Grant Moves South

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Grant Moves South Page 59

by Bruce Catton


  12.

  O. R., Vol. VII: Halleck to McClellan, February 17, pp. 627, 628; Halleck to Buell, February 18, p. 632; to McClellan on Smith, February 19, p. 637.

  13.

  Same, Halleck to McClellan, February 20, p. 641; Halleck to Scott, February 21, p. 648; to Stanton, p. 655.

  14.

  The replies of McClellan and Stanton are in O. R., Vol. VII, pp. 645, 652.

  15.

  Confederate losses at Fort Donelson have been in dispute for years, but it seems clear from an examination of Federal Reports in the Official Records (O. R.) that Grant captured somewhere between 14,000 and 16,000 men. On February 19 General Cullum at Cairo wrote that he had sent 9,000 prisoners to St. Louis and 1,000 to Chicago, with 500 more ready to leave the next day; on the same day, Rawlins notified General Buckner that transportation was available to send 6,000 men north “this evening” from Fort Donelson. (O. R., Series Two, Vol. III, pp. 282–283). On Feb. 24, Assistant Quartermaster J. A. Potter notified Washington that “at least 10,000 prisoners” were being held in Chicago and Springfield, Illinois, and on February 27 the adjutant general of Indiana reported 4000 prisoners at Indianapolis, 500 at Terre Haute and 800 at Lafayette. (O. R., Series Two, Vol. III, pp. 317, 333.)

  16.

  Grant’s order to Nelson is printed in a message he sent to Cullum on February 24, O. R., Vol. VII, pp. 662–663.

  17.

  Grant to Julia Dent Grant, in the U. S. Grant Papers, Missouri Historical Society.

  18.

  Grant to Sherman, February 25, O. R., Vol. VII, p. 667.

  19.

  O. R., Vol. VII: Grant to Cullum, February 25, p. 666. As noted, February 21 Grant had written Cullum: “It is my impression that by following up our success Nashville would be an easy conquest” (p. 424), and on the same date Foote wrote Cullum that “General Grant and myself consider this a good time to move on Nashville.” For Buell’s state of mind, see pp. 659, 668, 944–945.

  20.

  Grant’s Memoirs, Vol. I, pp. 320–321.

  21.

  Grant to Buell, February 27, O. R., Vol. VII, p. 670.

  22.

  Grant’s Memoirs, Vol. I, p. 321.

  23.

  For an excellent study of this strange administrative arrangement, and some of its damaging consequences, see Roscoe Pound, The Military Telegraph in the Civil War, in Vol. 66 of the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

  24.

  Halleck to Sherman, with a message for Grant, February 24, O. R., Vol. VII, p. 655; Halleck to Cullum and Sherman, February 25, p. 667; Halleck to McClellan, February 27, O. R., Vol. LII, Part One, p. 217.

  25.

  Halleck to Cullum and Halleck to Grant, dispatches dated March 1, O. R., Vol. VII, p. 674.

  26.

  O. R., Vol. VII, p. 674. Grant to J. C. Kelton, March 1, and Buell to Halleck, also March 1, pp. 674–675.

  27.

  For McClellan’s rebukes to Halleck, see O. R., Vol. VII, pp. 645, 646.

  28.

  Halleck to McClellan, in a message whose date, March 3, is apparently the date of its receipt; O. R., Vol. VII, pp. 679–680.

  29.

  McClellan to Halleck, March 3, O. R., Vol. VII, p. 680; Halleck to McClellan, March 4, p. 682; Halleck to Grant, March 4, O. R., Vol. X, Part Two, p. 3.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “What Command Have I Now?”

  1.

  Grant to Halleck, March 5, O. R., Vol. X, Part Two, pp. 4–5.

  2.

  Grant to Smith, in the C. F. Smith Papers; Grant to Halleck, March 10, O. R., Vol. X, Part Two, p. 25.

  3.

  This note, in Grant’s handwriting, is in the C. F. Smith Papers.

  4.

  Gwin to Foote, March 5, O. R., Vol. X, Part Two, p. 8; A. T. Mahan, The Gulf and Inland Waters, p. 28; Grant to Smith, March 5, in the C. F. Smith Papers; Smith’s letter dated March 9 to Wm. L. Martin, also in the Smith Papers.

  5.

  Halleck to Grant, March 5, O. R., Vol. X, Part Two, p. 7.

  6.

  O. R., Vol. X, Part Two: Halleck to Grant, March 6, and Grant to Halleck, March 7, p. 15.

  7.

  Same, Halleck’s retort, and Grant’s reply with the troop returns, p. 21.

