The Civil War
by Donald D. Erwin
The strong pressures surrounding the matters of slavery and states’ rights reached explosive proportions during the time leading up to the 1860 presidential election. When Abraham Lincoln was elected, South Carolina withdrew from the Union, and shortly thereafter so did Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas. On February 4, 1860 they formed the Confederate States of America in a meeting at Montgomery, Alabama. After hostilities began, Tennessee voted to secede on June 8, 1861.
The strategy of the Union was (1) to blockade Confederate ports, (2) to move from Washington south to capture Richmond, (3) to split the Confederacy by taking control of the Mississippi River and its surroundings, driving downstream from Illinois and driving upstream from New Orleans, (4) to produce a second split of the Confederacy by taking control of the West Tennessee and Cumberland River Valleys, then pushing to Nashville and Chattanooga, then to Atlanta, then to Savannah, then north through South Carolina and North Carolina to Virginia. The state of Tennessee stood across the pathways of both strategies (3) and (4). And therefore it is not surprising that except for Virginia more Civil War battles were fought in Tennessee than in any other state.
The strategy of blockading Confederate ports proceeded fairly rapidly, and was moderately successful, its grip tightening as the war went on. The most important event was probably the capture of New Orleans on April 28, 1862, since it initiated the Union takeover of the Mississippi River from the southern approach. Union strategy of moving south was largely a failure for the first three years of the war. The Confederates won the battle of First Bull Run (21 July 1861), repulsed the Union invasion up the Virginia Peninsula (early in 1862), drove the Union back from Richmond in several other battles, invaded Maryland and Pennsylvania (September 1862), and then invaded Pennsylvania again (Summer 1863). The first invasion was halted at Antietam, but it wasn’t until after the stopping of the second invasion at Gettysburg (July 1863) that the strategy showed any signs of success. Grant slowly bottled Lee up in the Richmond area during which four bloody battles were fought in 1864: Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg.
The strategy of splitting the Confederacy was inaugurated on March 14, 1862 when Union combatants took the Confederate Mississippi River stronghold at New Madrid, Missouri (just across the river from the northeast corner of Tennessee). This was followed quickly by the capture of nearby Island Ten on April 7, 1862 by Union naval forces, thus opening the river to Memphis. The Federal Admiral Farragut ran his warships through the forts guarding New Orleans on April 25, 1862, and sailed upstream to the harbor, thereby taking the city. On June 4, 1862 Ft. Pillow on the river near Covington, Tennessee was abandoned by the Confederates. Two days later, on June 6, 1862 at Memphis, five iron-clad Federal gunboats clashed with eight Confederate steam rams. In about an hour the battle was over, four Confederate ships having been captured, three sunk, and one having fled south. Memphis surrendered. On May 18, 1863 Farragut who had moved upstream through Baton Rouge took Natchez.. Then on July 4, 1863, after a long slow-moving campaign and a six-week siege, Vicksburg surrendered to Grant. And within four days, on July 8, 1863, Ft. Hudson, which also had been attacked and besieged for months, surrendered. The entire Mississippi River was now held by Union Forces.
Strategy number four (4) began with the Battle of Mill Springs, Kentucky, near Cumberland Gap on January 19, 1862. The Union defeated the Confederate troops and began to push them out of Kentucky, a border state which had remained in the Union. The next major encounters occurred at Ft. Henry on the Tennessee River at the border between Kentucky and Tennessee and Ft. Donelson on the Cumberland River just twelve miles away. On February 6 Ft. Henry surrendered to a Federal force commanded by U. S. Grant. Grant attacked Ft. Donelson on February 13-14, 1862, and after the escape of about half the fort’s defenders, the remaining eight thousand surrendered. The Union now had control over the entrances to the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers. Nashville, an important supply center and military equipment manufacturing town, was now open for attack. But the Confederates fled the city, and on February 25, 1862 Union troops occupied Nashville.
The next Union move was a push south on the Tennessee River into northern Mississippi and Alabama. The Confederates decided to make a defensive stand near Corinth, Mississippi, an important rail junction and military warehouse center. Grant led his troops to a site called Shiloh Church, twenty-two miles north of Corinth. On April 6, 1862, Confederate General Johnston launched a surprise attack which routed the Federals. The next day, when Grant’s forces were reinforced by more troops under General Buell, the opponents fought to a draw, after which the Southerners withdrew toward Corinth. The Federal army, after recouping, on May 13, 1862, took Corinth, which left West Tennessee defenseless. And as was mentioned in the previous paragraph, Memphis was captured on June 16, 1862. In the closing months of 1862, General Rosecrans’ Federal troops were holding Nashville and General Bragg’s Confederate Army of Tennessee was stationed in and around Murfreesboro, a town thirty miles south. Bragg’s intent was to drive the Federals out of Nashville; Rosecrans’ intent was to push further south. On December 31, 1862 they faced each other at Stone’s Creek just two miles north of Murfreesboro. The day went to the Confederates, but after a stalemate on January 1, 1863, the Union repelled further attacks and the Confederates fell back to Tullahoma. This meant that West and Middle Tennessee were now held by the North, with only East Tennessee remaining under Southern control.
