Oh You Who Are Able....

DESCRIPTION: "Oh you who are able go out to the stable And throw down your horses some corn If you don't do it the sergeant will know it And report you to General Van Dorn."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1924
KEYWORDS: Civilwar horse
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Jan 1862 - Earl Van Dorn appointed to command the Confederate armies in Missouri and Arkansas
Mar 7-8, 1862 - Battle of Pea Ridge/Elkhorn Tavern. Despite superior numbers, Van Dorn cannot dislodge the Federals
Oct 3-4, 1862 - Battle of Corinth. Van Dorn abandons the field after failing to break the Federal line. Although cleared of charges of mismanagement, he is transferred to a cavalry command, where his impetuosity is less of a liability
May 8, 1863 - Murder of Van Dorn, allegedly for seducing the wife of a local resident
FOUND IN: US(So)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Randolph 250, "Oh You Who Are Able..." (1 fragment)
Roud #7716
NOTES [3031 words]: I can't escape the feeling that this song is somehow connected to Earl Van Dorn's reputation as a flashy ladies' man without a great deal of depth or ability (Foote p. 725, quotes an unnamed Confederate senator as saying, "He is the source of all our woes, and disaster, it is prophesied, will attend us as long as he is connected with this army. The atmosphere is dense with horrid narratives of his negligence, whoring, and drunkenness, for the truth of which I cannot vouch; but it is so fastened in the public belief that an acquittal by a court-marshal of angels would not relieve him of the charge." Indeed, Van Dorn would later be murdered by an angry husband who accused him of an affair with his wife (Boatner, p. 867). And he lost both of his major battles as an infantry commander, at Pea Ridge and Corinth). That said, I can't prove the connection based on the fragment I've seen.
Born in 1820, he came from a distinguished Mississippi family, one of a large flock of brothers and sisters, but his mother died when he was still fairly young and his father was distant (Hartje, pp. 5-7). He was apparently fascinated with the military from an early age. When his father died in 1837, he had made arrangements for Earl to go to a good private college, but Van Dorn utterly rejected the idea, and reached out to Andrew Jackson (to whom his mother was related by marriage) for an appointment to West Point. Jackson's term was over by the time Van Dorn's father died, but Van Dorn still got the appointment (Hartje, pp. 8-9. On pp. 11-13, Hartje says that West Point at this time heavily stressed small unit training and rapid movement, with little training in large-scale actions or planning, and that Van Dorn was successful at the former and a flop at the latter. Part of that was his character, I think, but his training did nothing to help with his impulsive characteristics).
Despite his eagerness to go to West Point, Van Dorn almost didn't graduate. He was bad in almost every subject except drawing (Hartje, p. 14; painting and drawing was apparently a lifelong hobby; Hartje, p. 44). In at least two years, he came close to being expelled because of demerits (200 demerits in a year meant automatic expulsion, and he had 193 in his third year and 183 in his fourth; Hartje, pp. 14-15). He eventually graduated, but he was #52 in a class of 56. Soon after, he courted and married a 16-year-old girl, Caroline "Carrie" Godbold, apparently against her parents' will (Hartje, p. 16) -- but his military service meant that they were seldom together (Hartje, p. 17).
Van Dorn was one of the officers in Zachary Taylor's army that, by its presence in or near Mexico (depending on which border you accepted) helped precipitate the Mexican War (Hartje, p. 21). He fought with Taylor's army through the great Battle of Monterrey, after which he and his unit, the 7th US Regulars, were transferred to the army of Winfield Scott (Hartje, p. 35). Van Dorn was promoted to first lieutenant around this time (Hartje, p.36). At a battle on the way to Mexico City, Van Dorn was credited with killing two men and was given a brevet promotion to captain (Hartje, pp. 37-39. Note that a brevet promotion was not a real promotion; it was the equivalent of a medal, not an increase in rank or pay) More courage -- he was one of the first to enter Mexico City -- resulted in him becoming a brevet major soon afterward (Hartje, p. 42).
His first child, a daughter Olivia, was born on April 1, 1852. A son, Earl Junior, soon followed (Hartje, p. 46). But Van Dorn wanted to get out and fight.
