Born to Battle

by Jack Hurst

  During the first week of October, apparently a few days after his raging encounter with Bragg, Forrest wrote his commander a letter of formal resignation from the Army of Tennessee. The letter arrived at headquarters at a lucky time. It turned out to constitute what would have been considered a minor addition to a major revolt.

  On October 4, twelve generals in the Army of Tennessee signed and sent to Jefferson Davis a petition to sack Bragg. The signers included Lieutenant Generals Longstreet, Hill, and Polk, Major Generals Buckner and Cleburne, and seven others. Forrest’s name was not among them.

  At Bragg’s urgent request, Davis hurried down from Richmond to resolve the dispute. Once he arrived, however, he displayed characteristic misjudgment of subordinates. He had not only predetermined to sustain Bragg but also resolved to find a place in Bragg’s army for the now notorious General John Pemberton, loser of Vicksburg. Davis arrived on October 9 and stayed until October 14. If he thought he could talk Bragg’s detractors out of their enmity or let them bluster themselves out of it, he was wrong. His obliviousness to their complaints only made things worse. After five days of raising the generals’ hopes that their demand for Bragg’s removal would be granted, he retained Bragg, let Bragg banish Hill, and transferred Polk to Joe Johnston in Mississippi. Longstreet sulkily headed his corps off toward Knoxville to battle Burnside.57

  Forrest, a mere brigadier and comparatively unlettered, was likely not invited to sign the generals’ petition. His name did figure, though, in Davis’s talks with Bragg. Forrest’s resignation was fresh, and Davis brought up Forrest’s earlier request to operate independently along the Mississippi; that would keep the rough-hewn Tennessean in the war and placate some western constituents, who were increasingly alarmed as Federal armies ravaged their territory. Davis was as ignorant of Forrest’s gifts as Bragg was impervious to them, but Davis knew the shrinking Confederacy needed all the help it could muster.

  On October 13, Bragg sent a note to Davis’s Richmond office releasing Forrest. The transfer of “that distinguished soldier . . . can now be granted without injury to the public interest in this quarter,” Bragg disingenuously wrote.58

  A week later, on October 20, Forrest remained unhappy. On that date, Bragg aide George Brent wrote in his diary, “Forrest is here and is much dissatisfied.” Probably Bragg had objected to giving Forrest a modest detachment with which to form the nucleus of the army he planned to raise in Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Forrest had requested his own 65-man escort, Morton’s artillery, Major Charles McDonald’s 160-man battalion, and the disputed 240 Kentuckians who had served with Morgan and whom Forrest had refused, in the face of a Bragg order, to dismount and convert to infantry.

  Davis again mediated. Having extended his Georgia trip to rally war support, the Confederate president summoned Forrest to meet him in Montgomery, Alabama. The two then rode a train to Atlanta, and Davis wrote Bragg on October 29 suggesting that Bragg grant Forrest’s request for the nucleus troops. Bragg complied with one exception: he kept the Kentuckians.59

  Around November 1, Forrest left Bragg’s neighborhood. He could never, however, escape Bragg’s influence, because Bragg’s long and disastrous stint with the Army of Tennessee was followed by service as Davis’s principal military advisor in Richmond. Well after the war, Davis would tell a Tennessee governor that he himself never understood Forrest’s worth before the contest was lost. By then, the deposed Confederate president seemed to recognize that this failure stemmed in considerable part from the shortsightedness of Bragg and commanders like him. But it never would have occurred to Davis that the oversight was more generally attributable to the myopia and class consciousness of the Dixie elite.

  “The trouble was that the generals commanding in the Southwest never appreciated Forrest until it was too late,” Davis said. “I was misled by them.”60

  To the contrary, the trouble was the South’s self-proclaimed “better class of people.” Forrest’s hands were too callused by the axe and the hoe, his nostrils too familiar with the stink of sweat, and his language too full of the commonness of the cotton field for their gentility to countenance. Davis and most of his generals were members of their circle. Forrest never could be.