After camping during the winter, the Federal troops left Murfreesboro, moving toward Chattanooga in June 1863, arriving there in early Fall. Bragg, having left Tullahoma, followed them along and brought his forces to Lafayette, Georgia, about twenty miles south of Chattanooga. When Rosecrans attacked Bragg on September 19, 1863, at Chickamauga Creek, ten miles south of Chattanooga, the Federals were overwhelmingly defeated, and were forced back into Chattanooga, where the Confederates bottled them up. When it appeared that the Union forces might be starved into surrender, Grant brought reinforcements to Chattanooga, and on November 25, 1863, defeated the Southerners. They retreated in panic to a new position further south at Dalton, Georgia. Early in November, during the Chattanooga struggle, General Burnside had led a force of Federal soldiers from Cincinnati into Knoxville where they fortified their position. On November 20, 1863, General Longstreet and his Confederate troops who had been sent from Chattanooga by Bragg, attacked the Union fortifications at Fort Sanders. They were repulsed, and when Longstreet heard of the Union victory at Chattanooga, he withdrew his troops northeast, then into Virginia. The Union troops who had won at Chattanooga now pushed on south taking Atlanta on September 2, 1864, after which General Sherman and his soldiers moved across Georgia to capture Savannah on December 22, 1864, dividing the Confederacy in two again.
While Sherman was advancing toward Savannah, Confederate General Hood moved a reconstituted Southern Army of Tennessee out of Alabama toward Nashville. As Hood approached, Federal troops under General Schofield near Pulaski, Tennessee moved north toward Nashville. On November 30 1864, Schofield’s forces dug in at Franklin, Tennessee. Charge after charge by the Confederates was repelled with heavy Southern losses. Schofield then moved his troops into strongly-fortified Nashville which Union General Thomas and his army held. On December 15, 1864, the Union forces attacked and routed Hood’s soldiers, who retreated to Tupelo, Mississippi.
Strategy (1) was complete with the Southern blockade being almost airtight. Strategy (2) was achieved when Grant’s forces moved to surround Lee in Virginia in the spring of 1865. Strategy (3), the taking of the Mississippi River, had been completed in late 1863. And as for strategy (4), this was achieved when Sherman moved north from Savannah and captured Columbia, forcing the evacuation of Charleston on February 17, 1865. Although Confederate General Johnston made a last-chance attack on Sherman’s army in North Carolina March 19-21, 1865, he was defeated. Learning of Lee’s surrender to Grant on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox, Virginia, Johnston surrendered his command on April 14, 1865, to Sherman.
The cruel division among the American people, reflected most specifically among the people of the Border States, did not begin with the shot fired at Fort Sumter in April 1961, nor did it end with the surrender of the Confederacy at Appomattox Courthouse four Aprils later. The internal division dated from the beginning of the American Colonies, grew through successive stages of increasing intensity until the angry schism of the Civil War, and, to some degree, continues even today in struggles over civil rights and equal opportunity.
First, there was the division of black from white, and this was based on a fundamental assertion that to be black was to be less than human. Then there was the division of Northern white and Southern white: a difference which revealed not only a North-South conflict but also a confrontation between East and West. And the sharpest cutting edge of this unrest was in the Border States. Then, of course, there was the ultimate division itself…a standoff of two armies.
“Of the American Civil War it may safely be asserted that there was a single cause, slavery,” wrote historian James Ford Rhodes in 1913. Historian Charles G. Sellers, Jr. said, “The key to the tragedy of southern history is the paradox of the slaveholding South’s devotion to liberty.” While historians today would not put it quite so firmly on either point, Rhodes’ basic point remains valid.
