by Ron Chernow
The successful first phase obscured severe difficulties ahead. So overgrown with vegetation were the inner recesses of the pass, with cottonwood, sycamore, and cypress trees branching overhead, that Union gunboats could scarcely slide through these narrow channels. Confederates sent teams of slaves to fell huge trees, further slowing Union progress. It was a never-ending task for Wilson’s men to saw down obstructions and clear a path. Rebel soldiers threw up a further obstacle at the junction of two rivers, an earthwork island known as Fort Pemberton, stymieing any advance by Union boats. Three times in March Union gunboats worked to reduce the fort and failed. Grant’s reaction to the abortive project shows he banked more hope on these long shots than he later cared to admit when he portrayed them as so many diversionary maneuvers for inactive men. He told Sherman, “I had made so much calculation upon the expedition down the Yazoo Pass . . . that I have made really but little calculation upon reaching Vicksburg by any other than Haynes’ Bluff.”28
At first, the project that captured Grant’s fancy was cutting open another levee that would provide access from the Mississippi to Lake Providence on the Louisiana side of the river, fifty miles north of Vicksburg. Once entry was gained to the landlocked lake, it would be theoretically possible for Union gunboats to coast down several rivers and bayous to the Red River, where it emptied into the Mississippi above Port Hudson. This detour, costing hundreds of miles, would enable Union vessels to bypass Vicksburg’s big guns and reach the eastern shore of the Mississippi unmolested. Grant could then unite his forces with those of General Nathaniel Banks for an onslaught against the Confederate bastion at Port Hudson. Unfortunately, the proposed route south was choked with fallen timber and many trees had to be sawed underwater to free a path for Union boats. Along with dredging, this was such an arduous task that James B. McPherson, Grant’s main engineer, elected to scuttle the effort.
Yet another project attempted to probe Vicksburg from the north via Steele’s Bayou, which led by a series of waterways to the Yazoo River. Once again dense foliage tore apart wooden gunboats that brushed past the canopied branches. “Birds, fish, snakes, turtles and alligators were the only living things we saw while traversing its dark and gloomy labyrinths,” one journalist wrote of his hellish passage through the bayou.29 As boats drifted through tangled branches, rats, mice, raccoons, and snakes were shaken loose from tree limbs onto the decks, forcing crew members to sweep them off with brooms. River steamers with tall smokestacks got so entangled in this jungle growth that they could be hacked free only with difficulty. Submerged tree stumps also made it impossible for boats to move more than one mile per hour. All the while, stalled ships were subject to sporadic sniper fire from rebel sharpshooters. The Steele’s Bayou project was terminated as yet another costly fiasco.
These multiple missteps around Vicksburg and widespread stories of ill soldiers stoked fury in the North over the impasse. Echoing a crescendo of criticism, The New York Times scoffed that Grant was “stuck in the mud of northern Mississippi, his army of no use to him or anyone else.”30 The excruciatingly slow pace of the engineering projects aroused mockery, the Indianapolis Daily Journal snickering that “Grant is getting along at Vicksburg with such rapidity that, in the course of fifteen or twenty years, he will be ready to send up a gunboat to find out whether the enemy hasn’t died of old age.”31 For many, the Vicksburg deadlock symbolized the North’s stalled war effort. “This winter is, indeed, the Valley Forge of the war,” moaned an officer.32
