The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville

by Shelby Foote

  His main concern in ordering the dispersal, he told Stanton, was the “sanitary condition” of the men. At present it was good, he said, but the question arose: “Can it be kept so during the summer?” He thought it could, provided he steered clear of a southward advance; for “if we follow the enemy into the swamps of Mississippi there can be no doubt that the army will be disabled by disease.” (At least one of the general’s wool-clad soldiers agreed with him. After being exposed to what Halleck was now avoiding, an Indiana veteran declared: “You load a man down with a sixty-pound knapsack, his gun and forty rounds of ammunition, a haversack full of hardtack and sow belly, and a three-pint canteen full of water, then start him along this narrow roadway with the mercury up to 100 and the dust so thick you could taste it, and you have done the next thing to killing this man outright.”) “And yet,” Halleck wrote, “to lie still, doing nothing, will not be satisfactory to the country nor conducive to the health of the army.” He had therefore “deemed it best” to do as he had done. There was one drawback, one calculated risk: “This plan is based on the supposition that the enemy will not attempt an active campaign during the summer months. Should he do so … the present dispositions must be varied to suit the change of circumstances.”

  One immediate result the shake-up had. George Thomas returned to his old division, which was stationed under Halleck’s eye at Corinth, and Grant was restored to the command of his old Army of the Tennessee, which included the divisions under Sherman and McClernand. Receiving permission to establish headquarters at Memphis, he set out on June 21 with a dozen troopers as escort, and after narrowly escaping capture on the way—Confederate horsemen, tipped off that he was coming, missed intercepting him by less than an hour—arrived three days later to find affairs “in rather bad order, secessionists governing much in their own way.” He reported that there was even a plot to burn the city, which he thought might “prove partially successful,” though he believed that such an action would “operate more against the rebels than ourselves.” The main thing he needed, he told Halleck, was more troops.

  Old Brains was in no mood just now to give him anything but trouble. By the end of June they had renewed their old-time wrangle. Halleck began it, wiring: “You say 30,000 men are at Shelbyville to attack La Grange. Where is Shelbyville? I can’t find it on any map. Don’t believe a word about an attack in large force on La Grange or Memphis. Why not send out a strong reconnaissance and ascertain the facts? It looks very much like a mere stampede. Floating rumors must never be received as facts.… I mean to make somebody responsible for so gross a negligence.” Grant replied: “I did not say 30,000 troops at Shelbyville, but at Abbeville, which is south of Holly Springs, on the road to Grenada.” Then he too got his back up. “I heed as little of floating rumors about this city as anyone,” he protested. He had asked for more troops, he said, “that I might do effectively what you now ask. Stampeding is not my weakness. On the contrary, I will always execute any order to the best of my ability with the means at hand.” Halleck drew in his horns at this, replying four days later: “I made no insinuation that there had been the slightest neglect on your part.… Nor did I suppose for a moment that you were stampeded; for I know that is not in your nature.” Then—as if he had leaned down to stroke Old Rover, only to have Old Rover snap at his hand—he added: “I must confess that I was very much surprised at the tone of your dispatch and the ill-feeling manifested in it, so contrary to your usual style, and especially toward one who has so often befriended you when you were attacked by others.”

  This was more or less the note on which the other hassle had ended, four months back; Grant was willing to let it go at that. But five days later, July 8, Halleck was at him again: “The Cincinnati Gazette contains the substance of your demanding reinforcements and my refusing them. You either have a newspaper correspondent on your staff or your staff is very leaky.” Three days later, the Memphis telegraph receiver clacked off a blunt one dozen words from Corinth: “You will immediately repair to this place and report to these headquarters.”

