by Ron Chernow
To some extent, the drinking charges against Grant that passed through congressional corridors counted against him. Being an unknown entity to most legislators made him susceptible to damaging rumors about his prewar history. As the commissary chief Michael R. Morgan explained, “The reason for Grant’s resignation in 1854 . . . was known. Grant’s case was unusual at the time and was discussed by the Army . . . The prominent officers in the Eastern armies were mostly of the Old Army.”6 Rawlins believed his vigilance in saving Grant from drink was an open secret in Washington and those who knew it included “several gentlemen of great influence . . . who are to be found both in Congress and in the War Department and belonging to both political parties.”7
On February 26, both houses of Congress agreed to a bill that followed the Senate’s lead in expunging Grant’s name. After Lincoln signed it three days later, he promptly named Grant to the position, perhaps believing promotion would neutralize a presidential rival. Events moved apace, the Senate confirming the appointment so swiftly that on March 3 Grant received a telegram, summoning him to Washington to receive his new commission from the president’s own hands. He had mastered the art of not grasping for power, but letting it come to him unbidden. Beyond satisfying his aversion to lobbying, this approach allayed the ingrained American fear of the Man on Horseback, who might exploit his military laurels and turn tyrant after the war. As lieutenant general, Grant knew, his life would whirl into an altogether different orbit. “Nothing ever fell over me like a wet blanket so much as my promotion to the Lt. Generalcy,” he later confessed.8
The two men who knew Grant best, Rawlins and Sherman, dreaded his fate in Washington. They sensed that this guileless man could get sidetracked in the crooked paths of power. They had good reason to agonize over him: Grant’s fame had been sudden, massive—a torrential rain after years of drought. It says much about Grant’s character that, at this moment of supreme triumph, instead of advertising his own virtues, he paid unstinting tribute to his colleagues, telling Sherman, “Whilst I have been eminently successful in this war . . . what I want is to express my thanks to you and McPherson as the men to whom, above all others, I feel indebted for whatever I have had of success.”9 In a gracious reply, Sherman paid tribute to Grant:
You are now Washington’s legitimate successor and occupy a position of almost dangerous elevation, but if you can continue as heretofore to be yourself, simple, honest, and unpretending, you will enjoy through life the respect and love of friends, and the homage of millions of human beings that will award to you a large share in securing to them and their descendants a Government of Law and Stability . . . I believe you are as brave, patriotic, and just, as the great . . . Washington—as unselfish, kindhearted and honest, as a man should be, but the chief characteristic in your nature is the simple faith in success you have always manifested, which I can liken to nothing else than the faith a Christian has in a Savior. This faith gave you victory at Shiloh and Vicksburg.10
Sherman ended this warmhearted letter with a stark warning that Grant should beware the perils of Washington—a plea from one western man to another to avoid the insidious snares of the East. “Don’t stay in Washington. Halleck is better qualified than you are to stand the buffets of Intrigue and Policy. Come out West, take to yourself the whole Mississippi Valley . . . Here lies the seat of the coming Empire, and from the West when our task is done, we will make short work of Charleston, and Richmond, and the impoverished coast of the Atlantic.”11
Rawlins wondered what would happen to his beloved boss in the rarefied atmosphere to which he now ascended, telling his wife, “I grow dizzy in looking from the eminence he has attained and tremble at the great responsibility about to devolve upon him.”12 He also mused darkly about his own medical future, confessing to Grant that he feared his health “would require me to leave the service, that I should get no better when warm weather comes.”13 Rawlins’s military career had soared along with Grant’s, and for the first time he worried they might have to part company. When he was named brigadier general in the regular army on March 3, occupying the new post of chief of staff to the commanding general, some senators groused about his lack of credentials. Rawlins thought the ruckus boiled down to a charge that “my military education is not such as to fit me for his chief of staff” and that the brigadier rank should be reserved for field officers, not staff. Other senators thought it superfluous to have Rawlins as chief of staff in the field since Halleck would enact this role in the capital.14
Refusing to discard him, Grant made a persuasive case for Rawlins’s confirmation as brigadier general. “General Rawlins has served with me from the beginning of the rebellion,” he explained to Senator Henry Wilson. “He comes the nearest being indispensable to me of any officer in the service. But if his confirmation is dependent on his commanding troops, he shall command troops at once.”15 Having saved Grant from the bottle, Rawlins expected to be accorded special status in Washington. Testimonials to him invariably contained the code word “indispensable.” As Captain Ely Parker wrote to Washburne of Rawlins: “His unwavering fidelity, judicious counsel, untiring energy and inflexible integrity, have no doubt contributed largely to the uninterrupted success of Gen. Grant’s armies . . . It is my opinion that he is absolutely indispensable to Gen. Grant.”16 Lieutenant Colonel William R. Rowley chimed in to Washburne: “You know of how much importance I have always considered it to be to keep Rawlins with the General . . . It is unnecessary for me to particularize as I have talked with you on the subject.”17 Whether due to his guardian angel role or outstanding military judgment, Rawlins was confirmed as brigadier general by the Senate on April 14.
