(September 6, 1819–March 1, 1898)

Army General

Hard drinking and creatively profane, “Old Rosey” was a gifted tactician and popular with his men. Unfortunately, his brash, haughty demeanor and sluggish battlefield movements alienated his superior, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, during the Civil War. Throughout 1863, he engineered a brilliant campaign of maneuver in middle Tennessee, but a fatal mistake at the Battle of Chickamauga resulted in disgrace and removal from the army.

William Starke Rosecrans was born in Kingston, Ohio, and in 1838 he gained admission to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. An excellent student, he graduated fifth in his class four years later and was posted with the elite Corps of Engineers as a second lieutenant. Because engineering commissions were reserved for only the most accomplished cadets, his appointment was a great distinction. In 1842, Rosecrans commenced working on fortifications at Hampton Roads, Virginia, and during 1843–1847 he served at West Point as an instructor. Although promoted to first lieutenant, Rosecrans grew dissatisfied with army life and resigned in April 1854 to pursue business. He labored several years as a civil engineer in Ohio and also operated his own kerosene plant. When none of these ventures proved very profitable, the onset of civil war induced him to rejoin the army.

In April 1861, Rosecrans volunteered to serve as an aide to Gen. George B. McClellan while Union forces in Ohio were organizing. He rose to colonel of the 23rd Ohio Volunteers in June 1861, but President Abraham Lincoln suddenly expedited his advance to brigadier general in the regular army. The president saw in Rosecrans, a West Point graduate who was also Catholic and a Democrat, an ideal opportunity to expand his social and political appeal. Rosecrans then served under McClellan during preliminary fighting in West Virginia and on July 11, 1861, he won a small but important victory over Confederate forces at Rich Mountain. When McClellan, who claimed credit for the victory, was ordered east, Rosecrans succeeded him to command the Department of the Ohio. On September 10, he marched 110 miles to Carnifex Ferry and defeated another Confederate force. The Confederates’ subsequent retreat signaled abandonment of West Virginia to the Union, a considerable strategic loss. In light of his excellent performance, Rosecrans became head of the Department of Western Virginia until he was succeeded by Gen. John C. Frémont in April 1862. He then transferred to greater responsibility under Gen. John Pope in the Army of the Mississippi.

Rosecrans commanded the left wing of Pope’s army during the Corinth campaign in Mississippi and rose to succeed him as commander in June 1862. At this point, his forces came under the control of Grant, who regarded Rosecrans as a slow, uneven performer. In September, Rosecrans managed to push back Gen. Sterling Price, but angered Grant when he failed to trap the fleeing Confederates as planned. The following month, Rosecrans fought a stiff action with Gen. Earl Van Dorn at Corinth and eventually drove him off with heavy losses to both sides. Consequently, he received a promotion to major general of volunteers and was ordered to replace Gen. Don C. Buell as head of the Army of the Cumberland. An excellent organizer, Rosecrans spent several weeks in Kentucky revamping his forces before moving against the Army of the Tennessee under Gen. Braxton Bragg. Bragg suddenly turned and attacked at Murfreesboro (Stones River) on December 31, 1862, shattering Rosecrans’s left wing. Fortunately, Rosecrans regrouped and beat back Bragg’s successive attacks with massed artillery. By January 3, 1863, Bragg had had enough and he withdrew to his base at Chattanooga. Casualties in this standoff were heavy, 13,000 Union to 9,000 Confederate, making it one of the bloodiest in that theater of the war. Nevertheless, Rosecrans received the thanks of Congress for his performance and spent the next six months preparing the Army of the Cumberland for its next move.

Prodded by angry superiors and impatient subordinates, Rosecrans finally commenced the Tullahoma campaign, his greatest success, in June 1863. Over the next three months he expertly outmaneuvered Bragg in Tennessee and forced him to abandon Chattanooga without firing a shot. He then cautiously pursued Confederate forces into northern Georgia, unaware that the Army of the Tennessee had been reinforced by the corps of Gen. James Longstreet. On September 18, 1863, Bragg struck furiously at his pursuer along Chickamauga Creek, which in the local Indian dialect meant “River of Death.” On the first day of fighting, Union forces stood their ground, inflicting heavy losses. However, on September 19 Rosecrans mistakenly perceived a gap in his position and, by shifting Gen. Thomas J. Wood’s division from his center to cover it, created a real gap. At that moment, Longstreet’s veteran corps came pouring through, shattering the Union line. Rosecrans was caught up in the stampede to the rear and made no attempt to halt the flight. His entire army might have been sacrificed save for the sterling performance of Gen. George H. Thomas, whose stubborn defense earned him the title “Rock of Chickamauga.” It was a pyrrhic victory for Bragg, who lost 17,000 men to a Union loss of 16,000, and who then mounted a leisurely pursuit of the retreating Union forces. Rosecrans, meanwhile, fell back to Chattanooga and entrenched, but he inexplicably allowed Confederates to occupy the high ground overlooking the city and they besieged him closely. Given this predicament, Grant summarily relieved Rosecrans that October and replaced him with Thomas. Thereafter, each man had a mutual loathing for the other.

Rosecrans was subsequently reassigned to the Department of the Missouri, a relatively quiet sector, where he spent a year fending off an invasion by Price. In December 1864, he was ordered to Cincinnati to await orders, which never came. Despite his disgrace, Rosecrans was under serious consideration by Lincoln to run as his vice presidential nominee; when he refused the offer, he earned the nickname of the “Great Decliner.” In March 1865, Rosecrans was breveted major general in the regular army for his services at Murfreesboro but, resenting his treatment at the hands of Grant, he resigned his commission in March 1867 and entered politics. He served as U.S. minister to Mexico from 1868 to 1869 until Grant, now president, sacked him a second time. Rosecrans then relocated to California to engage in mining. In 1881, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and served as chairman of the Military Affairs Committee. There, he vindictively opposed back pay for Grant, who was then broke and dying of cancer. From 1885 to 1893, Rosecrans served as register of the U.S. Treasury before retiring to his ranch. He died on his ranch in Redondo Beach, California, on March 1, 1898.

Bibliography

Cozzens, Peter, The Darkest Days of the War: The Battles of Luka and Corinth, 1997; Cozzens, Peter, No Better Place to Die: The Battle of Stones River, 1990; Cozzens, Peter, This Terrible Sound: The Battle of Chickamauga, 1992; Haselberger, Francis E., Yankees from the South! The First Land Campaign of the Civil War, 1987; Hughes, Michael A., “The Struggle for Chattanooga, 1862–1863,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, 1991; Kaser, James A., “The Army of the Cumberland and the Battle of Chickamauga: An Exercise in Perspectivist Historical Research,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, 1991; Lamers, William M., The Edge of Glory: A Biography of General W. S. Rosecrans, 1961; Morris, Andrew N., “Forgotten Decisiveness: The Middle Tennessee Campaign of 1863,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, 1996; Wood, W. J., Civil War Generalship: The Art of Command, 1997.

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