by Ron Chernow
Afterward, Lincoln sat down with Grant for a strategy session, stating exactly what Grant wished to hear: “he had never professed to be a military man,” had no desire to meddle further in military strategy, and had done so reluctantly in the past.41 As Grant recounted, Lincoln said that “he did not care to know what I was to do, only to know what I wanted; that I should have all I required. He wished me to beat Lee, how I did it was my own duty. He said he did not wish to know my plans or to exercise any scrutiny over my plans; so long as I beat the rebel army he was satisfied.”42 Lincoln greatly overstated the degree of his future detachment. Almost immediately, he unrolled a map of Virginia and pointed out, in “his curious, high, piping voice,” a path of attack lying between two streams that emptied into the Potomac.43 Grant responded candidly that, if his army followed that direction, it would wind up in the mud or woods. “The route was an impossible route, and was never mentioned again by Mr. Lincoln,” said Grant, who stressed that Lincoln and Stanton “did everything in the world to assure my success.”44 (In his Memoirs, Grant said he listened tactfully, but refrained from noting Lincoln’s amateurish error.)45 In short order, Grant had established his independence and taken full responsibility for the war’s course. At the same time, he established a warm, cordial relationship with Lincoln, whose “affable and gracious manners” and humorous powers of mimicry pleased him.46
If Grant was in a hurry, Lincoln was equally impatient for results. He talked of his frustration with the whining, procrastinating generals who had tested his patience for years. Where Grant had hoped to make his headquarters out west, Lincoln emphasized the need for him to move east and rescue the sagging fortunes of the Army of the Potomac. He also stressed the urgent need for action. As Grant later quoted Lincoln, “The government was spending millions of dollars every day; that there was a limit to the sinews of war, and a time might be reached when the spirits and resources of the people would become exhausted.”47 Grant’s swift, relentless military style would conform exactly to the president’s desires. That night Grant was invited to dine with Secretary Seward. Rawlins, zealous as ever, trailed him doggedly, seeing temptations for his boss lurking everywhere. “I shall accompany [Grant] though it is not my pleasure to do so,” he told his wife with a slight trace of martyrdom. “You know where I am wine is not drunk by those with whom I have any influence.”48
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THE SOUTH UNDERSTOOD the portentous meaning of Grant’s promotion to lieutenant general: the North would have a fearless, aggressive commander who would ferociously exploit the North’s full resources in manpower and matériel. “They say at last they have scared up a man who succeeds, and they expect him to remedy all that is gone,” wrote the South Carolina diarist Mary Chesnut.49 Meanwhile the North imposed correspondingly lofty expectations on Grant. Below a headline that blared, “We Have Found Our Hero,” the New York Herald said Grant’s advent “materially strengthens our hopes that the great campaign about to open will substantially put an end to the rebellion.”50
For Grant, the first order of business on March 10 was to visit the troubled Army of the Potomac, headquartered at Brandy Station, southwest of Washington, near the town of Culpeper, Virginia. That army’s commander, George Gordon Meade, was temporarily grounded with a cold, so when Grant arrived in a driving rain, he was met at the train station by Meade’s chief of staff, Andrew Humphreys. As Grant knew, the Army of the Potomac brimmed with suspicion of him as a newcomer, a westerner, and an outsider, and Humphreys expected to take an instant dislike to him. Instead Grant won him over handily, Humphreys informing his wife that Grant was “good looking, with an intellectual face and head which at the same time expresses a good deal of determination.”51 Meade showed respect for Grant by having a Zouave regiment, with red fezzes and exotic flowing trousers, salute him as a band struck up martial airs. The tall, slim Meade strode from his tent, eyed Grant beneath a slouched felt hat, and gave him a friendly handshake even before Grant dismounted. The two men had last met during the Mexican War, when they were both young lieutenants.
