by Jack Hurst
That bluff-crowning city was doubly strategic. In addition to being the Confederates’ last real bastion on the Father of Waters, it was the western terminus of a railroad link to important Confederate munitions factories at Selma, Alabama. With the Union now controlling the more northern Memphis & Charleston line, the tracks out of Vicksburg connecting with a line in Louisiana comprised the Confederacy’s last means of rapidly transporting foodstuffs, matériel, and armies eastward from the southwest.
But Forrest’s Murfreesboro coup in July momentarily stalled further Confederate contraction. Buell—having reached Huntsville, Alabama, on his trek toward Chattanooga—was furious. He cashiered the timid Colonel Lester and termed the Federal dereliction of duty at Murfreesboro one of the most disgraceful “in the history of wars.” He informed Halleck that a dozen regiments had already been guarding the newly completed rail line that Forrest had just closed once again. Repairs would require another two weeks, during which Buell could not even consider advancing on Chattanooga. Instead, he would have to detail still more guards for the tracks.2
Rather than the brief sprint both sides had signed up for, the war was morphing into a marathon. Hints of its increasing ugliness had emerged in late June 1862, as Grant had headquartered in Memphis to accommodate a visit from Julia.
The preeminent city in West Tennessee, Memphis seethed with the same civilian resentment that the Federal occupiers of Murfreesboro had faced, except worse. Grant soon junked a forbearing policy toward Confederate sympathizers. That policy—instituted in the hope that average Southerners were lukewarm on secession and thus not dangerous—had signally failed. Most Memphians appeared steadfastly rebellious. The city’s clergymen insisted on praying for Jefferson Davis each Sabbath, and citizens refused to attend a formerly well-patronized church where a loyalist minister had been installed to preach to Union troops.3
On July 1, Grant closed the disloyal Memphis Avalanche, which resurfaced a few days later as a repentant Memphis Bulletin. He announced on July 3 that Federal losses of matériel to guerrillas would be replaced by personal property taken from Confederate sympathizers in the neighborhoods where the losses occurred. The same day, he decreed that guerrillas operating outside the regular Confederate command structure would not be treated as prisoners of war. On July 14, lacking enough troops to control “violent” Confederate kin, he ordered an evacuation southward by all Memphis families of Confederate soldiers or officials.4
More wrenching measures loomed. In mid-July, a day or so after receiving two-thirds of Halleck’s former job, Grant wrote to Illinois congressman Elihu Washburne saying that he had hoped for a different one: “the taking of Vicksburg.” The Mississippi town was the obvious next, mammoth prize for Federals in the West. Its capture would open the Mississippi to Union gunboats from end to end, cut Dixie in two, and close to Confederate use the Vicksburg railroad. Taking Vicksburg, Grant later reflected, would be “equal to the amputation of a limb” in its effect on the enemy.5
Washburne’s reply was momentous in the advice it offered. The congressman said he had “learned with great pleasure” that Grant had been reinstated and given a widened command. He added that the Northern public—and, by inference, officials of the Lincoln administration and many members of Congress—would see Grant’s return as “the precursor of more . . . vigorous operations.” He then endorsed the kind of policy Grant had instituted in Memphis. Average US citizens, he said, “want to see war. This matter of guarding rebel property, of protecting secessionists . . . is ‘played out’ in public estimation.”
Washburne then proposed that Grant wield a harsher hand against secessionist sympathizers, making them suffer economically for their disloyalty. He suggested, by inference, that Grant begin uprooting the South’s long-controversial economic foundation. He should promote the decamping of slaves from disloyal Southern owners and be aware that the Lincoln administration was leaning toward enlisting fugitive slaves as soldiers. Most Americans would have found the latter unthinkable a few months before. A Midwestern transplant hailing from Maine, Washburne could not have known the depth of horror and rage what he was outlining could engender in the Caucasian South, where armed African American insurrection had been a nightmare equated for centuries with doom. The Lincoln administration, Washburne said, had finally agreed with “the people” that blacks must henceforth be put to work—laboring or fighting—for the North instead of the South, and the general who best instituted this new idea would “be held in the highest estimation.”
