by Ron Chernow
Grant’s initial impression of Butler was favorable, and their visions of the upcoming campaign converged. Striding to a map, Butler outlined the movement of his army that Grant had already planned. Grant believed Butler’s subordinate generals would compensate for his deficiencies. Writing to his wife, Rawlins had good words for Grant’s three new commanding generals: Sherman, Meade, and Butler. “They are all three loyal to their country, friends of the General, and consequently with no ambitions to be gratified that look not to the success of our arms in obedience to and in accordance with his orders and plans.”91 In his diary, Cyrus Comstock sized up Butler more coldly, calling him “sharp, shrewd, able, without conscience or modesty—overbearing. A bad man to have against you.”92
While Grant and Butler conferred, they took time out to review a black brigade camped nearby. The subject of black soldiers still occupied Grant’s mind. On April 15, he learned of a horrifying cavalry raid conducted by Nathan Bedford Forrest against Fort Pillow on the Mississippi River in Tennessee. Forrest had slaughtered dozens of black soldiers after they surrendered, slashing and bludgeoning the wounded till they succumbed. “The Fort Pillow Massacre is one of the most brutal and horrible acts of fiendishness on record,” Rawlins reported to his wife.93 Grant reacted with outrage. “If men have been murdered after capture,” he warned Sherman, “retaliation must be resorted to promptly.”94 As proof of his foe’s inhumanity, Grant liked to quote the boastful dispatch Forrest filed after the episode: “The river was dyed with the blood of the slaughtered for two hundred yards . . . It is hoped that these facts will demonstrate to the Northern people that negro soldiers cannot cope with Southerners.”95
Further proof of Grant’s continuing concern for black soldiers was his uncompromising stand on prisoner exchanges. The previous year, Jefferson Davis had announced his intention of either executing captured black soldiers or returning them to slavery. This double standard for black and white Union soldiers was intolerable to Grant. In negotiating prisoner exchanges, he told Butler no distinction should be made between “white and colored prisoners; the only question being, were they, at the time of their capture, in the military service of the United States.”96 To back up his point, Grant suspended prisoner exchanges with the Confederacy until black and white equality was established. Even though he didn’t believe they had attained the same proficiency as the most experienced white troops, Grant continued to insist that black soldiers should be employed as widely as possible. In laying out instructions for Banks’s expedition up the Red River, he had expressed hope that “a large number of [black] recruits of this class” would be used.97 Having conferred with Butler, Grant was ready, at last, to take on Lee.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
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Raging Storm
BY LATE APRIL, with the northern Virginia roads drying out and permitting unimpeded movement, Grant celebrated his forty-second birthday and scheduled a date for the launch of his campaign. His vast army would cross the Rapidan River on May 4, and that same night Benjamin Butler and his Army of the James would push up that river as far as possible, gunning for Richmond. Meanwhile Sherman would lunge against Joseph Johnston in Georgia, destroying the southern infrastructure that supported Lee’s army, while Franz Sigel invaded the Shenandoah Valley. Provided with good intelligence about Grant’s intentions, Lee braced for his opponent’s first move and grew fidgety waiting to see where he would strike first. For his part, Grant longed for a fight. “I am growing impatient to be off,” he told Julia, “but must wait completion of preparations.”1 He had enough composure to ask how Buck and Nellie were progressing with their lessons and requested that the children send him weekly letters.
Awaiting the din of battle, Abraham Lincoln was glad to set down, at least a bit, the heavy mantle of military leadership that his earlier mediocre generals had forced him to shoulder. On April 30, he sent Grant a letter that exuded confidence in him and granted him total freedom. That confidence arose in part because he and Grant agreed on so many military matters.
