Grant and Sherman: The Friendship that Won the Civil War

by Charles Bracelen Flood

  The first men coming up the bluff to reinforce Grant’s army, marching with bayonets fixed on their muskets, were from a Kentucky brigade, troops who had been contemptuous of Sherman when he commanded them so timorously at Louisville. Now, as they reached the top of the bluff, they saw him sitting calmly on a horse in the evening light, a bloody bandage covering one hand, powder stains and crusted blood on his face, and his hat blown to rags. Putting their hats on their bayonets, they raised their muskets toward the sky and cheered him as they passed.

  That night, Beauregard slept in Sherman’s tent, while the battlefield echoed with the sound of United States Navy gunboats periodically firing at the enemy. At ten o’clock it started to rain in the torrential way it had when the Confederates were on the march from Corinth. Until late, Grant rode around his camp, watching as thousands of reinforcements marched in and talking with his commanders as he came to them. Perhaps remembering the moment at Fort Donelson when he sensed that whoever attacked next would win the battle, he said to one of his brigadiers, “Whichever side takes the initiative in the morning will make the other retire, and Beauregard will be mighty smart if he attacks before I do.”

  As the battlefield turned to mud—Grant said that, with their tents in enemy hands, “our troops were exposed to the storm without shelter”—agonized moans came from both the wounded who lay lost in the dark and the men being treated by overworked surgeons and medical orderlies. Grant described part of his experience during that night of suffering.

  I made my headquarters under a tree a few hundred yards back from the riverbank. My ankle was so much swollen from the fall of my horse the Friday night preceding, and the bruise was so painful that I could get no rest. The drenching rain would have precluded the possibility of sleep without this additional cause.

  Some time after midnight, growing restive under the storm and the continuous pain, I moved back to the log-house under the bank. This had been taken as a hospital, and all night wounded men were being brought in, their wounds dressed, a leg or an arm amputated as the case might require, and everything was being done to save life or alleviate suffering. The sight was more unendurable than encountering the enemy’s fire, and I returned to my tree in the rain.

  Sherman found him there, standing under that tree in the rainy night, supporting himself on a crutch. Grant had a lantern in one hand; his coat collar was up; rain dripped from the brim of his hat. He had a cigar clenched in his teeth. At this point Sherman, like Grant, knew that the incomplete casualty lists were already enormous: of the forty thousand Union soldiers who had started the day, ten thousand would be listed as killed, wounded, or missing, more than two thousand of the latter as prisoners. Thousands who had run from the battle still sat demoralized beside the river, huddled together in the rain, useless as soldiers.

  During this bloody and terrible day, Grant had learned a lot about Sherman; now Sherman was about to encounter the essence of Grant. Sherman had reached the conclusion that the relentlessly courageous Confederate attacks had so shocked and battered the Union divisions that, even with the arrival of reinforcements, it would be best “to put the river between us and the enemy, and recuperate.” He had sought out Grant to discuss how they could make such a withdrawal, from this bank of the river to the other side. Now, looking at Grant’s strong, thoughtful face in the rain and lantern light, he was “moved by some wise and sudden instinct” not to mention retreat. Instead he said, “Well, Grant, we’ve had the devil’s own day of it, haven’t we?”

  Grant said, “Yes,” and remained silent for a minute as they stood together in the falling rain, Grant on one crutch and in pain from his injured ankle, and Sherman in pain from his wounded hand. Then Grant added, “Lick ’em tomorrow, though.”

  Dawn brought something close to the reverse image of the previous day. Beauregard, who the night before had sent Jefferson Davis a wire that included the triumphant words “A COMPLETE VICTORY,” said of his frame of mind, “I thought I had General Grant just where I wanted him and could finish him up in the morning.” He might have been less confident if he had received a report from Nathan Bedford Forrest, who dressed several of his cavalrymen in federal uniforms—had they been captured, they would have been executed as spies—and sent them to penetrate Grant’s lines. They returned with reports of thousands of troops disembarking at Pittsburg Landing throughout the night, but when Forrest passed this on to Hardee, that general thought that the scouts had seen Grant evacuating his army. Beauregard never received any intelligence that Grant was being reinforced.