In many ways, George Gordon Meade was the antithesis of Grant. A patrician figure from Philadelphia, fluent in French, he had graduated from West Point and was well versed in military literature. With a gaunt, sallow face, bald pate, and graying beard, he had bags drooping below eyes that bulged behind oversize spectacles. Meade was forever jealous of his reputation. Thin-skinned and cantankerous, he seldom enjoyed calm moments and grew easily upset, spluttering with ungovernable rage whenever his pride was injured. This led to his nickname, the Old Goggle-Eyed Snapping Turtle, and it wasn’t meant affectionately. His battlefield style was frenetic: he would explode with colossal energy, curse a blue streak, then pace with fury behind the lines. “No man, no matter what his business or his service, approached him without being insulted in one way or another,” Charles Dana wrote, “and his own staff officers did not dare to speak to him unless first spoken to, for fear of either sneers or curses.”52 Meade later became notorious among the press corps when he seized a reporter who had criticized him, hung a scurrilous sign around his neck that said “Libeler of the Press,” placed him backward on a mule, and ran him out of camp.53 For all his flaws, Meade was a competent commander and an experienced professional and was recognized as such by his peers. When apprised the year before that Meade had taken command of the Army of the Potomac, Robert E. Lee reacted respectfully, saying Meade “would commit no blunders on my front, and if I make one he will make haste to take advantage of it.”54 Still, his failure to pursue Lee after Gettysburg revealed that Meade was not a bold, enterprising leader in the mold of either Grant or Lee.
Once Grant and Meade were seated in the latter’s tent, they lit cigars and got down to business. Grant sized up Meade well, acknowledging his bravery and loyalty while noting his temperamental outbursts. “No one saw this fault more plainly than he himself,” Grant wrote, “and no one regretted it more. This made it unpleasant at times, even in battle, for those around him to approach him even with information.”55 While Grant imagined at first that he would oust Meade, he needed to win over the goodwill of the skeptical Army of the Potomac and didn’t want to appear high-handed. Many people had warned Grant he would be surrounded by backbiting jealousy in the East. “I have just come from the West,” Grant noted, “and if I removed a deserving Eastern man from the position of army commander, my motives might be misunderstood, and the effect be bad upon the spirits of the troops.”56 Meade knew Grant might replace him with his own man, especially since Grant was “indoctrinated with the notion of the superiority of the western armies and that the failure of the Army of the Potomac to accomplish anything is due to their commanders.”57
Nonetheless, Grant showed an open mind. As the two men chatted, Grant was hugely impressed with Meade’s self-effacing manner. Saying he understood if Grant wished to replace him with a western officer close to him, Meade offered his resignation, arguing that the cause should take precedence over personal feelings. Grant was struck by his exemplary character. “He spoke so patriotically and unselfishly that even if I had had any intention of relieving him, I should have been inclined to change my mind after the manly attitude he assumed in this frank interview.”58 On the spot, Grant asked Meade to retain command of the Army of the Potomac and said he would appoint Phil Sheridan to take over the cavalry, with Sherman leading the western armies. Grant chose an unorthodox arrangement with Meade. He would make his headquarters in the field and travel with the Army of the Potomac, while Meade would remain, at least nominally, in command of the Virginia force. Grant would issue broad orders, leaving detailed execution to Meade. It was an awkward situation, with Meade operating in Grant’s shadow, but it obtained for Grant the dawning respect of the Army of the Potomac. Grant always felt vindicated in his decision to retain Meade: “Meade was certainly among the heroes of the war, and his name deserves all honor . . . Under this harsh exterior Meade had a gentle, chivalrous heart, and was an acco
mplished soldier and gentleman.”59 The two men would have an excellent, though not flawless, working relationship.
Grant disarmed people’s expectations with his interpersonal skills. If he did not overflow with charm, neither did he ruffle people’s feathers or threaten them with rivalry. If needed, he could handle people as delicately as he did his horses, and this formed a major part of his military success as he assembled the team of people required to end the war. Meade had gone into the meeting somewhat dubious about Grant. During the Mexican War, he had found Grant “a clever young officer, but nothing extraordinary” and not particularly well educated. He was acquainted with the dark side of Grant’s history, recalling how Grant had been “compelled to resign some years before the present war, owing to his irregular habits.” He condescendingly attributed Grant’s success to “indomitable energy and great tenacity of purpose,” not subtlety of mind.60 Now, Meade discovered new virtues in this somewhat clumsy, reticent man. “I was much pleased with Grant,” he told his wife. “You may rest assured he is not an ordinary man.”61 He did detect one critical, lifelong failing in Grant: “a simple and guileless” nature that placed him “under the influence of those who should not influence him and desire to do so only for their own purpose.”62
After this flying visit to Brandy Station, Grant returned to Washington, where he spurned an invitation from the president to attend a fancy dinner in his honor, followed by a performance of Edwin Booth in Richard III. Grant explained that he was anxious to set off for the West and put his military plans in motion. “We can’t excuse you,” Lincoln insisted. “Mrs. Lincoln’s dinner without you would be Hamlet with Hamlet left out.” Tactful but firm, Grant reminded Lincoln that time was important and that the dinner would mean a million dollars lost to the country. “And really, Mr. Lincoln, I have had enough of this show business.”63 Lincoln cordially bowed to his decision, perhaps secretly delighted by a general in chief so eager to finish the war.