Not expecting to see you again before the Spring campaign opens, I wish to express, in this way, my entire satisfaction with what you have done up to this time, so far as I understand it. The particulars of your plans I neither know, or seek to know. You are vigilant and self-reliant; and, pleased with this, I wish not to obtrude any constraints or restraints upon you. While I am very anxious that any great disaster, or the capture of our men in great numbers, shall be avoided, I know these points are less likely to escape your attention than they would be mine—If there is anything wanting which is within my power to give, do not fail to let me know it. And now with a brave Army, and a just cause, may God sustain you.2
Grant graciously replied that Lincoln and Stanton had responded to all his wishes and he had been “astonished at the readiness with which everything asked for has been yielded without even an explanation being asked. Should my success be less than I desire . . . the least I can say is, the fault is not with you.”3 Psychologically, this last sentence was a masterstroke, reaffirming that Grant, unlike his predecessors, wouldn’t scapegoat Lincoln or Stanton for any failures.
On May 2, Grant mounted his powerful bay horse Cincinnati and rode around the war-flattened countryside and Union encampments with his friend Daniel Ammen. He discussed the enormous logistical challenge posed by moving 115,000 men with wagons, supplies, and weapons. To accentuate his point, he noted that if the soldiers and their supply trains were strung out single file along the road, they would stretch the entire route from the Rapidan River to Richmond. Grant planned to have his army carry enough supplies for two weeks: one million rations plus two hundred thousand forage rations for the animals. He knew he must snap the potent spell Lee had cast over the Army of the Potomac, telling Ammen that Lee “possessed the entire confidence, respect, and indeed affection of every one under his command, and such a man could not be an indifferent commander to meet.”4
That same day, showing a superb fingertip feel for his adversary, Lee stood atop a nearby mountain with his infantry chiefs and identified, with oracular authority, two of the fords where Grant would cross the Rapidan. The next day, he suspected an imminent engagement when reports filtered back to him of billowing dust clouds on the Union side, the kind kicked up by marching soldiers, plus billowing smoke, the kind that rose from newly abandoned army camps. That night, Union columns were seen passing in silhouette in front of campfires, making it all but certain that Grant’s crossing of the Rapidan neared.
On the other side of the river that night, Grant sat in his tent, composing a letter to Julia. Knowing the nation’s eyes were riveted upon him, he sounded self-possessed and extremely confident: “I know the greatest anxiety is now felt in the North for the success of this move, and that the anxiety will increase when it is once known that the Army is in motion.”5 That Grant felt sanguine about his prospects was revealed by an unexpected flash of wit. “I believe it has never been my misfortune to be placed where I lost my presence of mind, unless indeed it has been when thrown in strange company, particularly of ladies. Under such circumstances I know I must appear like a fool.”6
The following night, in his Culpeper headquarters, Grant reviewed with Washburne, Rawlins, and senior staff members the scope of the upcoming campaign. Folding his legs, kindling a fresh cigar, he reviewed the strategy for hurling simultaneous strikes against the enemy in multiple locations. That night his army would begin its historic march into hostile territory. Once safely across the Rapidan, he would have a critical decision to make: whether to move right or left. Always preferring interwoven movements, Grant opted for the leftward movement, which would enable him to cooperate better with Butler’s army below Richmond and provide safeguards for Washington. If he got lucky, he might even sever Lee’s link with Richmond. A world of tactical difficulties lay ahead, but the broad strategic arc of his campaign stood clearly engraved in Grant’s mind. At one point, he strolled over to a wall map an
d traced with his forefinger a curve that connected Richmond and Petersburg. “When my troops are there,” he said, “Richmond is mine. Lee must retreat or surrender.”7 To ensure maximum secrecy, Grant waited until dark to issue orders that set the colossal machinery in motion. When he went to bed at 11 p.m., Washburne “said that Napoleon often indulged in only four hours of sleep, and still preserved all the vigor of his mental faculties.” Grant, who needed seven hours, sounded dubious. “Well, I, for one, never believed those stories. If the truth were known, I have no doubt it would be found that he made up for his short sleep at night by taking naps during the day.”8
