Grant

by Ron Chernow

  For those unlucky enough to fight there, the day furnished ghoulish vignettes they would never forget. As Charles Dana stared into a trench, “the leg of a man was lifted up from the pool and the mud dripped off his boot. It was so unexpected, so horrible, that for a moment we were stunned.”100 The jumble of dead bodies made it hard to extract the wounded, who lay gasping just below them. As Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote, the “wounded [were] often writhing under superincumbent dead.”101 It was long after dark when Confederate soldiers withdrew, leaving many dead to be buried in trenches where they had perished.

  Grant interpreted the day’s fighting as a victory and nominated Hancock for brigadier general in the regular army. In a telegram to Halleck, he noted that the Union army had captured an entire division, brigade, and regiment while keeping its own units intact. To Julia he boasted that the “enemy were really whipped yesterday.”102 Be that as it may, Grant had incurred heavy casualties since crossing the Rapidan: thirty-two thousand men killed, wounded, or missing, surpassing the total for all Union armies combined in any previous week of the war; the corresponding Confederate toll came to eighteen thousand. At the same time he had severely depleted the officer corps of Lee’s army, taking, killing, or wounding twenty of the fifty-seven corps, division, and brigade commanders—irremediable losses for Lee. If Grant’s main objective was to grind down the Army of Northern Virginia, he had made an effective if costly beginning. One Louisiana soldier voiced a dispiriting thought that began to sink in across the South: “We have met a man this time who either does not know when he is whipped, or who cares not if he loses his whole Army, so that he may accomplish an end.”103 Lee was sobered by his encounter with Grant. When he heard officers castigating Grant for “butchering” his men, Lee didn’t let the comment pass unnoticed. According to General Henry Heth, he replied, “Gentleman, I think Gen. Grant has managed his affairs remarkably well up to the present time.” As Heth noted, Grant “was wearing us out and starving us out. He hammered at us continually. He knew we couldn’t replace our men and that he could.”104

  The heavy rain caused a two-day gap in the fighting, which Grant devoted to the sad duty of interring the dead and carting off the wounded to temporary field hospitals. Roads were churned into a muddy lather by the downpour, and by the night of May 14, Porter wrote, Grant was “a mass of mud from head to foot, his uniform being scarcely recognizable.” At the same time, Porter noted that Grant was “scrupulously careful . . . about the cleanliness of his linen and his person,” washed his own clothes, and sat down in a sawed-off barrel to bathe.105 The pause in fighting gave Grant time to reflect and he seemed chastened by the barbaric intensity of the fighting. Pouring out his thoughts to Julia, he paid tribute to the indomitable grit of Confederate troops, which had clearly astounded him. The enemy, he reported, “are fighting with great desperation entrenching themselves in every position they take up . . . The world has never seen so bloody or so protracted a battle as the one being fought and I hope never will again . . . As bad as it is they have fought for [their cause] with a gallantry worthy of a better.”106

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  —

  Heavens Hung in Black

  FROM THE TIME Grant’s men filed across the Rapidan, he assumed Ben Butler and his Army of the James would synchronize their actions with him, pushing up the James River, seizing territory south of Richmond, and wrecking critical railroads. Butler fielded a force of thirty thousand men, supplemented by five ironclads and seventeen gunboats. Unfortunately, he moved slowly, exhibited undue caution, and flubbed his chance for a lightning strike, permitting his opponent to rush reinforcements up from the Carolinas. Confederates had seeded the James River with hundreds of torpedoes, making progress treacherous. Both Richmond and Petersburg were insufficiently manned by troops and, had Butler acted with dispatch, he might have snared the Confederate capital while Lee was distracted farther north. Some historians believe Butler’s failure to capitalize on this unmatched opportunity may have prolonged the war by nearly a year.

