Ser 1, Vol 13, page 888-889

LITTLE ROCK, ARK., October 18, 1862.

General T. C. HINDMAN,

Commanding First Corps, Trans-Mississippi Army:

GENERAL: Your two letters are received,* and I shall look with anxious solicitude for one from you after your arrival at Fayetteville. It is exceedingly strange that General Rains should have taken so important and disastrous a step as to fall back to Fayetteville without reporting it. Please direct Major Pearce to explain why be failed to turn over to Major Crump the $1,000,000 he received from Mr. Johnson. I am very much dissatisfied with him. I will cause $500,000 to be forwarded to Crump, though it will weaken me very much. I returned this evening from Austin. The division there is very much crippled by disease, though I think it will be ready to march as soon as we can get guns, or immediately, if you are hard pressed. I think there is nothing to be apprehended from Helena even though they are withdrawn. Van Dorn and Price have been badly defeated, and report says the former has been superseded by Pemberton, which in my judgment will not mend matters, as Pemberton has many ways of making people hate him and none to inspire confidence. The army is at Holly Springs. I am too much out of temper to write about the defeat, or I would give you an account of mismanagement and stupidity that would make you grieve for the cause intrusted to such heads

I have ordered all your requisitions on Adams to be filled at once, though I sincerely hope the corn will be unnecessary. If the division at Austin comes up I will accompany it, for it will be putting all on the cast and I will be present at the throwing. To complete my depression I have just received a telegraphic order to send seven regiments of Texas troops to Richmond. Let this be entirely confidential. I will probably send Garland's three regiments and Sibley's brigade. Take care of yourself; your life may save the Confederacy. I have received a letter from the President. He is much pleased that things are not as hard as they were represented, and will sanction what you have done as far as he is able.

Yours, very truly,

THE. H. HOLMES,

Major-General.

HEADQUARTERS TRANS-MISSISSIPPI DEPARTMENT,
Little Rock, Ark., October 19, 1862. (Received November 22.)

General S. COOPER,

Adjutant and Inspector General C. S. Army:

GENERAL: Your telegraphic order to send seven Texas regiments to the Army in Virginia is received. I will order Garland's brigade of three regiments, now at the Post of Arkansas [Arkansas Post], and Sibley's brigade of four regiments, believed to be now reassembled at Marshall, Tex. I have ordered Major Bryan, assistant adjutant-general, to proceed at once to Marshall to supervise and hasten the movement of the four regiments from that place, General Sibley having been ordered to report in person to General Hebert at San Antonio, where the charges against him are to be inquired into. Colonel Garland will move with his brigade as soon as the guns are mounted in the fort now being erected at the Post of Arkansas; say in ten days. The enemy have quietly collected a large force in Northwestern Missouri. I have sent General Hindman to take command and aggregate all our forces in that direction. It may be that he will require the division that is now in front of Helena; if so, I will accompany it and direct the operations in person.

I am, general, very respectfully,

THE. H. HOLMES,

Major-General.

By April/May of 1863 troops were needed everywhere in the Confederacy. Lee suffered terrible casualities at Chancellorsville and the threat was greater than that single phase of the Union Operational plan. Lee was in the formative stages of what he would hope to be the campaign to end the war (i.e. Gettysburg).

Given this thought Why was the need in Tennessee and Vicksburg greater than the need in Virginia? Lee had to leave one of his best brigades, Micah Jenkin's South Carolina Brigade of Longstreets Corp, behind during the Gettysburg Campaign because of the lack of troops to defend Richmond. Could one more fresh brigade have broken the Union Lines during Longstreets attack of the 2nd Day? Who knows?

But did the decision to send those Arkansas and Texas troops to Bragg instead of using them in Richmond have caused the loss of a veteran brigade of Lee's Army and lost the War for the Confederacy? There seems to be something else other than just the need for troops that formulated these decisions.

It is like the old limeric; "For want of a nail the shoe was lost ... on down to the horse was lost ... the company was lost ... until finally the war was lost".