  8.

  Same, Halleck to Grant, March 9, p. 22.

  9.

  Same, Halleck to Grant, March 6, p. 13. The unsigned letter to David Davis is p. 14; Grant’s reply, dated March 11, is p. 30; Halleck’s answer to this is p. 32.

  10.

  Thomas’s March 10 dispatch to Halleck, and Halleck’s reply dated March 15, are in O. R., Vol. VII, pp. 683–684.

  11.

  Grant to Halleck, O. R., Vol. X, Part 2, pp. 36, 63: Grant’s Memoirs, Vol. I, pp. 327–328.

  12.

  Brinton, p. 147; Rowley to Washburne, March 14, and Chetlain to Washburne, March 16, in the Washburne Papers. General John M. Schofield, who insisted that “I knew personally at the time the exact truth” about the matter, believed that Halleck simply wanted to replace Grant with C. F. Smith and that he was checkmated by “Grant’s soldierly action” in asking to be relieved. (Lieutenant Gen. John M. Schofield, Forty-six Years in the Army, p. 361.)

  13.

  Garland, p. 198.

  14.

  It must be remembered Grant’s final bitterness against Halleck did not develop until after the war, when he saw the dispatches Halleck sent to McClellan and realized that Halleck had been playing a double game with him.

  15.

  Grant to Washburne, March 22, in the Washburne Papers.

  16.

  Brinton, p. 148; Rowley to Washburne, November 20, 1862, and December 16, 1862, in the Washburne Papers; History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois, p. 60; W. T. Sherman to Dr. W. G. Eliot, Sept. 12, 1885, in the W. T. Sherman Papers, Library of Congress; Cincinnati Commercial for March 11, 1862.

  17.

  M. F. Force, From Fort Henry to Corinth, pp. 96–97.

  18.

  Grant to Smith, March 11, O. R., Vol. X, Part Two, p. 29.

  19.

  Halleck to Grant, March 13, and March 16; O. R., Vol. X, Part One, pp. 32, 41.

  20.

  O. R., Vol. X, Part Two: Halleck to Grant, March 18, p. 46; Grant to Smith and Wallace, March 20, p. 52; Grant to Halleck, March 19, p. 49.

  21.

  Same, Halleck to Grant, March 20, p. 51; Grant to Capt. N. H. McLean at St. Louis, March 20, p. 51; Grant to Halleck, March 21, p. 55; Grant to Smith, March 23, p. 62.

  22.

  Letter dated Pittsburg Landing, March 26, addressed to “My Dear William,” in the C. F. Smith Papers.

  23.

  Confederate numbers, expedients and troop movements are admirably detailed in Horn, pp. 107–115. See also T. Harry Williams, Beauregard; Napoleon in Gray, p. 119 ff. For Beauregard’s estimate of his numbers, and his desperate efforts to increase them, see O. R., Vol. VII, pp. 899–900. On February 24, Secretary of War Judah P. Benjamin was notifying Robert E. Lee, then in charge of Confederate defenses along the southeast coast, that “the recent disaster to our arms in Tennessee” made it necessary to send all possible troops to the Tennessee front. (O. R., Vol. VI, p. 398.) Horn (p. 115) remarks of this crisis that “fortunately for the Confederate plans, the Federals had been behaving with inexplicable deliberation and want of enterprise.”

  24.

  Halleck to Assistant Secretary of War Thomas Scott, March 6, O. R., Vol. X, Part Two, p. 10.

  25.

  Colonel William Preston Johnston, Albert Sidney Johnston at Shiloh, in B. & L., Vol. I, p. 555.

  26.

  Captain C. L. Sumbardo, “Some Facts about the Battle of Shiloh,” in Glimpses of the Nation’s Struggle, Vol. III, pp. 31–32.

  27.

  New York Herald for April 3, quoting a St. Louis Republican dispatch of March 29; Grant to Julia Dent Grant, letter of March 29, in the Grant Papers, Illinois State Hist
orical Society; Lieutenant S. D. Thompson, Recollections with the Third Iowa.

  28.

  Grant to Sherman, April 4, O. R., Vol. X, Part Two, pp. 90–91; Captain Charles Morton, “A Boy at Shiloh,” in the Papers of the New York Commandery of the Loyal Legion, Vol. III; statement of Captain I. P. Rumsey, from the printed Proceedings of the Reunion of Taylor’s Battery in Chicago, 1890, p. 46; Lieutenant Colonel E. C. Dawes in The History of the 53rd Ohio.

  29.

