The Man Who Saved the Union (29 page)

But Beauregard wasn’t dead, and as the Union casualty count—some thirteen thousand killed, wounded or captured—became known, it dulled Grant’s achievement. The troops who fled the field on Sunday included men who afterward blamed their loss of nerve on the failure of their superiors to anticipate the Confederate attack; they told lurid tales of being surprised in their tents and seeing their comrades bayoneted where they slept.
Buell’s officers and men naturally thought their arrival had saved the day;
their
commander, they said, rather than Grant, should be the hero of the hour.
Whitelaw Reid, a young reporter with the
Cincinnati Gazette
, savaged Grant in a lengthy article that furnished grist for scores of other newspapers. Horace Greeley, mightily impressed after Fort Donelson, now declared, “
There was no more preparation by General
Grant for an attack than if he had been on a Fourth of July frolic.” Governors of states that lost men complained that Grant hadn’t done enough to protect their boys; members of
Congress called for an investigation. Among the many people who had heard the tales of Grant’s drinking were more than a few now willing to blame his unpreparedness on the bottle.

Grant was sensitive to the criticism. “
I will go on and do my duty to the very best of my ability, without praise, and do all I can to bring this war to a speedy close,” he wrote his father from Pittsburg Landing. “I am not an aspirant for anything at the close of the war”—unlike those officers and politicians, he implied, who criticized him and
did
aspire for place and preference. “As to the talk about a surprise here, nothing could be more false. If the enemy had sent us word when and where they would attack us, we could not have been better prepared. Skirmishing had been going on for two days between our reconnoitering parties and the enemy’s advance. I did not believe, however, that they would make a determined attack, but simply that they were making a reconnaissance in force.” The newspapers and the politicians were stressing his absence from the front on the morning of the attack as evidence of his unreadiness; this showed how little they knew, Grant said. “Troops were constantly arriving to be assigned to brigades and divisions, all ordered to report at Savannah, making it necessary to keep an office and someone there. I was also looking for
Buell to arrive, and it was important that I should have every arrangement complete for his speedy transit to this side of the river.”

Grant never got over the criticism of Shiloh; in the last months of his life he was still defending his decision not to entrench. “
The troops with me, officers and men, needed discipline and drill more than they did experience with pick, shovel and axe,” he wrote in his memoirs. Yet he couldn’t deny the cost of the victory, although he noted that the Confederates paid heavily too. “Shiloh was the severest battle fought at the West during the war, and but few in the East equaled it for hard, determined fighting. I saw an open field, in our possession on the second day, over which the Confederates had made repeated charges the day before, so covered with dead that it would have been possible to walk across the clearing, in any direction, stepping on dead bodies, without a foot touching the ground.”

Shiloh showed him what he could ask of his men; it also taught him what he
must
ask of them. “Up to the battle of Shiloh I, as well as thousands
of other citizens, believed that the rebellion against the Government would collapse suddenly and soon if a decisive victory could be gained over any of its armies.” Forts Henry and Donelson had been such victories, but Shiloh revealed that the Confederates had more fight in them than ever. “Then, indeed, I gave up all idea of saving the Union except by complete conquest.”

A
lexander McClure was a friend of Lincoln and for that reason, following Shiloh, a critic of Grant. “
I did not know Grant at that time; had neither partiality nor prejudice to influence my judgment, nor had I any favorite general who might be benefited by Grant’s overthrow,” McClure remembered. “But I shared the almost universal conviction of the President’s friends that he could not sustain himself if he attempted to sustain Grant by continuing him in command.” McClure was an influential Pennsylvania Republican who had supported Lincoln early and strongly for president, and now he visited the White House to press the case for Grant’s removal. “I appealed to Lincoln for his own sake to remove Grant at once, and in giving my reasons for it I simply voiced the admittedly overwhelming protest from the loyal people of the land against Grant’s continuance in command.”