His reputation after the War was stellar, and he was given several responsible "desk" jobs -- which apparently drove him half-crazy; he hated sitting around (Hartje, pp. 44-45). So he surely welcomed it when the United States formed its first two cavalry regiments, largely to fight Indians, and promoted him to captain and gave him command of "A" company of the elite Second Cavalry (Hartje, pp. 49-50). While in that service, he was perfectly willing to help plan and take part in a massacre of Indians (Hartje, pp. 65-66), in which he was severely wounded (Hartje, pp. 67-68). In the summer of 1860, he was promoted to major (Hartje, p. 74),
Not surprisingly, Van Dorn, slave-holder, racist, Indian murderer, was all for secession in 1860. On January 3, 1861, six days before Mississippi even left the Union, he resigned his army commission (Hartje, pp. 76-77). Mississippi made him a general of their troops, #2 behind Jefferson Davis, and once Davis became Confederate president, Van Dorn became Mississippi's top soldier (Hartje, p.78). But he wanted action, so he soon quit the top job and took a job as a regimental commander in Confederate service (Hartje, p.79). He was soon sent to Texas to take charge of the state's forces -- and to recruit such soldiers as he could from the Federal regulars stationed there (Hartje, pp. 80-81). Van Dorn successfully captured many of the Federal troops in the state; in June, he was made a Confederate Brigadier General -- making him one of the most senior officers in the army (Hartje, p. 88). In August he was called to Richmond (Hartje, p.90), where he was promoted to major general and given command of one of four divisions in the army of Joseph E. Johnson (Hartje, p. 91). The other three division commanders were Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, James Longstreet, and Gustavus W. Smith. (Odd that two would go on to be two of the greatest generals in Confederate service and two would be among their worst flops.)
Ironically, the Virginia front was quiet for the rest of 1861, making Van Dorn itchy again. Thus it was, after two other officers turned it down, that he was sent west to take command of Confederate forces in Arkansas and Missouri (Hartje, pp. 103-105).
Van Dorn went to Arkansas with big plans, almost no staff, and complete ignorance ot the situation there (so much so that he even thought there were many Confederate sympathizers in Saint Louis, which he hoped to conquer; Hartje, p 111. In fact Saint Louis was the chief Union bastion in the state). Having arrived at his new headquarters of Pocahontas, Arkansas, he didn't take the time to remedy either his lack of staff or his ignorance; he just went charging off after the Federals who were invading Arkansas. It was there that his reckless ways finally brought him to disaster, starting with his complete mismanagement of the Battle of Pea Ridge; for background, see the notes to "The Battle of Elkhorn Tavern, or The Pea Ridge Battle" [Laws A12].
After Pea Ridge, he took his troops across the Mississippi to join the armies of Albert Sidney Johnston. He was too late for the Battle of Shiloh, where his troops might have given the Confederacy a victory, but he stayed east of the Mississippi, where he fought and lost the Battle of Corinth. Having lost two battles in a row, he asked for and got a court of inquiry -- but it was headed by his subordinate Sterling Price, who had been intimately involved in the Pea Ridge and Corinth losses. The court cleared Van Dorn (Shea/Hess, p.304), but in the circumstances, that doesn't prove much.
Van Dorn hardly wrote to his family in the period after Pea Ridge (Hartje, p. 171), which obviously raises questions about his relations with other women.
For a time after Shiloh, Van Dorn was one of the senior subordinates of P. G. T. Beauregard, who had succeeded Albert Sidney Johnson in charge of the Army of Tennessee. But when Beauregard was pushed aside and replaced by Braxton Bragg, the war department assigned Van Dorn to command of the Vickburg area, replacing Mansfield Lovell (Hartje, pp. 182-183. For more on Lovell, see "The New Ballad of Lord Lovell (Mansfield Lovell)"). While there, Van Dorn issued a proclamation of martial law, including restrictions on the press, on speech, and on prices that were so extreme that the resulted in a congressional inquiry (Hartje, pp. 192-193). He successfully fought off the first Federal attempt to take Vicksburg (Hartje, pp. 188-191, 197-204), but the War Department eventually overrode his martial law declaration and decided that generals should not have the right to make such declarations (Hartje, p. 195).
Having saved Vicksburg, Van Dorn set out to take more of the shores of the Mississippi. The campaign was a military failure -- the forces Van Dorn sent out were held to a stalemate in their only real battle, and his secret weapon, the ram Arkansas, had to be blown up when its engines failed (Boatner, p. 23). But the federals decided they had had enough, and retreated toward New Orleans, allowing Van Down to occupy the area from Vicksburg to Port Hudson near Baton Rouge (Hartje, pp.206-207).
