Crucible of Command

by William C. Davis

  53USG to McPherson, December 19, 1862, ibid., p. 69.

  54Richmond, Times-Dispatch, June 2, 1918.

  55REL to MCL, October 26, 1862, Lee, Recollections, pp. 79–80.

  56REL to Mary Lee, November 1862, ibid., p. 80.

  57REL to CCL, October 26, 1862, transcript, Keith Kehlbeck, Marshall, MI.

  58REL to Jackson, November 9, 1862, Wartime Papers, p. 331.

  59REL to George W. Randolph, November 10, 1862, ibid., p. 332.

  60REL to Custis Lee, November 10, 1862, ibid., p. 333.

  61Lee, 2, p. 428, says Lee learned on November 10 and cites OR, I, 21, p. 83 as his source. That citation in fact is to Burnside’s report of the Fredericksburg campaign and has nothing at all to do with when Lee learned of the change.

  62REL to Jackson, November 12, 1862, Wartime Papers, p. 334.

  63REL to Jackson, November 19, 1862, ibid., p. 340, REL to Davis, November 20, 1862, p. 341.

  64REL to MCL, November 22, 1862, ibid., p. 343.

  65REL to William M. McDonald, April 15, 1868, New Orleans, Times-Picayune, August 30, 1903.

  66REL to Cooper, November 22, 1862, Wartime Papers, pp. 341–42.

  67REL to MCL, November 22, 1862, ibid., p. 343.

  68REL to Davis, November 25, 1862, ibid., p. 345.

  69REL to Jackson, November 23, 1862, ibid., p. 344.

  70REL to Davis, November 25, 1862, OR, I, 21, pp. 1029–30, REL to Secretary of War, November 25, 1862, p. 1030.

  71D. H. Hill to R. L. Dabney, July 21, 1864, Charles S. Venable to Dabney, December 21, 1864, R. L. Dabney Collection, Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, VA.

  72Longstreet to Joseph E. Johnston, October 5, 1862, Marshall Coyne Collection, Fredericksburg, VA.

  73REL to Jackson, November 28, 1862, OR, I, 21, p. 1037.

  74REL to Jackson, November 27, 1862, Wartime Papers, p. 347.

  75Abstract from field return, December 10, 1862, OR, I, 21, p. 1057.

  76REL to MCL, December 7, 1862, Wartime Papers, p. 354.

  77REL to Mrs. W. H. F. Lee, December 10, 1862, ibid., p. 357.

  78REL to MCL, December 11, 1862, ibid., pp. 357–58.

  79REL to Gustavus W. Smith, December 12, 1862, OR, I, 21, p. 1060.

  80This is the point in the battle when Lee supposedly said to Longstreet words to the effect that it was a good thing war was so horrible, or else men would come to love it too much. This comes from John Esten Cooke’s 1871 biography of Lee, though Cooke was on Jeb Stuart’s staff and almost certainly could not have been present to hear anything said by Lee, since Stuart and his division were posted at the extreme right flank of the Confederate line almost five miles from Telegraph Hill. If Cooke did not invent the expression, it was at best hearsay sometime after the fact. Longstreet never wrote about Lee making such a statement. E. P. Alexander did, but forty-five years after the fact, and obviously taking it from Cooke’s book, by which time the expression was firmly fixed in the Lee mythology. Freeman further muddied the issue by altering the quotation. See Gary W. Gallagher’s introduction in Gary W. Gallagher, ed., The Fredericksburg Campaign: Decision on the Rappahannock (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), p. xii note, for a brief though incisive discussion of this famous quotation.

  81REL to William M. McDonald, April 15, 1868, New Orleans, Times-Picayune, August 30, 1903.

  82REL to MCL, December 16, 1862, Wartime Papers, p. 365.

  83REL to MCL, December 25, 1862, ibid., p. 380. In June 1877 Major General Henry Heth wrote a letter recalling a conversation of Lee’s supposedly shortly after Gettysburg when Lee said “I was much depressed” after Fredericksburg and that “we had really accomplished nothing; we had not gained a foot of ground, and I knew the enemy could easily replace the men he had lost.” Heth may overstate his recollection, assuming the conversation took place. “Letter from Major-General Henry Heth, of A. P. Hill’s Corps, A. N. V.,” Southern Historical Society Papers, 4 (October 1877), p. 153.

  84REL to James A. Seddon, December 14, 1862, Wartime Papers, pp. 363–64.

  85REL to MCL, December 16, 1862, ibid., p. 364.

  86REL to GWCL, January 4, 1862, ibid., p. 100.

  87REL to WHFL, July 9, 1860, George Bolling Lee Papers, VHS.

  88REL to GWCL, January 19, 1862, Wartime Papers, pp. 105–106, REL to MCL, January 28, 1862, p. 108.

