Early on the morning of July 13, 1862, Buell's dreams of glory came to a sudden end. Rebel horsemen under the command of Colonel Nathan Bedford Forrest swept upon Murfreesboro. Some of the astonished defenders tried to put up a fight, but half of the garrison surrendered without firing a shot. Forrest's men seized what they could burned the rest, destroyed a nearby railroad bridge and tore up a large section of track. Buell raged impotently at his men for their failure to protect the vital base, "take it in all its features, " he wrote shortly afterward, "few more disgraceful examples of neglect of duty and lack of good conduct can be found in the history of wars."
But Buell's anger could not reverse the result of Forrest's raid. With its main supply route severed, the Army of the Ohio's advance on Chattanooga ground to an ignominios halt. Six weeks later, while Buell was still trying to secure his rail link to the North, Confederate General Braxton Bragg launched a counteroffensive that compelled the Army of the Ohio to retreat all the way to Louisville, Ky., forever ending Buell's hopes of victory in Tennessee.
What caused the debacle at Murfressboro? Why were the defenders taken by surprise? Why did the garrison prove so completely incapable of resisting an attack by a force of only slightly great size, in a way marked by many instances of small units defending themselves bravely against overwhelming numbers? The answers to these questions lie in the very nature of the Army of the Ohio.
That army, like every other Civil War army, was made up almost exclusively of regiments of volunteers. Everything those citizen-soldiers experienced in their brief military careers, including their recruitment, training, and organization, helped to build their loyalty toward their regiments. The result was an army of many small, highly cohesive regiments that had little in common with one another.
The garrison of Murfreesboro on that fateful day numbered about 800 men of the Army of the Ohio's 23rd Brigade, including nine companies of the 3rd Minnesota Infantry Regiment and six companies of the 9th Michigan Infantry Regiment, supported by four guns of Hewitt's Kentucky artillery and two cavalry companies from Pennsylvania. The two largest units, the 3rd Minnesota and the 9th Michigan, were typical of volunteer regiments making up the bulk of the army. Each regiment consisted, at full strength, of 10 locally raised infantry companies with fanciful names like the Washington County Rifles, Root River Rangers and Olmstead County Volunteers.
The companies were, in thoery, units of 101 men (their actually strength was closer to 40 after disease, disertion and combat took their toll) who knew one another well from civilian life and whose bonds of comradeship were stregthened by months of service together. The same bonds of common experience, state loyalty and unit pride extended to unite the 10 companies of each regiment into a cohesive and competent fighting organization.
In some Civil War armies, soldiers looked beyond their regiments to identify themselves with their brigades (usually four or five regiments strong), taking pride in belonging to such famous units as the Iron Brigade or the Stonewall Brigade. Unfortunately for the Army of the Ohio, its unit cohesion essentially stopped at the regimental level. The 23rd Brigade was a case in point. When it was organized on March 9, 1862, the brigade's four regiments (3rd Minnesota, 9th Michigan, 8th Kentucky and 23rd Kentucky) were strangers to one another. Not until April 29, when the 3rd Minnesota joined the rest of the unit at Murfressboro, was the entire brigade assembled in one place. On May 2, the 23rd Brigade drilled as a unit, in what would prove to be its first and only joint training exercise.
The next day, the 8th Kentucky and the 9th Michigan were sent to Shelbyville, Tenn., in response to rumors of an impending Rebel cavalry raid. On May 4, the 9th Michigan went to Lebanon, Tenn., and on May 22 the 23rd Kentucky marched off to Pulaski. Neither of the two Kentucky regiment ever rejoined the brigade at Murfreesboro. On July 9, the brigade commander reported the positions of his troops as follows: "Third Minnesota stationed at Murfreesborough; Ninth Michigan at Murfreeborough, except four companies at Tullahoma;
Bureaucratic confusion added to the brigade's problems. Because no general had been appointed to lead the unit, the task fell to the senior regimental commander, Colonel William W. Duffield of the 9th Michigan. Duffield, however, was called on for another assignment and spent little time with the brigade, leaving it in the hands of Colonel Henry C. Lester of the 3rd Minnesota. Normally a brigade commander like Duffield (or Lester) would report to division headquarters, but the 23rd Brigade was designated an independent unit, meaning that it did not belong to any particular division. Theoretically the 23rd's commander was responsible directly to army headquarters, but for day-to-day instructions Colonel Duffield was ordered to report to Brig. Gen. Ormsby M. Mitchel, commander of the Army of the Ohio's 3rd Division. At the same time, however, Brig. Gen. Ebenezer Dumont, who commanded the post at Nashvile, directed Colonel Lester to report to him.