In the aftermath, Van Dorn's district was reorganized. This led to a situation oddly reminiscent of that before Pea Ridge, in which two generals did not cooperate well -- except that, this time, it was not Sterling Price and Ben McCulloch who were at odds, with Van Dorn appointed over them, but Price and Van Dorn himself who were supposed to cooperate without having someone set over them (Hartje, p. 209). This caused a lot of inaction until Van Dorn was finally placed over Price -- and headed for the rail junction of Corinth, Mississippi, just south of the Tennessee border (Hartje, p. 213), which was held by Federal forces under William S. Rosecrans.
Van Dorn had served in the Corinth area, so he knew the geography. This led him to ignore the need for reconnaissance (Hartje, p. 217). There was a strange similarity between the Corinth and Pea Ridge campaigns: Just as at Pea Ridge, the Federals placed obstacles in his way (in this case, damaging bridges), and Van Dorn wasn't ready and his march slowed down (Hartje, p. 219).
None of that might have mattered had Van Dorn had a better plan. But what he ordered was a direct frontal assault on an entrenched Federal army, without enough reserves to exploit any breakthroughs they might make (Hartje, pp. 219-222). He ended up with another Pea Ridge result: His forces drove the Federals back but did not break them; eventually Van Dorn had to retreat amid acrimony among his officers (Hartje, pp. 234-235). The campaign had been a disaster. Hartje is not sure of Confederate losses but quotes the figures of Livermore, p. 94 of 473 killed, 1997 wounded, 1763 missing -- almost a fifth of Van Dorn's estimated 22,000 men. (Federal killed and wounded were almost as high -- 355 and 1841, respectively -- but they had less than a fifth as many missing, so Livermore's estimates put their casualties at just about 11%.)
The defeat was so devastating that junior officers tried to bring charges against him, from incompetence to drunkenness. The first seems pretty clear but isn't really a military charge; Hartje doesn't accept the latter. Van Dorn was formally cleared by another friendly court (Hartje, pp. 240-243). But the Confederate government decided that he wasn't the man to defend Mississippi; they promoted John C. Pemberton over Van Dorn's head to command the area, with Van Dorn allegedly the field commander of his army (Hartje, pp.247-248); later Van Dorn became a corps commander under Pemberton (Hartje, p. 254). Pemberton was not one of Jefferson Davis's more inspired picks; he would be the one who surrendered Vicksburg to Ulysses S. Grant.
Van Dorn himself was forced out of his base at Holly Springs, Mississippi (southeast of Memphis, and about a third of the way from that city to Tupelo) by Ulysses S. Grant's advance forces in late 1862 (Hartje, pp. 250-251). But at the end of that year, Van Dorn was given a cavalry command with which to attack Grant's long line of communications (Hartje, p. 255). His raid on Holly Springs was a complete success, with few Confederate losses and at least $400,000 of Federal property destroyed, plus many prisoners (Hartje, pp. 262-265). The raiders rode more than 500 miles in a two week campaign; Hartje, p. 267, calls it one of the "most humiliating defeats" the Union forces in the area suffered. (Although even on this raid Van Dorn was guilty of attacks on isolated garrisons without examining their defensive positions, and being repulsed as a result; examples on pp. 265-267 of Hartje.)
It is widely stated that the Holly Springs raid, combined with other raids by Nathan Bedford Forrest, completely spoiled the plan Grant then had to take Vicksburg (e.g. Hartje, p. 268). Finally Van Dorn had found something he was good at! (Hartje, p. 269). Van Dorn's reward was peculiar. They couldn't really promote him; if he became a lieutenant general, he would be too senior to command a cavalry division, which was where his talents lay. So instead he was transferred from serving under Pemberton to serving under Braxton Bragg (Hartje, pp. 272-273). On the one hand, this got him away from Pemberton, who had been promoted over his head. On the other hand, everyone who served under Braxton Bragg regretted it!
Van Dorn continued his raids early in 1863, but without having any more big successes like Holly Springs.(Hartje, pp. 274-279). Arguably the best thing he did in this time was let Nathan Bedford Forrest do Forrest's thing. Van Dorn apparently became rather cranky that he wasn't promoted (Hartje, p.296); he thought that his failure at Corinth was being unfairly held against him. (He was obviously half right: It was being held against him -- but it was entirely fair to blame him for what was, after all, a disaster.)