It was a miserable time for Grant, who also had to cope with the loss of his false teeth. He had dipped them in a washbasin overnight only to find that his servant had tossed them out with the water the next morning. He also suffered cruelly from hemorrhoids. Although Grant insisted to Julia that his confidence remained unshaken, the Vicksburg stalemate prompted a wholesale reappraisal of his earlier successes, which many now chalked off to luck. Joseph Medill of the influential Chicago Tribune dismissed Grant’s victories as overblown, telling Washburne, “We could have made him stink in the nostrils of the public like an old fish had we properly criticized his military blunders. Was there ever a more weak and imbecile campaign?”33
By early 1863 the chronic weakness of northern armies was blamed not on ordinary soldiers but on their hopeless commanders. In the newspapers, Grant was unfairly lumped together with feckless generals in Virginia who had repeatedly disappointed Lincoln with their craven, weak-kneed leadership. The pressure on Grant grew daily. “All eyes are centered on your army and there is no mistaking the fact that the anxiety is intense,” a military friend warned. “Many almost feeling that the fate of the Republic now rests on your success or failure.”34 It was an amazing development: the lowly figure who had clerked in a Galena leather goods store now bore the weight of the republic on his shoulders. With voluntary enlistments dwindling and public discontent rising, the politically savvy Grant understood the urgent need for a smashing victory. “There was nothing left to be done but to go forward to a decisive victory,” he later wrote. “This was in my mind from the moment I took command in person at Young’s Point.”35
As his foremost paladin, Congressman Washburne felt the heat as searing criticism against Grant intensified. His brother Cadwallader, a brigadier general under Grant, bombarded him with alarming predictions of upcoming calamity in Mississippi. “All Grant’s schemes have failed. He is frittering away time and strength to no purpose. The truth must be told even if it hurts.”36 Without accusing Grant of drinking, he added: “He is surrounded by a drunken staff.”37 Meanwhile William Rowley slipped Washburne disturbing, confidential reports of new colonels on Grant’s staff who regularly resorted to alcohol. “I doubt if either of them have gone to bed sober for a week,” he wrote.38 From all directions, Washburne’s mail bulged with drinking charges against Grant.
In late January, Edwin Stanton appointed Captain William J. Kountz, who had tried to discredit Grant with drinking charges in Cairo, to supervise river transports for McClernand. Kountz lost little time renewing his vendetta against Grant and McClernand gladly helped him. On March 15, McClernand forwarded to Lincoln a letter from Kountz, whom he touted as honest and reliable. Kountz wrote: “On the 13th of March 1863 Genl. Grant I am informed was Gloriously drunk and in bed sick next day. If you are averse to drunken Genls I can furnish the Name of officers of high standing to substantiate the above.”39
No indictment against Grant was more savage than one penned by Murat Halstead, editor of the Cincinnati Commercial, to Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, who dutifully passed it along to Lincoln. The letter blasted Grant as “a jackass in the original package. He is a poor drunken imbecile. He is a poor stick sober, and he is most of the time more than half drunk, and much of the time idiotically drunk. About two weeks ago, he was so miserably drunk for twenty-four hours, that his staff kept him shut up in a state-room on the steamer where he makes his headquarters—because he was hopelessly foolish.”40 In conveying this letter to Lincoln, Chase noted that “reports concerning General Grant similar to the statements made by Mr. Halstead are too common to be safely or even prudently disregarded.”41 While such a letter, composed in Cincinnati about Grant’s behavior in Mississippi, is suspect, one notes in these nasty letters a recurring consistency in their portrait of an intoxicated Grant. He was always described as being foolishly or idiotically drunk, childish and even jolly in behavior, never angry or abusive. This makes one suspect that the letters contained a germ of truth, since the various authors described the drinking episodes in remarkably similar terms, even though they could not have coordinated their messages with one another.
