by Ron Chernow
Since nearly ten thousand horses and mules had perished from starvation, not a single draft animal remained to haul artillery or transport the sick. Desperate soldiers, subsisting on half rations of leathery meat and hard bread, prowled the ground searching for scraps of corn or oats. Many faced cold weather without shoes and overcoats and had felled virtually every tree for fuel, even grubbing up stumps in their desperation. Sick soldiers were stashed away in makeshift hospitals. All the while, enemy pickets patrolled less than a hundred yards away in some places.
The first order of business, Grant concluded, was to restore health and troop morale by prying open a new water and land route to bring in food from the key rail juncture at Bridgeport, Alabama. The Union army controlled the railroad all the way from Nashville to that spot. The new route would be nicknamed the “cracker line,” a tribute to the hard biscuits munched by the men. Smith and others had devised a plan to seize control of the serpentine Tennessee River at a point north of Lookout Mountain. Supplies would be taken by a direct wagon road to a spot known as Brown’s Ferry, shifted across the Tennessee by pontoon bridge, then moved across a spit of land known as Moccasin Bend. However tortuous this route seemed, it promised a much shorter road to Bridgeport than the forbidding, rocky mountain road now inadequately serving that purpose. Grant, Thomas, and Smith inspected Brown’s Ferry and confirmed that it stood well beyond the range of powerful Confederate guns staring down from Lookout Mountain.
Grant gave Smith’s ingenious plan his blessing and issued a host of orders to implement it. As ever, his whole physiology sprang into action: his pulse quickened, his mind sharpened, and Porter remembered a dynamo of concentrated energy that night. “He sat with his head bent low over the table, and when he had occasion to step to another table or desk to get a paper he wanted, he would glide rapidly across the room without straightening himself, and return to his seat with his body still bent over at about the same angle at which he had been sitting when he left his chair. Upon this occasion he tossed the sheets of paper across the table as he finished them, leaving them in the wildest disorder. When he had completed the despatch, he gathered up the scattered sheets, read them over rapidly, and arranged them in their proper order.”10
On the spot Grant infused a fighting spirit into the army, and men received him with “a rousing cheer” as he made the rounds.11 He tolerated no sloppiness. That first day he passed by soldiers packing cracker boxes into wagons in perfunctory fashion. “That won’t do, men,” he reprimanded them. “Those crackers are going to men who are starving. Every cracker is precious, and the more boxes you get into that wagon the more hungry men you will feed tonight.”12 He gestured with his crutch to indicate where more boxes could be stored. Such stories sparked new vitality in the hitherto sluggish, downcast army.
On the moonlit night of October 27, in predawn hours, Grant’s men, loaded on barges, slipped past Confederate positions and stealthily landed at Brown’s Ferry, overwhelming a meagerly defended Confederate post. Smith’s men were ferried over and handily laid down a pontoon bridge across the Tennessee River. General Hooker arrived with another sixteen thousand men, consolidating Union control of the area. The upshot was that Union forces broke open the route from Bridgeport to near Chattanooga, ending the isolation suffered by semistarving federal troops, who whooped with joy. “The Cracker Line’s open,” they cried. “Full rations, boys!”13 Food, clothing, and forage poured in, and suddenly Union men were better fed, better clothed, and more numerous than the rebels. This daring move threw into turmoil the Confederate camp, which shifted from confidence to alarm. “The question of supplies may now be regarded as settled,” Grant telegraphed proudly to Halleck, saying he could switch his attention to offensive operations.14 His old logistical skills, dating back to the Mexican War, had rejuvenated the army under his command, which felt a new guiding intelligence. “We began to see things move,” explained Colonel L. B. Eaton, brother of the chaplain. “We felt that everything came from a plan . . . Everything was done like music, everything was in harmony.”15 Grant strengthened the entire supply chain. Drawing on the expertise of General Grenville M. Dodge, he rebuilt 182 interior bridges, many spanning chasms, and restored 102 miles of railroad tracks destroyed by rebel armies in northern Alabama and middle Tennessee—a stupendous engineering feat, often accomplished with elementary axes, picks, and spades.