Foote, p. 278, says that at one time Van Dorn had a higher price on his head than General Beauregard, the commander of the attack on Fort Sumter, who was widely regarded as the Great Enemy of the north in late 1861 and early 1862. Abraham Lincoln himself called him a "pirate" (based presumably on the way he tricked the ships that were supposed to evacuate the Federal troops from Texas) and ordered a $5000 reward on his head, the same as placed on Jefferson Davis (Hartje, pp. 88-89).
Catton, p. 207, describes his better attributes: "a slim, elegant little soldier with curly hair, charming manners, and a strong taste for fighting. A West Pointer in his early forties, Van Dorn had an excellent record. He had been an Indian fighter of note, with four wounds received in action on the western plains, and he had done well in the Mexican War, taking another wound and winning promotion for gallantry." Catton regards him as very unlucky, however (p. 209).
Hartje, p. x, says that "From no officer was more expected at the outset of hostilities in 1861 than from Earl Van Dorn. Few men of his age had more military experience and prestige. His record of service in the Mexican War and on the Indian border indicated that he possessed courage and definite leadership possibilities. He could almost write his own ticket... But Earl Van Dorn lacked some vital quality as a man and as a general that kept him from achieving the success that his country expected." In assessing Pea Ridge, for instance, Hartje, p. 157, concludes that his overall strategy was sound, but his impetuosity and lack of regard for details, and logistics, cost him victory. I inline to agree.
And then there was his personal life: "His somewhat unsavory personal life caused his system systematically to destroy much of his correspondence that might otherwise have given important insights into his checkered career" (Hartje, p. xi). People at the time recorded that he was a "horrible rake" (Hartje, p. 308). People in Mississippi and Tennessee certainly believed it (Hartje, p. 309). Hartje, pp. 318-319, describes many newspaper reports attacking his behavtior.
HTIECivilWar observes in its entry on Van Dorn that he faced a charge of drunkenness at a court-martial after Corinth, notes that he was "frequently the center of controversy, both for his military tactics and the conduct of his personal life," and says that he "was killed by an irate husband at his headquarters in Spring Hill, Tenn[essee], 7 May 1863."
The "irate husband" was Dr. George B. Peters, who in addition to being a doctor was a slave-dealer and real estate investor (Hartje, p. 309), so probably not someone we would consider very respectable even though he was regarded as a good physician at the time.
Peters might almost have set himself up for betrayal. Jessie Hellen McKissack was his third wife; when he married her in 1858, he was 46 and she was twenty. And he spent most of the early part of the war behind Union lines -- seemingly voluntarily -- while his wife remained at home in the South (Hartje, p. 310). Which might not have mattered, except that Jessie, in addition to being young, was a "beautiful brunette" who was also quite outgoing. Some man was surely going to hang around her; apparently Van Dorn was the one to do so (Hartje, p. 311). And then Peters came home and, in April 1863, saw what Van Dorn was up to.
Peters would confess to the murder of Van Dorn, though his confession tells a very strange story of Peters demanding, at gun point, that Van Dorn release a statement exonerating Peters's wife of guilt. Supposedly Van Dorn agreed but reneged -- but took no precautions against Peters going after him again (Hartje, pp. 312-313). Whatever the actual course of events, Peters shot Van Dorn in the head, then made a carefully planned escape, fleeing to the Union lines. But he then returned to the Confederacy, was tried -- and was acquitted! (Hartje, p. 313). He then separated from but reunited with his wife -- but when he died, he was once again living with his second wife! (Hartje, pp. 314-320). Clearly he was a strange man, and one whose account of his actions cannot be taken entirely at face value.
There is a recent book about van Dorn's murder, Bridget Smith, Where Elephants Fought: The Murder of Confederate General Earl Van Dorn, Sunbury Press, 2015; it sounds rather wild, but I have not seen it. Probably more reliable is Arthur B. Carter, The Tarnished Cavalier: Major General Earl Van Dorn, C.S.A. University of Tennessee Press, 2013, but I haven't seen it either. Slightly older is Robert G. Hartje, Van Dorn:The Life and Times of a Confederate General, Vanderbilt University Press, 1994, cited above. - RBW
BibliographyLast updated in version 6.4
File: R250

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