While some folks—those who are historically challenged—may believe that the enslavement of blacks was unique to the American colonies, the fact is that black slaves had been imported from Africa to Europe fifty years before Columbus set out on his first voyage to the New World. The Portuguese started the practice in 1442 as a sidebar to their country’s commercial expansion. Under Prince Henry the Navigator’s driving ambition to find a passage to China, his mariners had established claim to the Canary and Madeira Islands, and had explored another four thousand miles southward along the African coast. In 1440, Antam Gonçalvez, one of Henry’s captains, captured three Moors who ransomed themselves for ten Negroes. These were brought to Lisbon in 1442. On a second trip Gonçalvez brought back more slaves, and in 1444 a group known as the Company of Lagos captured more than a hundred and fifty black African men, women and children. When they were landed at Lagos Prince Henry himself was there to greet them and to claim his share of the “cargo.”
By the end of the 1400s Portugal controlled Africa and had made an agreement, called the Asiento, to supply slaves to Spain. Spain joined the trade in 1517, as did England in 1562. France followed then Holland and Denmark. Within a century slaving had grown into a commercial enterprise of such proportions that no “civilized” nation could ignore it as a lucrative source of trade. By 1591 Brazil had imported fifty-two thousand slaves, and by 1750 the British West Indies had brought in over two million. In 1715 there were approximately sixty thousand slaves working in the American colonies, but by the time the American Revolution started there were over a half million.
They came in chains, and they came from everywhere along the west coast of Africa. They were people of at least four major races—the Negritians, the Fellatahs, the Bantus and the Gallas—as well as many tribes who are now remembered only by anthropologists. Chained to each other, neck and foot, they were driven to the coast by the slavers, who were, more often than not, black themselves. On average two out of five died on the long marches to the coasts, and more perished in the stinking holds of the slave ships.
But the practice of enslaving other human beings was old even then. It had been in existence since the first man discovered that he had an edge over a rival, and it had become entrenched in human customs before man was walking upright. It was a time-honored custom among the Jews, and it was old when Babylonia, Assyria and Phoenicia were young. And the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome were founded on it as well. It was also practiced by the Celts in Ireland and the Highland clans in Scotland, although in these cultures individuals were held as captives until ransomed. But those who had no one to produce the demanded ransom were, in effect, slaves.
There were really a host of reasons for the Civil War, slavery being the most visible. There was a “two civilizations” theory held by many prominent Southerners. A lawyer in Savannah, Georgia expressed it in 1860 in one way: “In this country there have arisen two races (i.e., Northerners and Southerners) which, although claiming a common parentage, have been so entirely separated by climate, by morals, by religion, and by estimates so totally opposite to all that constitutes honor, truth, and manliness, that they cannot longer exist under the same government.” While such a statement sounds ridiculous to most Americans today, it was widely believed in the South prior to the War…and long afterward for that matter.
Abraham Lincoln’s famous speech in which he declared “…a house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free” probably hit the mark best. The underlying reason for continuing slavery in the South had been economic, yet the percentage of slave owners to non-slave owners was very small.
Few Erwins who fought for the Confederacy owned slaves, so why did they fight? Pro slavery advocates preached that the bondage of Negroes was the basis of liberty for whites. They said that slavery elevated all whites to an equality of status and dignity by confining menial labor and caste subordination to blacks. “If slaves are freed,” said Southerners, “whites will become menials. We will lose every right and liberty which belongs to the name of freemen.”
Most Erwins in Tennessee and Arkansas, however, were on the lower end of the economic ladder. They were, in fact, menials…in the sense that they, and their families, worked their own farms, and if they did own a slave or two most likely worked alongside them in the fields. The slavery issue, for the most part, didn’t really touch them. Southern “honor” was something that they were willing to fight for, though most probably couldn’t really define what it was. And of course, there was the widely held belief that blacks were of an inferior race, and Southern and Border States Erwins were no exception to that thought either.
In the late 1850s and early 1860s it was clear that war was coming. The big question was…which states would secede from the Union? There were Erwin’s in several of the border-states, many closely related. The following letter from James Hezikiah Erwin, who lived in West Point, Georgia, to his uncle, John Johnston Erwin, in Calloway County, Kentucky, illustrates the fervor of the times. The unedited letter is dated only about three months after the Confederate Army attacked Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861:
West Point, July 18th 1861
Dear Uncle
Your last favor duly received and found me arid family all well. I have not been able as yet to get hold of any funds that would be current with you. I will however keep a sharpe look out and will avail myself with the 1st opportunitY that presentS its self. I deeply sympathiSe with you on the loss of your lovely daughter. Excepting your dear companion a greater affliction could not have been visited upon you than to be deprived of a lovely affectionate child, and although the event is sad and painful~ I am rejoysced to learn that she was prepared for the Soleum change. Let us endeavour to profit by the dealings of Providence and see to it that we be ‘wise in this our day of merciful visitation’ committing our interests both for time & eternity with all our trials and afflictions in to the hands of a kind and gracious God.
