Battle of Belmont, 1861: Ulysses S. Grant's first battle

Belmont was a small battle that mattered for one reason above all: it was the first time Ulysses S. Grant commanded troops in battle in the Civil War. It came close to ending in disaster, it was criticized at the time as a pointless risk, and it was argued over by both sides. It also showed Abraham Lincoln a general who was willing to fight.²

Kentucky and the Mississippi

In 1861 Kentucky tried to stay neutral. Opinion in the state was evenly split, and both sides hesitated to make the first move. The Confederates moved first. Fearing a Union advance down the Mississippi, Major General Leonidas Polk occupied Columbus, Kentucky, a town on high bluffs above the river, in early September. The move was denounced as an invasion and swung Kentucky opinion toward the Union. Grant, then commanding at Cairo, Illinois, answered by occupying Paducah at the mouth of the Tennessee River.³

Columbus became a fortress, its guns commanding the river. Across the Mississippi, on the Missouri bank, the Confederates kept a small camp of observation at the steamboat landing of Belmont. The National Park Service notes that the position gave them control of communications between southeast Missouri and the Confederates east of the river.⁴

A demonstration becomes an attack

At the start of November the Union commander in the West, Major General John C. Frémont, received reports that Polk was about to send troops from Columbus into Missouri and Arkansas. HistoryOfWar.org says the rumors were false, but Grant was ordered to make a demonstration toward Columbus to stop any such move. He left Cairo on transports on 6 November with about 3,000 men.⁵

Grant had not meant to fight a battle. HistoryOfWar.org argues that his men were restless for action and that he came to feel he had to give them a chance; he also suspected that the Belmont camp might be a staging post for troops heading west. The National Park Service says he received fresh intelligence on the way that the Confederates were sending troops against Unionists in southeast Missouri, and turned his transports toward Belmont.⁶

The fight for the camp

On the morning of 7 November the Union troops landed on the Missouri shore north of Belmont, three miles away by the accounts of the American Battlefield Trust and the Park Service, five by HistoryOfWar.org. Warned of the landing, Polk sent reinforcements across to the camp under Brigadier General Gideon Pillow, bringing its strength, by HistoryOfWar.org's count, to just over 3,000 men.⁷

The Union soldiers marched through woods and cornfields and met Pillow's men in the late morning. HistoryOfWar.org dates the start of the fighting to 10:30 and describes four hours in which the Confederates were slowly pushed back into their camp and then beyond it to the riverbank. By about 2 p.m., in the American Battlefield Trust's account, the Union troops had the upper hand and took the camp.⁸

Then discipline broke down. For many of the men it was their first victory, and they began to loot and celebrate in the captured camp. To restore order, Grant had the camp set on fire. According to the American Battlefield Trust, several wounded Confederates were badly burned in the chaos.⁹

Cutting a way out

The beaten Confederates had sheltered under the steep riverbank, covered by the heavy guns of Columbus. They now worked north along the bank and came out on the higher ground between Grant's men and their boats. At the same time Polk, realizing at last that the attack was not a feint, ferried more troops across the river and his artillery fired across it onto the Union troops.¹⁰

Some of Grant's officers, seeing themselves surrounded, talked of surrender. Grant replied, as HistoryOfWar.org quotes him, that they had cut their way in and could cut their way out just as well. His men, back under control, broke through to the landing, though, according to HistoryOfWar.org, one regiment was separated and had to march much further north to find a boat. The Park Service records that Grant was the last man aboard. He lay down in his cabin, went on deck when firing broke out from the shore, and on his return found that a shot had gone through the couch he had been lying on. Union gunboats drove the Confederates back from the bank and the transports got away.¹¹

Who won?

The losses were close. HistoryOfWar.org gives the Union loss as 607 men, 120 killed, 383 wounded and 104 captured or missing, and the Confederate loss as 641, 105 killed, 419 wounded and 117 missing. The Confederates claimed victory because they had driven Grant back to his boats. Grant claimed success because he had meant only a raid; in his memoirs, the American Battlefield Trust notes, he wrote that the Confederates gave up all idea of detaching troops from Columbus afterward.¹²

According to HistoryOfWar.org, in the North the battle was attacked as pointless and an unnecessary risk. But it gave Grant confidence in himself and in his men, and it brought him to Lincoln's notice as one of the few Union generals eager to fight. In the spring of 1864 Lincoln gave him command of all the Union armies. More on the man in our profile of Ulysses S. Grant.¹³