Grant Moves South

by Bruce Catton

  He never explained, and it does not matter much in any case. Within a very few days he was ordered to take his regiment to Iron-ton, seventy miles south of St. Louis, and to assume command of the district of Southeast Missouri. When the orders came he moved fast; got the regiment packed up and put on a train, took it to St. Louis, marched it through the city in the dead of night to take another train, and on August 8, 24 hours after receiving his orders, he was marching into Ironton. Here he got official notification that he was really a brigadier, with a commission dating from May 17. On August 9 the Senate confirmed the appointment. Meanwhile, Grant was taking hold of his new command.

  His orders were to entrench his position well so that it could be held against any Rebel force that might appear, and to “scour the country” in his front and keep headquarters, in St. Louis, informed of what the enemy was up to. Somewhere off to the south—not too far away, according to current rumor—were some thousands of Confederates under the highly respected General William J. Hardee, famous in the Old Army as the author of a standard book on tactics. (Grant had never studied this book; he bought a copy and started to “cram” shortly after he became a colonel, then concluded that the text was “nothing more than common sense and the progress of the age” applied to the tactics West Point had taught when Grant was a cadet. After that he got along fine, without cramming.) Now Hardee was in his front; and lurking somewhere in the background there was a semi-irregular force of Confederates led by a picturesque, flamboyant and highly energetic officer, General Jeff Thompson. Essentially, Grant’s job was what it had been before—to head a constabulary detachment that would protect loyal citizens, guard railroads and bridges, and secure the state against Confederate incursions.26

  Ironton, with the adjacent settlement of Pilot Knob, was at the end of a railway line that came wandering south from St. Louis to the fringe of the Ozarks. It had been held, previously, by a detachment composed largely of ninety-day men (whose terms were now expiring) commanded by Col. B. Gratz Brown. The detachment lacked training and discipline and was badly demoralized—Grant wrote later that “a squadron of cavalry could have ridden into the valley and captured the entire force”—and worried Colonel Brown was very glad to see a professional soldier come in to take responsibility. Grant relieved Colonel Brown and his ninety-day men and sent them home; he now had four infantry regiments, including the familiar 21st, and on the day after he had taken command he wrote his first report on the situation.

  From what he was able to learn, through spies “and loyally disposed citizens,” he said, he believed that there was no Rebel force within thirty miles that had the least intention of attacking his own post. This struck him as very fortunate, for the Ironton contingent was not ready for a fight: “Many of the officers seem to have so little command over their men, and military duty seems to be done so loosely, that I fear at present our resistance would be in inverse ratio to the number of troops to resist with.” However, he was not discouraged; as coolly as if the problem of bringing raw troops into efficient order were very simple, he promised that inside of two days “I expect to have a very different state of affairs and to improve it continuously.” He did have certain needs, to be sure. Artillery and cavalry were lacking, as a result of which Confederate detachments were pillaging Union men within ten miles of camp, and the quartermaster service at Ironton was seriously deficient. There were too few teams, and many of the horses that were available lacked shoes and forage; but Grant had known the livery-and-haulage business intimately ever since his boyhood in Ohio, and “I have taken steps to remedy these latter defects.”27

  His troops were starting to make an impression. Easygoing residents of the neighborhood were amazed at the speed with which the Illinois boys, Jacks-of-all-trades and handy with tools, built their camp, made tent floors, and installed bunks, tables, writing desks and seats; “If these men stay here six months,” it was said, “they could build a big city.” Colored folk, watching big-eyed as the Westerners drilled and maneuvered, looked with awe at the bayonets on the muskets and were heard to mutter: “Gorry mighty! Dey got lightnin’ rods on der guns. No sesesh can stand dat.” And the soldiers themselves realized that there had been a big change. One man wrote afterward: “The loud laugh and bluster, the swagger of loafing squads, were hushed. Instead you heard the bugle calls, the roll of drums, the sharp commands of officers to the drilling and marching and wheeling battalions.” To this man, Grant seemed to be “a man who felt that his country was beleaguered and its defenders were at the point of surrender, and it was necessary to fly to their instant relief.”28

  Grant was beginning to enjoy life. To Julia he wrote that the Ironton-Pilot Knob area “is one of the most delightful places I have ever been in,” with beautiful scenery all about, plenty of good water available, and enough altitude to insure cool weather. To his superiors in St. Louis he mentioned these advantages, suggesting that Ironton would be a healthy place to send one or two new regiments for training and discipline: “This would enable me to use the troops now here for scouting parties without calling upon the new volunteers for such service that would take them from their drill.” Without cavalry, he found it impossible to keep the Confederate irregulars out of the neighborhood, but he could at least stop communication with the enemy from within his own lines. Grant was interfering with the U. S. mails, holding up letters to certain suspected persons and cutting off all letters addressed to points within the Confederate lines. This worried him a little, because “I am entirely without orders for my guidance in matters like the above” and he did not know what, if anything, Congress had enacted that might bear on the case.29

  His need for horses he met by direct action, sending a contingent to nearby Potosi with orders to press into service as many teams as were needed, the impressment to be performed upon citizens of a secessionist tinge, “who will be pointed out by Union men of character.” Provisions might also be obtained in the same way, and the officer in charge was reminded that “you have my private instructions how to conduct this pressing business so as to make it as little offensive as possible.” Grant apparently had qualms about impressment, and to some regiments he prohibited it altogether. A few days after this, sending the 6th Missouri out on a scouting tour, he warned the Colonel: “Permit no pressing of horses or other property by your command. The policy meets with my decided disapproval and must be suppressed.” It is possible that what worried him was the fact that this regiment came from Missouri; too many recruits in this state’s service had scores of their own to settle with secessionists.

