Grant and Sherman: The Friendship that Won the Civil War

by Charles Bracelen Flood

  Although the question was framed in terms of the immediate situation, it opened the subject of how the entire South should be dealt with in the event of a final Union victory. While Grant and Sherman had been making their great contributions toward achieving such a victory, Lincoln had been trying to balance and control the political progress of the war. In Washington, he had his continuing differences with the Radical Republicans, who were adamant in their efforts not only to free every slave swiftly, but looked forward to giving these freedmen the vote as soon as possible in a conquered South that was to be governed under a strict federal rule that would rearrange its entire society. For the Radicals, the question was not whether the freed slaves should be given the vote, but whether white Southern men who had fought against the federal government should not be placed on a form of probation before they were allowed to reenter the political process. Lincoln, while firmly committed to a vigorous prosecution of the military effort and to the eradication of slavery, had as his priority the return of the rebellious states to the Union and took a more measured and conciliatory approach to reaching that goal.

  It was a time in the war when much was being tried. In June, the forty-eight counties of western Virginia had been admitted to the Union as the new state of West Virginia. Earlier in the year, the experimental government set up in areas of Louisiana under federal control resulted in two congressmen from that state being seated on the floor of the House of Representatives in Washington, but they were later disqualified. On June 30, the American Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission created by the War Department had issued its report titled “A Social Reconstruction of the Southern States.” Its three members, all prewar abolitionists, had toured the parts of the South occupied by the Union Army and recommended the creation of a Bureau of Emancipation to safeguard the interests of the slaves, an idea that eventuated in the later Freedmen’s Bureau. In addition, the commission called for complete equality for the freed blacks: one member recommended that the lands of Southern planters should be confiscated and redistributed among former slaves—an idea popular among many Radicals.

  Answering Halleck’s request for ideas on what measures should be instituted in occupied areas, Grant took a conciliatory line. Although the man famously linked with “unconditional surrender” believed that the Confederate Army must be destroyed, he said of the white population now under Union control in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas, “The people of these states are beginning to see how much they need the protection of Federal laws and institutions. They have experienced the misfortune of being without them.” In essence, Grant believed that the white civilian population could be brought back into the Union as full citizens; as for the men of the rebel armies, they must indeed be defeated, but “I think we should do it with terms held out that by accepting they could receive the protection of our laws.” As Grant saw it, if these soldiers surrendered and swore allegiance to the United States of America, they too should regain their status as citizens.

  Sherman took a harsher line, although he sometimes remembered his happy prewar times in the South and, the past spring, had even written Ellen a letter in which he conjured up the image of his own army being “Rude Barbarians” invading from the north. He was at the moment trying with mixed success to keep his own troops from looting and was distributing food to civilians in the areas under his control, but he kept thinking in terms of a hard policy. Knowing that savage fighting lay ahead, he had little patience with what he had increasingly seen of the hostile attitude of all Southerners, both soldiers and civilians. Ten weeks before, he had written to Ellen, “I doubt if History affords a parallel of the deep & bitter enmity of the women of the South. No one who sees them & hears them but must feel the intensity of their hate.”

  Now, in a twenty-seven-hundred-word reply to Halleck, Sherman carefully considered many of the problems of dealing with the conquered portions of the Confederacy. As for restoring civil rights to the people who had seceded from the Union, he saw all of those individuals as traitors and said that to give them “a Civil Government now … would be simply ridiculous.” He added, “I would not coax them, or even meet them halfway, but make them so sick of war that generations would pass” before they thought of taking up arms as a solution to a political problem.