By the time he left for Nashville the next day, Grant had started to reconfigure the upper echelons of the war effort, crafting a modern command structure. Halleck was demoted to army chief of staff, while Sherman would head the Military Division of the Mississippi and McPherson the Department and Army of the Tennessee. Lincoln did not regret seeing Halleck taken down a peg. He wasn’t the enterprising commander he had expected, but had “shrunk from responsibility whenever it was possible,” Lincoln complained.64 Probably relieved by the change, Halleck now found his ideal position, bound to his desk and thrust into an advisory role, where he could shield Grant from Washington intrigue, free him from tedious paperwork, and provide a crucial liaison with Lincoln. He would also relay Grant’s orders to nineteen departmental commanders. Instead of bypassing Halleck, Grant made him the conduit for communications with Stanton and the administration. After a sometimes bumpy past, Grant and Halleck now developed a superb partnership. Halleck had excellent analytic powers and gave Grant invaluable intelligence about the political calculations of Lincoln and Stanton. He was deferential to Grant while reserving the right to register dissent. In Grant’s later view, Halleck “was loyal and industrious, sincerely anxious for the success of the country, and without any feeling of soreness at being superseded.”65 The new structure was so well ordered by Grant that Lincoln could finally step back a bit from military matters.
When Grant arrived in Nashville on March 14, Sherman greeted him soberly. “I cannot congratulate you on your promotion; the responsibility is too great.”66 While there, Grant received the War Department order that officially made him commander of the Armies of the United States, his headquarters in the field. His decision to make Sherman chief of the entire western army was a daring one. Sherman had not yet attained his later celebrity (or notoriety), and his selection wasn’t an obvious choice. Grant’s new aide, Adam Badeau, recalled Sherman as “tall, angular, and spare . . . sandy-haired, sharp-featured; his nose prominent, his lips thin, his grey eyes flashing fire as fast as lightning on a summer’s night; his whole face mobile as an actor’s . . . No one could be with him half an hour and doubt his greatness, or fail to recognize the traits that have made him world-renowned.”67
In Nashville, Grant met with the talented commanders who would be instrumental in winning the war: Sherman, McPherson, Sheridan, Rawlins, Dodge, and Logan. Over the next couple of days, Grant laid out the broad strokes of his general strategy, which called for applying maximum pressure simultaneously to Robert E. Lee and Joseph Johnston so they could not rush aid to each other. The western commanders were hungry for scuttlebutt about the Army of the Potomac, and Grant assured them it was “the finest army he had ever seen, far superior to any of ours in equipment, supplies, and transportation.”68 But he also told them of an army cowed by the overblown specter of Robert E. Lee. “He said . . . that the officers told him, ‘You have not faced Bobby Lee yet,’ and as he said it,” Grenville Dodge noted, “I could see that twinkle in Grant’s eye that we often saw there when he meant mischief.”69
Grant’s Nashville stay allowed time for a statehouse meeting with Governor Andrew Johnson and a theater trip to see Hamlet. The audience was noisy and Sherman, an avid theatergoer, complained how the actors were butchering the text. In the graveyard scene, when Hamlet performed his soliloquy over Yorick’s skull, one soldier hollered, “Say, pard, what is it—Yank, or Reb?”70 This led to such tumult that Grant and his associates left the theater to dine on oysters in a local restaurant. Another comic scene ensued when Galena’s mayor arrived to present the ceremonial sword to Grant from the citizens of Jo Daviess County. The folks of northern Illinois were eager to claim him, notwithstanding his brief one-year residence in Galena. Grant stood ill at ease during the presentation. At its close, the mayor handed him a parchment covered with resolutions in his honor, passed by the Galena City Council. Grant, who had written out his reply, could not locate it, no matter how hard he searched. An amused Sherman said Grant “began to fumble in his pockets, first his breast-coat pocket, then his pants, vest, etc., and after considerable delay he pulled out a crumpled piece of common yellow cartridge-paper, which he handed to the mayor.” The speech was, in Sherman’s view, “excellent, short, concise, and, if it had been delivered by word of mouth, would have been all that the occasion required.”71 The moment illustrated that, if the naive Grant lacked polish, he already had finely tuned political instincts, the product of native intelligence.