  Grant intended to strike first, and hard. By three a.m. he had given orders to his commanders to push forward “heavy lines of skirmishers” at first light and keep moving until they encountered the enemy. Entire Union divisions were to march right behind the skirmishers, “to engage the enemy as soon as found.” As usual, Grant left his commanders with great flexibility as to how to implement his plan: when Brigadier General Lew Wallace, commander of a newly arrived division of reinforcements (and the man who later wrote Ben-Hur) asked him where to start placing his troops for the dawn attack, Grant pointed toward Sherman’s end of the line and said, “Move out that way.” In answer to Wallace’s question as to what formation he should adopt, Grant responded, “I leave that to your discretion.” Wallace said of Grant’s manner, “If he had studied to be undramatic, he could not have succeeded better.”

  The battle resumed at first light. A soldier of the Thirty-eighth Tennessee said, “At daybreak our pickets came rushing in under a murderous fire. The first thing we knew we were almost surrounded by six or seven regiments of Yankees.” This time it was the Confederates who could not hold. Union brigadier Jacob Ammen, an old West Pointer who had been Grant’s mathematics instructor at the academy, recorded that “the rebels fall back slowly, stubbornly, but they are losing ground.” At places the Southerners counterattacked, but this morning Grant, with twenty thousand new if untried reinforcements, had the momentum and the same number of men as the day before, while Beauregard had only half his previous day’s strength and no replacements on the way.

  Once again, Grant, like Sherman, was in places of danger, and sometimes encountered trouble in places he did not consider hazardous. After a morning during which the outnumbered Confederates kept withdrawing but never broke, Grant and two members of his staff, Colonel James B. McPherson and a Major Hawkins, were, as Grant recalled, riding

  along the northern edge of a clearing, very leisurely, toward the river above [upstream from] the landing. There did not appear to be an enemy to our right, until suddenly a battery with musketry opened upon us from the edge of the woods on the other side of the clearing. The shells and balls whistled about our ears very fast for about a minute. I do not think it took longer than that for us to get out of range and out of sight. In the sudden start we made, Major Hawkins lost his hat. He did not stop to pick it up.

  When we arrived at a perfectly safe position we halted to take account of damages. McPherson’s horse was panting as if ready to drop. On examination it was found that a ball had struck him forward of the flank just back of the saddle, and gone entirely through. In a few minutes the poor beast dropped dead; he had given no sign of injury until we came to a stop. A ball had struck the metal scabbard of my sword, just below the hilt, and broken it nearly off; before the battle was over it had broken off entirely. There were three of us: One had lost a horse, killed; one a hat and one a sword-scabbard. All were thankful that it was no worse.

  It was two-thirty. Both sides had been fighting since dawn. The Confederates were still in the battle—one of Hardee’s brigades, after a failed counterattack, had lost 1,000 killed and wounded, out of 2,750 who had started fighting the previous morning—but, as one of Beauregard’s staff said, “The fire and animation had left our troops.” Another of Beauregard’s staff went to him and put the matter gently. “General,” he said, “do you not think our troops are very much in the condition of lump sugar, thoroughly soaked with water, but ye
t preserving its original shape, though ready to dissolve? Would it not be judicious to get away with what we have?”

  Beauregard, who was in all probability not thinking of his suffering army as a lump of sugar, replied, “I intend to withdraw in a few minutes.” Some two thousand soldiers and twelve cannon were placed near Shiloh Church to cover the withdrawal, and within an hour the remnants of the late Albert Sidney Johnston’s army began an orderly retreat back down the road to Corinth.

