Grant

by Ron Chernow

  Although Grant took the train weekly to Washington, he was shadowed by assassination threats, especially since the legendary Confederate raider John Singleton Mosby, a former Virginia lawyer, preyed on Union detachments in the area. So thoroughly did Mosby terrorize northern Virginia that it was branded Mosby’s Confederacy. In mid-April, Grant narrowly escaped capture by Mosby’s irregulars, who attacked railroad guards at one station minutes before Grant was scheduled to arrive. Mosby’s partisans were such a menace that Grant decided that autumn to treat them without mercy. “When any of Mosby’s men are caught, hang them without trial,” he ordered. One who obeyed was George Armstrong Custer, who executed six of them.15 The threat of Mosby’s raiders reached the point that by April 17, Grant advised Julia of his reluctance to travel to Washington, saying, “It is not altogether safe. I cannot move without it being known all over the country, and to the enemy who are hovering within a few miles of the railroad all the time.”16

  Before initiating his spring campaign, Grant waited for the Virginia roads to dry out and become manageable. By staying with the Army of the Potomac, he guaranteed that Virginia would be the fulcrum of the war effort, and he directed his forces elsewhere with the ultimate aim of encircling Lee. Settling into field headquarters in a modest brick house at Culpeper Court House, Grant sounded upbeat, telling Julia he lived “plain and well, surrounded with mud.”17 Two years earlier, when Walt Whitman visited Culpeper, he found it “one of the pleasantest towns in Virginia,” fondly noting the “thin blue smoke rising from camp fires,” the Blue Ridge Mountains shimmering in the background.18 Now white tents sheltering fifty thousand troops cropped up everywhere. Because Virginia had been a cockpit of war, the surrounding area had lost any picturesque charm, leaving many houses vacant and forlorn. Fighting had created an alien world, beaten down by tramping boots and the bare feet of marching men, while shot and shell denuded the landscape. “Outside the town,” wrote Badeau, “not a house nor a fence, not a tree was to be seen for miles, where once all had been cultivated farm-land, or richly wooded country.”19

  Grant’s headquarters stood no more than ten miles from Meade’s. Inescapably Grant hovered over him, making it difficult for him to delegate authority. Signaling that he was no McClellan, Grant dispensed with grand reviews and had troops simply line up before their campgrounds. By late April, however, as grass appeared, he permitted General Winfield Scott Hancock to oversee a full-dress review of the Second Corps. As Rawlins watched men march with a “proud and elastic step,” he was roused to patriotic fervor. “It was the finest display of troops I ever witnessed at one review, twenty-two thousand men in all, in one clear, open field, with their glittering arms, their banners . . . and bands of music, all conspired to fill one with emotions of pride that he, too, was an American soldier fighting for the perpetuation of the principles of civil and religious liberty for our Republican form of Government.” These spirited men, Rawlins asserted, incontestably believed “they can whip Lee.”20

  With the Army of the Potomac, Grant did not inspire the adulation or hero worship that Little Mac had so easily called forth. Soldiers pasted no endearing nicknames on him. He moved among them, not as a superior being, shoulders thrown back, head held high, but merely as first among equals. Quiet, understated, Grant walked with the characteristic stoop that pitched him forward, a cigar clenched between his teeth. His visits to his men were businesslike, and they reacted with respect, not rapturous cheers. In response, he would simply tip his hat and bow.

  Those soldiers seeking high-flown Napoleonic grandeur or a dash of foppery came away disappointed. The artillery officer Charles Wainwright protested how Grant “rode along the line in a slouchy unobservant way, with his coat unbuttoned and setting anything but an example of military bearing to the troops.”21 As always, stories about Grant’s early army career surfaced. “It is hard for those who knew him when formerly in the army to believe he is a great man; then he was only distinguished for the mediocrity of his mind, his great good nature and his insatiable love of whiskey,” Wainwright wrote.22 For Charles Francis Adams Jr., who formed part of Meade’s cavalry escort, Grant seemed an untested entity: “The feeling about Grant is peculiar; a little jealousy, a little dislike, a little envy, a little want of confidence.”23 This want of confidence, he thought, would only be eliminated by a string of battlefield victories. Provost Marshal General Marsena R. Patrick dismissed Grant as someone who smoked, whittled, and “let Genl. Rawlins talk Big.”24