  Grant’s April 5 dispatch to St. Louis, O. R., Vol. X, Part One, p. 89; Grant’s letter to the Cincinnati Commercial, reprinted in the New York Herald, May 3, 1862.

  30.

  Ammen’s account of the conversation is in O. R., Vol. X, Part One, pp. 330–331.

  31.

  Lieutenant S. D. Thompson, Recollections with the Third Iowa; J. F. C. Fuller, The Generalship of Ulysses S. Grant, p. 104.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Guns on the Bluff

  1.

  O. R., Vol. X, Part One: Report of John A. Rawlins, p. 184; General Buell’s report, p. 291; Halleck’s telegram to Grant, April 5, O. R., Vol. X, Part Two, p. 94; statement of William I. Cherry to Lloyd Lewis, June 29, 1939, in the Lloyd Lewis Papers; Ms. letter, Mrs. William H. Cherry to the Reverend T. M. Hurst of Arnot, Pa., dated Dec. 6, 1892, also in the Lloyd Lewis Papers.

  2.

  O. R., Vol. X, Part Two, p. 95; Vol. LII, Part One, p. 232.

  3.

  O. R., Vol. X, Part One, McPherson’s report, p. 181; Grant to Halleck, Vol. X, Part Two, p. 94.

  4.

  O. R., Vol. X, Part One, Rawlins’s report, p. 185; Grant’s Memoirs, Vol. I, p. 336. In 1896, in a letter to James Grant Wilson, Wallace described the meeting, saying that Grant seemed mildly puzzled and that Grant’s last word to him was to “hold yourself in readiness to move in any direction.” (Letter in the Palmer Collection, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland.)

  5.

  Badeau, Vol. I, p. 79; John K. Duke, History of the 53rd Regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry, p. 49; O. R., Vol. X, Part One, p. 185.

  6.

  William W. Belknap, History of the 15th Iowa Veteran Infantry, pp. 189–190.

  7.

  O. R., Vol. X, Part One, pp. 181, 568; M. F. Force, From Fort Henry to Corinth, pp. 122–124.

  8.

  History of the 53rd Regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry, as Note 5, pp. 27, 46; T. J. Lindsey, Ohio at Shiloh: Report of the Commission, pp. 37–38; O. R., Vol. X, Part One, pp. 264–265; Henry H. Wright, History of the Sixth Iowa Infantry, p. 80; History of the 15th Iowa, p. 83.

  9.

  O. R., Vol. X, Part One, p. 133.

  10.

  Lieutenant S. D. Thompson, Recollections with the Third Iowa, p. 214; Warren Olney, Shiloh as Seen by a Common Soldier, in War Paper No. 5, California Commandery, Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, p. 6 ff.

  11.

  Richard Miller Devens, The Pictorial Book of Anecdotes and Incidents of the War of the Rebellion, p. 253; Badeau, Vol. I, p. 79; Grant’s account of Shiloh in B. & L., Vol. I, p. 473.

  12.

  O. R., Vol. X, Part One, p. 278; Sketches of War History: Papers prepared for the Ohio Commandery, Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, Vol. V, pp. 431–432.

  13.

  Samuel H. Fletcher, History of Company A, Second Illinois Cavalry, pp. 49–52.

  14.

  O. R., Vol. LII, Part One, pp. 232–233.

  15.

  Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Putnam, in Sketches of War History, Vol. III, p. 199; Sergeant Alexander Downing, Downing’s Civil War Diary, pp. 41–42.

  16.

  Interview with Hillyer, Chicago Tribune, January 27, 1869.

  17.

  O. R., Vol. X, Part One, p. 119.

  18.

  O. R., Vol. X, Part One, p. 288; F. Y. Hedley, Marching Through Georgia; Gen. Edward Bouton, Events of the Civil War, p. 31; The Story of the 55th Regiment Illinois Volunteer Infantry, by a committee.

  19.

  John R. Rerick, The 44th Indiana Volunteers in the Rebellion, p. 231.

  20.

  Chaplain Marion Morrison, History of the 9th Regiment Illinois Volunteer Infantry; O. R., Vol. X, Part One, pp. 203, 245; pamphlet, Ninth Reunion of Iowa Hornets’ Nest Brigade, held at Pittsburg Landing, April 6 and 7, 1912, p. 13; Warren Olney, Shiloh as Seen by a Common Soldier, as Note 10.

  21.

  Grant’s Memoirs, Vol. I, p. 340; A. L. Chetlain, quoted in Chicago Inter-Ocean, May 10, 1881; Chetlain, Recollections of Seventy Years, pp. 88–89.

  22.