On the morning of March 4, 1864, Grant left Nashville for the nation’s capital, accompanied by Rawlins and Cyrus Comstock, a West Point graduate who had become a trusted staff officer. It was a journey to a brand-new existence for Grant, who could tell from crowds blossoming at train stations along the way that his life had changed in an almost inconceivable fashion. “The General received a good deal of attention on the route, crowds waiting to see him at the depots,” Comstock jotted in his diary.18 Grant did not yet fathom that his center of operations would switch irrevocably to the eastern seaboard. Within two weeks, he imagined he would be back commanding western armies. What he knew for certain was that he would remain a fighting general in the field. As he promised Sherman, “I shall say very distinctly on my arrival” in Washington “that I accept no appointment which will require me to make that city my Head Quarters.”19
En route, Rawlins maintained a proprietary scrutiny of his boss. One side of him was cheered by the “hearty and enthusiastic manner” in which varied people greeted Grant.20 But his deeply puritan side descried a canker of corruption taking root in his pure-hearted boss. For all of Grant’s humility, Rawlins perceived, some tincture of vanity in him adored the adulation, however flustered he outwardly appeared. Grant never declined invitations to honor him and glowed before worshipful crowds. When they stopped in Louisville, Rawlins attended the theater with Grant and sat beside him in a private box. Back in his hotel room, he wrote a letter to his wife laced with mounting exasperation. During the performance, he said, “I was supremely disgusted . . . with the eagerness or willingness rather, of him we love to say is so modest and unassuming to acknowledge the notice people are taking of him. In one who had less reputation for modesty it would be pardonable.”21
When Grant arrived in Washington in the late afternoon on March 8, no official delegation greeted him at the train depot. Over his uniform he wore a well-worn linen duster, soiled with western dirt. Besides Rawlins and Comstock, he was escorted by thirteen-year-old Fred. Hewing to military protocol, Grant called on Halleck in his office, discovered he was gone, then called at his Georgetown home, where he was also out. Having done his duty, Grant headed straight to the Willard Hotel. The last time Grant was in the capital, he was on the humble mission of trying to convince the War Department that h
e hadn’t stolen the missing thousand dollars as a quartermaster in the Mexican War. Now he confronted a sadder, busier Washington, reshaped by wartime exigencies. Churches and stables were enlisted as hospitals, while soldiers pitched their tents everywhere, even on the White House lawn. The city’s sanitary conditions were atrocious with the Potomac River degraded into a receptacle for sewage, spreading filth and disease whenever it overflowed. Soldiers trudged down muddy streets, past the newly completed Capitol dome and the unfinished Washington Monument—apt symbols of both the finished and remaining business of the war.