  By mid-May, Grant’s grand strategy, featuring simultaneous movements of his far-flung armies, appeared poised to reap huge rewards. His forward motion against Lee was temporarily arrested by endless rain, making Virginia’s roads impassable. But en route to Atlanta, Sherman ousted Johnston from Dalton, Georgia; Sheridan smashed up major railroads serving Richmond; and Butler captured the outer defenses of Fort Darling, below Richmond. Then General Beauregard, exploiting Butler’s laxity, defeated him decisively at Drewry’s Bluff, driving him back down the river to a thin neck of land formed by the confluence of the James and Appomattox Rivers. In a bold stroke, Beauregard laid trenches across the land strip until Butler’s army at Bermuda Hundred was, in Grant’s acerbic image, “as completely shut off from further operations directly against Richmond as if it had been in a bottle strongly corked.”1 Later on, Grant regretted such harsh language against Butler, but his plan to trap Lee between his army and Butler’s or starve his supply lines had been rudely upended. So neatly had Beauregard neutralized Butler that he could release several thousand soldiers to beef up Lee’s army. Grant wearily told Halleck that Butler’s army had failed to ruin the railroad running south of Richmond: “Under these circumstances I think it advisable to have all of it here except enough to keep a foothold at City Point.”2 A British soldier fighting with the Army of the James delivered this blunt assessment of Beast Butler: “There is no confidence felt in the beast at all.”3

  Around this time, another keystone of Grant’s overarching design seemed to crumble. To curry favor with German Americans, Lincoln had appointed Franz Sigel as a brigadier general early in the war. Born in Germany, trained as a military officer, the versatile Sigel had worked as a journalist, teacher, and politician. A striking-looking man with high cheekbones and a fierce gaze, he was dedicated to the Union cause but destitute of military talent. Grant had dispatched him to the Shenandoah Valley with 6,500 men to harry Lee’s supply base at Staunton. Instead, on May 15 at the battle of New Market, a smaller Confederate force under John C. Breckinridge trounced Sigel, aided by 250 cadets from the nearby Virginia Military Institute, sounding the death knell for Sigel’s military career. “If you expect anything from him you will be mistaken,” Halleck told Grant. “He will do nothing but run. He never did anything else. The Secty of War proposes to put Genl [David] Hunter in his place.”4 Grant heartily endorsed the move, which soon occurred.

  The northern mood began to sour again and Noah Brooks speculated that the populace, “like a spoiled child,” craved instant success, not a maddening deadlock.5 If inspired by Grant’s pluck, citizens were dismayed by the interminable casualty rolls. As Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote on May 16, “These nearly two weeks have contained all of fatigue & horror that war can furnish.”6 Grant knew he didn’t enjoy the option of inaction. By the night of the sixteenth, with roads rapidly drying, he gave the signal for another round of dawn fighting at Spotsylvania. While he and Lee had absorbed reinforcements, Lee was strengthened by combat veterans while Grant had to deal with raw troops. If he was still beguiled by the notion of luring Lee to fight in the open, on the morning of May 18 Lee did not oblige, staying put behind his defenses as Grant attacked. The advancing Union infantry was raked by such blistering musket and artillery fire that by midmorning Grant called off the attack. All his maneuvering had come to naught, and he decided to abandon Spotsylvania.

  The failure to ram through the Confederate line with frontal assaults inspired second-guessing and soul-searching on Grant’s staff. Cyrus Comstock had been the supreme advocate of a fighting style he called “Smash ’em up! Smash ’em up!” Rawlins was so disgusted by this blunt approach, said James H. Wilson, that he “grew pale, and his form became almost convulsed with anger,” as he inveighed against a strategy that was “the murderous policy of military incompetents.”7 Despite unstinting faith in Grant, Lincoln was agitated by the lengthy lists of dead soldiers. House Speaker Schuyl
er Colfax discovered him pacing his office, “his long arms behind his back, his dark features contracted still more with gloom.” The distraught president let loose a terrible cri de coeur: “Why do we suffer reverses after reverses! Could we have avoided this terrible, bloody war! . . . Is it ever to end!”8

  On May 19, in a rare offensive thrust against Grant, Lee unloaded a surprise attack in the late afternoon, which turned bloody for both sides. As usual, Grant perceived opportunity where others saw blind terror, instructing Porter to “ride to the point of attack . . . and urge upon the commanders . . . not only to check the advance of the enemy, but to take the offensive and destroy them if possible.”9 By nightfall, Confederate troops were driven back in what proved Lee’s last offensive attack; henceforth he would exploit the advantages of fixed defensive positions. One feature of that sanguinary day has received insufficient attention: the bravery of black soldiers under Brigadier General Edward Ferrero. “It was the first time at the East when colored troops had been engaged in any important battle,” wrote Badeau, “and the display of soldierly qualities obtained a frank acknowledgment from both troops and commanders, not all of whom had before been willing to look upon negroes as comrades.”10