  Just what have I done now? Grant must have thought. It was not his way to worry, but he apparently had cause. For the past two weeks—and, indeed, before—Halleck had shown all the earmarks of a commander engaged in the old army game of needling an unwanted subordinate enough to keep him edgy and fatten the record against him, but of holding back from the big pounce until something downright ruinous turned up to head the list of charges and specifications. Whether his sin was one of omission or commission, Grant did not know, though he had three full days for wondering while his horse retraced the steps taken three weeks ago with its head in the opposite direction. At last, July 15, the worried general reached Corinth and was face to face with his tormentor. What he was confronted with, however, was not the climax to a series of well-organized reproaches, but rather the accomplishment of the “happy accident” Sherman had persuaded him to wait for. Halleck was ordered to Washington to take over the direction of all the armies, East and West, and Grant was to receive, by seniority, the lion’s share of what he left behind. Specifically, this included command of two armies—his own, now under McClernand and Sherman, and Pope’s, now under Rosecrans—and of the department embracing North Mississippi, West Tennessee, and Kentucky west of the Cumberland River.

  He had what he wanted, but not as he preferred it. The fact was, he disapproved of nearly all that had been done since Halleck’s arrival from St Louis, later saying: “For myself I am satisfied Corinth could have been captured in a two days’ campaign commenced promptly on the arrival of reinforcements after the battle of Shiloh.” Most of all he disapproved of what had been done, or left undone, since Beauregard’s sly evacuation of Corinth. With the Mississippi in Union hands, northward above Baton Rouge and southward below Memphis, “the Confederates at the west were narrowed down for all communication with Richmond to the single line of road running east from Vicksburg.” That was the true goal now: that city, that stretch of river, that railroad. “To dispossess them of this … would be equal to the amputation of a limb in its weakening effects.” As he saw it, “after the capture of Corinth a moveable force of 80,000 men, besides enough to hold all the territory acquired, could have been set in motion for the accomplishment of [this] great campaign for the suppression of the rebellion.” Thus Grant, by hindsight. But Halleck could not see it, or else he feared to undertake it, and “the work of depletion commenced.”

  Even so, when he wound up his paperwork and departed for Washington two days later, he left his successor in immediate command of more than the 80,000 troops which Grant afterwards said would have been enough for the taking of Vicksburg that summer. The trouble was, they were far from “moveable,” except when they were needed as reinforcements in adjoining departments. Before he had been at his post a week he was ordered to send a division to strengthen Samuel Curtis, who had marched from Northwest Arkansas to Helena, where the St Francis River flowed into the Mississippi, fifty airline miles below Memphis. Still, this left Grant with well over 75,000 effectives. Sherman had 16,000 at Memphis, and McClernand had 10,000 around Jackson. Another 7500 were stationed at Columbus, Cairo, and Paducah, while the rest of the Army of the Tennessee, 12,000 men under Major General E. O. C. Ord—a West Point classmate of Halleck’s, just arrived from Virginia—were at Corinth. Rosecrans’ Army of the Mississippi, 32,000 strong, was spread along a thirty-five-mile front that extended from south of Corinth to Cherokee, Alabama.

  It was a sizeable force, but deep in enemy country as he was, charged with the consolidation of all that had been gained since Donelson and Shiloh, Grant found that its very size increased his major immediate problem: which was how to keep it fed and equipped. Just as the foregoing spring had set records for rainfall, so now the summer was breaking records for drouth, and as a result the Tennessee River was all but worthless as a supply line. So was the Memphis & Charleston Railroad, for the rebels had torn up the track between Chewalla and Grand Junction, and west of
there the line had had to be abandoned for lack of rolling stock. All that was left him—except in Memphis, which of course could be supplied by river; the Mississippi never got really thirsty—was the slender thread of the Mobile & Ohio, stretching back to Columbus across more than a hundred miles of guerilla-infested West Tennessee, vulnerable throughout its length to attack by bands of regular and irregular cavalry, equally skilled at burning bridges and wrecking culverts, of which there were many. Tactically, too, the problems were not simple. Principal among them was the presence in North Mississippi of a highly mobile Confederate force, reckoned at 35,000 men, under the command of the resourceful and diabolical Earl Van Dorn, who sooner or later was probably going to succeed in one of his hair-trigger schemes. Its strength was less than half Grant’s own, but its advantages were large. Van Dorn, for example, did not have to post a single man on guard in his rear, and best of all—or worst—he could choose the point of attack. He could strike the unconnected extremities, Corinth at one end, Memphis at the other, or he could pierce the lightly held center and knife straight through for Bolivar, Jackson, or Brownsville. What was more, he could choose the time.