Political life in Washington flowed through the thronged corridors of the Willard Hotel, down the block from the White House. Lincoln’s secretary John Hay criticized the place as “miraculous in meanness; contemptible in cuisine,” but that was beside the point.22 Political deals were sealed in this watering hole, office seekers and war contractors buttonholed legislators, and senators socialized over free-flowing whiskey. “Everybody may be seen there,” Nathaniel Hawthorne observed. “You exchange nods with governors of sovereign states; you elbow illustrious men, and tread on the toes of generals; you hear statesmen and orators speaking in their familiar tones.”23
When Grant, short and shabby, entered the lobby of this haven for the city’s power brokers, he brought into its elegant precincts the rough garb of the western theater of war. He was known only by his rank and reputation, and few capital denizens had ever seen him in the flesh. Hence he and Fred created no stir as they slipped unnoticed into the hotel. Grant was an easy man for easterners to patronize, and the desk clerk treated him with casual contempt, telling him a small top-floor room might be available. Unfazed, Grant said that would do and signed the hotel register “U. S. Grant and son, Galena, Ill.”24 When the clerk spun around the register and saw Grant’s name, he changed on the spot from haughty to fawning, giving him Parlor 6, the most luxurious suite, where Lincoln had stayed prior to his inauguration.
Once Grant and his son had stowed away their bags, they descended to the dining room, Grant clutching Fred’s hand. For a few minutes, nobody recognized him, and then pandemonium erupted. “Ladies and Gentlemen: The hero of Donelson, of Vicksburg, and of Chattanooga is among us,” a congressman announced. “I propose the health of Lieutenant-General Grant.”25 Hundreds of diners cheered, stomped, twirled handkerchiefs, and banged knives on tables. Grant, who had never created a sensation like this, rose “looking very much astonished and perhaps annoyed . . . awkwardly rubbed his mustache with his napkin, bowed, and resumed his seat.”26 So many people came over to grab Grant’s hand and say hello that he scarcely had time to eat and finally gave up the attempt. As people gawked and gossiped, he must have realized he had shed his privacy forever. He and Fred fled the unwanted attention of the dining room.
Many in the crowd commented on the celebrated newcomer. Richard Henry Dana Jr., a well-known writer, attorney, and politician from Massachusetts, reacted snobbishly to Grant, as educated easterners often did. He was disgusted by Grant’s seedy appearance. Grant “had no gait, no station, no manner,” Dana huffed. “He gets over the ground queerly. He does not march, nor quite walk, but pitches along as if the next step would bring him on his nose.” He noted snidely that Grant had “rather the look of a man who did, or once did, take a little too much to drink.”27 Other spectators gave Grant a more searching look, spying hidden strength beneath the lackluster exterior. The renowned Shakespearean actor Edwin Booth grew enamored of the new lieutenant general: “Grant looks like the man he is—solid, true and honest.”28 Theodore Lyman, a young officer on General Meade’s staff, described his appearance: “He is rather under middle height, of a spare, strong build; light-brown hair; and short, light brown beard; his eyes are of a clear blue; forehead high; nose aquiline; jaw squarely set, but not sensual.”29
The hubbub at the Willard Hotel paled beside the glittering soiree that awaited Grant at the president’s weekly reception at the White House. Having misplaced the key to his trunk, Grant wore the same grubby outfit in which he had traveled that day. Because one newspaper had announced he would attend the reception, the White House was packed with spectators eager to snatch their first glimpse of Grant, who arrived around 9:30 p.m. He slowly worked his way toward the lanky president, looming distantly in the Blue Room. Lincoln had prepared for the meeting by studying a Grant portrait by John Antrobus that hung in the Capitol, showing him on Missionary Ridge in Chattanooga. It had been commissioned by Grant’s friend J. Russell Jones, who sent Antrobus there to sketch Grant in person.
