The Man Who Saved the Union

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by H. W. Brands


  The next morning Sherman’s troops straggled into Fort Corcoran, their base on the Potomac. “A slow, muzzling rain had set in, and probably a more gloomy day never presented itself,” Sherman related. “All organization seemed to be at an end.… Of course, we took it for granted that the rebels would be on our heels, and accordingly prepared to defend our posts.” But the Confederates had become nearly as disorganized in victory as the Federals were in defeat, and they failed to follow up. This minor blessing didn’t stop some of Sherman’s soldiers from attempting to desert. Most were dissuaded when he ordered his artillery officers to level their guns at them and threatened to open fire if they made a move. Yet one captain announced his decision to depart nonetheless. “Colonel,” he said to Sherman, “I am going to New York today. What can I do for you?”

  “How can you go to New York?” Sherman demanded. “I don’t remember to have signed a leave for you.”

  The captain explained that he didn’t want a leave; his ninety-day term was up and he was mustering out.

  Sherman considered the matter. “I noticed that a good many of the soldiers had paused about us to listen, and knew that if this officer could defy me, they also would,” he wrote afterward. “So I turned on him sharp and said: ‘Captain, this question of your term of service has been submitted to the rightful authority, and the decision has been published in orders. You are a soldier, and must submit to orders until you are properly discharged. If you attempt to leave without orders, it will be mutiny, and I will shoot you like a dog!’ ”

  The captain returned to his quarters, apparently chastened. The watching men went back to their business. Sherman thought the incident ended. But later that day a carriage carrying President Lincoln and Secretary of State Seward drove by the camp. The driver looked lost, and Sherman volunteered to give directions. He got into the vehicle and told the driver where to go. Meanwhile he spoke with Lincoln, who said he had come out to encourage the troops. Sherman asked if he intended to give a speech. Lincoln said he thought he would. Sherman cautioned him against anything that might elicit cheering or other noisy demonstrations. “We had had enough of it before Bull Run to ruin any set of men,” he recalled telling the president. “What we needed were cool, thoughtful, hard-fighting soldiers—no more hurrahing, no humbug.”

  Lincoln nodded, and when he later stood up in the carriage to address the men, he stopped their cheering with a nod to Sherman. “Don’t cheer, boys,” he said. “I confess I rather like it myself, but Colonel Sherman here says it is not military, and I guess we had better defer to his opinion.”

  Lincoln continued his inspection, with Sherman as guide. The president was about to return to Washington when the captain Sherman had reprimanded earlier approached the carriage. “Mr. President, I have a cause of grievance,” the captain said. “This morning I went to speak to Colonel Sherman, and he threatened to shoot me.”

  “Threatened to shoot you?” Lincoln replied.

  “Yes, sir. He threatened to shoot me.”

  Lincoln looked at Sherman, then at the captain, then back at Sherman. In a whisper loud enough for all in the vicinity to hear, he said, “Well, if I were you, and he threatened to shoot, I would not trust him, for I believe he would do it.”

  19

  “COLONEL GRANT IS AN OLD ARMY OFFICER—THOROUGHLY A GENTLEMAN and an officer of intelligence and discretion,” John Pope wrote to John Frémont in early August. Frémont commanded Union forces in the West from headquarters in St. Louis; Pope was his lieutenant for Missouri. The mission in Missouri was confused on account of the unsettled circumstances in the state. Secession forces roamed at will but did comparatively little damage, causing the Federals to give unproductive and eventually halfhearted chase. “Fighting here looks to me like gold hunting in California—always rich leads are a little farther on or in some other locality,” an exhausted assistant wrote Frémont.