  89MCL to Eliza A. Stiles, July 6, 1862, Hugh S. Golson Collection of Stiles Family Papers, Georgia Historical Society, Savannah.

  90REL to MCL, December 16, 1862, Wartime Papers, p. 365, December 21, 1862, p. 379.

  91The Seligmans sold primarily ladies’ fashion items, so Julia may have been the reason Grant and Jesse met. Watertown, New York Reporter, April 3, 1851.

  92In Memoriam: Jesse Seligman (New York: Philip Cowen, 1894), p. 20.

  93Pawn Ticket, December 23, 1857, PUSG, 1, p. 339.

  94USG to Thomas J. Haines, December 17, 1861, PUSG, 3, p. 299, USG to William Leland, January 1, 1862, pp. 359–61.

  95Grant to Isaac F. Quinby, July 26, 1862, PUSG, 5, pp. 238–41n.

  96PUSG, 5, p. 240n.

  97Charles A. Dana to Stanton, January 21, 1863, Charles A. Dana, Recollections of the Civil War (New York: D. Appleton, 1913), p. 18.

  98USG to Washburne, November 7, 1862, PUSG, 6, p. 273.

  99USG to Hurlbut, November 9, 1862, ibid., p. 283 and n.

  100USG to Sherman, December 5, 1862, ibid., p. 393.

  101USG to John V. D. Du Bois, December 9, 1862, PUSG, 7, pp. 8–9n.

  102Ibid., p. 9n.

  103Ibid., p. 52n.

  104Ibid., p. 51n.

  105Boston, Herald, January 29, 1863.

  106Richmond, Examiner, December 25, 1862.

  107Springfield, Daily Illinois State Journal, December 18, 1862.

  108Macon, Telegraph, December 20, 1862.

  109USG to Mary Grant, December 15, 1862, PUSG, 7, pp. 43, 44.

  110Ibid., pp. 44–45n.

  111Jesse R. Grant to Washburne, January 20, 1863, Elihu B. Washburne Papers, LC; Jesse R. Grant Statement, December 31, 1863, Cincinnati, Daily Enquirer, September 16, 1872; New York, Tribune, January 31, 1872.

  112PUSG, 7, p. 24n, says Julia arrived December 19, but the sources are an undated memoir written some years later that may not be accurate, and Julia’s statement says that she arrived the day before the Holly Springs raid, which was December 20 (PMJDG, pp. 107–108). She could not have arrived any earlier than December 16 if the rail line was completed by then, as Grant believed it would be when he wrote to his sister Mary the day before (USG to Mary Grant, December 15, 1862, PUSG, 7, p. 43). Julia Grant makes no mention of Jesse Grant being with her on the visit. She does by her chronology suggest that Grant had issued Orders No. 11 before he notified her that the road to Oxford was completed.

  113USG to Mary Grant, December 15, 1862, PUSG, 7, p. 44.

  114USG to McPherson, December 16, 1862, ibid., p. 47.

  115USG to Jesse Grant, November 23, 1862, PUSG, 6, p. 344–45.

  116William S. Hillyer to New York World, January 29, 1868, PUSG, 19, pp. 20–21n. Hillyer says this telegraphic exchange took place December 17 and Grant wrote the order immediately afterward, but his memory is surely in error. USG’s letter to Mary Grant on December 15 states he had received a telegram from Jesse at Holly Springs. It seems more likely that if Jesse was going to ask for permission to come on to Oxford he would have done it then rather than wait two days. Moreover, as of December 15 Grant only expected to be at Oxford until the next day or December 17 at the latest, which Julia surely knew, so Jesse should have too, more reason that he would not wait until December 17 to wire for permission, when for all he knew his son would not be in Oxford when he got there.

  It appears questionable that Jesse Grant ever got the permit from his son. He later maintained that he did, and in 1864 filed a suit against the Marks for $10,000 as his share of the cotton they purchased thanks to his good offices. The Marks, however, testified that Jesse
never met his obligations under the contract, did not get them a permit, but only furnished a letter of introduction to USG. They did buy cotton at Lagrange from January to March 1863, but that was after revocation of Grant’s expulsion order, and Jesse had nothing to do with it since it was not purchased under a permit from his son. Their defense was that Jesse rendered no “lawful service” to them. On October 23, 1866, Jesse’s suit was dismissed by mutual assent with each side paying its own court costs, though some accounts allege that the Macks paid him a small settlement. Jesse Grant Statement December 31, 1863 Cincinnati Superior Court, Jesse R. Mack vs. Harmon Mack and others, Cincinnati, Daily Enquirer, September 16, 1872; New York, Tribune, January 31, 1872; Matthew Carey, Jr., comp., The Democratic Speaker’s Hand-book: Containing Every Thing Necessary for the Defense of the National Democracy in the Upcoming Presidential Campaign, and for the Assault of the Radical Enemies of the Country and Its Constitution (Cincinnati: Miami Print and Publishing, 1868), pp. 42–43. This reprints an account that first appeared in the Cincinnati, Commercial, May 17, 1864.