Horace Porter recorded the historic encounter between Lincoln and Grant: “Lincoln recognized the general at once from the pictures he had seen of him. With a face radiant with delight, he advanced rapidly two or three steps toward his distinguished visitor, and cried out: ‘Why, here is General Grant! Well, this is a great pleasure, I assure you,’ at the same time seizing him by the hand, and shaking it for several minutes with a vigor which showed the extreme cordiality of the welcome.”30 The two formed a strange pair: Lincoln tall and rangy, loquacious with countrified good humor, whereas Grant was small and self-contained, as taciturn as Lincoln was talkative. Porter noted the comical discrepancy in height: “Grant’s right hand grasped the lapel of his coat; his head was bent slightly forward, and his eyes upturned toward Lincoln’s face. The President . . . eight inches taller, looked down with beaming countenance upon his guest.”31
Lincoln chatted alone with Grant for a while, then had Secretary of State William Seward shepherd him into the East Room, which broke into brisk applause and wave after wave of cheers. So boisterous did the gathering grow that Noah Brooks labeled it “the only real mob I ever saw in the White House.”32 The room shook in the throes of Grant mania. Because the crowd swallowed up the diminutive Grant, people twisted their necks to spot the bashful hero, chanting “Grant! Grant! Grant!”33 Finally at Seward’s behest, Grant stood on a couch, enabling everybody to ogle the hero. “For once at least,” Brooks noted, the president “was not the chief figure in the picture. The little, scared-looking man who stood on a crimson-covered sofa was the idol of the hour.”34 The moment capped Grant’s improbable progression since Fort Sumter.
Never cut out for such social duties, a prisoner of this pandemonium, an embarrassed Grant admitted that the time he stood on the couch was the hottest campaign he ever fought. To Julia, he confessed, “I heartily wish myself back in camp.”35 One reporter captured vividly the flustered Grant standing amid the hubbub: “He blushed like a girl. The handshaking brought streams of perspiration down his forehead and over his face.”36 The war years hadn’t improved Grant’s social graces, but his gaucheness only heightened his appeal. “It indicated an absence of conceit, a lack of pretense,” said an aide, “and a modesty almost unexampled in a man of his achievements.”37 For an hour, Grant remained a captive of the adoring crowd before extricating himself to confer with Lincoln and Seward in a small dining room.
Lincoln explained to Grant that, at a brief ceremony the next day, he would formally bestow the lieutenant general commission upon him. “The Secretary of War and yourself may arrange the time to suit your convenience,” Lincoln said. “I am all ready, whenever you shall have prepared your reply.” Lincoln must have been startled when Grant retorted, “I can be ready in thirty minutes.”38 They agreed upon 1 p.m. the next day. As a courtesy to Grant, Lincoln furnished him with a four-sentence statement that he would read aloud to him the next day, enabling Grant to prepare his reply. Lincoln made two suggestions about Grant’s response, both pertaining to the morale of soldiers and officers. Back at Willard’s, Grant promptly scribbled his statement in pencil on a sheet of paper. Determined to establish his independence, he pointedly ignored Lincoln’s two suggestions. Wary of pressure from Washington, he was bent upon resisting it from the outset.
At the cabinet meeting the next day, the guests included John Nicolay, Halleck, Rawlins, Comstock, and Fred Grant. With deep feeling, Lincoln
expressed what the lieutenant generalship signified. Reading aloud from a paper, he proclaimed, “With this high honor devolves upon you also, a corresponding responsibility. As the country herein trusts you, so, under God, it will sustain you. I scarcely need to add that with what I here speak for the nation goes my own hearty personal concurrence.”39 In response, Grant seemed visibly nervous. Fishing his speech from his pocket, he seemed to decipher his own handwriting with some difficulty. Then he straightened his spine, settled his nerves, and recited his statement with clarity. He was brief and self-effacing: “With the aid of the noble armies that have fought on so many fields for our common country, it will be my earnest endeavor not to disappoint your expectations. I feel the full weight of the responsibilities now devolving on me and know that if they are met it will be due to those armies, and above all to the favor of that Providence which leads both Nations and men.”40 Although Nicolay was disturbed that Grant hadn’t heeded Lincoln’s two suggestions, the president himself voiced no complaint, and when he introduced Grant to his cabinet, they almost all applauded.