Grant

by Ron Chernow

  On December 23, 1861, Grant notified his troops that he now headed the new District of Cairo, which would encompass southern Illinois, some southern Missouri counties, and western Kentucky. Though he was swamped with paperwork, his real passion lay in planning future battles. His troops were now fully outfitted, and he marveled at the size of the army under his aegis. “I have now a larger force than General Scott ever commanded prior to our present difficulties,” he told his sister. “I do hope it will be my good fortune to retain so important a command for at least one battle.”64 His command now extended to the mouths of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers in northwest Tennessee, two large tributaries of the Ohio River that would enable him to infiltrate the Confederacy. To exploit this required close coordination with the navy and Grant would benefit from the steadfast cooperation of Flag Officer Andrew Hull Foote, who supervised the gunboat flotilla.

  Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Foote had dark hair, a piercing eye, a clean-shaven upper lip, and a full beard. He was a faithful member of the Congregational Church whose piety spilled over into his political views. He hated slavery and had patrolled the African coast years earlier as part of a navy campaign against the slave trade. On Sunday mornings he offered sermons on his ships. No less than Grant, he detested swearing. The puritanical Foote was forever on the warpath against drinking, having years earlier extracted temperance pledges from men on his ships. With his blunt, salty manner, he was the perfect navy counterpart to Grant, sharing his aggressive instincts and preferring to take the war to the enemy. In the absence of smooth institutional arrangements between the army and the navy early in the war, Foote and Grant managed to forge a harmonious working relationship.

  In the fall of 1861, Foote dispatched a reconnaissance mission to ascertain Confederate defenses along the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers. Despite potent Union sentiment in its eastern portion, Tennessee had seceded in June. The Confederate general Albert Sidney Johnston had to defend a long east-west line that stretched from Missouri to Bowling Green, Kentucky, to the Cumberland Gap. The two parallel rivers represented the soft underbelly of his defensive shield. As a result, the Confederacy hastily constructed Fort Henry on the east bank of the Tennessee and Fort Donelson on the west bank of the Cumberland, twin fortresses a dozen miles apart. The capture of one fort might quickly topple the other, and Johnston fretted about their exposed condition, inadequate manpower, and unfinished state. Though he sensed a catastrophe in the making, he felt powerless to stop it in time, despite a multitude of rushed warnings to subordinates.

  Johnston worried for good reasons. Control of Fort Henry would create a river pathway for Union forces, laying bare a broad swath of rebel territory as far south as Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Control of Fort Donelson would render Nashville vulnerable to Union forces. After General Charles F. Smith made a demonstration against Fort Henry, he returned to Grant on January 22 with a hopeful verdict for an assault: “I think two iron clad gun-boats would make short work of Ft. Henry.”65 Grant required little convincing: “Well, if it can be taken,” he declared, “it should be without delay.”66

  Contemplating his next action, Grant chafed at Halleck’s hidebound style. On January 6, he had requested permission to travel to St. Louis to see Halleck and present plans for the conquest of Forts Henry and Donelson, but not until January 23 did he secure permission for a four-day visit. Halleck had an “abrupt, brusque style,” according to William Tecumseh Sherman, and lost no time treating Grant in patronizing fashion, making clear who stood higher in the military hierarchy.67 Short-tempered, impatient, he shook Grant’s hand coldly, resumed his seat, and told Grant to “state briefly the nature of the business connected with your command which brought you to headquarters.” Unfurling a map, Grant showed how twenty-five thousand men, backed up by gunboats, could grab the two riverside forts. Halleck, having none of this, rudely interrupted him: “Is there anything connected with the good of your command you wish to discuss?” When Grant returned to his map, Halleck brushed him aside. “All of this, General Grant, relates to the business of the General commanding the department. When he wishes to consult you on that subject he will notify you.”68 Having pulled rank, Halleck stormed from the room while Grant stood nursing his wounds. “I was cut short as if my plan was preposterous,” he wrote. “I returned to Cairo very much crestfallen.”69