At Chattanooga, Grant profited from knowledge of his Confederate counterpart, Braxton Bragg, a North Carolina native and West Point graduate, who had met Grant during the Mexican War and later worked as a Louisiana sugar planter. A cold martinet with a gaunt, narrow face and beetling brows, Bragg had flashing eyes that suggested his combustible temperament. However much Grant respected his professionalism, he knew “he was possessed of an irascible temper, and was naturally disputatious.”16 A stickler for rules, Bragg took sadistic delight in punishing people for violations, forcing fellow soldiers to witness executions of deserters. “He loved to crush the spirit of his men,” said a soldier. “Not a single soldier in the whole army ever loved or respected him.”17 Whatever the dislike of his troops, Bragg had won significant victories at Perryville, Stones River, and Chickamauga and never shed the unqualified trust of his main supporter, Jefferson Davis.
Scarcely had Grant broken the semi-siege than reports drifted back that Bragg had made a critical error by dispatching twenty thousand men under James Longstreet to attack General Ambrose Burnside and his Army of the Ohio, holed up in Knoxville, in eastern Tennessee. Lincoln had lavished an almost paternal regard upon the loyal residents of eastern Tennessee, reflected in a flurry of telegrams from the capital to Grant, demanding urgent action to rescue Burnside. Although Grant shared their anxiety, he felt powerless to relieve Burnside directly. He still had to wrestle with a troublesome shortage of artillery horses, and, even had he posted soldiers to Burnside, there would have been no supplies or ammunition to equip them when they arrived. Stuck on the horns of this dilemma, Grant believed the most efficacious way to save Burnside was by thrashing Bragg in Chattanooga, possibly forcing him to summon Longstreet back to his side. On November 7, Grant was tempted to pummel a weakened Bragg at Missionary Ridge until Thomas convinced him the attempt was hazardously premature due to Confederate strength and a dearth of draft animals. He also didn’t know if his men were ready. In the meantime, Grant exhorted Burnside to banish any thought of retreat and hold eastern Tennessee at all costs.
Working from a modest white frame house overlooking the Tennessee River, Grant believed the war hinged on saving Chattanooga—“the vital point of the rebellion”—as it had on Vicksburg before.18 By mid-November, he enjoyed robust health, having recuperated from his accident, when William Tecumseh Sherman rode into town and made a beeline for headquarters. He and his seventeen thousand soldiers had tramped six hundred miles from Vicksburg. Grant’s first action upon arriving in Chattanooga had been to telegraph Washington and request that Sherman be given command of the Army of the Tennessee, with his headquarters in the field. By now, an easy camaraderie joined the two men who immediately fell into good-natured repartee. Grant extended a cigar to Sherman, ushering him toward a rocking chair. “Take the chair of honor, Sherman.” “Oh no—that belongs to you, General,” Sherman retorted. “Never mind that,” Grant replied slyly. “I always give precedence to age.” “Well,” said the slightly older Sherman, “if you put it on that ground I must accept,” and he sat down and lit a cigar.19 Grant held an animated discussion with Sherman and Thomas, lasting well into the night, about how best to bring Braxton Bragg to bay.
The next morning, escorted by Grant and Thomas, Sherman received his first sobering glimpse of military realities in Chattanooga when they strolled out to a promontory east of town that afforded “a magnificent view of the panorama,” Sherman wrote. He saw rebel tents clearly stretched along Missionary Ridge and rebel flags aflutter atop Lookout Mountain, while rebel sentinels strode their posts “in plain view, not a t
housand yards off.” For the first time, Sherman comprehended the dire, claustrophobic plight of federal forces. “Why, General Grant,” he remarked, “you are besieged.” Grant confessed, “It is too true.” Until that moment, Sherman said, “I had no idea that things were so bad.”20 Grant gave Sherman a complete rundown of the deficiencies he dealt with, including his fear that Thomas’s army, whipped at Chickamauga, had shed their fighting élan and that Sherman’s men would have to assume the offensive. Grant believed he had detected a weak link in Bragg’s defenses—the northern portion of Missionary Ridge—and he and Sherman diligently reviewed the ground. The grand outline of Grant’s strategy now emerged: Sherman and Hooker would attack the flanks of Bragg’s position on Missionary Ridge—Sherman’s attack on the northern end being the main thrust—while Thomas bulldozed the butternut center, then joined forces with Sherman.
