Shiloh, 1862 (17 page)

In a telegram on March 3, Halleck groused: “I have had no communication with General Grant for a week. He left his command without my authority and went to Nashville. His army seems as much demoralized by the victory at Fort Donelson as was that of the [Army] of the Potomac by the defeat at Bull Run. It is hard to censure a successful general immediately after a victory, but I think he richly deserves it. Satisfied with his victory, he sits down and enjoys it without any regard to the future. I am worn out and tired with this neglect and inefficiency. C. F. Smith is almost the only officer equal to the emergency.”

As if this were not damaging enough, Halleck followed up a few days later with a postscript: “Word has just reached me that since the taking of Fort Donelson General Grant has resumed his former bad habits [the drinking].”

This unseemly outburst was prompted by Grant’s failure to reply, on several occasions, to requests by Halleck for troop strengths and movements, and also a snide report from Buell that Grant had made an unauthorized trip to Nashville. In his memoirs Grant attributes the failure to communicate to a telegraph operator “who proved afterwards to be a Rebel; he deserted his post a short time later and went south taking [the] dispatches with him.”

But McClellan—perhaps recalling the scene from Fort Vancouver, Oregon—deduced that Grant was probably up to his old tricks, and sent Halleck this reply: “Your dispatch of last evening received. The future success of our cause demands that proceedings such as Grant’s should at once be checked. Generals must observe discipline as well as private soldiers. Do not hesitate to arrest him at once if the good of the service requires it, and place C. F. Smith in command. You are at liberty to regard this as a positive order if it will smooth your way.”

Now both Halleck and McClellan were irate at Grant, but there is every indication that behind and beyond these charges was the green goddess jealousy. While “Unconditional Surrender” Grant was being celebrated on a national scale for marching on Fort Donelson, Halleck, the general in charge of the Department of the West, had been marching a desk in St. Louis, receiving no credit for the victory. Apparently Halleck was beginning to see a rival in Grant. Furthermore, Halleck had ordered Grant
not
to take Nashville after Grant had telegraphed that he could have it in Union
hands—“in 8 days”—and Grant had found a way to disobey him in that matter also.

As it happened, a week after Donelson had capitulated a convoy containing the infantry division of William “Bull” Nelson came steaming up the Cumberland River and arrived at Clarksville, south of Fort Donelson, where Grant had gone the day before. Nelson, a portly and obstreperous giant with a full beard and side whiskers, had been given an army division after he set up a Union recruiting station in his native Kentucky. The division had been loaned to Grant as reinforcements from Buell on a temporary basis when it was thought a long siege would be necessary to capture Fort Donelson. Now Grant, being the good soldier that he was, and realizing that the occupation of Nashville would be an important prize in winning the war, had a bright idea. If he himself was not permitted by Halleck to take Nashville,
somebody
needed to, so Grant declared to his chief of staff, according to Dr. Brinton, who was present in Grant’s office on the steamboat
Tigress:
“I have it, Rawlins! That must be Nelson and his command. I will order him to report to Buell in Nashville.”

The fact that Buell was as yet many miles from Nashville, and “was headed thither at a snail’s pace,” did not faze Grant in the least. He saw a chance to capture and occupy a major enemy city and did not hesitate. Nelson and his people steamed up that night and occupied Nashville without a shot being fired. For his trouble Grant now had Buell—who complained to McClellan, “My troops are being filched from me”—furious with him too.

Under cover of McClellan’s instructions, Halleck issued an order that relieved Grant of command and replaced him with C. F. Smith. “Remain yourself at Fort Henry,” Halleck instructed Grant.
“Why do you not obey my orders to report troop strength and positions of your command?”

Grant was flabbergasted, and maintained that this was the first he had heard of Halleck’s requests. His demotion could not have come at a worse time. Something important was brewing—a big expedition up the Tennessee River, and not just gunboats this time but a major infantry action. Ostensibly it was to be in the nature of a raid to break up the Memphis and Charleston Railroad to deny the Confederacy its ability to send reinforcements against McClellan’s operations in Virginia. And, if successful, it would indeed have dealt the Rebels a severe blow. A worried LeRoy P. Walker, until recently the Confederate secretary of war, telegraphed to Richmond, “The Memphis and Charleston road is the vertebrae of the Confederacy, and there are no troops for its defense.”

Grant’s reaction to his demotion at first was disbelief, then indignation, and at one point it actually brought him to tears. “I was virtually under arrest,” he said later, “and I had lost my command.” He responded to Halleck in the tone of a hurt friend. “I am not aware,” Grant wrote, “of ever having disobeyed any orders from headquarters—certainly never intended such a thing.” In the throes of humiliation, he asked to be relieved from further duties in the department, but Halleck was silent on the request. Clearly, though, there was more to this than Grant simply not responding to Halleck’s telegrams. Halleck could easily have sent his chief of staff down to Grant on a steamboat to find out what was going on.

While Grant remained in limbo at Fort Henry, with only his staff to keep him company, C. F. Smith organized and, with 60 steamboats, got the expedition under way into the darkest heart of Rebel territory. Grant had walked with his old commandant up
and down the levee the night before the army departed, according to surgeon Brinton, who remained with Grant during this period. Unfortunately their conversation is lost to history. Brinton nevertheless put in his impressions: “The treatment received by General Grant at this time cut him bitterly. I formed the opinion at the time that General Buell’s complaints had not a little to do in leading to the misunderstandings.” Brinton characterized the action of Halleck and McClellan as “infamous,” and concluded that “[Grant’s] fault was in being too strong and active.”