  27

  SEPTEMBER—OCTOBER 1863—GRANT HEADS TO CHATTANOOGA

  “Hold at All Hazards . . . I Will Be There Soon”

  Even before his troops entered Vicksburg, Grant itched to keep pushing forward. On July 10, less than a week after the surrender and the day before Union troops escorted the last Confederate parolees out of the city, he wrote General Nathaniel Banks in Louisiana that he had “little idea” as to the next task of the Union’s western armies. But, he added, all his troops not needed to guard Vicksburg had started toward Jackson in pursuit of Joe Johnston the day Pemberton surrendered. William T. Sherman, commanding the pursuers, would “give Johnston no rest.”1

  Mopping up was the only job left in central Mississippi. Vicksburg’s capitulation—and the resultant surrender of disheartened Confederates at Port Hudson, Louisiana, four days later—had eliminated the last major points at which Confederates west of the Mississippi might cross the river to reinforce or supply their eastern comrades. Minor trafficking was reported at Natchez, south of Vicksburg, but Grant put an end to it. He sent a Federal division to rustle 5,000 head of Texas cattle gathered there for Johnston, whom Sherman hoped to bottle up at Jackson. Grant was also collecting and sending to Memphis railroad stock that by early August he thought might total 100 locomotives and 1,500 cars. Grant had begun gathering these back in December for use in his Vicksburg drive, but now his aim was to keep them out of Confederate hands and to supply other Federal campaigns.

  Sherman meanwhile began practicing the destructive tactics that would soon make him famous—or infamous—to Confederate adherents then and later. His men smashed rails, engines, cars, bridges, and machine shops for a hundred miles around, aiming for wreckage so thorough as to be irreparable as long as the war lasted. They also stripped the countryside of cattle, hogs, sheep, and poultry and appropriated corn in the fields to feed their transportation animals.

  Sherman acknowledged the horror of his ravages but justified them as militarily necessary. “The wholesale destruction to which this country is now being subjected is terrible to contemplate,” he wrote Grant on July 14, “but it is the scourge of war . . . destroying and weakening the resources of our enemy.”2

  The loss of Vicksburg had devastated Mississippi’s spirit of rebellion. Sherman reported to Grant on July 21, and Grant repeated to Henry Halleck, that many of the most influential citizens of the state capital had approached Sherman about reorganizing the state’s government under US authority so they would be spared further Federal destruction. “They admit themselves beaten . . . and charge their rulers and agitators with bringing ruin & misery on the state.”3

  While Sherman disemboweled south-central Mississippi, Grant focused on the horizon. Sherman had suggested that their next target should be Mobile, two hundred miles southeast of Vicksburg on the Gulf of Mexico. On July 18, Grant wrote Halleck to propose it. He added another Sherman suggestion: that the move should come from New Orleans, as a summer march from Vicksburg to Mobile would be too hot and dry. Sherman or Major General James McPherson should command, he wrote, because “the army does not afford an officer superior to either.”4

  Also seeking additional troops to garrison captured points and free up his army, Grant specifically asked that these new units be African American. He especially wanted an African American heavy-artillery unit to garrison Vicksburg. He wrote Union army adjutant general Lorenzo Thomas that he was “anxious to get as many of these” black regiments “as possible.” Arms for them would be no problem. He mentioned that the Vicksburg spoils included 50,000 stands of muskets and a large supply of cannon and shells.5

  Grant even sided with new black troops in a controversy that infuriated many white ones. Before the Milliken’s Bend battle, a white officer of a bla
ck unit had ordered a white soldier tied to a tree and whipped by black troops for “acts of wantonness” against the new enlistees and their families. Colonel Isaac Shepard of Massachusetts, the only officer in the area who had volunteered to lead a black unit without the common accompanying promotion to higher rank, ordered the whipping. He said he had seen many previous instances of white troops mistreating African Americans in his camp and in the neighboring village of the “contrabands”; he also claimed to have repeatedly protested to the whipped soldier’s commander. A military court deliberated; Shepard’s command of the First Mississippi African Descent was suspended pending a verdict. The Milliken’s Bend fight occurred in the meantime, and Shepard fought in the ranks with his men.