  Nevertheless, Grant had his fair share of defenders. Theodore Lyman studied him closely: “He habitually wears an expression as if he had determined to drive his head through a brick wall, and was about to do it.”25 Or: “He is a man of a natural, severe simplicity, in all things—the very way he wears his high-crowned felt hat shows this: he neither puts it on behind his ears, nor draws it over his eyes; much less does he cock it on one side, but sets it straight and very hard on his head.” Then came Grant on horseback: “He sits firmly in the saddle and looks straight ahead, as if only intent on getting to some particular point. General Meade says he is a very amiable man, though his eye is stern and almost fierce-looking.”26 One recent West Point graduate was immediately taken with the unruffled Grant, finding him the center of “a pervasive quiet which seemed to be conveyed to everyone around him.”27 Another officer wrote home how General John Sedgwick “was very favorably impressed with Grant, for when he last saw him . . . he was drunken & dirty to the last extreme.”28

  In dealing with the Army of the Potomac, Grant believed its fighting spirit had been drilled out of it and that it had “never been thoroughly fought,” giving way to inbred caution.29 However demoralized the army was, it still clung to its pride, and Grant injected new dynamism into it. As his influence spread, a psychological change took hold. The men no longer saw themselves as virgin troops, outclassed by southern opponents, but as seasoned veterans who would wring victory from battle. Grant had the inestimable advantage of not being associated with the history of dismal defeats in Virginia and could offer a fresh start. If he never quite succeeded in turning the Army of the Potomac into a fighting force with the esprit de corps of his Army of the Tennessee, the improvement was still tangible. Lieutenant Charles Wellington Reed of Massachusetts was convinced that putting “Grant in command is the grandest coup yet” and that he had “inspired all with that confidence that insures success.”30 Grant’s new army was well equipped and well fed, and he attributed much of this to his old West Point pal, General Rufus Ingalls, who directed supplies and “could move and feed a hundred thousand men without ruffling his temper.”31

  To keep up morale, Grant did his best to retain existing commanders of the Army of the Potomac. The one thing he couldn’t abide was the dejected state of that army’s cavalry. It had long bothered Grant that southern cavalry was thought superior to northern. One day, chatting before the White House with Lincoln and Halleck, Grant stated his need for a new cavalry commander, adding that he wanted the best man he could find. “Then why not take Phil Sheridan?” Halleck asked. “Well,” Grant replied, “I was just going to say Phil Sheridan.”32 Promptly summoned from the west, Sheridan at first resented the transfer, believing himself on the verge of promotion to corps commander. Like Grant, Sheridan struck people as too slight to be a fearsome warrior and was therefore underestimated. A man after Grant’s own heart, he wanted to rescue the cavalry from guard and picket duty, deploying it instead as a prime fighting force. When he reported to the Army of the Potomac, a Grant aide recalled, he was “worn down almost to a shadow by hard work and exposure in the field; he weighed only a hundred and fifteen pounds, and as his height was but five feet six inches, he looked anything but formidable as a candidate for a cavalry leader.”33 Sheridan laughed in later years that he was then “thin almost to emaciation.”34 The next time Grant stopped by the War Department, someone teased him about Sheridan’s size: “The officer you brought on from the West is rather a little fel
low to handle your cavalry.” Grant responded prophetically: “You will find him big enough for the purpose before we get through with him.”35

  Grant was adamant about keeping Rawlins as chief of staff. Whether he was fit to discharge this important duty was another matter. Besides lacking appropriate credentials, Rawlins had to deal with a cough that had become hacking and frequent over the winter. The day Grant first met Lincoln, Rawlins told him to organize his new staff without him, fearing his health “would require me to leave the service.”36 Grant refused to let Rawlins go and promised if he didn’t recover by the time warm weather came, he could take an extended leave. Rawlins was deeply touched. “No man in the country is so great a friend to me,” he told his wife, “and to feel that I have this friendship, is to me, a great satisfaction.”37 So solicitous was Grant of Rawlins’s health that when they arrived at Culpeper Court House, Grant insisted he occupy the other bedroom in his brick house, which had a soft, comfortable feather bed. Afraid his health might be harmed by living in a tent, Rawlins was again awash in gratitude to Grant.

