by Bruce Catton
This move apparently reflected nothing more than Halleck’s natural wish to get, for the number two job in his department, an officer whom he knew personally and in whom he had full confidence. Hitchcock was such a man. He was getting on in years—he had been born in 1798, and he was graduated from West Point in 1817—but he had served on Winfield Scott’s staff in the Mexican War, he was a soldier of unquestioned intellectual capacity, his standing at the War Department was good, and Stanton had approved Halleck’s plan without delay. Halleck then wired to Sherman, for whom he had developed a warm regard: “Hitchcock will be appointed tomorrow morning and I am directed to assign officers accordingly. Make your preparations to take a column or division on the Tennessee or Cumberland.” Sherman at this time outranked Grant; if he “took a column or division” in any area where Grant commanded, he and not Grant would be in charge.
Halleck tried to expand his plan. To McClellan, he proposed that the War Department establish a Western Division, to include three departments: Department of the Missouri, under General David Hunter, who at that time was commanding in Kansas; Department of the Mississippi, under Hitchcock (or, if Hitchcock did not want it, under Sherman), and Department of the Ohio, under Buell. Halleck would be commander of this Western Division, and his principal lieutenants thus would be Hunter, Hitchcock or Sherman, and Buell. What would happen to Grant was not mentioned, but obviously he would be down-graded.10
Nothing came of this; Hitchcock, who was feeling his years, declined the Western assignment.11 But none of Halleck’s proposals affecting the Western command—and he made a good many of them—held out much prospect of advancement for Grant. Halleck began, immediately after Fort Donelson had been taken, by begging Buell to “come down to the Cumberland and take command,” adding: “I am terribly hard pushed. Help me and I will help you.” Halleck believed that Beauregard was collecting reinforcements at Columbus and was about to attack either Cairo or Paducah, and he assured McClellan that “it is the crisis of the war in the west.” On February 17 he wired McClellan: “Make Buell, Grant and Pope major-generals of volunteers and give me command in the west. I ask this for Forts Henry and Donelson.” This telegram at least acknowledged Grant’s existence, although it sandwiched him in between the other two generals in clear implication that he was just one of several deserving cases; and two days later Halleck demanded a major general’s commission for C. F. Smith, who “by his coolness and bravery at Fort Donelson when the battle was against us turned the tide and carried the enemy’s outworks.”12
On the heels of this, Halleck began to bid for his own advancement without permitting himself to be handicapped by modesty, false or genuine. On February 20 he wired McClellan: “I must have top command of the armies in the west. Hesitation and delay are losing us the golden opportunity. Lay this before the President and Secretary of War. May I assume the command? Answer quickly.” On the following day he sent a message to Assistant Secretary of War Thomas A. Scott, who was then in Louisville, urging Scott to come to the Cumberland “and divide the responsibility with me.” Plaintively, he confessed: “I am tired of waiting for action in Washington. They will not understand the case. It is as plain as daylight to me.” To Secretary Stanton, Halleck wrote that “a golden opportunity” to strike the Confederates a fatal blow had been lost, “but I can’t do it unless I can control Buell’s army.… Give me authority and I will be responsible for results.”13
For the moment this got Halleck nowhere. Both McClellan and Stanton returned abrupt refusals, and Stanton warned that the President “expects you and General Buell to co-operate fully and zealously with each other, and would be glad to know whether there has been any failure of co-operation in any particular.”14 In addition, Washington failed utterly to follow Halleck’s lead in the matter of promotions. To the Senate Abraham Lincoln sent the name of just one man for promotion to major general—U. S. Grant. The Senate promptly confirmed the promotion, and now Grant outranked everyone in the Western Department except Halleck himself. If Grant and Buell—or Grant and Pope, Sherman or anyone else—came together in the same area, Grant would be in charge. Promotions for the others came a little later, but Grant’s was the first, and as the first it was all-important.