On May 4, the day his army was to cross the Rapidan, Grant rose to the historic occasion and sported for once fancy military duds: a uniform frock coat over a blue vest, three-star shoulder straps, yellow thread gloves, a black felt hat adorned with a gold braid, a midriff sash, and a sword clanking at his side.9 Before dawn, Sheridan’s cavalry crossed at one ford and other units sprang into motion after sunrise. It was an impressive spectacle as infantrymen lifted their weapons and waded across waist-high water while cannon and supply wagons rolled across four pontoon bridges, two crafted from cloth, two from wood. On this improbably beautiful day, clear and glistening, the sun’s rays struck brightly off bayonets, drums rolled, trumpets blared, and regimental banners rippled in the breeze. “Never since its organization had the Army of the Potomac been in better spirits, or more eager to meet the enemy,” a journalist wrote.10 As the day warmed, the sprightly soldiers, anticipating summer weather, deposited excess clothing and baggage by the wayside—“an improvidence I had never witnessed before,” Grant said, forgetting what had happened at Fort Donelson.11
In the early morning light Grant lingered at Culpeper, waiting until all his troops were on the road. Then, astride Cincinnati, he galloped off to the Rapidan with Washburne at his side, the congressman dressed in such funereal black that wags said Grant had enlisted his own mortician. Around noon, when he crossed the river at Germanna Ford, Grant was delighted by what he saw. Horace Porter described how fast-stepping soldiers with “lusty shouts . . . greeted their new commander as he passed . . . But as General Grant was neither demonstrative nor communicative, he gave no expression whatever to his feelings.”12 He set up headquarters at a vacant hilltop farm on the Rapidan’s south bank, where he profited from splendid views to track the unceasing movements of his army. Although he manifested neither pride nor pleasure, he inwardly exulted that his army traveled twelve miles that day and that four thousand wagons would lumber across the river by the following evening. “This I regarded as a great feat and it removed from my mind the most serious apprehension I had entertained: how was so large a train to be carried through a hostile country and protected?” Grant told Stanton.13 He would also need to track down forage for thirty thousand horses and twenty-three thousand mules as the army journeyed south.
After lunch, Grant enjoyed a cigar with his staff, sufficiently pleased with his progress that he allowed himself momentary banter. When a reporter inquired how long it would take to reach Richmond, Grant gave a mischievous reply: “I will agree to be there in about four days.” After an astonished silence, Grant went on, “That is, if General Lee becomes a party to the agreement. But if he objects, the trip will undoubtedly be prolonged.”14 The joke drew hearty laughter. By this time Grant had probably learned from intercepted enemy signals that Lee knew the Army of the Potomac had poured across the Rapidan River, prompting Grant to send a message to Burnside to move his corps posthaste to Germanna Ford. “Make forced march until you reach this place . . . require them [his troops] to make a night march.”15
The triumphant mood soon faded. The Rapidan crossing inaugurated the Overland Campaign, seven weeks of brutal, remorseless fighting so steeped in gore that one Union officer would term it “a raging storm of lead and iron.”16 Immediately south of the Rapidan lay a bleak, uninhabited region of dense vegetation known as the Wilderness, closely packed with stunted trees, tangled shrubs, scrub oak, and pine trees. Loggers had once chopped down a mature forest to make charcoal for nearby iron smelters, leaving behind a forbidding realm of second-growth trees. At the battle of Chancellorsville a year earlier, Lee had trounced Hooker in this perilous region, mastering its mystifying terrain. As far as Lee was concerned, Grant was set to wander into the same trap as Hooker. Lee had only 64,000 men versus Grant’s 115,000—a difference that could be fatal to Lee in an open field confrontation. In the trackless maze of the Wilderness, however, that advantage would vanish. The tricky topography would also neutralize Grant’s superior artillery, its fire obstructed by trees. For that reason, Lee made no effort to thwart Grant’s crossing of the Rapidan and was eager to encourage it. Hoping to avoid a collision with Lee in the Wilderness, Grant intended to march his men through it rapidly, then meet Lee in more open country.