Now it was Halleck who found himself in an unenviable position, for word of Grant’s travails had leaked out, as always it must in Washington, and among the recipients of the news was the President of the United States. Still in agony over the death of his son Willie, who at last had expired two weeks earlier, Lincoln at least was thankful to find a winning general—Grant—only to discover that he had asked to be relieved from duty. The lawyer in Lincoln quickly determined that almost all of the accusations against Grant were based on rumor and hearsay, and he told Halleck, in so many words, to “put up or shut up” (i.e., either court-martial him or return him to duty). Thus, on March 13, Grant received a letter from Halleck, saying, “You cannot be relieved from your command. There is no good reason for it. Instead of relieving you, I wish you as soon as your new army is in the field to assume the command and lead it on to new victories.”

Grant was immensely grateful and reassured. The thing had blown over. He had not seen Halleck’s treacherous correspondence, and would not until the war was over, and somehow believed it was all a simple misunderstanding. In fact, such was his naïveté that amid all this backstabbing he wrote to Julia, “There are not two
men in the United States who I would prefer serving under than Halleck and McClellan.” If Grant had one notable fault it was that he too often failed to discern the true character of his fellow men. This bedeviled his entire career, especially after he became President of the United States.

With Grant now out of the doghouse, another quirk of fate threw him together with the man who would become his closest confidant, almost his alter ego: William Tecumseh Sherman. Sherman had arrived at Cairo beneath an even darker cloud than Grant had just escaped from under, for it had been widely reported that Sherman was “crazy.” Having rehabilitated himself from these accusations, Sherman was given command of a reinforced division of 9,000 raw recruits with which to spearhead operations against the Memphis and Charleston Railroad somewhere along the Tennessee-Mississippi border.

In time, the size and mission of the Tennessee River expedition was greatly expanded. Orders now were that when the railroad was destroyed, C. F. Smith was to select a base of operations deep in Rebel territory, where he would be joined by five more divisions totaling nearly 50,000 men. As well, Buell was to march 20,000 men of his army overland from Nashville and meet up with Grant at some point close to the river. Once established, this combined army was to “operate against the enemy” as the situation dictated. It was generally assumed that a large and decisive battle would be brought on, since the Confederates could not allow such a force to roam about their country unmolested. Grant was now headed south to take command. It would become Sherman’s finest hour.

Sherman was born in Lancaster, Ohio, on February 8, 1820, into the comfortable family of a prominent lawyer and state supreme court justice. When he was nine, however, Sherman’s father died, leaving behind his wife with nine children and an ocean of debt. From then on the family relied on relatives and friends for their survival, and young William was sent to live with the neighboring Ewing family. He developed into a tall, awkward redhead with a promising intellect and an edgy, anxious temperament. His foster father, Thomas Ewing, had become a United States senator and secured for him a place at West Point, which he entered in 1836 at the age of 16, proving to be a better than average student and graduating near the top of his class in 1840. In Sherman’s final year, a plebe arrived at the Academy with the name of U. S. Grant, and Sherman often claimed that he was the one to nickname him “Sam,” as in “Uncle Sam” Grant.

Sherman’s military career took him to posts throughout the South where the wealth and prominence of Thomas Ewing opened doors for the young lieutenant. He mixed and mingled well with the upper crust of Southern society, for whom he acquired a lasting affection. In 1846 the army sent Sherman to California when war broke out with Mexico, and he got caught up in the Bear Flag Rebellion and the famous set-to between his boss Gen. Stephen Kearny and (then a colonel) John C. Frémont. With California occupied by the Americans, Sherman spent the duration consigned to supply duty and was present for the Gold Rush of ’49 brought on by the discovery of nuggets at Sutter’s Mill.

In 1850 Sherman returned to the East Coast and became engaged to his foster sister, Eleanor “Ellen” Ewing, a practice that was not uncustomary in the 19th century. By then Ewing had been named
secretary of the interior, and Sherman’s wedding was attended by nearly all the top political celebrities, including the President of the United States.

Unfortunately, the California gold rush had created such an overwhelming monetary inflation that it left Sherman, who had become a captain, almost destitute, and he resigned from the army and wound up running a bank in San Francisco. But the gold bubble soon burst and the bank failed, and eventually Sherman found himself in Cincinnati employed as, of all things, a bill collector.

At last his luck began to turn when he got wind through family channels from the new secretary of the army, John Floyd, that the state of Louisiana intended to establish a new military academy in Baton Rouge and was looking for a superintendent. Sherman applied for the job and was soon en route down the Mississippi to oversee the building construction and the education and military training of 56 cadets at the Louisiana Seminary of Learning and Military Academy, which would one day become Louisiana State University.

The institution officially opened its doors on New Year’s Day 1860, and Sherman proved to be an excellent college president; he got on well not only with the students but with the Louisiana politicians from the governor on down. These were, however, ominous and uncertain times. The abolitionist John Brown had recently caused a great uproar with his famous raid, and his body had barely begun to molder in the ground when a schism over slavery split the Democratic Party and practically ensured the election of Lincoln. Residing in Louisiana, Sherman didn’t need to read the tea leaves to see that this would lead to war.

His personal feelings were strongly antisecession. Sherman viewed the United States as an entity in which individual states
could not be permitted simply to make off with themselves without the consent of the majority of states. Such a policy, Sherman said, would cause state after state to peel away until “we should reap the fate of Mexico, which is eternal war.” On slavery, however, Sherman, like many if not most men, North and South, was a man of his time and loathed the notion of abolition almost as much as secession, because he worried that it would bring on civil war. “I would not,” he wrote to Thomas Ewing, Jr., his foster brother, “abolish or modify slavery. Negroes in the great numbers that exist here must of necessity be slaves. All the congresses on earth cannot make the negro anything else but what he is.” Sherman was more ambivalent about slavery spreading to the territories, a burning issue of the day, “but as to abolishing it in the south or turning loose 4 millions of slaves, I would have no hand in it.”