  O. R., Vol. X, Part One, pp. 186, 259, 263.

  23.

  In his coldly savage criticism of Grant’s actions at Shiloh (B. & L., Vol. I, pp. 486–536), General Buell remarks that Grant is very seldom seen in reports of the April 6 fight, and implies broadly that the army commander was very inert. Actually, there are few Civil War battles in which one gets so many glimpses of a commanding general going about his business energetically and competently. Colonel J. F. C. Fuller has cited 18 separate movements and actions which Grant carried out in a space of nine hours, and concludes that “during the turmoil, his activity and generalship appear to me, in the circumstances which surrounded him, to have been quite wonderful.” (The Generalship of Ulysses S. Grant, pp. 111–113.) For another discussion of Grant’s activities on April 6, reaching a similar conclusion, see Conger, pp. 243–251.

  24.

  O. R., Vol. X, Part One, pp. 130–131, 161–162, 226–227; Belknap, pp. 189–190.

  25.

  Rawlins’s original account of the meeting is given in his Shiloh report, O. R., Vol. X, Part One, p. 186. A slightly more elaborate version, probably derived from Rawlins himself, is given in Wilson’s “Life of John A. Rawlins,” p. 88. In his account of Shiloh printed in B. & L., Buell flatly asserts that nothing whatever was said about surrender, and depicts Grant as a rather frightened and stupid man. (Vol. I, pp. 492–493.) Grant refers to the meeting in his Memoirs, Vol. I, pp. 344–345.

  26.

  John K. Duke, History of the 53rd Regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry, pp. 39–55; Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Putnam in Vol. III, Sketches of War History, p. 202.

  27.

  O. R., Vol. X, Part One, p. 149; John T. Bell, Tramps and Triumphs of the Second Iowa Infantry, p. 8.

  28.

  O. R., Vol. X, Part One, pp. 277–278, 562.

  29.

  B. & L., Vol. I, pp. 590, 599–601; O. R., Vol. X, Part One, p. 464.

  30.

  Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Putnam, as Note 26; Whitelaw Reid, Ohio in the War, Vol. I, p. 375.

  31.

  Whitelaw Reid, in an address at a testimonial dinner to Grant at the Lotus Club, New York, reported in the Chicago Tribune, Nov. 21, 1880. When he copied this report for future use, Lloyd Lewis added his own caustic comment: “Reid lies like a dog, for it was he who spread blame on Grant for Shiloh’s massacre.” A slightly different version is given by Reid in Ohio in the War, Vol. I, p. 375.

  32.

  Wilbur F. Hinman, The Story of the Sherman Brigade; Sergt. N. V. Brower, The Battle of Shiloh, at the 5th annual reunion of the 9th Illinois Regiment Veteran Volunteer Association, 1888, p. 58; William R. Hartpence, History of the 51st Indiana Veteran Volunteer Infantry, pp. 36–37; O. R., Vol. X, Part One, p. 331.

  33.

  O. R., Vol. X, Part One, p. 333.

  34.

  John Beatty, The Citizen Soldier, p. 161; History of the 51st Indiana Veteran Volunteer Infantry, p. 38.

  35.

  G. T. Beauregard, “The Shiloh Campaign,” in the North American Review for February, 1886.

  36.

  Colonel William H. Heath, “Hours with Grant,” in the National Tribune, June 29, 1916; O. R., Vol. X, Part One, p. 339.

  37.

  Edwin Witherby Brown, “Reminiscences of an Ohio Volunteer,” in Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, Vol. 48, p. 311; H
enry H. Wright, History of the Sixth Iowa Infantry, p. 86, 89–90; Captain James G. Day. The 15th Iowa at Shiloh, in Vol. II, War Sketches and Incidents, published by the Iowa Commandery, Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, p. 186.

  38.

  Charles F. Hubert, History of the 50th Regiment Illinois Volunteer Infantry, p. 93; Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Putnam, in Vol. III, Sketches of War History, p. 205.

  39.

  Grant voiced sharp criticism of Wallace when he wrote of Shiloh, but modified his criticism materially in his Memoirs, Vol. I, pp. 351–352. Accounts by Rowley, McPherson and Rawlins of the various efforts to get Wallace’s division to the battlefield are in O. R., Vol. X, Part One, pp. 178–182, 185–188. Wallace’s own report on Shiloh is in that volume, beginning p. 169. Wallace gives a detailed and convincing justification of his course of action in his letter to James Grant Wilson, Western Reserve Historical Society, as Note 4.

  40.

  O. R., Vol. X, Part One, p. 159; Grant’s Memoirs, Vol. I, p. 349.

 

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