  Here was the moment for Grant’s divisions to strike them from the rear and vanquish them all, but the Union soldiers had nothing left. Men lay on the muddy ground, panting and vomiting from exhaustion; some fell asleep right where they were after these two days of battle; others who had been sick gave way to their illnesses. Grant said that he “wanted to pursue, but had not the heart to order the men who had fought desperately for two days, lying in the mud and rains whenever not fighting,” and concluded that “my force was too much fatigued to pursue. Night closed in cloudy and with terrible rain, making the roads impracticable for artillery by the next morning.”

  This was not going to be as clear-cut a scene of victory as at Fort Donelson, with thousands of Confederate soldiers marching out of their earthworks to surrender. In fact, it was going to be far worse than that for the Southern soldiers. Within a mile or two down the Corinth road, men began staggering to the side of the road and falling, unable to go on. The retreating column was seven miles long, and a man with them described it.

  Here was a long line of wagons, loaded with wounded, piled in like bags of grain, groaning and cursing, while the mules plunged on in mud and water belly-deep, the water sometimes coming into the wagons. A cold, drizzling rain commenced about midnight and soon came harder and faster, then turned to pitiless blinding hail. This storm raged with unrelenting violence for three hours. I passed wagon trains filled with wounded and dying soldiers without even a blanket to shield them from the driving sleet and hail, which fell as large as partridge eggs, until it lay on the ground two inches deep.

  The next morning, Sherman rode forward down the Corinth Road with four infantry brigades and some cavalry, not to resume the battle but to make sure that all the Confederates were in fact leaving the area. In some confusing terrain, he found himself and his staff separated from the screen of federal infantrymen who were supposed to be moving ahead of them. His sudden vulnerability was noticed by Nathan Bedford Forrest, who was guarding the rear of the Confederate column with 350 of his intrepid mounted troopers. Forrest shouted “Charge!” and came right for Sherman and the officers around him.

  “I and my staff ingloriously fled pell mell through the mud,” Sherman recalled. “I am sure that if Forrest had not emptied his pistols as he passed through the skirmish line, my career would have ended right there.” Forrest’s career also nearly ended: intent on trying to kill or capture what he rightly thought was a general and his staff, he spurred his horse through the underbrush straight into a line of federal foot soldiers he had not seen and was hit by a bullet that stopped in his back. With his unfailing presence of mind, Forrest grabbed a Union soldier up off the ground from where he stood, somehow placed the man behind him on his horse so that the soldier’s comrades would not shoot at this human shield, and galloped away—the last man to shed blood at Shiloh.

  When Sherman rode back into his original encampment around Shiloh Church at the head of the force he had taken down the Corinth Road, soldiers came from all directions to hail him. As the cheers went “rolling down the line,” a man who was there said that “he rode slowly, his grizzled face beaming with animation, his tall form swaying from side to side, his arms waving.” Halting on his horse in the middle of a crowd, his raspy voice rang out: “Boys, you have won a great victory. The enemy has retreated to Corinth.”

  For Grant and Sherman, there was the matter of telling their wives. Within hours of Sherman’s triumphant return to camp, Grant wrote home.

  Dear Julia,

  Again another terrible battle has occurred in which our arms have been victorious. For the numbers engaged and the tenacity with which both parties held on for two days, it has no equal on this continent. The best troops of their rebels were engaged … and their ablest generals … The loss on both sides was heavy probably not less than 20,000 killed and wounded altogether.

  I got through all safe having but one shot which struck my sword but did not touch me.

  I am detaining a steamer to carry this and must cut it short.

  Give my love to all at home. Kiss the children for me. The same for yourself.

  Good night dear Julia.

  Ulys.

  Three days later, Sherman told his wife of Shiloh in a long letter, the end of which is missing, which he began almost in the tone of an excited schoolboy.