  Grant seemed to Pope and Frémont the man for the moment and place. His discretion and intelligence enabled him to deal with fractious troops and suspicious locals, instilling discipline and pride in the former and respect for the Union in the latter. “No wandering will be permitted, and every violation of this order will be summarily and severely punished,” Grant warned his troops upon learning that some of them had annoyed and abused the neighbors. “No soldier will be allowed to go more than one mile beyond his camp except under order or by special permission, on pain of being dealt with as a deserter. No expeditions will be fitted out for the purpose of arresting suspected persons without first getting authority from these Headquarters.” The troops absorbed the message and so did the locals. “When we first come, there was a terrible state of fear existing among the people,” Grant informed Julia. “They thought every horror known in the whole catalogue of disasters following a state of war was going to be their portion at once. But they are now becoming much more reassured. They find that all troops are not the desperate characters they took them for.” Grant was especially gratified at the change in the attitudes of the inhabitants of Macon City, on the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad north of Jefferson City. “People of the town, many of them, left on our approach, but finding that we behave respectfully and respected private property they returned and before we left nearly every lady and child visited camp and no doubt felt as much regret at our departure as they did at our arrival.”

  Yet the Missourians were a puzzling bunch. “The majority in this part of the state are secessionists, as we would term them, but deplore the present state of affairs,” Grant wrote his father. “They would make almost any sacrifice to have the Union restored, but regard it as dissolved and nothing is left for them but to choose between two evils. Many, too, seem to be entirely ignorant of the object of present hostilities. You can’t convince them but what the ultimate object is to extinguish, by force, slavery. Then too they feel that the Southern Confederacy will never consent to give up their State and as they, the South, are the strong party, it is prudent to favor them from the start.” The rebels and sympathizers controlled the newspapers of the neighborhood, with little regard for facts. “There is never a movement of troops made that the Secession journals through the country do not give a startling account of their almost annihilation at the hands of the State’s troops, whilst the facts are there are no engagements. My regiment has been reported cut to pieces once that I know of, and I don’t know but oftener, whilst a gun has not been fired at us. These reports go uncontradicted here and give confirmation to the conviction already entertained that one Southron is equal to five Northerners.”

  Grant’s good work confirmed the favorable impression he had made on Pope and Frémont, and when the rapid expansion of the Union army compelled a raft of promotions, he found himself among the beneficiaries. “I see from the papers that my name has been sent in for Brigadier General!” he wrote Jesse at the beginning of August. He was as pleased as he was surprised. “This is certainly very complimentary to me, particularly as I have never asked a friend to intercede in my behalf.” After learning that Elihu Washburne and other members of the Illinois delegation in Congress had pushed his promotion, Grant told Julia, “I certainly feel very grateful to the people of Illinois for the interest they seem to have taken in me, and unasked, too. Whilst I was about Springfield I certainly never blew my own trumpet and was not aware that I attracted any attention, but it seems from what I have heard from there the people, who were perfect strangers to me up to the commencement of our present unhappy national difficulties, were very unanimous in recommending me for my present position.”

  He nonetheless thought the promotion was no more than he deserved. To his father he described his handling of his regiment: “I took it in a very disorganized, demoralized and insubordinate condition and have worked it up to a reputation equal to the best, and I believe with the good will of all the officers and all the men. Hearing that I was likely to be promoted, the officers, with great unanimity, have requested to be attached to my command.” He cautioned, h
owever, that he was writing for Jesse’s eyes alone. “This I don’t want you to read to others, for I very much dislike speaking of myself.”

  Grant’s promotion arrived on the heels of word of the Union defeat at Bull Run, which complicated his newly enlarged task. “People here will be glad to get clear of us notwithstanding their apparent hospitality,” Grant wrote Julia. “They are great fools in this section of country and will never rest until they bring upon themselves all the horrors of war in its worst form. The people are inclined to carry on a guerilla warfare that must eventuate in retaliation, and when it does commence it will be hard to control. I hope from the bottom of my heart I may be mistaken, but since the defeat of our troops at Manassas things look more gloomy here.”