“The idea that a man can be in the rebel army, leaving his negroes and property behind him to be protected by our troops, is to me shocking,” Washburne continued. “If the constitution or slavery must perish, let slavery go to the wall.”6
Grant knew from working fields alongside slaves—as well as with Caucasian Southern subsistence farmers—the wrenching nature of this concept. But he could also see its military benefit. The latter, along with longstanding sympathy for the enslaved, now began to drive a progression in his attitude.
Grant had initially opposed on military grounds the encouragement of slave escapes. He thought it would stiffen Southern opposition and add to the Union army’s task. In mid-June, he had written home complaining of “negro stealing” by soldiers, saying it helped Confederate leaders whip up hysteria by painting Federals as abolitionists. But in mid-July, with the Grants occupying the plantation house of a Confederate sympathizer named Francis W. Whitfield on the outskirts of Corinth, Grant asked Halleck if he could “let . . . go” slave women and children that Whitfield wanted to send to relatives farther south. Significantly, this request slightly predated Washburne’s letter. And in early August, having had time to digest Washburne’s views, Grant guardedly wrote his slavery-hating father, who could not be trusted to keep their correspondence private, that he had no personal preference “with regard to the negro, either to effect his freedom or to continue his bondage. If Congress pass any law and the president approves it, I am willing to execute it.” He said he did not believe a soldier should even discuss “the propriety of laws and official orders.”7
Two weeks later, in mid-August, a letter from Grant to his sister expressed growing comfort with the army’s de facto “negro stealing,” which he said was making the war “oppressive to the Southern people.” Slaves were getting restless, following back to camp every detachment of soldiers that went out. He had begun employing blacks “as teamsters, Hospital attendants, company cooks &c. thus saving soldiers to carry the musket.” He added a note reminiscent of the feelings he had shown in 1859 (but never discussed) in freeing, rather than selling, the only slave he ever owned.
“I don’t know what is to become of these poor people in the end,” he wrote, but he rejoiced that taking them weakened the enemy.8
Grant needed all the help he could get. He soon barely had enough troops to defend his Department of West Tennessee. Halleck ordered him to send two divisions to Buell, then another, and then a fourth. Grant’s 80,000 men shrank to 46,000.
He could barely defend what he held. He wrote his sister Mary in mid-August that his job was to “keep open” the Mississippi, Tennessee, and Cumberland Rivers, as well as railroad tracks from Columbus, Kentucky, to Corinth, Mississippi; from Corinth to Decatur, Alabama; and from Jackson, Tennessee, to Bolivar, Tennessee. Guerrillas hovered everywhere. His men were kept busy whipping them every day, he wrote.
Confederate activity in fact appeared threatening, he wrote Mary, and he did not exaggerate. South of him, Confederate general Earl Van Dorn, by combining his forces with those of General Sterling Price, could amass an army nearly the size of Grant’s own, and to the north Confederate cavalry bands were bedeviling his supply routes. In mid-August he sent his family to St. Louis after less than a month in the Whitfield plantation house.
That raised another problem. Where could Julia live long enough for the children to attend school for the term starting in September? The wife of Grant staffer William Hillyer occupi
ed a “nice” St. Louis residence and was alone, “and it may be that she and Julia will keep house together,” he wrote. Julia, though, preferred Covington, Kentucky, where Grant’s parents lived—perhaps so the in-laws could help with the children.9
Another worry was simultaneously personal and military. Congressman turned brigadier John McClernand, commanding the First Division of the Army of the Tennessee at Jackson, Tennessee, had an infuriating habit of sidestepping the chain of command. Grant already disliked and feared McClernand for befriending and praising William J. Kountz, who had filed the drunkenness charges against Grant back in January. A former congressman, McClernand was also a shameless self-promoter, writing letters baldly aimed at self-advancement to the president and other high government officials. On July 9, he had asked Grant’s congressman friend, Washburne, to recommend him for command of a corps comprising two divisions of new Illinois troops. And he wanted a transfer east, away from Halleck and Grant. That request was nipped in the bud when, just two days later, Halleck himself was called east to supervise all the Federal armies; thus, McClernand could no longer escape Halleck’s supervision by going there. In August Halleck rebuked McClernand for sending Lincoln a request for a leave unapproved by Grant. He had violated army regulations, Halleck told him, adding that it was not the first time.