That night, Grant and Meade smoked before a blazing fire and hatched plans for the morrow. Satisfied with the day’s activity, Grant wired Halleck: “The crossing of Rapidan effected. Forty Eight hours now will demonstrate whether the enemy intends giving battle this side of Richmond.”17 The conversation of Grant and Meade was interrupted periodically by messages confirming that Sherman, Butler, and George Crook had advanced their armies as planned. True to his word, Grant viewed the war effort through a wide-angled lens that spanned the fighting in its entirety. Adam Badeau, who admired Grant’s unflappable nature, applauded this: “It had never happened before in the history of war that one man directed so completely four distinct armies, separated by thousands of miles, and numbering more than a quarter of a million soldiers; ordering the operations of each for the same day, and receiving at night reports from each that his orders had been obeyed.”18 The man who wielded this unprecedented power was a model of simplicity. He slept that night in a tent furnished plainly with “a portable cot made of a coarse canvas stretcher over a light wooden frame, a tin wash-basin which stood on an iron tripod, two folding camp-chairs, and a plain pine table,” Porter remembered. “The general’s baggage was limited to one small camp trunk, which contained his underclothing, toilet articles, a suit of clothes, and an extra pair of boots.”19
Also camped in a tent that night, Lee decided that the following day he would provoke an encounter before Grant could concentrate his enormous forces. Though he wanted to avoid a Wilderness clash, Grant was scarcely less eager to fight. He had three corps under Winfield Scott Hancock, Gouverneur Warren, and John Sedgwick at his disposal, while a fourth corps under Burnside endured a grueling all-night march to join the fray. As he tensely awaited Burnside, Grant made a revealing comment to Porter: “The only time I ever feel impatient is when I give an order for an important movement of troops in the presence of the enemy, and am waiting for them to reach their destination. Then the minutes seem like hours.”20
The few roadways in the Wilderness were rough and narrow, obstructing troop movements. Lee started one corps eastward under Richard S. Ewell down the Orange Turnpike and another under A. P. Hill down the Orange Plank Road, hoping a third corps led by Longstreet would appear in time to assist them. Early in the morning, Grant received word from Meade that Confederate forces had been spotted on the Orange Turnpike. When Meade ordered Warren to pounce on them immediately, Grant endorsed this aggressive attitude: “If any opportunity presents itself for pitching into a part of Lee’s army, do so without giving time for disposition.”21
For once Lee proved a reluctant warrior, preferring to defer any general engagement until the next day, when Longstreet would strengthen him with approximately fourteen thousand men. Nonetheless, he wasn’t one to duck a battle, especially after Union general Charles Griffin pounded hard into one of Ewell’s advance brigades. Griffin’s triumph was fleeting, stymied by a factor that would govern two days of Wilderness fighting: as dry leaves and branches caught fire from exploding shells, they produced a thick curtain of smoke that trapped and blinded Griffin’s men, making them vulnerable to Ewel
l’s counterattack. Union soldiers ended up fleeing the scene. Griffin, incensed, showed up on a hill where Grant sat smoking with Meade. In blistering tones, he let his superiors know his disgust at not being supported. Shocked that someone would berate his beloved general, Rawlins gave way to anger, but Grant reacted more matter-of-factly. “Who is this General Gregg?” he asked Meade. “You ought to arrest him.” “His name’s Griffin, not Gregg,” Meade replied, “and that’s only his way of talking.”22 Meade then leaned forward and buttoned up Grant’s coat for him.
In midafternoon came another bout of furious fighting. Grant and Meade sent a division commanded by General George W. Getty and a corps under General Hancock to deal with an advance by A. P. Hill on the Orange Plank Road. This produced a searing firefight marked by such deafening musket clatter that one federal soldier remarked, “The steady firing rolled and crackled from end to end of the contending lines as if it would never cease.”23 Despite acrid smoke drooping over the battlefield, the federal troops acquitted themselves ably, and Hill’s forces staggered backward under the fierce onslaught amid heavy casualties on both sides.