By nature and background, Abraham Lincoln was an eminently sober figure, having published as an adolescent his maiden newspaper article on the evils of alcohol. Whatever his worries about Grant’s drinking, he could not afford to sacrifice this uniquely successful general. He showed wisdom and fortitude in facing down naysayers who brayed for Grant’s dismissal, p
erhaps sensing their malice. “I think Grant has hardly a friend left, except myself,” he said. Nevertheless, “what I want . . . is generals who will fight battles and win victories. Grant has done this, and I propose to stand by him.”42 The president, who felt as beleaguered as Grant, may thus have had an extra measure of sympathy for him. Before long Lincoln would feel vindicated by his fidelity to Grant: “If I had done as my Washington friends . . . demanded of me, Grant . . . would never have been heard from again.”43
Because most Washington politicians had never set eyes on Grant, he was a largely mythical figure, a cipher on whom they could draw caricatures. The person best placed to correct these distorted images and provide a vivid, personalized picture of Grant was Charles A. Dana, the assistant secretary of war, who arrived in Grant’s camp at Milliken’s Bend, north of Vicksburg, on April 6. Dana found unforgettable his first glimpse of the Union camp laid out along the delta: “The Mississippi at Milliken’s Bend was a mile wide, and the sight as we came down the river by boat was most imposing. Grant’s big army was stretched up and down the river bank over the plantations, its white tents affording a new decoration to the natural magnificence of the broad plains.”44
Before he left Washington, Edwin Stanton gave Dana his mission with Grant plus a plausible cover story: “The ostensible function I shall give you will be that of special commissioner of the War Department to investigate the pay service of the Western armies, but your real duty will be to report to me every day what you see.”45 Stanton wanted an honest assessment of Grant’s drinking habits and daily reports on the Vicksburg Campaign. A handsome man with a full beard and dark, wavy hair, Dana was a figure of considerable stature and investigative skills. He had a colorful background, having lived at Brook Farm, the utopian socialist community, and served as managing editor of Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune. It was an open secret that he was in Mississippi to spy on Grant and report back to Stanton, a situation that hardly endeared him to Grant’s staff. “Dana was about as popular in camp as a case of measles,” said Captain Samuel H. Beckwith. “We knew why he had come and the role he was playing, and the knowledge didn’t engender any warm-hearted enthusiasm for him among us.”46
It attested to Grant’s excellent political judgment that, instead of snubbing Dana, he received him with such disarming civility that the two men formed a warm friendship. At their first interview, Grant even disclosed his new plan for taking Vicksburg. Before long, Dana admitted the true purpose of his presence, and Grant wasn’t fazed. Dana soon vouched to Washington that Grant was “the most modest, the most disinterested, and the most honest man I ever knew, with a temper that nothing could disturb, and a judgment that was judicial in its comprehensiveness and wisdom.”47 He recorded a lovely vignette of Grant’s conviviality: “A social, friendly man, too, fond of a pleasant joke and also ready with one; but liking above all a long chat of an evening, and ready to sit up with you all night, talking in the cool breeze in front of his tent.”48 As to whether Grant drank, Dana delivered a categorical rebuttal: “I have been able, from my own knowledge to give a decided negative.”49 Dana later had to modify this sweeping declaration, but for the moment, it helped to mollify Lincoln and Stanton and buttress support for Grant. So trusted did Dana become that he was soon invited to ride with Grant’s army, becoming a reliable confidant. His dispatches made for prized reading in Washington and Stanton relayed them to the White House, where they were “looked for with deep interest,” the war secretary said.50
Not surprisingly, Dana quickly perceived the special intimacy between Grant and Rawlins. Rawlins invited Dana to pitch his tent right next to Grant’s, thinking it foolish to behave as if they had something to hide. So highly did Dana rate his friendship with Rawlins that he furnished Stanton with this thumbnail sketch: “He is a lawyer by profession, a townsman of Grant’s, and has a great influence over him, especially because he watches him day and night, and whenever he commits the folly of tasting liquor hastens to remind him that at the beginning of the war he gave him (Rawlins) his word of honor not to touch a drop as long as it lasted.”51 But if Dana admired Rawlins’s hardworking patriotism, he criticized his writing skill and thought Grant’s staff was populated with mediocrities chosen less for competence than their loyalty to Grant. As he wrote bluntly to Stanton, “If Gen. Grant had about him a staff of thoroughly competent men, disciplinarians, & workers, the efficiency & fighting quality of his army would soon be very much increased.”52 The staff problems Dana identified would haunt Grant during his presidency, when he needed strong personalities with broad policy expertise. In wartime, however, Grant was at liberty to keep his own counsel and trust his judgment, which was more often than not correct.