Grant’s annoyance grew. McClernand’s White House ties remained dangerous, but Grant now knew that he at least need not fear McClernand’s ingratiating himself with Halleck. He had been around his chief long enough to know Halleck despised civilian interference in military matters; for that reason, he cared less for the militarily unschooled recent politician than he did for Grant.
But McClernand kept pushing. When another officer turned up to investigate destruction of government property in his district, McClernand threatened large consequences if anyone again encroached on what he maintained was his territory. At the same time, he charged Brigadier General James B. McPherson, fast becoming one of Grant’s most trusted lieutenants, with letting the railroads ship civilian goods in preference to military matériel; McPherson fired back that he was doing all possible to prevent such smuggling and would pay no attention to complaints from “Officers who know nothing about the circumstances and . . . misstate facts.” Again, when Major General Edward O. C. Ord entered Bolivar, McClernand indignantly inquired of Grant on whose authority Ord had come. This time Grant tartly informed him that as commander he would order any officer wherever in his department he wished. McClernand countered hotly, protesting Grant’s “boast of authority.”10
And McClernand’s scheming was by no means the only ongoing annoyance. There was always the hypersensitive Halleck to deal with. The Union’s new general in chief required careful deference, despite which he nonetheless periodically burst into fits of waspish rage, then resented it when Grant took offense. On June 29, two weeks before Lincoln ordered Halleck east, a band of Confederates had captured a supply train and its Federal guard detachment, and Grant reported hearing from behind Confederate lines that 30,000 enemy were at Abbeville, Mississippi, intending to march on LaGrange, Tennessee, as soon as a bridge over the Tallahatchie River was repaired. Halleck replied, “You say thirty thousand rebels at Shelbyville to attack LaGrange. Where is Shelbyville? I can’t find it on any map.” Furthermore, he believed no such attack to be imminent. Why did Grant not obtain “facts? It looks . . . like a mere stampede.” After making this implied slur on Grant’s courage, he instructed Grant to investigate loss of the train “and ascertain facts. I mean to make somebody responsible for so gross a negligence.”
Grant replied angrily. He corrected Halleck’s mistaking Abbeville for Shelbyville and added that he heeded “as little of . . . floating rumors” as anybody. Indeed, he had sent for cavalry to make an investigation of the train incident before Halleck demanded it. And, Grant added, “stampeding is not my weakness.” Halleck waited nearly a week, then responded as if it were Grant who was overreacting. In ordering him to investigate the loss of the train, he said, he had not implied that Grant was at fault. He had only directed a gathering of the facts, “and you take offense at the order, as intended to reflect upon you! Nor did I suppose for a minute that you were stampeded; for I know that is not in your nature. . . . I was very much surprised at the tone of your dispatch, and the ill feeling manifested in it . . . toward one who has so often befriended you.”11
Such were dealings with Henry Halleck.
Then there was the other war—the one with the Confederates. Charged with protecting undermanned outposts dotting ultrahostile northern Mississippi and western Tennessee, Grant could only watch the enemy grab the initiative.
On July 23, Grant notified Halleck that Confederates were departing Tupelo, Mississippi—“in what direction or for what purpose is not . . . certain.” Rumor, however, had it that a heavy Confederate column had moved on July 7 toward Chattanooga. Grant began to suspect that the best western Confederates were heading to Virginia to aid Lee while the rest would try to hold him and Buell in check. But his July 23 dispatch also contained other odd information. He had learned from spies that at Tupelo, Confederate major general Sterling Price of Missouri had made a speech to his troops promising to return them to Missouri by way of Kentucky.
