“Blinky” French at Payne’s Farm, Reconsidered (sort of)

The November 27, 1863 action at Payne’s Farm had huge repercussions for the Mine Run campaign. Alas for Union commander Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade, the underperformance of his III Corps throughout the campaign ruined any chances Meade had for a victory. “[O]ne corps was three hours behind time in arriving at the river, and slow movement afterwards,” he explained to his wife immediately after the campaign; “which caused a delay of one day, enabled the enemy to advance and check my columns before they united, and finally to concentrate his army in a very formidable position.”[1]

While I wouldn’t even dream of trying to defend III Corps commander Maj. Gen. William “Blinky” French, it’s worth pointing out one positive outcome from his encounter with Confederates at Payne’s Farm.

French blundered into the Confederate division of Maj. Gen. Edward “Allegheny” Johnson shortly after 2:00 p.m. on the 27th. This happened because French had gotten lost the night before while crossing Jacobs Ford and then, on that morning, got stymied at an intersection along the road near Widow Morris’s house. He had been explicitly ordered to take the left road at the intersection yet, for reasons never explained, dithered for more than two hours. In that span, Johnson’s division began to cross in French’s front, although French did not at first realize it. Skirmishers from both sides bumped into each other, which escalated into a fight so intense that “minie balls by the bucketful” were expended by both sides.

The most consequential outcome of this engagement at Payne’s Farm is that Johnson’s 5,300-man division tied up not just French’s entire III Corps but John Sedgwick’s VI Corps, which was bottlenecked on the road behind French. Those 32,000 Federal soldiers were supposed to be converging at Robinson’s Tavern to link up with Maj. Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren’s II Corps—which had been holding off the Confederate Second Corps (sans Johnson’s division) all day.

At Payne’s Farm, French enjoyed a 3-to-1 advantage over Johnson. If you include the VI Corps men, Federals outnumbered Johnson 6-to-1. So, obviously, whether you think Johnson was foolish or bold to throw his men into the fight against those odds, the consequence was that he kept those much-needed reinforcements from reaching Warren.

Overlooked in that discussion, however, is the impact the fight had for the Federals. By tying up Johnson, French prevented him from rejoining the rest of the Confederate Second Corps. This was significant because the road Johnson traveled from Racoon Ford would have brought him directly into Warren’s right flank.

Imagine the old Stonewall Division showing up on the flank of the Union army. Hmmmm. Wonder what that might’ve looked like. . . .

I’m being a little cavalier there, of course. There’s no way to know how that would have actually turned out. At the very least, though, Johnson’s appearance would have complicated the situation for Warren by forcing him to fight on two fronts. How that scenario played out beyond that would depend on whether French remained inexplicably stalled at Widow Morris’s or finally moved to link up with Warren. Conceivably, had Johnson moved against Warren’s right flank, French might have been in a position to move against Johnson’s left flank or even come up from behind. Complicating matters further, all of that would’ve been in the dark.

In the end, Johnson got the far better deal. Had French just shown up at Robinson’s Tavern when he was supposed to, everything would’ve worked out differently, and the Confederate Second Corps would have found itself in serious trouble (especially with Lee not on the scene, because he was traveling with the Third Corps down along the Plank Road). But as events played out, he at least prevented Johnson from executing serious mischief against the rest of Meade’s army.

There was no real way to know that in the moment, and French certainly made enough other missteps in the campaign—including petulant behavior toward a furious Meade on November 30—so I’m not suggesting we recalibrate everything we know about ol’ Blinky and start giving him some love. In the end, it’s impossible to argue with the assessment of Pvt. John Haley of the 17th Maine: “There should have been no fight here—we never should have been on this road.”[2]

But they were, there was, and any minimal positives outweighed the substantial negatives. In his official report, Meade laid the blame for the campaign’s failure squarely at the III Corps’ feet: “the unnecessary delay in the progress of this corps, and the failure to attack the enemy as soon as he was encountered . . . was one of the primary causes of the failure of the whole movement.”[3] (read it here)

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[1] George Gordon Meade, letter to wife, 2 December 1863, The Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade, 157.

[2] John Haley, The Rebel Yell and the Yankee Hurrah, 129.

[3] George Gordon Meade, report, O.R. XXIX, PT. I, 15.