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Re: The Turning Point
In Response To: Re: The Turning Point ()

The problem which Johnston and Braggs thinking in this matter, in the Fall of 1862, and what Davis was thinking about, was that just a few months earlier in April of 1862, Gen. Van Dorn had pulled the same stunt and moved the entire Confederate Army in Arkansas to Mississippi. The feelings on this matter in Arkansas was such that had there been such an order issued the men themselves would have simply went back home.

That abandonment of Arkansas by Van Dorn in the face of a veteran 12,000 man Federal Army attempting the advance on the States capitol, had caused a rebellion in Arkansas. Governor Henry M. Rector threaten to secede from the Confederacy and sue for neutrality. The fact that Van Dorn was a Mississippian made it appeared to Arkansawyers that he had abandoned his command of the Trans Mississippi Department in favor of his own states protection.

So the subject of sending these 30,000 Arkansas and Texas troops again to Mississippi, in the fall of 1862, after Rector, Hindman, Holmes had rebuilt that force from the ground up during the summer, would have caused Arkansas to have dropped completely out of the War.

Now you might say why would that have been so important?

Well, beside the fact in 1862 that without Arkansas there would be no possibility of keeping southern Missouri viable on the side of the Confederacy. The whole point of the Union trying to capture Vicksburg was to control the Mississippi River.

The reason that the Yankee's wanted to control the Mississippi was to cut off the lines of military supplies coming from Europe through Mexico into Texas, and then to the eastern theaters like Tennessee and Virginia. So if they had lost Arkansas there was no need for the federals to capture the Mississippi River and cut off those same supplies.

Does everybody think that the Confederacy in the east got all their supplies, all those shipments of Enfield muskets, like the entire production of London Arms Armoury enfields in 1864, and such, from Europe by blockade runners sneaking through the dead of night, into ports along the East coast past the Union naval blockades?

No, the Mexico/Trans-Mississippi Department connection by the summer of 1862 was the gateway for these supplies getting into the Confederacy. And was never really fully stopped even after the fall of Vicksburg.

The Government of Arkansas and Texas were not about to strip their country bare of their own fighting men. And absolutely refused to send any more men east after the Van Dorn episode. And even at one point demanded that there soldiers fighting east of the Mississippi to be return to thir home state. They refused to even return soldiers to their original units when they came back home on sick furloughs or leaves or even deserters if those soldiers joined units in Arkansas and Texas.

So no there were no 30,000 troops in Arkansas to be had for the Defense of Vicksburg unless they stayed on the west bank of the Mississippi river. Which they did at the Battle of Millikins Bend and such.

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The Turning Point
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