  The court’s investigation found that two troopers of the Tenth Illinois Cavalry had entered Shepard’s camp and, for no reason, beat and kicked a black private who was tied to a tree for disciplinary reasons. They also attacked two women and beat a fourteen-year-old boy. The Tenth’s officers ignored these acts, so Shepard sent soldiers of the First Mississippi to get them. He took testimony from the private and the boy, then ordered a white trooper tied to a tree and whipped by black troops—with bushes, not a whip. He left the trooper tied to the tree for Illinois officers to retrieve.6

  Its officers were called to other duty, so the court produced no final judgment. The troops themselves were bitterly divided over the episode; in their testimony, whites defended their comrades, and blacks defended theirs. Grant sided with the latter. He wrote Washington that the incident stemmed from “outrageous treatment of the Black troops by some of the white ones, and the failure of their officers to punish the perpetrators.” He reinstated Shepard to command of his unit and endorsed Thomas’s nomination of Shepard for promotion to brigadier general. But, to avoid further controversy, he refused Shepard’s request that the court proceedings be published to counter bad publicity. An army officer should be satisfied with an investigation in which his superiors approved his conduct, regardless of a hostile press, Grant held. That was the only satisfaction Shepard got. The US Senate never confirmed the promotion of this officer who had let blacks whip a white man.7

  Grant likely risked embracing such unpopular causes as black enlistment and Colonel Shepard’s defense so stoutly because his own popularity was growing. After Vicksburg, Grant’s public approval in and out of the army soared. When news of the surrender reached Washington, Halleck nominated him for major general in the regular army, rather than merely of volunteers, and he was swiftly confirmed. This made his rank and pay permanent, ensuring his family’s security—provided the Union won the war. That Congress confirmed Gettysburg victor Major General George Meade as only a regular army brigadier reflects Grant’s national standing after Vicksburg. Soon Sherman and McPherson, too, were made regular army brigadiers.8

  Grant was emphatically rising, but his success did not beguile him into the pomposity or officiousness exhibited by most of his politicking superiors and peers. A letter he did not write illustrates the stark contrast between him and them: he sent no reply to the grateful note Lincoln wrote him on July 13 saying the Vicksburg campaign had proved Grant smarter than Lincoln himself. The president wrote again on August 9 to explain why the Mobile campaign Grant favored could not be undertaken just then. French activity in Mexico necessitated quick reestablishment of Federal power in West Texas. Lincoln also mentioned that he was “very glad” if, as War Department official Charles Dana had reported, Grant thought the Emancipation Proclamation was aiding war efforts.

  Grant did reply to Lincoln’s second letter. He thanked the president and said he saw the wisdom of the administration’s wish to safeguard Texas. Emancipation, he added, was the heaviest blow yet struck against the Confederacy because, since its proclamation, the Confederates were getting reduced labor even out of those slaves who did not flee. He said he remained in favor of enlisting blacks to garrison points already taken and others likely to be seized soon.9

  Grant probably had good reasons for not replying to Lincoln’s first note. After the Vicksburg victory the president had begun to weigh the idea of bringing Grant to Virginia to lead the Army of the Potomac. Lincoln was deeply disappointed with General Meade’s failure to pursue Robert E. Lee after Gettysburg. Lee had been trapped in Maryland by the flooding Potomac for several days in mid-July; yet Meade waited a full week after the battle before going after him, and Lee had escaped to Virginia, where Meade now did little more than watch him. But Grant did not want to go east. He told Dana in a letter of August 5 that Dana and Halleck had correctly assumed a transfer eastward would bring him “sadness.” In the west he knew all the commanders and their territories, he said; in the east he would have to start over. And importing a general into an army already full of them would engender dissatisfaction among the others.10

  Grant’s ambition was oblique at best. He sprang from a class accustomed to limited possibilities. His mother espoused religious humility, and if the religion did not stick so deeply in her son, the humility did. He also had a superstitious belief that grasping for advancement to a higher position invited bad luck once the position was gained. So Grant’s ambition manifested itself as determination to do his best in every job, trusting that this would lead to promotion. But in the late summer of 1863, he did not want his hard work to lead him east. He had dealt with plenty of backstabbers where he was.11

  On August 31, Grant wrote of an incident that boded ill for the Confederacy. To Halleck, he reported evidences of slave insurrection. Armed nonmilitary blacks had killed several white men north of Vicksburg, apparently because some of the local whites had tried to intimidate the blacks by whipping and even shooting them. Grant said the killings probably were cases of retaliation.