  Apart from the questions put to him by Halleck, Sherman had begun to realize that he, whose ideas were solicited by Halleck with the thought that “I may wish to use them with the President,” was becoming a national figure himself. With all his fondness for Grant and his occasional paeans of praise for Grant’s achievements, Sherman still had some reservations about the man with whom he had, in every sense, come so far. Even after Vicksburg, Sherman seemed not to understand that Grant had intuitive military gifts that simply exceeded his own great abilities. Sherman was better read, a frequently brilliant conversationalist, brave, imaginative, energetic, ambitious, a man who Grant said “boned” [studied hard in planning] his campaigns—how could one have and be and do more than that? After Shiloh, he had written Ellen, of Grant, “He is not a brilliant man … but he is a good & brave soldier tried for years, is sober, very industrious, and as kind as a child.” More than a year later, writing to Ellen the day after Vicksburg fell, he said that “we have in Grant not a great man or a Hero—but a good, plain, sensible, kind-hearted fellow.” Two paragraphs later, he tried to do Grant justice, but it was hard for him: “I am somewhat blind to what occurs near me, but have a clear perception of things & events remote. Grant possesses the happy medium and it is for this reason I admire him. I have a much quicker perception of things, but he balances the present & remote so evenly that results follow in a normal course.”

  The man who later said of Grant, “To me he is a mystery,” was demonstrating that this remained true, but he sounded happily confident when he spoke of their demonstrated ability to work together. Looking back on a planning session for the Vicksburg campaign that he and Grant had held the year before, in this same letter he told Ellen, “As we sat in Oxford [Mississippi] in November we saw in the future what we now realize and like the architect who sees the beautiful vision of his Brain, we feel an intense satisfaction at the realization of our military plans.” He did not mention that on several occasions, questioning Grant’s intuitions, he had wanted to change those blueprints, but their partnership was working. Grant and Sherman were developing an ever-greater respect for each other’s views and often listened patiently to each other, but these two West Pointers understood that, once Grant reached a decision, discussion ceased and vigorous action began.

  The idyll for the Grant and Sherman families, the Grants in Vicksburg and the Shermans at the encampment on the Big Black River, and the needed rest for the troops themselves came to a sudden end. On September 18, Braxton Bragg threw sixty-two thousand Confederate soldiers at badly positioned Union forces in the mountainous Georgia countryside eleven miles south of Chattanooga, Tennessee. The battle, centering on Chickamauga Creek, went on for three days. At its close, the total casualties suffered on both sides came to thirty-four thousand; among the Confederates killed was Lincoln’s brother-in-law Brigadier General Ben Hardin Helm, a Kentuckian who had married Mary Todd Lincoln’s half-sister Emilie Todd. (Lincoln’s family was torn apart by the war; in addition to the loss of Helm, three of Mrs. Lincoln’s half brothers were killed fighting for the South.)

  At Chickamauga, the Union commander, William Rosecrans, was saved from disaster only through the heroic stand made by Major General George Thomas, a Virginian who had chosen to fight for the Union. Because of the skillful rear-guard action under Thomas, who became known as “the Rock of Chickamauga,” the demoralized Union forces were able to retreat north to Chattanooga. In their flight, however, the Union regiments reached the city itself but failed to secure the arc of towering ridges just outside the city that hemmed it in from three sides. Bragg’s men, advancing behind them, soon looked down on the city from Raccoon Mountain, to the city’s west, Lookout Mountain on the south si
de, and Missionary Ridge to the east. Chattanooga was a vital communications hub, the principal southern rail center, an X that connected lines running southwest-northeast and northwest-southeast. If Chattanooga, only recently taken by Union forces, were recaptured by the Confederate Army, it would be both a great strategic loss for the Union and a rejuvenation for Southern morale after the defeats at Gettysburg and Vicksburg.

  In Washington, it became clear that this new flaming area of war needed both troop reinforcements and some new commanders, and needed them swiftly. (Lincoln said that Rosecrans, whom he would soon remove from command, was “stunned and confused, like a duck hit in the head.”) Halleck, already sending a reinforcement of eighteen thousand men south from Meade’s Army of the Potomac under Joseph Hooker, ordered Grant to send another twenty thousand from his Army of the Tennessee and to go to Chattanooga himself.