While Halleck was concentrating on the problem of command, and while he and McClellan and Buell were filling the records with long, carefully-reasoned proposals regarding the next step in the campaign against the Confederacy, Grant was trying to keep moving. He was full of the idea that when Forts Henry and Donelson fell the Confederacy received a genuinely crippling blow, and it seemed to him that the Federal Armies should crowd on after the beaten foe and press their advantage to the utmost. The immediate objectives, he believed, were Nashville and Johnston’s army, which army—subtracting the number lost at Fort Donelson, and not counting those in the distant stronghold of Columbus, on the Mississippi—just now numbered hardly more than seventeen thousand men, and obviously was in full retreat and must continue so for some time to come.15 Grant had put Smith at Clarksville, in obedience to orders, and he wanted to go driving on to the south. And although headquarters refused to let Grant send his own troops to Nashville, Grant presently found troops that he could send.
While the battle at Fort Donelson was still going on, Buell had detached a division commanded by Brigadier General William Nelson, had put it on transports, and had sent it down the Ohio and up the Cumberland to reinforce Grant if Grant needed reinforcing. This division, its strength diminished to just under six thousand men by the detachment of a brigade at Paducah, reached Fort Donelson on February 24, and Grant responded immediately. Buell, when last heard from, was marching laboriously toward Nashville from Bowling Green; Nelson belonged to Buell, and there was no longer any reason to land his men at Fort Donelson, or at Clarksville either; the territorial limits of Grant’s command had never been defined, and for all anyone knew they might include Nashville … and so, stretching his authority just a little, Grant promptly ordered Nelson to move on up to Nashville forthwith, with gunboat Carondelet for escort. Nelson was to report to Buell at Nashville, when Buell arrived; until he got in touch with Buell, Grant’s orders were binding.16
What Grant had in mind comes out in a letter which Grant wrote to Julia, immediately after he had sent Nelson on up the river. In this letter, typically careless in matters of spelling and syntax, Grant explained his strategic ideas:
I have just returned from Clarksville. Yesterday some citizens of Nashville came down there ostensibly to bring surgeons to attend their wounded at that place but in reality no doubt to get assurance that they would not be molested. Johnson with his Army of rebels have fallen back about forty miles south from Nashville leaving the river clear to our troops. Today a Division of Gen. Buell’s army reported to me for orders. As they were on steamers I ordered them immediately up to Nashville. “Secesh” is now about on its last legs in Tennessee. I want to push on as rapidly as possible to save hard fighting. These terrible battles are very good things to read about for persons who loose no friends but I am decidedly in favor of having as little of it as possible. The way to avoid it is to push forward as vigorously as possible. Gen. Halleck is clearly the same way of thinking and with his clear head I think the Congressional Committee for investigating the Conduct of the War will have nothing to enquire about in the West.17
There would come a time when Grant would be much more reserved in his references to General Halleck’s clear head, but at the moment he had no reason to suppose that Halleck had anything but his own impatience for delays. In a letter to Sherman he confessed that he did not know what Halleck wanted him to do next,18 but his deepest instinct as a soldier was to keep a beaten foe off balance. Unfortunately, he seemed to be the only Union officer in Tennessee who possessed that instinct.
Buell himself was greatly displeased, and there quickly developed between him and Grant a coolness which never grew any warmer. Nelson dutifully went on to Nashville, occupying an abandoned fort just below the cit
y and then moving on to take possession of Nashville itself. (The last of Johnston’s troops had left not long before.) Buell’s advance guard appeared shortly afterward, on the opposite side of the river, and Buell was indignant when he found that a division of his own army was in Nashville ahead of him. This, he believed, was altogether too risky; he was convinced that Johnston out-numbered him, he feared that the Confederates would come back and destroy Nelson’s division before he could bring up the rest of his own men, and he hastily wired to Clarksville demanding reinforcements.
