for Price and the South, Sherman would capture Atlanta early during Price's raid, and the resulting rising spirits in the North would insure a Lincoln landslide.
Price was then compelled to conduct a campaign that was primarily of a military, not a political, nature. Unfortunately, as always, Price's troops were insufficiently armed, insufficiently fed, insufficiently clothed, and insufficiently disciplined. He conducted a rabble into Missouri. Fortunately for Price, at least until he reached Westport, the Union Army, sufficiently armed, fed, clothed, and disciplined, was unable to do him much harm, excepting in a few limited encounters.
Dick Titterington considers primarily the Union response directed by William Rosecrans out of St Louis in this book. Although Titterington calls himself an amateur historian, he certainly knows his chops and he can be counted on to get his facts straight, to dot every i and cross every t, and to provide excellent documentation all along the way. Moreover, when presenting a broad story like this one with so many characters and changing places, Titterington does something which is difficult: he organizes his tale in an order that is easy to follow. That takes some real storytelling skill, particularly when you're dealing with nonfiction which can't be rewritten to heighten dramatic effect.
This book aims to show Rosecrans' field officers in a better light than that in which they are usually remembered, to provide an accounting for why they kept not quite catching up and closing with Price, to emphasize how absence of reliable military intelligence encouraged a conservative approach to tangling with Old Pap. I've read other accounts of this raid, and the analyses put forward by others, and I confess I'm unpersuaded by Titterington's thesis. In military terms, Price made numerous errors during his raid, and the Union Army was almost never in a position to capitalize on them. I have a feeling we would be less willing to forgive Grant or Sherman for paralysis due to absence of intelligence as we are asked to do for Rosecrans. Nevertheless, although my interpretation is not the same as Titterington's, the events he documents are unshakably solid.
Some might find fault with Titterington's unwillingness to move away from absolute historical objectivity and reveal some of his own interpretive and subjective opinions about the people involved. I myself understand exactly why he does not do this, as it necessarily would taint the objectivity of the story he's setting down. What I do think would help, however, would be to add a layer of sensation: to better show the country and the weather, the cold and the rain of the surroundings, to hear the wagon wheels creak and the mules bray, to smell the ears of corn cooking and feel the campfire smoke burning in our eyes, to make us feel we as readers are more present in the world of 1864. Just a few paragraphs of such strategically placed throughout a text like this can work wonders.
As far as books about Price's raid go, this is a very good one, and one told with a different emphasis than I've seen before. I'd like to have seen more of the action around Westport and beyond, but no doubt that's for a later book in the series. I'd recommend this concise and absorbing story to everyone interested in the western conflicts of the Civil War, and to everyone who lives in the region now.
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