When Grant departed for Washington, Sherman accompanied him, but they had to shout at each other to be heard above the train’s din. As a result, when they reached Cincinnati, they took a room at the Burnet House, posted a guard at the door, unfurled maps, and formulated military policy. The strategy Grant laid out envisioned assaults on enemy armies, not cities or territories. “He was to go for Lee and I was to go for Joe Johnston,” Sherman wrote. “That was his plan.”72 They also discussed the operation that would win Sherman lasting fame, his march on Atlanta. Then Sherman retraced his steps westward to Nashville and Grant continued eastward. Years later, standing outside the hotel, Sherman waved his hand toward it and declared, “Yonder began the campaign.”73
Before leaving Cincinnati, Grant took time to visit his parents in Covington, Kentucky. His father sent a carriage to the train station, but the driver, expecting someone magnificent, did not spot Grant. As a result, Jesse was startled to see his son, alone, padding up the path to the house, toting his carpetbag, attired in a plain army coat. Hannah Grant had reacted to the Civil War with religious fervor, convinced the Lord had chosen her son for a purpose. She had only one concern: how would her son fare against the toughest southern general? Was he afraid to attack Lee? “Not at all,” Grant assured her. “I know Lee as well as he knows himself. I know all his strong points, and all his weak ones. I intend to attack his weak points, and flank his strong ones.”74 During Grant’s stay, a highly unlikely story made the rounds that he was drunk and Jesse insisted to a reporter that his son “had not drank [sic]
a drop of liquor in ten years, except a very small quantity on one occasion, by order of a physician.”75
On March 22, Grant spent the day in Philadelphia and dropped by the Continental Hotel, where he met General Delos B. Sackett, who was about to travel west as an army inspector. His friend E. D. Keyes, seated at the table, recorded a telling comment by Grant: “We conversed pleasantly on various subjects, and when I offered to fill a glass with champagne for him, the general placed his hand over his glass saying, ‘If I begin to drink, I must keep on drinking.’”76 The same day this conversation occurred, Isaac N. Morris, a former congressman from Illinois, published an unsigned biography of Grant in the National Intelligencer, boosting him as a presidential prospect. Two months earlier, Grant had written to Morris and explicitly disavowed presidential ambitions, but Morris refused to heed his word and proudly sent copies of the newspaper to Grant, his parents, and his friends in Ohio and Missouri.
The next day, Grant reached Washington in the company of Julia, who suffered from an eye infection, and six-year-old Jesse; the other children still boarded with Harry and Louisa Boggs in St. Louis. Grant received the treatment befitting a newly coined celebrity when he and Stanton visited the photographic studio of Mathew Brady. With his curly hair and wire-rimmed spectacles, Brady had pioneered in battlefield photography. After seating Grant directly beneath a skylight, he ordered his assistant to climb up and remove a covering that blocked the fading sunlight of late afternoon. When this colleague slipped, his feet crashed through two-inch-thick glass panes, sending a drizzle of sharp fragments around Grant, who, according to Brady, gazed up slowly with “a barely perceptible quiver of the nostril.” His coolness struck the photographer as “the most remarkable display of nerve I ever witnessed.” Turning white, Stanton trembled to think what might have occurred had Grant perished. “Not a word about this, Brady, not a word!” he exclaimed. “You must never breathe a word of what happened here today . . . It would be impossible to convince the people that this was not an attempt at assassination!”77