  Dearest Ellen,

  Well we have had a big battle where they shot real bullets and I am safe, except a buckshot wound in the hand and a bruised shoulder from a spent ball … Beauregard, Bragg[,] Johnston, Breckinridge and all their Big men were here, with their best soldiers and after the Battle was over I found among the prisoners an old Louisiana Cadet named Barrow who sent for me and told me all about the others, many of whom were here and Knew they were fighting me. I gave him a pair of socks, drawers and Shirt and treated him very kindly. I won[’]t attempt to give an account of the Battle, but they Say that I accomplished some important results, and Gen. Grant makes special mention of me in his report which he shew [sic] me …

  The scenes on this field would have cured anybody of war. Mangled bodies, dead, dying, in every conceivable shape, without heads, legs; and horses! All I can say this was a Battle … I know you will read all accounts—cut out paragraphs with my name for Willy’s future Study—all Slurs you will hide away, and gradually convince yourself that I am a soldier as famous as Gen. [Nathanael, of the Revolution] Greene …

  You ask for money—I have none, and am now without horse saddle bridle, bed, or anything—The Rebels, Breckinridge had my Camp and cleaned me out.

  At about this time, Sherman began his appraisal of the performance during the battle of his officers and men, and brought court-martial charges against four of the twelve commanders of his infantry regiments. Addressing the assembled officers and men of the Fifty-third Ohio, most of whom had fled with their commander, Colonel Appler, to the riverbank early in the battle, with some trying to get themselves evacuated with the wounded being taken downstream by boat, Sherman gave them a verbal whipping that lasted for an hour. An Indiana soldier, a bystander who heard it all, said Sherman told them that “they were a disgrace to the nation and finally wound up by promising them that at the next battle they would be put in the foremost rank with a battery of Artillery immediately behind them and then if they attempted to run they would open on them with grape and canister.”

  The Battle of Shiloh had ended, and the battle about what happened there now began. For the South, the process was simple. After Beauregard’s first triumphant telegram to Jefferson Davis, joy and relief pulsed through the Confederacy. Then came the news of the death of Albert Sidney Johnston, then the fact that some of the South’s finest generals had been forced to retreat back to Corinth, and then the casualty figures: 1,723 dead, 8,012 wounded, 959 missing. The Union losses were marginally higher, but, with no more talk about each Southern man being able to beat three, four, five Yankees, it was clear that the South had lost more blood than it could afford to lose. Strategically, so much had been at stake for the Confederacy at Shiloh: it was the South’s chance to reverse Grant’s victories at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, the opportunity to fight back into Tennessee and Kentucky, the chance to become equal again in the Mississippi River theater of operations that Grant and Sherman knew held the key to the war. All that was gone.

  And there was morale. Memories of the rout inflicted on the North at Bull Run were no comfort to Southerners hearing the realities of the biggest battle fought on the North American continent to that date. The Southern publ
ic learned of a pond in Shiloh’s woods that turned red from the blood of men killed and wounded around it, of fields you could not walk across without stepping on bodies, of seven hundred Confederate soldiers buried in a mass grave, of the carcasses of five hundred horses that had to be burnt where they fell, of a large and growing pile of amputated arms and legs in the courtyard of the makeshift hospital hastily set up in the Tishomingo Hotel at Corinth. The Confederacy was determined to fight on, but as one of its soldiers, the writer George Washington Cable, said, “The South never smiled after Shiloh.”

  In the North, the first news was of a tremendous, categorically successful victory. Bells rang; Congress recessed for a day; President Lincoln proclaimed a national day of prayerful thanksgiving. Beauregard had called off the battle on Monday, April 7; on April 9, The New York Times, The New York Herald, and the New York Tribune came out with headlines proclaiming a tremendous victory. Grant was the man of the hour. The next day’s edition of the Tribune was filled with stories of his courage and skill: splendid, determined soldier; smokes cigars; man of few words but magnificent results.

  The next day’s Tribune struck a different note, echoed in other cities as reporters arrived at Pittsburg Landing and began buttonholing anyone in sight for stories of the battle. Grant’s army had been taken by surprise. Why was he having breakfast nine miles away, when his men were attacked while they were asleep in their tents? Thousands of men ran away from the battle. There was confusion everywhere, throughout the battle.