  By August 13 Grant was able to report to the Assistant Adjutant General, at department headquarters in St. Louis, that some three thousand Confederates were about to move on the railroad which he was guarding, and that Hardee with five thousand more seemed to be moving directly on Ironton. He added: “I express you the facts and leave it to the general commanding whether in his judgment more troops should not be sent.” Grant did not think very many more were needed; if a battery and one regiment of infantry could be sent, “I would feel that this point would be secure beyond any present contingency.”30 This unemotional report seems to have been misinterpreted in department offices at St. Louis, and the next day a telegram went from St. Louis to President Lincoln—“General Grant, commanding at Ironton, attacked yesterday by a force reported at 13,000. Railroad seized by enemy at Big River Bridge, on this side of Ironton”—as a result of which more troops and material were urgently needed in Missouri. To General Prentiss, commanding at Cairo, went orders to go at once to Ironton with four regiments and assume command. Grant, meanwhile, reported that the invading Rebels had withdrawn, started out after them with two regiments to get a clearer line on the situation, and dryly wrote to Julia:

  “No doubt you will be quite astonished, after what the papers have said about the precarious position my brigade has been in for the last few days, to learn that tomorrow I move South.”31

  CHAPTER TWO

  Assig
nment in Missouri

  To move south was Grant’s compelling motive, then and thereafter. He comes down in history as a stolid, stay-put sort of character, but actually he was nothing of the sort. He had the soldier’s impulse to strike rather than to receive a blow; in addition (and it is a point that is easily overlooked), he was a restless person who disliked nothing more than to be obliged to remain in one place. Even as a child, driving livery rigs for his father, he had traveled about southern Ohio as extensively, probably, as any adult of his time. Then, in the Army, he had gone to Mexico City, and later he had gone to Panama and thence to California and the Northwest Coast; and many years after this, with official life left far behind him, he would go all the way around the world, for no reason except that he liked to keep moving. Now he was in southeastern Missouri, helping to hold a state of tangled emotions and divided loyalties, and while he drilled and prepared his troops he wanted to get on with the war. He believed that he could hold his position against anything Hardee might do, and his outposts tangled now and then with informal bands of roving Confederates, but there was no real action. Grant wanted to get going.

  When he told Julia “tomorrow I move South,” he was thinking beyond the immediate defensive problem. Ironton dangled at the terminus of the St. Louis and Iron Mountain railroad, and both town and railroad must be held if St. Louis were to be secured against Confederate attack; but what seems to have been in Grant’s mind just now was nothing less than the reclamation of all of southeast Missouri. He sent his old 21st Illinois south toward Greenville, thirty-five miles away, where Hardee and five thousand Confederates were believed to be posted. He also ordered the 24th Illinois to march twenty miles east to Fredericktown, notifying a third regiment, the 17th Illinois, to be ready at any moment to follow the 24th. He would bring all of these troops together for an attack on Hardee, and he told Frémont that he himself would move after the advance forces as soon as possible, taking along a little additional infantry, any artillery that might be available, and (if he could scrape together some more teams and wagons) a supply of provisions.1 This movement, if successful, would help to protect Ironton, but it would also make possible an advance all the way to Cape Girardeau, which lay on the Mississippi sixty or seventy miles southeast of Ironton and a few miles upstream from Cairo.

  Cairo nestled in muddy discomfort behind high levees at the point where the Ohio River joined the Mississippi. It was all-important, a gateway to and from practically everywhere, north, south east and west. It was already held by Federal troops, but Grant believed that the Federals could do more than just hold it. With Missouri safely in hand they could use it as a point of departure and carry aggressive war deep into the South. This idea was not possessed by Grant alone; Cairo’s strategic importance was obvious, and Frémont had lost no time in putting reinforcements there. Its potential value as a base for an invasion of the South had occurred to Mr. Lincoln himself, and it was noted in a memorandum which the President had, at that moment, in a file in his desk;2 but Grant’s plan represented thinking which went a little beyond anything that might be expected to come from an obscure brigadier occupying a minor outpost in Missouri.

  A glimpse of what was working in Grant’s mind—a cloudy glimpse, put out of focus by later knowledge, but nevertheless something of genuine insight—comes out in a tale told by John Emerson, a citizen of Ironton whom Grant had known in St. Louis before the war, the man who owned the land on which Grant’s headquarters tents were pitched. Emerson, who was presently to become a colonel, said that he called on Grant the day Grant reached Ironton; he wanted to show the new General some sketches of projected defense works. Grant examined them but did not seem much interested; he just put them in his pocket with a noncommittal “They look well. We shall see.” When Emerson went around the next day to ask about the project, and said that refugees were coming in with alarming stories about Hardee’s advance, Grant heard him out and said no more than that Hardee might need defensive works before any Unionists at Ironton needed them.

