General Meyer has requested that I prepare bios of each important General in our Army.
I have come up with this timeline-I plan to do the Generals of the Union Army of the Tennessee mentioned in the article. If you have a favorite general that is not mentioned, please email me directly at davidmelkin@comcast.net for me to consider the inclusion of the requested officer.
Time line
1. The term “Army of the Tennessee was first used in March 1862 to describe forces perhaps more properly described as the “Army of West Tennessee” under U. S. Grant.
2. In October 1862, Grant's command was reconfigured and elevated to departmental status, as the Department of the Tennessee; the title of his command was thus officially aligned with that of his army.
3. Grant commanded these forces until after his critically important victory at Vicksburg in July 1863. Under other generals, starting with William Tecumseh Sherman, the army marched and fought from the Chattanooga Campaign, through the Relief of Knoxville, the Meridian Campaign, the Atlanta Campaign, the March to the Sea, the Carolinas Campaign, and to the end of the war and disbandment.
4. It was William Tecumseh Sherman who led the Army of the Tennessee's contingent in November 1863 to Chattanooga, up the Mississippi River from Vicksburg and then east from Memphis. Sherman began his march as a corps commander and ended it as Grant's replacement as commander of "the Department and Army of the Tennessee." He brought to Chattanooga most of his old XV Corps, now placed temporarily under the command of Maj. Gen. Frank P. Blair, Jr., and the 2nd Division of the XVII Corps, led by Brig. Gen. John E. Smith.
5. Only about a third of Sherman's Army of the Tennessee (mostly XV Corps troops) had participated in the Chattanooga and Knoxville campaigns. Most of the XVII Corps had remained on other duties, under General McPherson at Vicksburg, and most of the XVI Corps, under General Hurlbut at Memphis in early 1864.
6. In March 1864, Lincoln promoted Ulysses S. Grant to the new rank of lieutenant general and gave him command of all Union armies; to fulfill that role, Grant relocated to the Eastern Theater and maintained his headquarters thereafter in the field with the Army of the Potomac. In the West, Sherman succeeded Grant in command of the Military Division of the Mississippi. Command of the Army of the Tennessee now passed to the XVII Corps commander, Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson
7. In the Battle of Atlanta on July 22 1864, General Hood launched a strong assault against McPherson's army, on Sherman's left. McPherson himself was killed, and command temporarily passed to Maj. Gen. Logan, his senior corps commander. Notwithstanding Logan's battlefield success that day, Sherman chose West Pointer Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard, imported from a corps command in Thomas's army, to become the new commander of the Army of the Tennessee
8. During this period (September–October 1864), Sherman made many adjustments to his forces. One involved dividing Grenville Dodge's XVI Corps troops between the XV and XVII Corps; this ended the role of the XVI Corps with the main Army of the Tennessee
9. To salve the injury he had inflicted in bypassing John A. Logan for Oliver Howard after McPherson's death, Sherman arranged in May of 1865 for Logan to become the final commander of the Army of the Tennessee.
Col Elkin AotT