  Unbowed, Grant decreed a secret midnight march south by his left flank, ordering Hancock “to get as far towards Richmond on the line of the Fredericksburg railroad, as he can make, fighting the enemy in whatever force he may find him.”11 For Grant, the important thing was the constant, inexorable push southward. Finding his progress delayed by slow-moving artillery, he shipped back one hundred pieces to Washington. He played a cat-and-mouse game with Lee, even pretending to commit an error that might tempt his rival to pounce. He deliberately kept Hancock’s corps apart from the rest, dangling it as isolated bait that Lee might want to come out and snatch, but the stratagem didn’t work.

  For the next few days, energized by sunny weather, Grant and his army headed toward the railroad junction at Hanovertown, marching through prosperous, open countryside with elegant houses flanked by abundant fields of grain and tobacco. The prosperous air was misleading, for the region had been drained of life, abandoned by able-bodied men and left to the care of women, the old, and the infirm. As happened after the Wilderness fighting, Grant’s dearest hope was to cover twenty-five miles fast enough to overtake Lee and insert his army between the Army of Northern Virginia and Richmond. Again aided by interior lines, the agile, alert Lee beat Grant to the North Anna River on May 22, digging in on its south bank. Never short of confidence vis-à-vis Grant, he predicted to his staff surgeon, “If I can get one more pull at him, I will defeat him.”12 Clearly Grant faced a far more self-assured rival than he had ever confronted before and one who seldom made mistakes.

  During his race south, Grant lingered at Guiney’s Station, throwing up tents on the ground of a country estate. When he paid his respects to the lady of the house, she told him that, by an extraordinary coincidence, Stonewall Jackson had died there two years earlier. Striking the conciliatory note he would sound at Appomattox, Grant complimented Jackson as a man and soldier. “I can understand fully the admiration your people have for him.”13 The woman sobbed in describing Jackson’s last hour and Grant posted sentries around the house to shield it from harm. As courtly as any southern gentleman, he didn’t force his way into the house but sat outside on the verandah.

  Grant was no less courteous to his men. One Massachusetts regiment was marching down a railroad line when they spotted Grant sitting on a flatcar, devouring a ham bone. They let loose a cheer that he only acknowledged with a friendly wave of the bone before gnawing it again. As ever, Grant refused to parade his superior rank, and his skillful handling of people, no less than his military acumen, accounted for much of his success. As Charles Francis Adams Jr. wrote, “Grant had this army as firmly in hand as ever he had that of the Southwest. He has effected this simply by the exercise of tact and good taste.”14

  Having crossed the North Anna River first, Lee had established a strong position with troops who had recently opposed Butler and Sigel but were no longer needed against them. As Grant’s men began to ford the river on May 23, they were “violently attacked,” he informed Halleck, “but handsomely repulsed the assault without much loss to us.”15 The North Anna was a wide river with high bluffs and shallow enough that soldiers walked across in waist-high water. Grant’s engineers also threw down pontoons and seized a wooden bridge with such electrifying speed that retreating Confederates jumped into the water, many drowning. That night, Lee’s army dug fresh trenches and hardened their positions, and these fortifications again functioned as the great equalizer against superior numbers.

  On May 24, Grant found his forces arrayed in a perilous configuration. The left and right wings of his army had crossed the North Anna, but with Burnside, in the center, having failed to do so, he feared Lee might pick off one wing of his divided army at will. In beautiful, summery weather, Grant’s men spent the day finding new places to traverse the river. At this critical juncture, Lee was stretched out on a cot, laid low by intestinal problems as he meditated a knockout blow against Grant. His subordinates failed to capitalize on the opportunity presented by Grant’s fragmented army. Lee grasped the danger of allowing Grant to press him back against the gates of Richmond. “We must strike them a blow,” he told his commanders in frustration. “We must never let them pass us again.”16 Temporarily Lee retired Traveller and moved by ambulance for several days.