  Still later, Emerson found Grant sitting at a table under a tree near headquarters, studying a map. To Emerson, Grant complained that the map was defective; could not a better one be found, one that would show all of southeastern Missouri, southern Illinois and western Kentucky? Emerson got one, and saw how Grant traced the line of the great river with a stubby forefinger, muttering that the Rebels must be driven out of the river valley. On another day, Emerson saw that Grant had made elaborate red-pencil marks on this new map, with lines running down the Mississippi and with other lines going south by the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers; and when Emerson remarked (in his capacity as innocent civilian) that this looked like business, Grant seemed flustered, said “possibilities—mere possibilities,” and walked over to a little spring that went bubbling down a pebbly channel a few yards away. Emerson said that Grant drank from the spring, then looked down at the water and remarked that the little brook flowed into the Mississippi and that the Mississippi flowed into the sea, and that both brook and river must flow with complete freedom; and Emerson reported, too, that Grant said something to the effect that it was easy to make long-range plans when one was not in full control, but that the first thing to do was to drive the enemy out of southeastern Missouri. Then, he said, Grant broke off in his musing, stalked back to the table, pocketed his map and some sheets of paper on which he had been writing, and went away. A headquarters officer told Emerson that the General “spends every minute of his spare time going over maps and making plans.”3

  On the same day that Grant ordered the Illinois regiments to move east and south, he got reinforcements—two new regiments, as Western as regiments could be, 7th Iowa and 1st Nebraska. Colonel John Thayer of the Nebraska regiment called at headquarters and found Grant sitting at a table writing; he remembered that Grant wore a suit of Army blue, not unlike the suits worn many years later by graybeard members of the Grand Army of the Republic, with no shoulder straps or any other signs of rank. Grant was puffing at a clay pipe, and he asked Thayer to wait a few minutes while he finished what he was writing. Thayer was willing; an amateur soldier himself, he wanted a chance to size up this West Pointer who was to be his commander.

  Studying him, Thayer thought that he saw something: firmness, self-reliance, quiet determination. (So, at any rate, it seemed to him, years afterward, when he sat down to write about it, writing in the knowledge that the unassuming little Brigadier he met in Missouri was to become the most famous soldier in the world.) When Grant at last pushed his papers aside and began to talk, Thayer liked what he heard. Grant asked a few questions about Thayer’s regiment, its strength and its state of training, and he expressed satisfaction that the frontier territory of Nebraska had been able to send a thousand men to the front; he went on to say that this was a nice contrast to the course taken by older, more populous states in the South, which (as Grant saw it) had brought on a fratricidal war. “When I read of officers of the army and navy,” said Grant, “educated by the government at West Point and Annapolis, and under a solemn vow to be defenders of the flag against all foes whatsoever, domestic or foreign, throwing up their commissions, going South and taking service under the banner of treason, it fills me with indignation.” Later that day Grant came around to the Nebraskans’ camp, riding the clay-bank horse which was to become such a familiar sight in the Army, and Thayer felt that the men were impressed, as he had been, by “his calm, composed manner, united with a soldierly bearing but entirely free from any pride or hauteur of command.”4

  More reinforcements were coming, but their arrival took Grant down a peg. Two days after the Nebraska and Iowa regiments had appeared, four more regiments came into camp, led by Brigadier General Benjamin M. Prentiss, another Illinoisan. What disconcerted Grant, who was just ready to leave Ironton and join his advanced forces, was the fact that Prentiss carried orders from Major General John C. Frémont, commanding the Western Department, putting Prentiss in command in southeastern Missouri. This relieved
Grant from his command and left him without an assignment, although Frémont apparently had not quite intended it that way; he seems to have got mixed up by the intricacies of Army regulations governing seniority.

  Prentiss, an amateur soldier, had been made a brigadier earlier in the year, at a time when Grant was still a civilian doing clerical work for the governor of Illinois at Springfield. When Grant became a general his commission was dated back to May 17, the same date that Prentiss’s commission bore; headquarters seems to have assumed that because Prentiss had actually held the commission before Grant did he was therefore Grant’s senior, and what it overlooked was the provision that when two officers whose commissions bore identical dates got together, seniority would depend on prior rank in the Army. Prentiss had fought in the Mexican War as a captain of Volunteers and then had returned to civilian life, but Grant had been a captain of Regulars; hence, by law, Grant ranked Prentiss.

  What gave this mixup its cutting edge was the fact that as Army law then stood it was impossible to require an officer to serve under an officer whom he ranked. When Prentiss got off the evening train from St. Louis and displayed his orders, then, his arrival automatically put Grant out of a job. There was nothing Grant could do but report at St. Louis and see if there was another assignment for him. He turned everything over to Prentiss, explained the moves that were afoot, and then ordered a locomotive and a daycoach prepared to take him to the city.5