  If Grant seemed untroubled by such reports of black retaliations against Southern whites, he also seemed too trusting about the fate of black soldiers who fell into Confederate hands. He continued to believe—or to want to believe—that General Richard Taylor, son of his old Mexican War role model, had told the truth after the Milliken’s Bend battle, when he said the blacks captured there and elsewhere were being treated humanely. Grant wrote Halleck on August 29 that he had seen no evidence of ill treatment to any Federals “further than the determination to turn over to Governors of states all colored soldiers captured.” About what even that might mean to the black captives, he did not speculate.12

  The Army of the Tennessee was worn-out and increasingly ill with malaria and the innumerable diseases of camp. Its two months of battle and siege under the angry Mississippi sun demanded rest and recuperation.

  Its commander, though, was no good at resting. Idleness imperiled Grant; his old thirst appeared to reassert itself when his job did not demand his full attention. This danger mounted in late August, when he accompanied Julia as far as Cairo as she took the Grant children to St. Louis for a new school year. Julia’s presence was the strongest bastion against her husband’s drinking; abstemious friend and aide John Rawlins surely winced to see her go. Grant wrote a brother-in-law that he had taken the Cairo trip for “a little recreation.” Arriving back in Vicksburg alone, he decided to go to New Orleans. He had orders from Halleck to cooperate with General Banks in Louisiana, so he took the opportunity to leave his department (and, perhaps not coincidentally, Rawlins) to visit his colleague. In the New Orleans suburb of Carrollton, he accepted an invitation to review Banks’s army on September 4.13

  He was given, or chose, a horse so unruly two men were required to hold it as he mounted. Yet the review went well. Banks’s men hurrahed the resplendently uniformed Vicksburg hero.

  Then came trouble. The holder of the West Point jump record loved a hard gallop, but heading back toward his hotel in downtown New Orleans, he got more than even he could handle. The horse, spooked by the blast of a whistle from a trolley, banged a shoulder against the vehicle and became uncontrollable. The adept equestrian kept the saddle, but he might have been better off had he not. The horse fell, and, goin
g down, all but crushed Grant’s right leg beneath its body.14

  Was he drunk? Almost certainly. Banks, Major General William B. Franklin, and newspaper correspondent Sylvanus Cadwallader all suggested as much. Even Grant’s laconic account is ambiguous. It says the horse, “shying at a locomotive in the street, fell, probably on me. I was rendered insensible.” His indication that he did not remember the horse falling on him hints that he may already have been “insensible.”15

  He awoke at a hotel unable to move his right leg. Doctors said no bones were broken, but he was feverish and in excruciating pain. His fever passed; the agony did not. The injured leg had swollen from knee to thigh, and the swelling continued up his body to the armpit, appearing ready to burst. For a week, pain prevented him from turning over in bed on his own. He ordered a steamboat to Carrollton to return him to Vicksburg, but ten days elapsed before he could board it. He finally did on a stretcher.16

  He arrived back in Vicksburg on September 16. Rawlins wrote Halleck on September 17 that, although unable to walk, Grant was “able for duty.” Hardly. He did not even write a letter until two days later, and that one he atypically dictated.17

  Grant’s injury hampered the Union war effort. Lincoln and Halleck, having long beseeched Rosecrans to move, now were frightened by his reckless dispersal of forces in northern Georgia and by Burnside’s blithe slothfulness in linking up with him from East Tennessee. On September 13, a week before the massive Confederate offensive against Rosecrans at Chickamauga, Halleck wrote that he wanted Grant in command there. He lamented that Grant was unable to take the field.18

  Grant’s all-out efforts to help from afar suggest the difference he might have made at Chickamauga. Halleck ordered him to send Rosecrans as many men as he could spare, and Grant stripped his units to the minimum. He redirected two divisions that had already started toward Arkansas, added one of Sherman’s and one of McPherson’s, and put the whole under Sherman’s command. He sent them by boat 220 miles to Memphis, where they were joined by a fifth division from General Stephen A. Hurlbut. The 20,000-man force then began to trek 240 miles overland to Chattanooga, to which Rosecrans had retreated from Chickamauga.19