The result was that no one at army headquarters seemed to have a clear idea of what was happening with he 23rd Brigade. On June 30, an aide to Buell sent a note to General Mitchel inquiring about an incomplete report of the brigade's status, which erroneously indicated that Colonel Marcus Mundy and his 23rd Kentucky Regiment were at Murfreesboro. "Is he not at Pulaski?" Mitchel was asked. "Arrangements for further operation cannot be made until this information is received." The next day Buell's headquarters issued Special Order No. 89, which, among other things, removed the23rd Kentucky from the 23rd Brigade. The order was appartently intended to be comprehensive with regard to the brigade, giving specific instructions to each of its units by name, including the 3rd Minnesota and the six companies of the 9th Michigan then stationed at Murfreesboro, but it failed to mention the remaining four companies of the 9th Michigan.
The mission of the 23rd Brigade was as ambiguous as its place in the army's table of organization. Southern horsemen under leaders like John Hunt Morgan and Forrest seemingly roamed at will throughout Kentucky and Tennessee in the spring and summer of 1862, and the regiments of the 23rd Brigade were frequently dispatched on independent missions to try to stop those raids, at least until the unit's officers "realized the absurdity of chasing cavalry with infantry," according to Charles Bennett of the 9th Michigan. The 9th was temporarily assigned to another brigade and sent to make a diversionary attack on Chattanooga, returning to Murfreesboro on June 12, a day after the 3rd Minnesota left for an expedition to Pikesville. With its troops constantly coming and going, the 23rd Brigade had no opportunity to develop a sense of esprit de cops, and its men continued to identify themselves primarily with their regiments.
The summer of 1862 was exceptionally hot and dry in Tennessee and Kentucky. On June 17, with Colonel Duffield and Lester both away from Murfreesboro on detached duty, acting post commander Lt. Col. John G. Parkhurst of the 9th Michigan decided to move his regiment's camp about a mile north of the center of the town, to the estate of a Major Manny, where a large spring offered an ample supply of water for the men. There they set up "the largest and most comfortable camp we ever had," according to one soldier, with the tents pitched at full regulation distances from each other, a luxery the regiment had never experienced. When Colonel Lester and the 3rd Minnesota returned from their Pikesville expedition on June 20, however, the expansive Michigan camp did not impress them. Lester, resuming his role as acting post commander, ordered Parkhurst to reduce the size of his regiment's camp and make more room for the Minnesotans. Parkhurstrefused and was placed under arrest for a day by Colonel Lester.
The resulting quarrel between Lester and Parkhurst soon spread to the men of their respective regiments, creating what Colonel Duffield later described as " a great lack of discipline and a bitter feeling of jealousy between the different regiments, manifesting itself in the personal encounters of the men when they met upon the street." Angry at Parkhurst's refusal to move his camp, Lester responded on June 25 by taking the 3rd Minnesota and Hewitt's artillery battery to a new camp more than a mile away from the Michigan troops, well out of supporting distance in the event of an attack. Parkhurst bided his time, awaiting the return of Colonel Duffield. Writing to his sister, Parkhurst confidently predicted that when Duffield resumed command of the 23rd Brigade, he would give the 9th Michigan the best opportunities for service, " in preference to any other" regiment, and leave Colonel Lester helpless with frustration and envy.
As long as Murfreesboro remained an obscure outpost far in the rear of the Army of the Ohio, dissension within its garrison was no more than a matter of local interest. While the men of the 3rd Minnesota and the 9th Michigan were glaring at one another in the town's dusty streets, the bulk of Don Carlos Buell's army was attempting to capture Chattanooga, 100 miles to the southeast. Following Department of the Mississippi commander Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck's explicit instructions, Buell initially tried to supply his armyt using the Memphis & Charleston Railroad, which ran west to east parallel to the boundary between Union and Confederate territory. Rebel raiders, however, could easily sally forth and cut the line at will. According to Alexander McCook, then a brigadier general under Buell, " it would have taken 50,000 men to keep that railroad in running order," far more than could be spared.