  One of the greatest Missouri fools, Grant thought, was his former business partner. “I called to see Harry Boggs the other day as I passed through St. Louis,” he told Julia. “He cursed and went on like a madman. Told me that I would never be welcome in his house, that the people of Illinois were a poor miserable set of Black Republicans, Abolition paupers that had to invade their state to get something to eat. Good joke that on something to eat. Harry is such a pitiful insignificant fellow that I could not get mad at him and told him so, where upon he set the Army of Flanders far in the shade with his profanity.”

  Boggs made an impression on Grant all the same. “You ask my views about the continuance of the war,” he wrote his sister Mary. “Well, I have changed my mind so much that I don’t know what to think. That the Rebels will be so badly whipped by April next that they cannot make a stand anywhere I don’t doubt. But they are so dogged that there is no telling when they might be subdued. Send Union troops among them and respect all their rights, pay for everything you get and they become desperate and reckless because their state sovereignty is invaded. Troops of the opposite side march through and take everything they want, leaving no pay but script, and they become desperate secession partisans because they have nothing more to lose. Every change makes them more desperate.”

  Grant wouldn’t have described Sam Clemens as dogged, had he met him. Nor would Clemens have described himself that way. Clemens was a twenty-five-year-old river pilot from Hannibal, Missouri, living in St. Louis in the early summer of 1861 when a recruiter for the secessionist Missouri state guard came through. A couple of Clemens’s friends, also from Hannibal, decided to enlist, and they talked Clemens into joining them. The three headed back to Hannibal to cast their lot with secession.

  But their rebel careers almost ended before they began. A Union packet boat arrived at Hannibal; Clemens and his friends watched it land a company of troops. The captain somehow learned that Clemens and the others were pilots, and he dragooned them into the Federal service. The three were transported downriver to St. Louis, where a Union officer was about to compel them to sign papers of enlistment when two young women knocked at the officer’s door. He left Clemens and the others alone long enough for them to make their escape and return once more to Hannibal.

  But the Union troops had occupied the town, and the trio joined some rebel irregulars mustering in the forest nearby. Clemens was chosen second lieutenant in a company they formed; his mount was an undersized yellow mule named Paint Brush. One night when Clemens was on picket duty a comrade spotted what looked like Union soldiers. The comrade fired a shotgun at the moving shadows, and Clemens and the others leaped on their steeds and raced away. Paint Brush, however, was no match for the horses of the others, and Clemens was quickly left behind. “The last we heard of him,” one of the swifter fellows remembered, “he was saying, ‘Damn you, you want the Yanks to capture me!’ ”

  The horsemen got to camp ahead of Clemens and girded for battle. At the approach of hoofbeats they leveled their weapons to blast the Unionists. But it was only Clemens and Paint Brush, out of control. Mule and rider charged through the camp—Clemens cursing, Paint Brush braying. Eventually they drew to a halt and the camp settled in for the night. The next morning some of the men returned to the scene of the engagement. There was no sign that Union troops had ever been there, only some wildflowers swaying soldierlike in the breeze.

  The incident became the narrative center of a story Clemens wrote about his Civil War service. The story, “The Private History of a Campaign That Failed,” related the misadventures of a Missouri guardsman much like Clemens who was driven from the military by the approach of a Union regiment headed by an officer apparently destined for greater things. “In time I came to learn that the Union colonel whose coming frightened me out of the war, and crippled the southern cause to that extent, was General Grant. I came within a few hours of seeing him when he was as unknown as I was myself, at a time when anybody could have said, ‘Grant—Ulysses S. Grant? I do not remember hearing the name before.’ ”

  20

  GRANT’S PROMOTION GAVE HIM GREATER AUTHORITY THAN HE HAD ever expected to wield. “My present command here numbers about 3000 and will be increased to 4000 tomorrow and probably much larger the next day,” he wrote Julia. The brigade included regiments unused to the Grant style. “Many of the officers seem to have so little command over their men, and military duty seems to be done so loosely, that I feel at present our resistance”—to enemy attack—“would be in the inverse ratio of the number of troops to resist with,” he told John Frémont. Yet things would change soon. “In two days I expect to have a very different state of affairs, and to improve them continuously.”