  For Grant’s forces, the movement of so many men, horses, artillery pieces, and supply trains was going to be exceptionally difficult. As the crow flies, Vicksburg is 340 miles southwest of Chattanooga. But Grant’s and Sherman’s divisions of troops would first go north by riverboat for 220 miles up the Mississippi to Memphis. Then, to reach Chattanooga, they would make their way east through 240 miles of country subject to Confederate raids. (One estimate was that the actual distance, counting river bends and winding roads, came to 600 miles.) Different units would have to use combinations of railways, some of them torn up by the enemy, roads that could deteriorate in bad weather, bridges the enemy would try to destroy, and riverboats steaming slowly on the meandering Tennessee River. Grant, in bed at Vicksburg with a severe leg injury sustained in a fall from a horse during a brief trip to New Orleans, instructed Sherman to take five divisions, which would comprise the required twenty thousand men, and organize them for the movement to Chattanooga. Grant would start for Chattanooga himself as soon as he was able and would probably arrive there ahead of Sherman.

  On September 27, Sherman shifted his headquarters to the steamboat Atlantic, loaded with troops, including those of the Thirteenth Infantry, ready to head north up the Mississippi. His family was with him. The plan was for Sherman, his staff, and the troops aboard to disembark at Memphis and prepare for the final part of the movement to Chattanooga. Ellen and the children were to go on to Cairo, Illinois, and then travel by train to her family’s house in Lancaster, Ohio. Sherman’s son Willy, wearing his sergeant’s uniform and carrying a shotgun, came aboard, still thinking of himself as a soldier bound for high adventures but complaining of diarrhea.

  The ship cast off; as they went on upstream, leaving Vicksburg behind, Sherman stood at the rail, pointing out to Ellen and the children the places where his men had camped and fought. Glancing at Willy, he saw that his son’s face was pale and that he was feverish. Ellen hurried Willy to a bunk below. The word was passed that a doctor was needed. The regimental surgeon of the Fifty-fifth Illinois examined Willy, found symptoms of typhoid fever with possible complications of dysentery, and told Sherman that his son’s life was in danger. The important thing was to get to Memphis as soon as possible so that Willy could be treated by the physicians there, but the Atlantic was a slow riverboat, making its way upstream at the season when the water was low. For a week the ship moved as fast as it could, while Sherman, Ellen, and the doctor remained constantly at their suffering son’s bedside.

  At ten-thirty on the night of October 2, Willy was carried ashore at Memphis. Every soldier in the battalion of the Thirteenth Infantry wanted to help the nine-year-old boy who was their little mascot, and none could. Sherman summoned two more doctors, who hurried to a room at the Gayoso House and examined their patient as he lay pale in bed. The following morning, Ellen Sherman called in Father J. C. Carrier, a French priest from the University of Notre Dame who was serving as a chaplain for troops who were Catholics. When he visited Willy and they were alone together, “Willy then told me in very few words,” the priest recalled, “that he was willing to die if it was the will of God but that it pained him to leave his father & mother.” Trying to reassure him, the priest “told him it was not certain he would die.” Willy seemed unconvinced, and Father Carrier finally promised him that “If God wishes to call you to him—now—do not grieve for he will carry you to heaven & there you will meet your good Mother & Father again.” Ellen entered and began crying; Willy reached up and patted his mother’s face.

  At five o’clock on the afternoon of October 3, eighteen hours after the Shermans reached Memphis, Willy died. Sherman said, “Mrs. Sherman, Minnie, Lizzie, and Tom were with him at the time, and we all, helpless and overwhelmed, saw him die.” At noon the following day, the battalion of the Thirteenth Infantry, marching to the beat of muffled drums and carrying their rifles reversed in a military funeral march, escorted Willy’s body, in a steel casket, to the waterfront. There the Grey Eagle had steam up, ready to depart for Cairo, from where the Shermans would go on to Lancaster. Sherman went aboard with Ellen, Minnie, Lizzie, and Tom, said good-bye to them, and returned to his headquarters at the Gayoso. That night he wrote Grant that “this is the only death I have ever had in my family, and falling as it has so suddenly and unexpectedly on the one I most prized on earth has affected me more than any other misfortune could. I can hardly compose myself enough for work but must & will do so at once.” He then proceeded to add a report of approximately 750 words, telling Grant in Vicksburg what the situation was at Memphis and his plans for readying his forces for the movement east to Chattanooga. (Three days later, Grant had one of his generals forward to Sherman, who was still in Memphis, what Grant referred to as a “private letter.” The contents are unknown.)