Faced with the manifest impracticability of supplying the Army of the Ohio from Memphis, on June 30 Halleck granted Buell's request to change the army's base of operations to Nashville. The railroad that ran south from Nashville through Murfreesboro thus became one of the lifelines of the Army of the Ohio, and the town itself assumed strategic importance.
For the garrison of Murfreesboro, July 12 had been an extraordinarily busy day. Colonel Duffield and General Crittenden had arrived the day before, and Crittenden had assumed command of the post that morning. The two officers spent the day inspecting the position, criticizing what they found and instituting changes. Lieutenant Colonel Parkhurst's hope that Colonel Duffield would favor the 9th Michigan over the 3rd Minnesota was quickly dashed. Duffield was appalled at the state of affairs and blamed both regimental leaders equally. "The brigade had never been drilled as such nor a brigade guard mounted," he fumed. The brigade had no coordinated plan to set pickets along the many roads leading into Murfreesboro. Duffield learned that responsibility for security had been divided among the regiments, each of which guarded certain roads. "Worse than all," he wrote later, "the commanding officers of the respective regiments were on ill terms with each other, and this feeling, upon one occasion, had broken out into an open personal quarrel....There was no order, no harmony. The parts of the machine did not fit well, and the commanding officers seem either not to have possessed the will or the ability to adujst them."
General Crittenden was equally surprised by the state of his new cammand, particularly the widely separated camps of the two infantry regiments. "I found things negligently and loosely done at the post," he wrote of his first day in Murfreesboro, which he spent in an attempt "to remedy all the negligence I saw there." Scoffing at Colonel Lester's excuse that he had moved the 3rd Minnesota away from town because there was no water available there, Crittenden pointed out that the regiment's original campsite had water "abundant to supply 5,000 men." To reduce the vulnerability of the scattered units, Crittenden and Duffield agreed that the entire garrison ought to be consolidated into one camp.
Army headquarters had sent a warning to Lester and other post commanders on July 11 that Confederate raiders were active in central Tennessee, but Lester assured Crittenden that there were no enemy troops closer than Chattanooga, and that none could approach except via McMinnville or Lebanon. Relying on Lester's statement, Crittenden decided to wait until the next morning to move the troops together, in the meantime taking the precaution of ordering double pickets from the 7th Pennsylvania Cavalry on the McMinnville and Lebanon roads.
At 4 a.m. the next day, Forrest's horsemen swept into the town along the unprotected McMinnville road, seizing the few infantry pickets they encountered before the startled guards could fire a single warning shot. The first substantial body of Union soldiers the Rebels encountered was the garrison's two companies of Pennsylvania cavalry, still asleep in their tents. While the Confederate overran the helpless troopers, the men in the nearby camp of the 9th Michigan struggled to grab their weapons and form a defensive line. Because four of the unit's 10 companies had not yet returned from an expedition to Tullahoma and another company was serving as provost guard in the center of Murfreesboro, barely 250 men were in the regiment's camp. One of them, John C. Love, "caught the sound of cavalry [sic] as they rushed down upon us like a wild tornado[.] I sprung from my bed and began to shriek for the men to turn out."
Among the first casualties was Colonel Duffield, who suffered wounds in the right testicle and left thigh, which he described as "very painful and bleeding profusely." Although he stayed with the regiment, he soon lost consciousness, leaving command in the hands of Lt. Col. Parkhurst. With enemy cavalry swirling around the camp, Parkhurst tried to form his companies in a regimental square. The men were familiar with that formation, but in their drills they had alway practiced going into square from other formations, such as line or column, and there was no time to form either. Many of them were dressed in only their underwear as they rushed about trying to find their places within the regiment. Before they could do so, Forrest's yelling horsemen were upon them.
Hiding individually behind trees and fences, most of the Michiganders fought back as best they could (with the notable exception of Captain John A. Tanner of Company K, who fled to the woods at the start of the action, and was afterward dismissed from the service for his behavior). They ordinary chaos of combat was multiplied by the lack of an orderly formation. Private Love wrote to his parents to describe how he was wounded by one of his comrades who was trying to load his musket but accidentally "run a Bayonet into my back, fracturing the back bone." For some 15 minutes the men of the 9th Michigan fired at the Rebel cavalry as the opportunity offered. Suddenly, to their relief, they saw the emeny gallop off as quickly as they had arrived. Gathering their wounded, the stunned survivors staked out a defensive position in the fenced yard of a nearby log house and awaited the next attack.