By November 16, Longstreet laid siege to Burnside at Knoxville and Grant, concerned about this situation, stayed up past midnight to fire off dispatches. At the same time, he grew increasingly sanguine about his chances against Bragg. Projecting high spirits, he retailed old war stories as he rode about inspecting fortifications. “In general he is extremely reserved,” the visiting William Wrenshall Smith wrote in his diary, “but with one or two friends he is very entertaining and agreeable.”21 Charles Francis Adams Jr. found Grant’s appearance uninspiring, saying he could easily pass for a “slouchy little subaltern.” Yet he saw that the “cool and quiet” Grant radiated confidence and “in a crisis he is one against whom all around . . . would instinctively lean.”22 Grant’s clear sense of purpose enabled him to enlist the energies of a giant army in a common task. “For good sense, strong judgment and nerve, he cannot be surpassed,” Wilson wrote. “He is a tower of strength.”23
The tower of strength struggled with one fateful flaw—his intermittent weakness for alcohol—and Rawlins did yeoman’s duty policing Grant’s staff to create a safe zone of sobriety around his boss. He grew irate when aide Colonel Clark B. Lagow—described by Dana as “a worthless, whisky-drinking, useless fellow”—held a raucous, late-night drinking party that Grant himself had to break up at 4 a.m.24 Smith observed the rough justice meted out by Rawlins to Lagow: “He saw that General Rawlins wanted him off the staff, and after the unfortunate spree that the General himself broke up, he saw that he was treated coldly by him. He today heard his resignation had been approved and sent to Washington for acceptance.”25 Smith arrived in camp with a bottle of wine for Grant from his mother. When he turned it over to Rawlins, the latter snapped, “Who brought that?” Smith answered, “I did. The General’s mother sent it.” Rawlins spluttered, “The General’s family are all damn fools.”26 That Hannah Grant sent wine to her son meant she was either unaware of his drinking history or refused to believe the prevalent stories.
Grant remained inordinately proud of Rawlins, having recently boasted to Elihu Washburne that he was “no ordinary man” and had matured amazingly as a military strategist. “As it is he is better and more favorably known than probably any other officer in the Army who has filled only staff appointments.”27 That November, Rawlins again sounded the alarm after two nights of apparent drinking by Grant, writing to him with his usual messianic fervor:
I again appeal to you in the name of everything a friend, an honest man, and a lover of his country holds dear, to immediately desist from further tasting of liquors of any kind . . . This very moment every faculty of your mind should be clear and unclouded, the enemy threatens your lines with immediate attack, Burnside one of your Generals trembles where he stands, the authorities at Washington fear he will yield, they look to you to save him. Since the hour Washington crossed the ice-filled Delaware with his bare-footed patriots to the attack of Trenton, so much of weighty responsibility, has not been imposed by your Government upon one man as it has now imposed upon you . . . Two more nights like the last will find you prostrated on a sick bed unfit for duty. This must not be, You only can prevent it, and for the sake of my bleeding country and your own honor I pray God you may.28
Upon reflection, Rawlins decided not to transmit this letter and talked to Grant instead, believing afterward it had the desired effect. If Grant imbibed at this interval, it deviated from his standard pattern of drinking on side trips; here his army was distinctly endangered. Rawlins began to feel oppressed by the eternal burden of being Grant’s watchdog. “I am the only one here (his wife not being with him) who can stay [the drinking] . . . & prevent evil consequences resulting from it,” Rawlins told his fiancée.29 He was eager to visit Emma in Connecticut, but only if he could persuade “the General to send for Mrs. Grant. If she is with him all will be well and I can be spared.”30 In that same letter, Rawlins disclosed another reason for his extreme vigilance over Grant: his dread that he himself might turn into a drunkard. “I tell you, my dearest Emma, unless the blighting shadow of intemperance once had hung like a pall over one’s pathway all his life . . . and made him . . . fear to ask himself the question—‘Am I to die a drunkard?’—he can poorly appreciate my feelings on this subject.”31 So Rawlins, under the guise of watching over Grant, seemed to be scrutinizing himself as well. That Rawlins’s rebuke of Grant had a salutary effect can be seen from a comment made by Major General David Hunter, who stayed with Grant for three weeks, starting in Chattanooga. At the end of that period, Hunter reassured Stanton that Grant was “modest, quiet, never swears, and seldom drinks, as he only took two drinks during the three weeks I was with him.”32
By November 18, Grant had eighty thousand men and stood ready to assault Missionary Ridge, notwithstanding that he still felt handicapped by a shortage of horses and supplies. As he told an aide, “I am tired of the proximity of the enemy and do not intend to stand it if it can be helped . . . And one more good whipping will virtually end the war. Unfortunately I am not in a condition to give them that.”33 The main attack was slated for November 21, with Sherman approaching the ridge at daylight from its extreme northern end. It would be a daring amphibious undertaking: Sherman and his men would cross the Tennessee River via a long pontoon bridge and aboard three large rafts.