  Rawlins yearned to participate in the coming campaign and the conquest of Richmond, but there was no mistaking that things had worsened for him. Forced to nap every afternoon, he was so sleepy after dinner he could scarcely stay awake. At first he pretended to be mystified by this, then could no longer disguise the reason. “I have not been well today, owing to the large doses of medicine I have taken for my cough,” he confessed to his wife on April 12. “The quantity of opium has effected [sic] my whole system insomuch as to produce a sensation of numbness and drowsiness, and given me a bad headache. I have slept the whole day.”38 Doctors said he had chronic bronchitis, though he must have suspected worse. Only two weeks before the campaign began, he insisted to his wife that his cough was improving. “Unless I do get better I cannot think of trying to remain here, for I had better quit the Service than to permanently injure my health. Permanent injury of my lungs would of course be certain death; this however I do not seriously apprehend.”39 On April 28, he went riding without an overcoat and contracted a severe cold, leading him to contemplate a long leave of absence. Whether from Rawlins’s medical condition or because he disliked insidious gossip in Congress that he needed Rawlins to stay sober, Grant began to pull away from his chief of staff. It was not overt, nor something perceived by most people, but it was keenly felt by Rawlins. According to his friend James H. Wilson, Rawlins believed “Grant was drawing away from him. Grant remained friendly to him, but there was a coldness between them. He didn’t know everything that Grant was doing as in the old days.”40

  By this point, Grant had put together the staff of twelve people who would sustain him through the war, and many would trail him to the White House. Some of his choices were cronies, but others were highly competent staffers. In the fall, Ely Parker, the full-blooded Seneca Iroquois whom Grant had befriended in Galena, had joined the staff as a military secretary. He had fallen victim to anti-Indian prejudice when he tried to get an army commission. Approaching Secretary of State Seward, he had received a rude lecture that the war was “an affair between white men” and hence none of his business. “Go home, cultivate your farm. We will settle our own troubles among ourselves without any Indian aid.”41 Then, in May 1863, Brigadier General John E. Smith, formerly a Galena jeweler, recommended Parker as an assistant adjutant general, with a captain’s rank, and Grant enthusiastically endorsed his selection, writing, “I am personally acquainted with Mr. Parker and I think [he is] eminently qualified for the position.”42 Impressed by Parker’s performance at Vicksburg, Grant brought him on board as his military secretary.

  Like many others, Parker praised Grant’s storytelling power, humor, and special gifts as a listener. “General Grant had a wonderful power of drawing information from others in conversation without their being aware that they were imparting it.”43 He found Grant’s absorbent memory astounding. “His memory for facts was good, and for faces remarkable. He recognized people after a period of twenty years and recalled their names immediately.”44 Most of all he was taken with Grant’s kindness and fairness. “He always sought to speak of the good in men rather than the evil, and if he had to speak of the bad qualities in a man he would close his remarks with the mention of his good points, or excuses why he did not have them.”45 It was this lovely quality, inherited directly from Hannah, that would make Grant the victim of unscrupulous men.

  Of his four new aides, Grant especially warmed to Horace Porter. A handsome young man with a handlebar mustache and pointed beard, he had shown bravery at Chickamauga and Chattanooga. His rollicking jokes and stories helped to relieve wartime tension, making him valuable when Grant turned despondent. Early on, Porter discovered that Grant—anointed the “American Sphinx,” “Ulysses the Silent,” and the “Great Unspeakable”—was very circumspect about personal matters. “When questioned beyond the bounds of propriety, his lips closed like a vise, and the obtruding party was left to supply all the subsequent conversation.”46 Yet when it came to war stories, Grant captivated his listeners with his excellent stock of knowledge. Porter noted that Grant had refined manners, however bespattered he was with mud and dust. “He was always particularly civil to ladies, and he rose to his feet at once, took off his hat, and made a courteous bow.”47

