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Lot 217
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Confederate General Ruggles' Strategy Before Decisive Battle of Shiloh
Confederate General Ruggles' Strategy Before Decisive Battle of Shiloh
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Description:

Ruggles Daniel

Confederate General Ruggles' Strategy Before Decisive Battle of Shiloh


[CIVIL WAR.] DANIEL RUGGLES, Autograph Telegram or Note Signed, to Braxton Bragg, March 9, 1862, [Corinth, Mississippi].  1 p., 7.75" x 6.125". Written in pencil; some foxing and expected folds.


Confederate Brigadier General Daniel Ruggles sent this message to Brigadier General Braxton Bragg less than a month before the critical battle of Shiloh and just days before the first Union forces arrived at Pittsburg Landing (Shiloh). Writing from Corinth, Mississippi, to Bragg’s headquarters at Jackson, Tennessee, Ruggles suggests creating entrenchments at Corinth and refers to two heavy guns in position at Chickasaw, Alabama, along the Tennessee River. 


After the forces of General Ulysses S. Grant captured Fort Henry and Fort Donelson in February 1862, Confederate forces withdrew southward into western Tennessee and northern Mississippi to reorganize. Grant moved much of his army south on the Tennessee River to Pittsburg Landing near the border of Mississippi, the first units arriving on March 11, two days after this message.


Reconnaissance operations by Union gunboats on the Tennessee River in mid-March had engaged Confederate batteries at Eastport, Mississippi (25 miles upriver from Pittsburg Landing), and Chickasaw, Alabama. On April 1, General William T. Sherman loaded his troops on transports and traveled south and east up the Tennessee River with an ironclad and two timberclad gunboats to destroy the Confederate batteries at Eastport and Chickasaw but found them abandoned.


On April 6, Confederates under the command of General Albert Sidney Johnston attacked Grant’s forces. The Confederates had marched from their base at Corinth, twenty miles southwest of Pittsburg Landing, and drove Grant’s army back to the river. There, under the protection of artillery batteries and gunboats, Grant’s army regrouped, and with reinforcements that arrived overnight, launched a counterattack the next morning, forcing the Confederates to retreat to Corinth.


Complete Transcript

General

It is advisable to throw up slight entrenchments here at once.

Two heavy guns in position at Chickasaw.

D. Ruggles

March 9


Daniel Ruggles (1810-1897) was born in Massachusetts and graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1833. After duty in the West, he participated in the Second Seminole War in Florida and in the Mexican War, during which he was promoted to lieutenant colonel. After further service in the West, he took a leave of absence for health reasons in 1859. In May 1861, he resigned his commission in the U.S. Army and was placed in command of forces in the Provisional Army of Virginia. In August, he was promoted to brigadier general in General Braxton Bragg’s Army of Pensacola in Florida, even though Ruggles was a known abolitionist. In April 1862 at the Battle of Shiloh, he commanded repeated Confederate assaults on the “Hornet’s Nest” in the Union line. He assembled 62 cannons, known as “Ruggles Battery” to bombard the “Hornet’s Nest” until a final Confederate charge broke the Union line twelve hours after the battle started. He fulfilled mostly administrative roles for the remainder of the war, then became a farmer and real estate agent in Virginia after the war.


Braxton Bragg (1817-1876) was born in North Carolina and graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1837. He served in the Second Seminole War in Florida and in the Mexican War, in which he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He resigned from the army in 1855 and settled on a sugar plantation in Louisiana. At the beginning of the Civil War, Bragg trained soldiers along the Gulf Coast. In February 1862, he transported troops to Corinth, Mississippi, where he commanded a corps under General Albert Sidney Johnston. For his performance at the Battle of Shiloh, Bragg received a promotion to full general. After Johnston’s death at Shiloh, and with P. G. T. Beauregard away due to illness, Bragg took command of the Western Department. He continued to lead the Western army until November 1863, when President Jefferson Davis accepted his resignation and called him to Richmond as Davis’s military adviser and chief of staff. In October 1864, Bragg took command of the defenses of Wilmington, North Carolina, and later commanded a division in Joseph E. Johnston’s dwindling army. After the war, he tried a variety of occupations but none for very long.


This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.


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