  117An anonymous writer ironically styling himself “Gentile” wrote to the Cincinnati, Commercial, in mid-January, 1863, attesting that he had been at Grant’s headquarters in Oxford on the evening of December 17 when an aide brought in a telegram from Washington that Grant read aloud. “We are reliably advised that Jews are buying up the gold in the various cities of the Union, for the purpose of investing in cotton in the South,” the writer remembered it saying. “This should be prevented. You will, therefore, issue an order expelling from your lines all Jews who can not give satisfactory evidence of their honesty of intentions” (Columbus, OH, Crisis, January 21, 1863). Thereupon, it said, Grant immediately issued General Orders No. 11.

  “Gentile’s” story may have been a hoax, or a truth stretched to falsehood. Certainly Grant had received forged telegrams in the past. The Cincinnati, Commercial, was no apologist for Grant, having itself published some scathing criticism of his actions at Shiloh, as well as Bickham’s insinuations, while puffing for Rosecrans. Just days before the order appeared it predicted that “too much must not be expected of Gen. Grant” (quoted in Augusta, GA, Daily Constitutionalist, December 25, 1862). That would make it seem unlikely that the paper would publish something amounting to a defense of Grant after General Orders No. 11 caused a firestorm of protest. Yet it was also the Commercial that published his letter to his father defending himself against charges of being surprised at Shiloh, and Jesse Grant had placed other items in its pages in his often bumbling efforts to advance his son. Jesse did not get to Oxford on this trip, apparently, at least not on December 17. “That Jew order so much harped on in congress,” he told Washburne six weeks later, “was issued on express instructions from Washington” (Jesse Grant to Washburne, January 20, 1863, Washburne Papers). He could only know that—or purport to know it—if his son told him, or if he read the “Gentile” statement in the Commercial. One other possibility offers an explanation: Jesse Grant himself was “Gentile.” The heavy-handed irony of the nom de plume was typical of his ham-fisted efforts at wit, as would be such a retroactive attempt to relieve his son of responsibility for the controversial order. Speculation on that can go no further.

  The alleged December 17 telegram or packet of letters is a controversial issue and cannot be fully resolved. If such a telegram was actually sent and received, no copy or record of it survived, which would be unusual in Grant’s headquarters, and even more so in the War Department at Washington. That argues more for a letter if anything, and the testimony is strong that something came to headquarters that day that influenced Grant’s action. Certainly the alleged telegram just reiterated reports common in the department for some time. Others later testified to the general authenticity of the “Gentile” statement, if not the telegram quoted, and all agreed that Grant received some kind of communication on December 17 that led directly to issuance of the order. Jesse Grant’s January 30, 1863, letter to Washburne is the earliest, and though it does not mention the supposed telegram received December 17, it substantively corroborates its import. The New York, World, on August 18, 1863, ran a letter from a correspondent with Grant’s army observing that his policy at that time seemed to be “what he was instructed by the department at Washington to attempt six months ago, namely, the expulsion of the ‘Jews,’” a pretty clear reference to the supposed order received by Grant on December 17, 1863. On January 29, 1868, William S. Hillyer wrote an account that unequivocally stated that Grant wrote General Orders No. 11 after receiving a telegram that his father was at Holly Springs with a Jewish trader, Goldsmith, who wanted to come see him (William S. Hillyer to New York World, January 29, 1868, PUSG, 19, pp. 20–21n). On May 6, 1868, writing on behalf of Grant, Rawlins addressed an open letter to Lewis Dembitz, in which he gave a lengthy justification of the order, noting that on the evening of December 17 Grant received a number of complaints referred to him by Halleck, all citing Jews for violating orders prohibiting alleged acts. On reading them, Grant, said Rawlins, felt that “some immediate action was demanded of him,” hence the order (Rawlins to Dembitz, May 6, 1868, New York, Tribune, June 23, 1868).

  On July 6, 1868, David Eckstein of Cincinnati, who had three days earlier published a denial that Jews were opposed to Grant’s presidential candidacy, made an unannounced call on Grant while the general was in Covington for a few hours visiting his parents (San Francisco, Bulletin, August 15, 1868). Grant discussed the order with him for some two hours and gave him permission to publish “the substance of our conversation” if he wished (New York, Herald, October 23, 1868). Eckstein certainly drafted an account of Grant’s explanation for General Orders No. 11 and sent it to Grant a few weeks later, for in an August 14 letter to his father Grant mentioned “the Israelite who called on me,” and added that he got a letter from him in late July or early August and that Eckstein had “written out our conversation substantially correct,” mentioning that the account contained “an allusion to a letter received by me before the publication of my Jew orders, correctly given, as I recollect it.” Thus Grant confirmed the receipt of an unspecified communication just before he issued General Orders No. 11, though he did not state that it was an order for him to do so, or even that it was the proximate cause for him doing so, though the context clearly implies that was the case. Grant further stated that he sent Eckstein’s account to Rawlins for verification (USG to Jesse Grant, August 14, 1868, PUSG, 19, p. 17).