Heavy rains on November 20 heaved roads around Brown’s Ferry into muddy wastes, impeding Sherman’s wagons, livestock, and artillery and making it impossible for him to get into position in time for an attack the next day. To Grant’s extreme frustration, it was not even certain that Sherman, despite “almost superhuman efforts,” would be ready by November 22.34 Adding to Grant’s worry was that hard fighting had broken out in Knoxville. He knew Lincoln and Stanton chafed in suspense over Burnside’s fate and that he would be compelled to provide some relief. He also worried that Bragg might break loose from Chattanooga and rush to join the fray against Burnside. Longing to fight Bragg now, Grant found delay insupportable, telling Halleck that “I have never felt such restlessness before as I have at the fixed and immovable condition of the Army of the Cumberland”—a dig at George Thomas.35 Meanwhile, scruffy Confederate soldiers languished in woeful misery that made the plight of Union forces look like paradise in comparison. “The soldiers were starved and almost naked, and covered all over with lice and camp itch and filth and dirt,” wrote the Confederate soldier Sam Watkins. “The men looked sick, hollow-eyed, and heart-broken, living principally upon parched corn, which had been picked out of the mud and dirt under the feet of officers’ horses.”36
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EARLY IN THE AFTERNOON of November 23, the Army of the Cumberland under George Thomas swept across the open plain in front of Missionary Ridge and overran a small cluster of hills, including an elevation called Orchard Knob that gave Grant the perfect command post for the coming battle. The next day all of the interlocking pieces of his strategy began to unfold, albeit with critical improvisations along the way.
On the cold, rainy morning of November 24, Sherman ordered his four divisions to cross a swollen Tennessee River with pontoons and occupy the undefended northern end of Missiona
ry Ridge. It turned out to be sheer illusion that he had staked out a piece of the ridge called Tunnel Hill. Whether from defective maps or Sherman’s having misread the geography, his men had conquered a freestanding hill, detached from the main ridge by a deep ravine. At a separate command post, he was initially unaware of what had happened and reported a successful move to Grant. Because of this error, Grant was fooled about the precise location of Sherman’s army and sent an erroneous message of triumph to Thomas: “General Sherman carried Missionary Ridge as far as the tunnel with only slight skirmishing.”37
The day’s most scintillating action belonged to Joe Hooker. Tall, muscular, and ramrod straight, with blue eyes and tousled hair, he seemed perfectly cast as a general, with a self-confidence that many found appealing, but that also savored of self-promotion. A West Point general who fought in Mexico, he had failed in farming and engineering on the West Coast before the war plucked him from obscurity. Boastful, unable to muzzle opinions, he had waded into troubled waters with indiscretions. After he said the North needed a dictator, President Lincoln, who had appointed him commander of the Army of the Potomac, cautioned him, “Of course it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the command.”38 In many ways, the hard-drinking Hooker, whose louche headquarters were called “a combination of barroom and brothel,” stood poles apart from the prudish Grant.39 Right on the eve of the Chattanooga battle, Grant tried to get rid of Hooker and only held back because he had been sent by Lincoln. In his Memoirs, Grant admitted that he regarded the egomaniacal Hooker as “a dangerous man. He was not subordinate to his superiors. He was ambitious to the extent of caring nothing for the rights of others.”40