I am very sorry at the position the galant old state of “Kentuck” occupies at this time. How it is, that a Southern State can remain in a Government ruled by a black republican President, disregarding and trampling underfoot the plainest provisions of the Constitution and waging a war of subjugation or extermination upon Eleven States with whom Kentucky is connected by every consideration of interest, Patriotism and Sympathy is to me a matter of great surprise. Under such circumstaces Neutrality is an absurdity and Kentucky in attempting to maintain it is occupying the unenviable position of a Coward in the estimation of any Southern State. The people of the Confederate States are united and regard with contempt all Ideas and efforts at reconstruction. They could not be induced back in to the “Old Wreck” upon any terms. Looking at it from every stand point possible the conclusion is irresistable that those who are not for us in this struggle are against us. You are much mistaken in Southern Valor and patriotism when you think that it was our object to make Kentucky the battleground and then to retire with “forced armes” and not participate in the struggle. Far from it.
But if you people could be satisfied that Kentucky desired to cut loose from old Abe and his\government and link her destiny with the Confederate States where God and nature designed her to be, ’Thousands” upon tens of thousands of the brave hearts and strong army from the Confederacy would flock to the standard and fight until “the last armed for expired” and until Kentucky should be again free and independent. And if Kentucky is afraid to strike for liberty and freedom and will manifest her willingness our Jeff will send a force sufficient to drive out every hessian from her soil, and if Kentuckians are unwilling to participate, they can flee to the “hills of [illegible] for safety.” But I believe that Kentucky will get aroused from this lethergy and inactivity and vindicate her honor. Unite with her sisters in a Confederacy that is destined to be unsurpassed by the world. In what I have said of Kentucky I intend nothing personal to yourself for I know you have not a nephew who esteems you more highly than I do. We are all entitled to our political opinions, and it is nothing strange if men should differ. Providence has blessed us with abundent crops, perhaps the best for a number of years. My children were well when I feard from the last. They are staying at Dr. Lloyds. I expect to see them Saturday. I was at Uncle Abes & Mikes about a week ago. They were all well — they say there is no chance of doing anything for you before this fall.
My Love and best wishs to Aunt Sarah and the family — yourself not excepted.
Write often.
Very truly yours
Jas. H. Erwin
It is clear that James is trying to convince his uncle that Kentucky should be with the Confederacy. Although there was strong feeling for the Southern cause, and although many Kentuckians did go south to serve in the Confederate forces, the State of Kentucky did not secede from the Union.
Arkansas, where my father and grandfather were born, was admitted to the Union on June 15, 1836, as the 25th state, with its capital at Little Rock. Among the more than 435,000 inhabitants in 1860, some 111,000 were slaves. That year no one in the state voted for Abraham Lincoln; in fact his name wasn’t even on the ballot. Sentiment, however, was fairly evenly divided at a March convention on the secession question. David Walker, an anti-Secessionist, was elected as convention president, and Elias C. Boudinot, a half-Cherokee slaveholder, as secretary. The delegates voted against secession but kept the question open by calling for a referendum to decide if Arkansas should take part in a conference of border-states, scheduled to be held in Frankfort, Kentucky, in May.
Well before May, however, Sumter had fallen and President Lincoln had called for troops, assigning Arkansas a quota of 75,000. Governor Henry M. Rector, without much fear of losing favor at home, sent Lincoln a flat no. A May convention in Little Rock passed the ordinance of secession by a vote of sixty-nine to one. On May 16, 1861, Arkansas became a Confederate state.
Fifty thousand Arkansans enlisted in the Confederate army. Thirteen thousand Arkansans, many of them Negroes, served with the Union. The now Confederate Arkansas state government, during its brief life, had to move from Little Rock to Hot Springs, later to Washington, in Hempstead County, then briefly to Rondo, located near the Texas border.
After Little Rock had fallen to Union forces commanded by Gen. Frederick Steele on September 10, 1863, Isaac Murphy, who had cast the sole dissenting ballot at the secession convention, was elected Union governor. Thereafter he presided in Little Rock while Confederate Gov. Harris Flanagin served at the provisional state capital in Washington, Arkansas. Roughly the line of the Arkansas River divided the opposing governments.
More than 450 military engagements (both land and naval battles) occurred within the state during the war. The exceptionally bloody battle of Pea Ridge, or Elkhorn Tavern, was a major encounter of the war. While neither side managed to evict the enemy beyond state boundaries, Union forces soon gained an edge which was maintained to the end of hostilities.