  Spent from punishing night marches, battle smoke, sleep deprivation, and never-ending skirmishes, Grant’s soldiers were dazed by the strain of the Overland Campaign. The cumulative pressures overwhelmed many, and Captain Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said that “many a man has gone crazy since this campaign began from the terrible pressure on mind & body.”17 “The men in the ranks did not look as they did when they entered the Wilderness,” another soldier recalled. “Their uniforms were now torn, ragged, and stained with mud; the men had grown thin and haggard. The experience of those twenty days seemed to have added twenty years to their age.”18 Despite this outward change, Grant had wrought a profound alteration in the soldiers’ psyche, making them believe in themselves. “This army has learned to believe that it is sure of victory,” Dana told Stanton. “Even our officers have ceased to regard Lee as an invincible military genius.”19 The soldiers knew their movements weren’t haphazard but integral parts of a well-thought-out plan. If anything, Grant seemed dangerously overconfident, telling Halleck, “Lee’s Army is really whipped . . . I feel that our success over Lee’s Army is already insured.”20

  Leavening the somber mood for Grant was the welcome return of a tanned, healthy-looking Sheridan after his memorable cavalry raid. With the exuberant, vivid gestures of a stage actor, he described for Grant the many clashes he had experienced. Darkly dramatic one moment, he burst into gales of laughter the next. The popular Sheridan had drawn off so many Confederate cavalry to cope with his raiders that the four thousand wagons of Grant’s supply train had passed virtually unscathed.

  The next day, Grant’s men probed Lee’s lines, finding them well defended and bristling with sharpened timbers. Grant despaired of breaching this barricade and again moved his army south, scuttling to the left, a move that kept his supply lines open by water. Lee knew his inability to inflict heavy damage on Grant’s army meant a steady creep southward of the two armies toward Richmond, a move ultimately cataclysmic to the Confederacy. Grant’s men tore up railroad tracks that supported Lee’s army, heating and twisting crossties into crazy shapes to render them useless. Grant was greeted warmly by his soldiers, who were relieved he hadn’t launched them in a suicidal rush against Lee’s defenses on the North Anna. Grant’s force was boosted by forty thousand reinforcements, replenishing men he lost, while the ten thousand Lee received didn’t compensate for his losses.

  Striding along in fine, clear weather, the Army of the Potomac tramped across streams and swamps as it penetrated to
Hanovertown, seventeen miles from the Confederate capital. Richmond’s citizens felt cornered as they eyed Grant’s approaching movement and listened for artillery fire that might portend Armageddon for their city. Once again Lee was girding to meet Grant as a heated cavalry clash engaged the two armies. By the night of May 29, Grant’s army had inched forward to Totopotomoy Creek, nine miles northeast of Richmond, where the Army of Northern Virginia stood aligned for battle.

  At this point, Lee experienced something akin to panic. “We must destroy this army of Grant’s before he gets to James River,” he confided to a commander. “If he gets there it will become a siege, and then it will be a mere question of time.”21 Gradually Lee’s army drifted south toward a place called Cold Harbor, where he hoped to intercept Grant if he made a sudden run for the James River. The name was derived from English roadside inns that advertised overnight stays without hot meals. True to this tradition, a tavern occupied the village crossroads. It was clear that this strategic spot, the nexus of five converging roads, would become a flashpoint in any looming fight.

  On May 31, in a desperate cavalry conflict, Sheridan defeated the rebels near Cold Harbor and Grant advised him to hold the place at all hazards. Lee’s army had taken up positions north of the Chickahominy River. Grant wanted to herd his foes south of the river, while ravaging Richmond’s northern railroad links and preventing Lee from sending men to curb Hunter’s raids in the Shenandoah Valley. Riding beside Rawlins to Cold Harbor, Grant suffered one of his few recorded losses of temper when he spied a teamster flogging his horses. With his exquisite sensitivity for animals, Grant spurred his bay horse Egypt toward the perpetrator, shaking a clenched fist at him. “What does this conduct mean, you scoundrel?” Grant yelled. “Take this man in charge, and have him tied up to a tree for six hours as a punishment for his brutality.”22