McClure spoke for several minutes, constructing what he thought was a compelling case. Lincoln listened and pondered silently for some time. “He then gathered himself up in his chair,” McClure recounted, “and said in a tone of earnestness that I shall never forget: ‘
I can’t spare this man; he fights
.’ ”

H
enry Halleck was certain he knew more about war than Lincoln did, and he was shocked at the cost of Shiloh and sure the Union couldn’t stand many more such victories. For the record he congratulated Grant and his officers and men. “
The soldiers of the great West have added new laurels to those which they had already won on numerous fields,” he proclaimed. But he moved at once to demote Grant in practice if not in rank. He informed the War Department that he was transferring his headquarters to Pittsburg Landing and would assume direct command of Grant’s army.

Grant resented the decision deeply. He had grown accustomed to command and didn’t like being preempted. He felt embarrassed by Halleck’s
display of want of confidence and deprived of the chance to capitalize on and thereby redeem the bloody victory at Shiloh. He suffered in silence for weeks, thinking Halleck intended to attack Corinth, the objective of the battle of Shiloh. But when no attack occurred or even appeared imminent, he couldn’t contain himself. “
I have felt my position as anomalous, and determined to have it corrected, in some way, so soon as the present impending crisis should be brought to a close,” he wrote Halleck. “I felt that censure was implied but did not wish to call up the matter in the face of the enemy.” Apparently, however, no battle was at hand, and so he must speak. “My position differs but little from that of one in arrest.” This was intolerable. “I deem it due to myself to ask either full restoration to duty, according to my rank, or to be relieved entirely from further duty.”

Halleck professed puzzlement. “
I am very much surprised, General, that you should find any cause of complaint in the recent assignment of commands,” he replied to Grant. “You have precisely the position to which your rank entitles you.” Grant was wrong to take offense. “You certainly will not suspect me of any intention to injure your feelings or reputation or to do you any injustice; if so you will eventually change your mind on this subject.” Far from being Grant’s persecutor, he was his protector. “I have done everything in my power to ward off the attacks which were made upon you.” Many in Washington wanted Grant fired; Grant should be happy to retain his post. “If you believe me your friend, you will not require explanations; if not, explanations on my part would be of little avail.”

G
rant couldn’t have refuted Halleck’s explanation even if he had been sure it was specious. Perhaps Halleck was telling the truth after all. Yet this didn’t change the fact that Grant was now a general without an army. And he saw little chance of regaining an army until the cloud over his reputation lifted.

He learned that
Elihu Washburne, alone in Congress, had defended him. In writing Washburne a letter of thanks, Grant detailed the untenability of his situation in the face of the continuing attacks. “
I have a father, mother, wife and children who read them and are distressed.… Then, too, all subject to my orders read these charges, and it is calculated to weaken their confidence in me and weaken my ability to render efficient service in our present cause.” He told the same sad story to Julia. “
I have been so shockingly abused
that I sometimes think it is almost time to defend myself,” he said. He couldn’t do so where he was. “I am thinking seriously of going home.”

But he wouldn’t leave with Corinth unconquered. He thought the army should have moved on Corinth immediately after Shiloh when the Confederates were battered and vulnerable. Every day let
Beauregard regroup and consolidate the town’s defenses. Yet Halleck refused to move at more than a snail’s pace, insisting that each step be thoroughly prepared and all vulnerabilities eliminated.

Grant, already upset at being ignored, grew exasperated at Halleck’s slowness. He approached Halleck in late May and suggested that an advance by night could lay Corinth open to easy assault. Halleck rebuffed the advice as unsound and unwanted. “
I was silenced so quickly that I felt that possibly I had suggested an unmilitary movement,” Grant remembered bitterly.

Halleck’s cautious approach eventually succeeded, after a fashion. Beauregard decided that Corinth had become indefensible and ordered the town evacuated. “
We found the enemy had gone, taking with them all their men, arms, and most of their supplies,” Grant wrote Julia on May 31. “What they did not take was mostly burned, in flames as we entered.” The Union now controlled Corinth and the rail lines in and out of the place. But the Confederate army there had escaped.

The result left Grant unsatisfied. He believed that victory depended less on seizing enemy territory, however crucially placed, than on destroying the enemy’s armies. “They will turn up somewhere, and have to be whipped yet,” he said of Beauregard’s forces.