  Interestingly, Eckstein’s papers in private hands contain an unsigned and undated account written in the first person as a witness present on December 17, 1862, that almost quotes the “Gentile” item verbatim. Bertram Korn, American Jewry and the Civil War (New York: Athenaeum, 1970), p. 141, sees the similarity in wording between the Eckstein document and the “Gentile” original as corroboration of its content, but it argues just as strongly that whoever wrote this account had “Gentile’s” item before them and rephrased it in the form of a personal recollection. The unnamed writer also says that he sent his “recollection” to someone in Washington who had been present at Grant’s headquarters on December 17, 1862, asking for his opinion, and that he replied that the account was “substantially correct.” The man in Washington is obviously Rawlins (PUSG, 19, pp. 26–27n). The fact that Grant in his letter to his father and the unnamed writer of the Eckstein account both state that an account was sent to Rawlins suggests that they are both talking about the same statement, a conclusion circumstantially reinforced by the fact that both Grant and the authority in Washington use exactly the same phrase “substantially correct” in evaluating what Eckstein showed Grant, and what the unnamed writer sent to Rawlins. Moreover, if Jesse Grant was in fact the author of the “Gentile” statement, the fact that Eckstein met Grant in his father’s Covington home would mean that Jesse very likely had a copy of the newspaper item readily at hand to display, accounting for the similarity in wording. The fact that the unsigned account is written in the first person is cha
llenging. Korn, American Jewry, p. 141, states that other papers of Eckstein’s establish that he was in the Oxford, Mississippi, area in December 1862, but makes no specific citations.

  Finally, on September 18, 1868, USG wrote to Isaac N. Morris in explanation of the order, saying, “I do not pretend to sustain the order. At the time of its publication I was incensed by a reprimand received from Washington for permitting acts which the Jews, within my lines, were engaged in.” The supposed telegram quoted by “Gentile” was hardly a reprimand, but Grant’s letter corroborates the statement that he issued the order in response to a communication from Washington (USG to Morris, September 14, 1868, PUSG, 19, p. 37).

  The most outlandish explanation came five years later when Grant was running for the presidency and a newspaper stated that Jesse told his son that the Macks were refusing to pay him his share of their cotton profits, and Grant threatened to expel Jews from his department in retaliation, and finally did (Camden, NJ, Democrat, August 15, 1868).

  118USG to Christopher P. Wolcott, December 17, 1862, PUSG, 7, pp. 56–57. Grant’s failure to mention General Orders No. 11 in his letter argues strongly that it was written prior to his drafting the order that day, though clearly he had an order of expulsion on his mind.

  119It is often asserted that Grant’s “last straw” was his father arriving with one or more of the Macks to apply for a permit to buy cotton. See, for instance, PUSG, 7, p. 53n, and John Y. Simon, “Ulysses S. Grant and the Jews: An Unsolved Mystery,” The Record (Washington: Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington, 1995), 21, pp. 24–33; Simpson, Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph Over Adversity, p. 164. However, this seems highly improbable, at least as traditionally presented. Simon Mack, in testimony cited below, stated that Jesse Grant only gave him a letter of introduction to USG and did not secure a permit. Solomon Goldsmith said he went to Holly Springs with Jesse, made no mention of going on to Oxford to meet Grant in person, and then said he returned North with Jesse. If the railroad line from Holly Springs to Oxford was not open for Julia to make the trip to her husband until December 19, then Jesse could have made it no sooner unless somehow he made the trip overland. Solomon Goldsmith said he bought $6,000 worth of cotton at Holly Springs that was destroyed in the Confederate raid on December 20, and presumably was not allowed to buy any after December 18, when Grant’s expulsion order was known. Indeed, that order would have required Goldsmith to leave Holly Springs within twenty-four hours of the post commander there being notified of General Orders No. 11, which he would have been the first to receive as it went out on the telegraph from Oxford. Thus Goldsmith would have been required to leave by December 18, or the 19th at the latest. The fact that Julia’s memoir does not mention Jesse Grant being with her is not conclusive of anything, since it was written years later and is often fallible, but it is suggestive of the possibility that Jesse never came on to Oxford but left when Goldsmith left, and thus never had an opportunity to apply personally to his son for a permit. That would agree with the Macks’ later statement that no such permit was issued and that all Jesse did for them was give Simon Mack a letter of introduction, which he very well might have, since the Macks were certainly buying cotton from January to March 1863 in that department after General Order No., 11 was revoked.