In 1864 delegates again met at Little Rock, drew up a Unionist constitution, repudiated the ordinance of secession, and ratified the 13th amendment. The last skirmish took place at Monticello on May 24, 1865; forty-five days after Lee surrendered at Appomattox. In 1868 Arkansas was readmitted to the Union.
Thomas Johnston Erwin, my great-grandfather, joined the Arkansas Home Guards on February 28, 1864 in Fayetteville, Arkansas. He was part of Captain George E. Gaddy’s company, which would later be combined with other forces as Company M, 73rd Regiment of Missouri Enrolled Militia, a unit of the Union Army.
Michael Pike Erwin, Thomas’ youngest brother, joined the same unit later. Both were present at the Battle of Race Track Hollow in April 1864. On June 8, 1864 Captain Gaddy reported to Berryville, Arkansas with his company where they assisted in the evacuation of Berryville and reinforced Company G at Easley’s Ferry. This action ended the Union occupation of Carroll County.
Josephus C. Epley, husband of Elizabeth Rebecca Erwin, served in the Union Army. They were married September 11, 1864 in Carroll County, but Elizabeth moved shortly afterwards to Springfield, Missouri to “sit out the war.” When “Joe” Epley was released from the Union forces he went to Springfield where they lived for a time. Arlonia Alice Epley, their first child, was born there August 25, 1866. Their second child, however, was born May 5, 1868 in Denver, Carroll County, Arkansas. It is said that there was considerable friction between neighbors, as well as between individual members of Carroll County families, for years after the war ended.
John I. Worthington, husband of Nancy Abigail Erwin, a younger sister of Thomas Johnston Erwin, joined the Union Army when the Civil War broke out. He was commissioned a captain and served in the Sixth Kansas Cavalry. He later served in the First Arkansas Cavalry where he was promoted to major. He saw some action in Carroll County. He was wounded near the end of the war and died of his wounds. His widow and children returned to Carroll County after hostilities ceased, where they lived for a time with her parents, Joseph and Rebecca Erwin, and later with Elizabeth and Josephus Epley.
John Johnston Erwin, a son of James Polk Erwin of Oktibbeha County, Mississippi, was in the Confederate Army and was captured by Union Forces, probably at the Battle of Vicksburg on February 4, 1864. He was imprisoned at Camp Douglas in Illinois when he wrote the following letter to his namesake-uncle, John Johnston Erwin, in Calloway County, Kentucky:
Camp Douglas Ill May 17th 1864
Dear Uncle,
For the time since my capture I seat myself to address you. I expect you will be surprised to hear from me so far North, but such is the fate of war I have no news to communicate but my general good health. I was captured at Jackson Miss on the 4th of Febry and arrived at this place about a month afterwards. Like the ballance of Confederate Prisoners I am here without money and as I am cut off from the hope of getting it from home must beg the favor of you to send me Ten Dollars by express. If an opportunity occurs please write to my family or to brother Harvy or Father. Give my best regards to Aunt Sarah and family and accept for yourself the best
wishes of
Your Nephew
Jno. J. Erwin
Direct your letter thus
Jno. J. Erwin
Co. H. 14 Ky Regmt
Camp Douglas, Ill
There were surely many other Erwins involved, on both sides, in this bloody, senseless and tragic war. In fact, the actual statistics are:
Erwin Veterans Allegiance:
655 Confederate
557 Union
1212 Combined
Total Veterans in the Civil War:
1,050,000 Confederate
2,213,363 Union
3,263,363 Combined
Most of the scars of battle on the countryside are no longer visible, but there are many monuments on the various battlefields to mark the confrontations and the slaughter. And although several generations would have to come and go before total peace would return between neighbors and former friends in the border-states, there is no historical indication that Erwins involved in one side of the conflict held a grudge against Erwins on the other side. There is every reason to believe that once the war was over the Erwin clan became a close-knit family once again.
On the other hand – even though the millions of former black slaves were now free and legally equal – the people of the South, as well as a large portion of the people in the border-states, including Erwins, still believed that they were superior to blacks in every way. It would take a hundred years plus, including a sweeping civil rights movement and Congressional legislation, before a semblance of true equality between blacks and whites would surface. And it would be one hundred and thirty-nine years after an Erwin family slave was declared free that a group of his descendants welcomed me as an honored guest at their family reunion in Longview, Texas in June 2004. Perhaps the Civil War is finally over. I would like to think so.