  Grant did not look forward to the coming months. Committed as he was to the defensive—much as he had been while biding his time before Shiloh—this was still not his kind of war. It was true, he had learned from what had happened then; from now on, he would keep in close touch with his field commanders and see to it that they had their men intrench. But he still did not like it, and he declared long afterwards that these midsummer months had been for him “the most anxious period of the war.”

  Discontent was general—amphibious, so to speak. For the navy, too, the successes of late spring and early summer, up and down the falling river, north and south of Vicksburg, were followed by a hot-weather season of doubts and tribulations. Every victory was accompanied by a setback, and the fruits thereof were bitter, their savor turning to ashes in the mouth. For Flag Officers Farragut and Davis, as for Grant, the midsummer word was anxious.

  Davis ran into trouble first. As if Plum Run Bend had not been proof enough that his ironclads were vulnerable, it was presently reproved in backwoods Arkansas, and on one of the resurrected victims of that earlier disaster. In the course of his eastward march from Pea Ridge to Helena, Curtis had to cross White River: a task that was complicated by the presence of a Confederate fort at St Charles, sixty miles from the mouth. Given orders to reduce it immediately after his Memphis triumph, Davis assigned the mission to four gunboats and an Indiana regiment which went along in transports. Raised, pumped out, and patched, the Mound City had the flag; this was her first outing since her encounter with the Van Dorn, back in May. When the flotilla came within sight of the fort, June 17, the Hoosier colonel requested permission to assault by land—there were only just over a hundred rebels in the place—but the naval commander refused to yield or even share the honors. Closing with the flagship, he opened fire at point-blank range: whereupon the fort replied with a 42-pound solid that pierced the Mound City’s casemate and went right through her steam drum, scalding to death or drowning 125 out of her crew of 175 men, injuring 25 more, and leaving only 25 unhurt. (It was freakish in more ways than one, including arithmetically; for the round-looking casualty figures were exact.) Helpless, the ironclad went with the current and the other gunboats withdrew, leaving the proposed reduction to the Indianians, who encircled the fort and took it without the loss of a man. Davis had himself another victory, though he had it at far from a bargain price and the credit went to the army.

  Farragut’s troubles, downriver, were at once less bloody and more personal, and having a slopjar emptied onto his head from a French Quarter window was only the least of them. Five days after congratulating him for his “magnificent execution” and “unparalleled achievements” at New Orleans, Assistant Secretary Fox heard that the Tennessee sailor had abandoned the attempt against Vicksburg. “Impossible!” Fox cried. “Sending the fleet up to meet Commodore Davis was the most important part of the whole expedition. The instructions were positive.” Quickly he reiterated them in triplicate, dispatching the original and two copies in three different ships to make certain of delivery: “It is of paramount importance that you go up and clear the river with utmost expedition. Mobile, Pensacola, and, in fact, the whole coast sinks into insignificance compared with this.” Two days later he repeated the admonition in a second dispatch, invoking the support of higher authority: “The President requires you to use your utmost exertions (without a moment’s delay, and before any other naval operation shall be permitted to interfere) to open the Mississippi and effect a junction with Flag Officer Davis.”

  On his previous trip upriver, Farragut had explained to Butler why he did not think a limited expedition against Vicksburg should be undertaken: “As they have so large a force of soldiers here, several thousand in and about the town, and the facility of bringing in 20,000 in an hour by railroad from Jackson, altogether, [I] think it would be useless to bombard it, as we could not hold it if we take it.” He still felt that way about it; but the orders from Fox, which presently arrived, left him no choice. He put the fleet in order for the 400-mile ascent, taking part of Porter’s mortar flotilla with him this time, as well as 3000 men from Butler, and came within sight of Vicksburg’s red clay bluff on the same day the Mound City took the solid through her boiler. He was back again, and though he still did not like the task before him, he wrote home that he was putting his trust in the Lord: “If it is His pleasure to take me, may He protect my wife and boy from the rigors of a wicked world.”