Grant kept watching. On July 29 he reported that Union colonel Phil Sheridan had driven six hundred Confederates from Ripley, Mississippi, and captured a captain and thirty interesting letters. Some were from Richmond, but most were from members of the Twenty-sixth Alabama Infantry. These indicated that a significant number of troops were going by rail from Tupelo roundabout through Mobile, Alabama, to Chattanooga. Meanwhile, wagons were hauling their equipage cross-country to the rail station at Rome, Georgia.12
Three weeks later, a closer threat emerged. Thirty-two thousand Confederates left behind in Mississippi—halved between Price at Tupelo and Van Dorn at Vicksburg—were uniting to attack. The question was where. Meanwhile, 3,500 Confederate cavalry under Colonels Frank Armstrong and William H. Jackson had linked up in northern Mississippi and sped northwest toward Bolivar, Tennessee. Grant and his subordinates, puzzling over the upshot, inked much paper during August’s last days. On August 30, six Federal cavalry companies and a section of artillery clashed repeatedly with Armstrong and Jackson a few miles out of Bolivar. Armstrong was erroneously reported killed. A Union lieutenant colonel died leading a saber charge.13
The carnage from mid-July to mid-September equaled that of most of the famous battles of the Mexican War, Grant later recalled. The little Bolivar-Jackson campaign, all but forgotten today, was a mini-bloodbath for the Confederate attackers. But Armstrong’s cavalry thrust accomplished much. By his account, he had destroyed all bridges and a “mile of trestle work” between Jackson and Bolivar, killed two Union colonels and one lieutenant colonel, and captured 8 other officers and 213 prisoners. This drew much of Grant’s attention north, away from the targets Price and Van Dorn were eyeing.14
Grant had connections to both Confederate commanders. Price had been governor of Missouri when Grant was struggling at farming there. And Van Dorn, eight months older than Grant, had been one class ahead of him at West Point. An elegant Mississippi plantation dandy and ladies’ man, Van Dorn likely would not have had—or wanted—much association with Grant. Grant probably felt the same about Van Dorn.
The day after the Bolivar fight, August 31, the mystery surrounding Confederate intentions in Grant’s department cleared a bit. Michigan cavalry captured a Confederate courier from Chattanooga carrying mail saying that Major General Braxton Bragg was now in command there. Major General William J. Hardee was Bragg’s top subordinate, and Beauregard was not present at all. Most important, Bragg’s troops were said to be on the march, headed for Nashville. Reportedly numbering 70,000, they were traveling light, carrying no tents and accompanied by just one wagon per hundred troops.15
The captured letters did not mention epic plans Bragg had for Price and Van Dorn. He wanted these two Mississippi subor
dinates to deal with Rosecrans at Corinth and Sherman at Memphis, then march their armies north. They were to join Bragg in a grandiose sweep whose aim was breathtaking. It meant to flank the Federals out of Nashville from the northeast, force Buell to drop the Chattanooga drive and defend northern Kentucky, whip Buell in the Bluegrass State, and push the Union all the way back to the Ohio River.16
Bragg had neglected one factor, though. To deal with Rosecrans and Sherman, Price and Van Dorn would also have to confront the Federal department commander: Grant. Bragg, hero artillerist of the Mexican War and four years Grant’s senior, likely misjudged the ex-captain with whom he had participated in several of the same Mexican battles. Stampeding was not Grant’s weakness, as he had lately reminded Halleck, and now, ringed by foes in enemy territory, he would show how true that was.17
Bands of Confederate and guerrilla cavalry were striking Federal outposts across West Tennessee and northern Mississippi in the first half of September, but with no discernible pattern. Their goals remained unclear to Grant for the first half of September. On August 31, on the Tennessee River south of Fort Henry, two hundred Confederates captured and burned a transport steamer loaded with coal to fuel Federal gunboats. Another two hundred Confederates attacked a forty-man bridge guard post near Humboldt northwest of Jackson. They burned the camp and set the bridge afire before being chased farther down the track by counterattacking guards. Their target had been a freight train bound for Holly Springs, Mississippi, but two fugitive slaves from the hamlet where the Confederates camped the previous night had stolen away and warned Federal mounted infantry. The horsemen kept the attackers off a larger bridge south of Humboldt. The Confederates fired into, but could not stop, the train.18