W
illiam Sherman was astonished to hear, just days later, that Grant intended to go home. “
I rode from my camp to General Halleck’s headquarters, then in tents just outside of the town, where we sat and gossiped for some time,” Sherman recalled. “He mentioned to me casually that General Grant was going away the next morning.” Sherman asked why. “He said that he did not know, but that Grant had applied for a thirty days’ leave, which had been given him. Of course we all knew that he was chafing under the slights of his anomalous position, and I determined to see him on my way back.”

Sherman approached Grant’s camp, which consisted of a handful of tents in the woods, surrounded by a railing of saplings. Some of Grant’s
staff were outside the tents. “Piled up near them were the usual office and camp chests, all ready for a start in the morning. I inquired for the general, and was shown to his tent, where I found him seated on a camp-stool, with papers on a rude camp-table; he seemed to be employed in assorting letters, and tying them up with red tape into convenient bundles. After passing the usual compliments, I inquired if it were true that he was going away.”

“Yes,” Grant replied.

Sherman asked why.

“Sherman, you know,” Grant said. “You know that I am in the way here. I have stood it as long as I can, and can endure it no longer.”

Sherman asked where he was going.

“St. Louis.”

Did he have any business in St. Louis?

“Not a bit.”

Sherman weighed this briefly. “I then begged him to stay, illustrating his case by my own,” he recalled. “Before the battle of Shiloh, I had been cast down by a mere newspaper assertion of ‘crazy,’ but that single battle had given me new life, and now I was in high feather; and I argued with him that if he went away events would go right along and he would be left out; whereas if he remained, some happy accident might restore him to favor and his true place.”

Grant acknowledged that things had worked out for Sherman. He thanked Sherman for the advice. He sat silently for a moment and then consented to put off his travel plans. Sherman got him to promise not to leave the army without seeing or writing him.

Sherman was ordered away from Corinth soon after this meeting. But a short while later he got a message from Grant saying he had reconsidered and would not be leaving the army after all.

“
I have just received your note, and am rejoiced at your conclusion to remain,” Sherman replied. “For yourself, you could not be quiet at home for a week when armies were moving, and rest could not relieve your mind of the gnawing sensation that injustice has been done you. There is a power in our land, irresponsible, corrupt and malicious, ‘the press,’ which has created the intense feelings of hostility that have arrayed the two parts of our country against each other, which must be curbed and brought within the just limits of reason and law before we can have peace in America.” The press was the enemy as much as the rebels were, Sherman said. “War cannot cease as long as any flippant fool of an editor may
stir up the passions of the multitude, arraign with impunity the motives of the most honorable, and howl on their gang of bloody hounds to hunt down any man who despises their order. We can deal with armies who have a visible and tangible existence, but it will require tact and skill and courage to clip the wings of this public enemy, and I hope you have sufficiently felt the force of what I say to join in their just punishment before we resign our power and pass into the humble rank of citizens.”

Sherman’s advice and letter cemented Grant’s high opinion of him. Sherman had been
promoted to major general after Shiloh, but Grant’s admiration transcended professional rank. “
I have never done half justice by him,” he wrote Julia. “With green troops he was my standby that trying day of Sunday (there has been nothing like it on this continent, nor in history). He kept his division in place all day, and aided materially in keeping those to his right and left in place.” Another letter to Julia summarized Grant’s judgment: “
In General Sherman the country has an able and gallant defender and your husband a true friend.”

D
uring the spring and early summer of 1862 Lincoln grew as dissatisfied with George McClellan as McClellan already was with him. McClellan thought war should be left to the generals; he answered Lincoln’s letters and telegrams politely but proceeded to do as he thought best. He took aim at Richmond, believing capture of the Confederate capital would disperse the rebel government and demoralize the Southern populace. He developed his strategy with care, transporting his army down the Chesapeake and then advancing slowly up the peninsula between the James and York Rivers. He took comfort in news that Robert E. Lee had replaced Joseph Johnston in charge of Richmond’s defense. “
I prefer Lee to Johnston,” McClellan wrote Lincoln in late April. “The former is too weak and cautious under given responsibility; personally brave and energetic to a fault, he is yet wanting in moral firmness when pressed by heavy responsibility and is likely to be timid and irresolute in action.” He assured the president that all was well. “I am confident of success, not only of success but of brilliant success. I think that a defeat here substantially breaks up the rebel cause.”