  Again he laid out the new dispensation. “Commanders will see that the men of their respective commands are always within the sound of the drum, and to this end there must be at least five roll calls per day,” he declared. “The commanding officer from each company must be present at each roll call and see that all absentees are reported and punished.… The strictest discipline is expected to be maintained in this camp, and the General Commanding will hold responsible for this all officers, and the degree of responsibility will be in direct ratio with the rank of the officer.” Again his efforts succeeded. “Order was soon restored,” he recalled succinctly.

  Yet certain developments were beyond his control. The rapid expansion of the army inevitably caused mix-ups as to who was senior to whom. Benjamin Prentiss had won appointment as brigadier general of Illinois volunteers during the spring, when Grant was still a civilian; Prentiss became a brigadier in the U.S. Army at the same time as Grant, early in August. He unsurprisingly thought he outranked Grant. But Grant knew the rules of the army, which in fact gave him seniority on account of his prior army service. When Prentiss refused to obey Grant’s orders, a confrontation ensued. Grant had relocated to southern Missouri, where he established temporary headquarters at Cape Girardeau, and had ordered Prentiss to take a position at Jackson, a short distance away. Grant set out from his office at Cape Girardeau to meet Prentiss at Jackson. “As I turned the first corner of a street after starting, I saw a column of cavalry passing the next street in front of me,” he remembered. “I turned and rode around the block the other way, so as to meet the head of the column. I found there General Prentiss himself, with a large escort. He had halted his troops at Jackson for the night, and had come on himself to Cape Girardeau, leaving orders for his command to follow him in the morning.” Grant confronted Prentiss and reminded him of the order to stay at Jackson. “He was very much aggrieved.” Words were exchanged, with each officer staking his claim to seniority. “I then ordered the General very peremptorily to countermarch his command and take it back to Jackson.” Prentiss did so but under protest.

  Frémont found in Grant’s favor, prompting Prentiss to threaten to resign. Frémont told him to cool off, and he gradually did so. But the incident left him angry and Grant eventually sad. “When I came to know him better, I regretted it much,” Grant reflected. “He was a brave and very earnest soldier. No man in the service was more sincere in his devotion to the cause for which we were battling.”

  Grant’s shift to southern Missouri reflected a change in the nature of t
he war. As long as both sides thought the conflict would be short, the fighting was chiefly tactical; each attempted to gain local advantage or show regional strength. But after Bull Run, as the prospect of a longer struggle set in, the two sides began to think strategically, in terms of total strength or weakness. And the West, which had seemed secondary to South Carolina and Virginia, suddenly became the central theater of the war. The West comprised the valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi, the heartland of the continent. Who controlled the West bid fair to control the country and decide the war.

  The cockpit of the West, for the moment at least, was the hundred-mile circle centered on Cairo, Illinois, where four states—Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee—and three rivers—the Ohio, Mississippi and Tennessee—came together. Grant got to Cairo in early September, on the same day that Confederate forces occupied Columbus, Kentucky, on the east bank of the Mississippi twenty miles downstream. Those forces could cause trouble if augmented, but more alarming at present was word that the Confederates were planning to seize Paducah, Kentucky, where the Tennessee entered the Ohio. “There was no time for delay,” Grant recalled. “I reported by telegraph to the department commander”—Frémont—“the information I had received, and added that I was taking steps to get off that night to be in advance of the enemy in securing that important point.” The war had stalled traffic on the Mississippi and Ohio, and dozens of steamers and their crews lay idle at Cairo. Grant offered work to the boats and men, and the latter quickly loaded fuel and fired up boilers. He ordered two regiments and an artillery battery aboard. He telegraphed Frémont again, not having received a reply to his earlier message, and said he would set off unless ordered otherwise.

 

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