Although the Michigan men did not know it at the time, the force that they had repelled represented only a small fraction of the Confederates in Murfreesboro. Forrest had learned of the garrison's divided deployment, and had sent two companies of Texas Rangers to deal with the 9th Michigan, and another small detachment to screen the camp of the 3rd Minnesota, while he personally led the bulk of his troops to attack the center of the town.
In the camp of the 3rd Minnesota, no more than two miles away from the center of town, Colonel Lester and his men could clearly hear the sounds of battle. They responded by quickly falling into ranks and advancing, with Hewitt's battery in support. While still a mile away from the fighting, Lester brought the regiment to a halt. A few hundred Rebel cavalry made a show of force and were driven off by the skirmishers of the 3rd Minnesota and the fire of Hewitt's guns, but Lester made no attempt to resume his advance. Messengers arrived from Parkhurst, begging Lester to come to the relief of the remnants of the 9th Michigan, who were holding out at the log house under increasing pressure. The Minnesota soldiers were eager to fight, but Lester refused to order them forward, even after parties of Confederate cavalry slipped behind their lines and burned the regiment's camp.
At noon Forrest sent Colonel Parkhurst a demand for unconditional surrender. Parkhurst referred the note to the wounded Colonel Duffield, who left the matter up to Parkhurst. The 9th Michigan had lost 12 killed and at least 50 wounded by this time, along with an unknown number missing in action, leaving fewer than 150 able-bodied men available to fight. After consulting with his officers, the lieutenant colonel agreed that further resistance was futile, and the regiment surrendered. Forrest then invited Colonel Lester to meet with Duffield, now a prisoner of war, in the hope that Lester would surrender as well. Lieutenant Henry Duffield, brother of the commander of the 23rd Brigade, went to the 3rd Minnesota under a flag of truce and brought its commander into Murfreesboro. Forrest took care to station as many of his troops as possible along the Union officers' route in order to give the impression of overwhelming numbers.
According to Lester, it was Colonel Duffield's suggestion "to refer the matter of surrender to my officers." Duffield's own report makes no mention of discussing surrender with either Parkhurst or Lester, and implies that he was still unconscious from the excruciating pain of his wounds. Whatever transpired between Duffield and Lester, the latter returned to his regiment and put the question to a vote of his officers, representing it to them "as derived from Colonel Duffield." In an open vote, five officers (the lieutenant colonel and four company commanders) urged him to fight, while four others voted to surrender, with two not voting. Dissatisfied with this result, Lester called for another vote, this time by secret ballot, and requested that all the present officers cast a vote. Much discussion followed, during which two of the company leaders who voted to fight returned to their units.
Nonetheless, when the second vote was taken, the results were in accord with Lester's apparent wish to surrender. The enlisted men of what Crittenden described as "a splendidly drilled regiment...anxious to fight" were dismayed. A Michigan soldier relayed to his wife an account of the scene as described to him a few days afterward: "The men did not want to surrender & said they would rather die on the spot...brave men were seen to shed tears & were unwilling to yield & others, broke their guns by striking them against trees & Rocks. They charge their Col. with cowardice."
The surrender of the 3rd Minnesota ruined Henry Lester's military career. Alone among the Union officers captured at Murfreesboro, Lester was treated as a pariah not only by his fellow prisoners but also by Forrest's men.
Forrest paroled the enlisted soldiers of the garrison and sent them north to be held at Camp Chase, Ohio, until they could be exchanged. On their way to captivity, a 9th Michigan veteran wrote, "The Minnesota boys spent a good share of their time in cursing Col. Lester for his cowardice." Lester was dismissed from the service in December 1862, a month before a formal court of inquiry absolved Crittenden of responsibility for the debacle. Fifty years later, in a history of the Army of the Ohio's 1862 campaigns, a former officer of Buell's staff still could not bring himself even to write Lester's name, referring to him only as the "pusillanimous colonel" who had surrendered the 3rd Minnesota.....