  In his Memoirs, Sherman gave Halleck credit for having already mapped out the general move against the Tennessee forts a month earlier, but Grant insisted he was first to spot the precise point of Confederate vulnerability: “My mind was made up from the time I went to Cairo—before Halleck assumed command of the Dept.—where that point was.”70 However impeccable in preparation, Halleck was slow and lumbering in execution and did not appreciate the rapid tempo, daring decisions, and assertive nature of his gifted subordinate. He also fancied himself the authority on grand strategy, condescending to Grant as a lowly upstart. Historian John F. Marszalek suspects that Halleck viewed Grant through the lens of his troubled past in the antebellum army. “Halleck knew all about Grant’s reputation for having had a prewar drinking problem in California, and unfounded rumors had reached Washington that Grant had recently fallen off the wagon. Grant’s unkempt appearance did not help either.”71

  While Grant was in St. Louis, he stopped by White Haven, a plantation now depleted by runaway slaves, for a turkey dinner with Colonel Dent, who was in a more hospitable mood than previously. As they ate, Grant narrated for him the Belmont battle. A large contingent of Confederate sympathizers lurked in St. Louis and had formed an organization to funnel aid to rebels. One member had suggested kidnapping Grant and hauling him farther south as a valuable prisoner. It was testimony to Grant’s popularity during his St. Louis years that the leaders rejected the idea.

  Back in Cairo, Grant conferred with Foote, who concurred in his plan to take Fort Henry. The two men decided to renew their entreaty for a bold move to Halleck, and Grant sent off a startling one-line telegram that exuded supreme confidence: “To Major General Halleck: With Permission I will take Fort McHenry on the Tennessee and hold & establish a large camp there.”72 Grant’s words were effective because of their extreme economy. On the same day, Foote sent a telegram to Halleck contending that troops, escorted by four ironclad gunboats, could seize the fort. Grant believed a prompt attack stood an excellent chance of success and that delay would permit the Confederates to shore up the fort’s shoddy defenses.

  To the surprise of Grant and Foote—Rawlins even banged his fist in spontaneous celebration—Halleck endorsed the campaign on January 30: “Fort Henry should be taken & held at all hazards.”73 The letter contained the principal reason for Halleck’s sudden about-face: he had received startling intelligence from Washington that P. G. T. Beauregard, accompanied by fifteen regiments, was marching from Manassas to Kentucky to strengthen the lengthy defensive line that Halleck, Grant, and Foote wished to pierce. The intelligence proved mistaken—Beauregard was heading there alone, not with troops—but the error proved fruitful for Grant.

  In addition to news about Beauregard, Halleck may also have felt pressure from Lincoln, who was annoyed by jockeying for position between Halleck and Buell and the resulting inaction. “Delay is ruining us,” Lincoln warned both generals. “It is indispensable for me to have something definite.”74 After receiving a dispatch from Halleck making excuses for his lethargy, Lincoln poured out his frustration to Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs. “General, what shall I do? The people are impatient . . . The bottom is out of the tub. What shall I do?”75 Lincoln read the riot act to his generals, ordering that “Land and Naval forces” ought to move “against the insurgent forces” by Washington’s Birthday on February 22.76 Among the forces specified for action were the “Army and Flotilla at Cairo.”77 The new war secretary, Edwin Stanton, also hungered for action and had become disillusioned with the do-nothing McClellan, whose grandiosity concealed deep insecurity. Stanton wrote internally t
hat “as soon as I can get the machinery of office going, the rats cleared out, and the rat holes stopped, we shall move. This army has got to fight or run away; . . . the champagne and oysters on the Potomac must be stopped.”78

  Brimming with confidence, Grant prepared to take Fort Henry, employing fifteen thousand men and nine gunboats under Flag Officer Foote. He proceeded with a secrecy that became a trademark of his operations, confiding in the fewest number of people. Even Grant’s commanders were kept in the dark until the last moment. “I am quietly making preparations for a move,” he alerted Halleck, “without as yet having created a suspicion even that a move is to be made.”79 Striving to perfect a new style of swiftly mobile warfare, he planned to have the whole army travel lightly and elected to dispense with cumbersome baggage trains as well as cavalry for the high command.