This, in a way, was just what Grant wanted, since it gave him at least a left-handed justification for intervening at Nashville. He wrote to Cullum, telling him what had happened and saying, “I shall go to Nashville immediately after the arrival of the next mail, should there be no orders to prevent it.” He sent Cullum some Memphis newspapers which his spies had brought in, to be transmitted to Halleck in St. Louis, and he confessed: “I am growing anxious to know what the next move is going to be.” Then, having received no word telling him not to go to Nashville, he got on a steamer and set off up the Cumberland.19
On his way he stopped briefly at Clarksville, where he saw transports—the same that had taken Nelson’s troops to Nashville—lined up along the bank, with Federal troops going aboard. Grant stopped and went to see C. F. Smith, who displayed a message just received from Buell. Buell recited that Nelson had occupied Nashville contrary to his own wishes, and that as a result he had to hold the place whether he wanted to or not—had to hold it, as he conceived, with grossly inadequate forces. Johnston, Buell continued, would soon take the offensive against him, and Buell had fewer than fifteen thousand men on the scene; Smith, therefore, must bring his men to Nashville at once, and Buell had sent the transports to bring them.
This, Smith told Grant, was nonsense. Grant agreed that it was, but he remarked that Buell’s request had the force of an order and that Smith would have to obey. Smith, whose whole gospel centered around explicit obedience to orders from all lawful superiors, said that he knew that, and pointed out that the embarkation of his men was well under way; and then Grant hurried on up the river, full of the idea that he and Buell had better have a conference.20
Buell himself was not actually in Nashville—his headquarters were still on the northern side of the river—and that evening, the evening of February 27, Grant wrote Buell a letter:
I have been in the city since an early hour this morning, anxious and expecting to see you. When I first arrived I understood that you were to be over today, but it is now growing too late for me to remain longer. If I could see the necessity of more troops here I would be most happy to supply them. My own impression is, however, that the enemy are not far north of the Tennessee line. [In other words, Johnston was altogether too far away to threaten any Union troops in Nashville.] I am anxious to know what information you might have on the subject.
He notified Buell that Smith was bringing two thousand soldiers, and asked: “If not needed, please send him back.”21
This note, it must be confessed, is just a little starchy. Writing as a senior to a junior (he signed himself, U. S. GRANT, major general) Grant was making it clear that he had been kept waiting and that he was slightly surprised to find that the General commanding the forces of occupation was not actually present with his troops; he was also making it clear that he did not quite agree with his junior about the urgency of the situation, the need for more troops, or the complete reliability of the junior’s information—and, altogether, it was quite a letter, considering that its author had been just an ex-captain of infantry, of shadowed fame, less than ten months earlier. One gathers that Grant rather enjoyed writing it and that Buell got very little pleasure out of reading it. Having written, Grant set off for his own steamboat. On his way to the wharf he met Buell in person.
The meeting appears to have been icy. Grant noted that the only Federals in Nashville were men of Nelson’s division, sent there by himself, and that the others in Buell’s command were still on the other side of the Cumberland. He mentioned that the Confederates, from all he could learn, were retreating as fast as they could, and Buell retorted that fighting was going on no more than ten or twelve miles away. This, said Grant, might be true, but it could be no more than a rear-guard action; Nashville had been full of munitions, foodstuffs and Army equipment, and the Confederates were undoubtedly trying to carry off all they could. (They had entrusted the job to Bedford Forrest, as good a man for such a job as could have been found anywhere.) Buell insisted that Nashville was in danger of a Confederate attack, Grant said that he did not believe it, and Buell insisted that he knew he was correct. Grant let it go at that, replying merely that Smith’s troops were at that moment disembarking in Nashville. Writing about it long afterward, Grant commented that on that evening “the enemy were trying to get away from Nashville and not to return to it.”22