  He spent ten days reëxamining the problem and giving the mortars time to establish ranges. Then on the night of June 27 he made his run. Eleven warships were in the 117-gun column: three heavy sloops, two light sloops, and six gunboats. Skippers of the eight smaller vessels were instructed to hug the western bank while the large ones took the middle, the Richmond leading because her chase guns were situated best for high-angle fire, then the flagship Hartford, and finally the Brooklyn, lending a heavy sting to the tail. Two hours after midnight the attack signal was hoisted, and for the next three hours it was New Orleans all over again—except that this time the rebel gunners, high on their 200-foot bluff, were taking little punishment in return. Down on the river, by contrast, everything was smoke and uproar; the Brooklyn and two of the gunboats were knocked back, and all of the others were hit repeatedly. Total casualties were 15 killed and 30 wounded. But when daylight came, eight of the ships were beyond the hairpin turn, and Farragut was farther from salt water than he had been since he first left Tennessee to join the navy, more than fifty years before.

  Two days later, July 1, Davis brought his gunboats down from Memphis and the two fleets were joined. There was much visiting back and forth, much splicing of the main brace—and with cause. Upper and nether millstones had come together at last, and now there was not even grist between them.

  There, precisely, was the trouble; for now that Farragut was up here, there was nothing left for him to do. The day before the blue-water ships steamed past the batteries, Colonel A.W. Ellet, his brother’s successor, took two of his rams up the Yazoo River, which emptied into the Mississippi a dozen miles above Vicksburg, to investigate a report that the rebels had three gunboats lurking there. It turned out to be true, one of them being the Van Dorn, only survivor of the Memphis rout; but all three were set afire as soon as the rams hove into view, and Ellet came back out again to report that he had destroyed the fag end of Confederate resistance on the western rivers. Then the Gulf squadron made its run and the two fleets rode at anchor, midway between Vicksburg and the mouth of the Yazoo. As far as Farragut could see, however, all the exploit had really yielded was more proof that he could take his ships past fortifications: a fact he had never doubted in the first place. “We have done it,” he informed the Department, “and can do it again as often as may be required of us.” Just now, though, what he mainly wanted was a breath of salt air in his lungs.
Requesting permission from Washington to go back downriver again, he emphasized the point that there were now two fleets biding their time in an area where there was not even work enough for one.

  While awaiting an answer he did what he could to keep his sailors busy, including having them fire a high-noon 21-gun salute in celebration of the Fourth. The 3000 soldiers were no problem in this respect. With an ingenuity worthy of Butler himself, their commander Brigadier General Thomas Williams had them digging a canal across the narrow tongue of land dividing the shanks of the hairpin bend in front of Vicksburg. When the river rose, the general said, it would widen the ditch and sluice out a passage for the fleet, beyond the range of the batteries on the bluff. But there was the rub. The river was not rising; it was falling. It was falling so fast, in fact, that Farragut had begun to fear that his deep-draft sea-going fleet would be stranded up here all summer. On July 13 he sent a wire which he hoped would jog the Department into action on his request: “In ten days the river will be too low for the ships to go down. Shall they go down, or remain up the rest of the year?”

  One problem more there was, though he did not consider it a matter for real concern, never having had much of an ear for rumor. In addition to the three gunboats whose destruction Ellet had effected when he appeared up the Yazoo, there were whispers that the Confederates were building themselves an ironclad up there. Farragut did not give the rumor much credence. Even if it were true, he said, there was small chance that the rebels would ever be able to use such a craft, bottled up as she was, with two powerful Federal fleets standing guard in the Mississippi, just below the only point of exit. “I do not think she will ever come forth,” he reported.