  In general, Grant operated free from immediate oversight by Halleck, but the latter planted a spy with a mission to function as his eyes and ears. Halleck appointed Lieutenant Colonel James Birdseye McPherson of Ohio, thirty-three, as the expedition’s chief engineer, and he arrived with Halleck’s instructions to Grant. After graduating first in his West Point class, McPherson had overseen fortifications on Alcatraz Island off San Francisco. If Halleck had intended to keep watch on Grant’s rumored drinking, the plan soon boomeranged, for the bearded young McPherson quickly shifted loyalty to his new boss. Smart and handsome, he had an unusually keen grasp of military affairs and a farsighted look of shrewdness in his eyes. He also had a pleasing way with people, and Grant soon viewed him as one of the finest gentlemen he had ever encountered. From the outset, Grant predicted McPherson “would make one of the most brilliant officers in the service” and came to regard him as a virtual member of his family.80

  When he boarded his flagship at Cairo on February 2 to commence the Fort Henry campaign, the ordinarily imperturbable Grant seemed edgy, eager to overrun the fort before it was reinforced. Timing was always critical in his missions. Fearing that Halleck, at the last moment, might revoke his orders, he kept stealing backward glimpses at the wharf as his boat departed, as if a message might suddenly detain him. When Cairo disappeared behind him, Grant was so relieved that he cuffed Rawlins on the shoulder—Grant seldom behaved with such genial familiarity—and exclaimed, “Now we seem to be safe, beyond recall . . . We will succeed, Rawlins; we must succeed.”81

  On the rainy morning of February 3, 1862, Grant set off up the Tennessee River from Paducah, Kentucky, toward Fort Henry, leading a fearsome flotilla of four ironclad and three wooden gunboats that protected twenty-three regiments of Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa volunteers, who stood packed on transports. The new ironclads, designed by James B. Eads, rode low in the water, presenting a spectacle never seen before. They had thick armor plates welded to the bow and tilted sides to deflect flank shots. These humpbacked monsters were surprisingly nimble, with thirteen guns apiece mounted on top. They proceeded with extreme precaution down a perilous river swimming with mines called “torpedoes” or “infernal machines,” which could blow even ironclads to smithereens. These devices bobbed unseen below the surface, each packed with seventy-five pounds of powder, and Foote’s sailors delicately swept up and defused eight of them before they exploded. Luckily the swollen river put the boats beyond the reach of many submerged mines tethered to the river bottom in fixed positions.

  Always curious about new technology, Grant asked the ship’s armorer to bring him a defused mine plucked from the river. When the man obliged, the device started to give off a threatening hiss at which point several bystanders threw themselves flat on the deck or dove into the water. Grant and Foote bolted helter-skelter up the ship’s ladder. When they reached the top, both felt a trifle foolish and Foote inquired with a smile, “General, why this haste?” “That the navy may not get ahead of us,” Grant replied drolly.82 By then the menacing hiss had ceased.

  By next morning, Grant had landed an entire division under Brigadier General John A. McClernand at a spot three miles below Fort Henry. Grant’s force was so large that once the transports were emptied, he sent them steaming back to Paducah to bring forward the remaining troops under General Smith. He wanted to place his men at a staging area that offered quick access to Fort Henry yet lay beyond the reach of its seventeen powerful guns. For surprised Confederates at Fort Henry, smoke curling from the boats alerted them to the abrupt approach of danger. “Far as the eye could see,” one wrote, “the course of the river could be traced by the dense volumes of smoke issuing from the flotilla.”83 Brigadier General Lloyd Tilghman, the Confederate commander, hunkered down inside the fort instead of trying to disrupt Grant’s landing.

  To figure out the range of Fort Henry’s guns, Grant didn’t leave matters to a team of officers, but showed personal bravery and involvement. He boarded the gunboat Essex, joined by two other gunboats, and the three ships crept slowly toward Fort Henry until they drew fire, establishing the precise trajectory of rebel weapons. “One shot passed very near where Captain [William] Porter and I were standing, struck the deck near the stern, penetrated and passed through the cabin and so out into the river,” Grant wrote.84 Afterward, aboard the steamer Uncle Sam, Grant sent Julia a letter that gave a fine snapshot of his excited, self-assured state of mind. “The enemy are well fortified and have a strong force,” he informed her. “I do not want to boast but I have a confident feeling of success. You will soon hear if my presentiment is realized.”85

  Fort Henry’s location represented a colossal miscalculation by the Confederates, for its natural features gave the advantage to attacking forces. When the river was swollen with rain, as now, buoyant enemy ships actually gazed down on its earthworks. As one Confederate captain put it, “We had a more dangerous force to contend with than the Federals—namely the river itself.”86 Portions of the fort’s low, outlying grounds were submerged in two-foot puddles. It had been a harebrained scheme to place a fort in this unsafe spot. Tilghman’s men had to defend a five-sided structure with antiquated weaponry that included hunting rifles brought by soldiers from their farms and flintlock muskets reminiscent of bygone wars. Many of the fort’s heavy guns had to be retired because they blew up in preliminary tests or lacked suitable ammunition.