It took Halleck a long time to find out what was going on, an unexpected complication having arisen to disturb the operation of high strategy. The communications system by which Halleck and Grant were supposed to be keeping in touch had lapsed, and for the moment neither man knew it. Originally, messages between headquarters at St. Louis and the advanced force in the Fort Henry-Fort Donelson area had been relayed by steamer to Paducah or Cairo. The telegraph line had been extended to Fort Henry, but it was not working well. Years later, Grant learned that the operator at the Fort Henry end of the line was a Rebel sympathizer, indulging in sabotage by failing to deliver telegrams; but the basic trouble was a queer organizational setup which had been devised by Secretary Stanton, who had a strange mania for keeping administrative controls in his own hands. The military telegraph system was run by civilian operators who were entirely out from under the jurisdiction of Army and departmental commanders; they were answerable only to the Superintendent of Military Telegraphs, Colonel Anson Stager, who had his office in Washington and was himself answerable only to the Secretary of War. If the Fort Henry man had been under either Grant or Halleck, his failure presumably would have been noted and corrected, but he was independent of both officers; messages simply vanished and no one realized that they were vanishing, and as a result Halleck and Grant were out of touch without knowing that they were out of touch.23
This was to have consequences. Halleck had concluded (his attempt to get Buell under his command having failed) that he should leave the Cumberland to Buell and make his own advance up the Tennessee, and he had ordered that Grant bring Smith back from Clarksville, establish stand-by garrisons at Fort Donelson and Fort Henry, and concentrate the bulk of his forces near Danville, on the Tennessee thirty-five miles upstream from Fort Henry, ready for a movement well to the west of Nashville. Of all of this, Grant at the moment knew nothing, and of Grant’s recent moves Halleck knew nothing. The measure of the mutual misunderstanding is in a telegram Halleck sent to McClellan at the moment Buell and Grant were meeting in Nashville—a telegram which said that Buell, by now, was probably in Nashville, that Nelson’s division had relieved Smith at Clarksville, that reports about Confederate dispositions were obscure and that it seemed unwise to order any further movements until the situation became a bit clearer.24
By the end of the month, indirect news began to reach Halleck. On March 1 he got off an angry wire to Cullum, demanding to know: “Who sent Smith’s division to Nashville? I ordered them across to the Tennessee, where they are wanted immediately. Order them back. What is the reason that no one down there can obey my orders? Send all spare transports to Grant up the Tennessee.” On the same day he wrote a message to Grant, addressing it to Fort Henry, where Grant had not been for a number of days. Grant, he said, was to take a column up the Tennessee River, to destroy Rebel railroad bridges near Eastport, Mississippi, and railroad connections at Corinth, Mississippi, and at Jackson and Humboldt, in Tennessee. This, he pointed out, was to be a raid, pure and simple; at all costs Grant must avoid an engagement with superior forces, and it would be better to retreat than
to risk a general battle. Having broken the railroads, Grant was to re-concentrate at Danville and was to move off toward the town of Paris, Tennessee, which lay west of the river on the line of the railroad running up from Memphis to the Tennessee River crossing.25
While Halleck was writing this, Grant was sending a report of his own to St. Louis. In it, he innocently remarked that he had made daily reports ever since he left Cairo—a point that would presently be in dispute—and said that his troops were suffering badly from camp dysentery, that transportation was lacking, and that if he should have to move he would move with less strength than Halleck probably anticipated, sickness and battle losses having weakened him. He was mentioning this, he said, “not to make suggestions but that my true condition may be known.” On this same day Buell wired Halleck that he now felt safe in Nashville and that he was sending Smith and Smith’s troops back to Clarksville.26
Upon General Halleck, as a result, it abruptly dawned that nothing on the upper rivers had been going on as he had planned, and his waspish temper got entirely out of control. His irritability is at least understandable, because he was an extremely busy man and at the beginning of March, 1862, most of the hot spots in the war seemed to be in his own territory. In the far southwestern corner of Missouri, he had troops under Brigadier General Samuel Curtis chasing Price and his Confederates into Arkansas. Along the Mississippi, the General Pope whom he had recommended for promotion was assembling an army that was to occupy Columbus, break the Confederates loose from their river strongholds at New Madrid, Island Number Ten and Fort Pillow, and bring about the capture of Memphis. On the Tennessee, Grant was supposed to be cutting Confederate railroad connections, which would isolate the Confederate forces that were facing Pope, and on the Cumberland Buell was sending daily messages offering and demanding co-operation and proposing a top-level conference to work out grand strategy.