  Having momentarily discharged his military responsibilities with his report to Grant, Sherman gave way to his emotions in a letter to Captain C. C. Smith, commander of the battalion of the Thirteenth Infantry, which had made Willy an honorary sergeant and had furnished the troops that gave him full military honors as his body left Memphis earlier in the day. Dated “October 4, Midnight,” it began with a salutation not usually found in communications from major generals to captains.

  My Dear Friend:

  I cannot sleep tonight till I record an expression of the deep feelings of my heart to you, and to the Officers and Soldiers of the Battalion, for their kind behaviour to my poor child. I realize that you all feel for my family the attachment of kindred; and I assure you of full reciprocity. Consistent with a sense of duty to my profession and my office, I could not leave my post, and sent for my family to come to me in that fatal climate, in that sickly period, and behold the result! The child who bore my name … now floats a mere corpse, seeking a grave in a distant land, with a weeping mother, brother, and sisters clustered about him …

  But, my poor WILLY was, or thought he was, a Sergeant of the 13th. I have seen his eyes brighten and his heart beat as he beheld the Battalion under arms … Child as he was, he had the enthusiasm, the pure love of truth, honor, and love of country, which should animate all soldiers. God only knows why he should die thus young …

  Please convey to the Battalion my heartfelt thanks, and assure each and all, that if in after years they call on me and mine, and mention that they were of the 13th Regulars, when poor WILLY was a Sergeant, they will have a key to the affections of my family that will open all it has, that we will share with them our last blanket, our last crust. YOUR FRIEND,

  W. T. SHERMAN

  MAJOR GENERAL

  So many of Captain Smith’s men wanted copies of the letter that he had it printed and gave each man in the battalion a copy.

  Two mornings later, in a letter to “Dearest Ellen” dated as being written at seven a.m., Sherman began:

  I have got up early this morning to Steal a short period in which to write you but I can hardly trust myself. Sleeping—waking—everywhere I see Poor Little Willy … Why oh Why should that child be taken from us? … I will always deplore my want of judgment in taking my family to so fatal a climate at so critical [a] period of the year
… If human sympathy could avail us aught, I Know and feel we have it—I see it in every eye and in every act—Poor Malmbury, an old scarred Soldier, whom the world would Style unfeeling, wept like a babe as he came to See me yesterday, and not a word was spoken of Poor Willy …

  I follow you in my mind and almost estimated to the hour when all Lancaster would be shrouded in gloom to think that Willy Sherman was coming back a corpse.

  Four days later, in his third letter to Ellen since they parted, he continued his lament and self-recrimination. “The moment I begin to think of you & the children, Poor Willy appears before me as plain as life. I can see him now, stumbling over the Sand hills on Harrison Street [in] San Francisco … running to meet me with open arms at Black River & last, moaning in death in this Hotel.” Of their children, he said, “Why should I ever have taken them to that dread Climate? It nearly kills me to think of it. Why was I not killed at Vicksburg and left Willy to grow up to care for you?”

  Ellen was equally distraught and unable to comfort her husband. “My heart is now in heaven,” she wrote him, “and the world is dark and dreary.” Everything threatened and frightened her. “Since we lost our dear Willy, I feel that evils of all sorts are likely to come upon us.” More earnest a Catholic than ever, she begged Sherman to embrace the religion in which he had been baptized but had never believed in or practiced, so “that you will die in the faith that sanctified our holy one whom we have just given up to God.” Sherman made no known response to that, but he soon wrote Ellen of Willy, “He knew & felt every moment of his life our deep earnest love for him … God knows and he knows that either of us and hundreds of others would have died to save him.” To his daughter Lizzie he wrote, “We must all now love each other the more that Willy watches us from Heaven,” and told her always to appreciate “the Soldiers who used to call Willy their brother. I do believe Soldiers have stronger feelings than other men, and I Know that every one of those Regulars would have died, if they could have saved Willy.” Usually he signed his letters to his children simply with W. T. Sherman, but in this one he added above that, “Yr. Loving Father.”