  Grant’s strategy for seizing Fort Henry was simple but effective. Foote and his gunboats would first pummel the Confederates at close quarters. On the high ground opposite Fort Henry stood another thinly manned Confederate work called Fort Heiman. Grant would have General Smith and two brigades sneak up behind Heiman and occupy it. At the same time, General McClernand and an infantry division would envelop Fort Henry from behind, bottling up its defenders and preventing them from scampering to safety at nearby Fort Donelson.

  Perhaps nothing highlighted Grant’s meteoric rise more than the fact that one of his main commanders, General Charles F. Smith, had been Commandant of Cadets when Grant attended West Point, having instructed him in infantry tactics. A stately figure with blue eyes and a handlebar mustache, Smith was a gentlemanly soldier and Grant remained awed by his regal presence. He held Smith in such reverence that he found it hard to act as his superior. “It does not seem quite right for me to give General Smith orders,” Grant admitted.87 “General, I am now a subordinate,” Smith said graciously. “I know a soldier’s duty. Pray, feel no awkwardness whatever about our new relations.”88 Instead of resenting that he had to answer to Grant, Smith reciprocated the high regard of his former cadet, fondly remembering him from academy days “for his modesty, superior horsemanship, and proficiency in mathematics.”89 He scoffed at stories about Grant’s drinking as fables. “The public are all astray about Genl Grant: his habits (drink) are unexceptionable.”90

  On the night of February 5, 1862, Grant was stirred by the beautiful sight of Union campfires flickering on both sides of the Tennessee River. He issued orders for the attack against Fort Henry at 11 a.m. the next day, even though he was not absolutely certain that all his infantry would arrive
in time. As always, Grant rated speed and timing as more important than having every soldier in perfect position. That he expected his army to roll over the enemy swiftly was apparent from his field order: “The troops will move with two days rations of bread and meat in their haversacks.”91 That night, heavy rains soaked the soldiers, many of whom slept outdoors without tents to shelter them.

  By the next day, rainy weather had transformed footpaths into bogs, impeding an infantry advance. At around 11 a.m., four ironclads began the journey toward Fort Henry, while three timberclads hung in the rear. Grant began to write orders so expeditiously that his hand ached. The orders were terse, hard-hitting. All seven of Foote’s ships unleashed maximum firepower on the rebels, who responded with deafening fire, scoring eighty hits on Union ships and inflicting special damage on Foote’s ironclad flagship. Undeterred, Foote kept the remaining three ironclads roaring ahead, firing with prodigious ferocity. By the time they approached within three hundred yards of Fort Henry, they had created such havoc inside the fort that Tilghman ran up a white flag. It had taken Foote’s fleet little more than an hour to snuff out Confederate batteries, and Tilghman surrendered with his staff and ninety other men. Once inside the fort, the Union men stared in amazement at the horrifying damage they had wrought, with “mangled bodies, arms and legs and brains scattered all around,” said a junior officer from Illinois.92 Foote’s boats had prevailed over the fort’s primitive artillery while Grant’s infantry still lagged in the rear, mired in mud and threading their way through dense forests. One infantryman probably spoke for many in saying that they “really felt sore at the sailors for their taking of the fort before we had a chance to help them.”93

  The sailors had performed the lion’s share of the work and by the time Grant arrived at 3 p.m., the Union flag had already fluttered above the fort for almost an hour. It was a stunning victory for new naval technology, mobilized by an old infantryman, U. S. Grant.94 Tilghman told Grant he had evacuated almost his entire garrison—some 2,500 of a total of 2,600—to Fort Donelson, leaving a skeletal crew of 100 men to stave off Union forces and allow time for these soldiers to escape. Other accounts claim that rebel defenders yielded to panic under fire, fleeing of their own accord. Setting his style for the rest of the war, Grant was mild-mannered in victory, although when he met Confederate officers, they felt the steely core beneath the surface. Captain Jesse Taylor, who greeted Grant on behalf of Tilghman, appraised him as “a modest, amiable, kind-hearted but resolute man.”95 Grant magnanimously invited the Confederate officers to join his staff for meals aboard the steamer he had tapped as his headquarters.