  Grant struck Porter as the most reflective of generals, devoted to pure contemplation of battle plans: “He would sit for hours in front of his tent, or just inside of it looking out, smoking a cigar very slowly, seldom with a paper or a map in his hands, and looking like the laziest man in camp. But at such periods his mind was working more actively than that of any one in the army. He talked less and thought more than any one in the service.”48 Porter limned a comic portrait of Grant’s disorganized nature. Heaps of paper piled up higgledy-piggledy on his desk and letters overflowed his stuffed pockets. Nonetheless, Grant kept track of the chaos and “even in the dark” could “lay his hand upon almost any paper he wanted.”49 Grant never raised his voice, lost his temper, or scolded people and did not abuse his power by indulging in moody behavior. Grant explained to Porter his aversion to profanities, saying “swearing helps to rouse a man’s anger; and when a man flies into a passion his adversary who keeps cool always gets the better of him.”50 A by-product of Grant’s equanimity was his enviable ability to fall asleep anywhere. Even on the eve of a major battle, Porter noted, Grant could “drop down in the mud and rain and be sound asleep in two minutes.”51

  Grant’s self-confidence, his willingness to act on his own judgments and take responsibility, spread courage through the ranks. He was a superb communicator, making sure officers in one place knew what was happening elsewhere. Porter thought Grant’s capacity to visualize the entire battlefield unmatched. “After looking critically at a map of a locality, it seemed to become photographed indelibly upon his brain, and he could follow its features without referring to it again.”52 Porter also noticed Grant’s old superstition about never turning back, noting “he would try all sorts of cross-cuts, ford streams, and jump any number of fences to reach another road rather than go back and take a fresh start.”53

  Another holdover from Grant’s early days was his extreme queasiness about food. “I never could eat anything that goes on two legs” was a habitual Grant refrain.54 As had been the case since boyhood, Grant would only touch meat burned to a dry crisp: “If blood appeared in any meat which came on the table, the sight of it seemed entirely to destroy his appetite.”55 His eccentric tastes favored oysters and cucumbers, along with corn, pork and beans, and buckwheat cakes. “In fact,” concluded Porter, “he seemed to be particularly fond of only the most indigestible dishes.”56 Given his high level of activity during campaigns, one might have expected Grant to enjoy a hearty appetite. Instead he ate sparingly. Porter observed that “he ate less than any man in the army; sometimes the amount of food taken did not seem enough to keep a bird alive.”57

  Another aide new to Grant showed
a literary flair comparable to Porter’s. Adam Badeau joined the team of military scribes whom Grant termed his “men with quills behind their ears.”58 A short, stout young man, with glasses and a ruddy complexion, Badeau was emotional, high-strung, and voluble, with a weakness for alcohol that later marred his career. Born into a wealthy family, he lost his parents at an early age, but inherited enough money to attend tony boarding schools. In New York in the late 1850s, he earned a reputation as a witty commentator on culture, fashion, theater, and society for the Sunday Times. He was also a social climber and sycophant who latched on to celebrities. After seeing him in Richard III, he became smitten with Edwin Booth’s exceptional talent, which far outpaced that of his brother, John Wilkes.

  Badeau became Booth’s journalistic champion, literary tutor, and patron in New York society. There was something vain and pretentious about Badeau, who was prone to hero worship intermixed with underlying envy and resentment. He would attach himself to gifted, powerful men, only to turn against them. He presented himself as the trusted counselor who would groom Edwin Booth for higher levels of artistry, yet when Booth married in July 1860, Badeau felt displaced from his affection. When spurned, Badeau could turn vicious, and this, too, set a pattern later repeated with Grant. In June 1863, Badeau suffered a foot wound at Port Hudson and recuperated in New York City under the care of Edwin and John Wilkes Booth. He was still hobbling on crutches when he came to Grant and started a lasting relationship as his secretary.