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EVEN AS HE PURSUED circuitous approaches to Vicksburg, Grant remained holed up for hours aboard the Magnolia, puffing intently on cigars and studying maps unfurled on a mahogany table before him. With its succession of natural barriers, Vicksburg was a riddle that he pondered with all-consuming concentration. “Heretofore I have had nothing to do but fight the enemy,” he explained to Julia. “This time I have to overcome obstacles to reach him.”53 During a party aboard the flagship, the convivial James McPherson worried that Grant, oblivious to the crowd, was wearing himself down with hard work and attempted to lure him away from his desk. “General, this won’t do; you are injuring yourself; join with us in a few toasts, and throw this burden off your mind.”54 Grant smiled up at McPherson. “Mac, you know your whisky won’t help me to think; give me a dozen of the best cigars you can find, and, if the ladies will excuse me for smoking, I think by the time I have finished them I shall have this job pretty nearly planned.”55
On April 1, Dana informed Stanton that Grant had ditched plans for indirect moves on Vicksburg. Lincoln had foreseen the failure of such tortuous approaches, telling a reporter he considered “all these side exhibitions through the country dangerous.”56 Pale, haggard, the president suffered anxious moments as he impatiently awaited news of a breakthrough from Mississippi. His prayers were soon answered. As the Mississippi waters receded, exposing more dry land, Grant opted for a more direct approach to Vicksburg. In a stupendous leap of military daring, he decided to run his gunboats past its batteries at night, establishing a beachhead for his troops south of the city. Just how tough this would be was strikingly demonstrated on March 25, when Grant ran two steam rams past its oversize guns. The Switzerland, though it absorbed a shot in its boiler room, floated past the fortress largely unharmed. The Lancaster, by contrast, was pulverized by Confederate fire. “The wreck floated down and lodged at our lower pickets, bottom up,” Grant told Halleck. “She was very rotten and worthless.”57
In addition to scooting gunboats and transports past miles of batteries, Grant would have to march his troops down the western Mississippi shore, then ferry them to dry land on the other bank. From there they would have to cut themselves off from their supply base and live off the land as they drove inland, taking the state capital at Jackson before turning on Vicksburg from the east. The strategy was fraught with danger, raising the prospect that Grant, operating in enemy territory, might be trapped between two Confederate armies—the Vicksburg garrison and any Confederate army that raced to its rescue from the east. It was also questionable whether such a large army could simply batten off the bounty of southern agriculture. Nevertheless, Grant was confident he could subjugate Vicksburg. As Cadwallader Washburn (sic) informed Elihu, “I hear that he says he has a plan of his own which is yet to be tried in which he has great confidence.”58
The self-reliant Grant, despite resistance from several key commanders, chose a plan he hatched in solitude. Sherman thought Grant should return to Memphis and reprise his December tack of traveling south to Vicksburg along the Mississippi Central Railroad in a double-pronged assault. The stubborn Grant would not budge. “I confess I don’t like this roundabout project,” Sherman confided to a commander, “but we must support Grant in wha
tever he undertakes.”59 Believing the new plan headed for disaster, Sherman took the unusual step of writing to Rawlins, who shared his anxieties, about the extreme risk involved. As ever, Grant was exquisitely attuned to the political repercussions of military acts, telling Sherman he opposed retracing his December steps because such a “move backward would further discourage the loyal North and make it difficult to get men or supplies . . . what was wanted was a forward movement to a victory that would be decisive.”60 With such insights, Grant’s mind moved increasingly in tandem with Lincoln’s.
Acting rear admiral David D. Porter, commander of the Mississippi Squadron, shared Sherman’s skepticism, telling Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gustavus Fox, “I am quite depressed with this adventure, which as you know never met with my approval.”61 Porter knew Grant was staking everything on one enormous roll of the dice. As he warned Grant, “You must recollect that when these gunboats once go below [Vicksburg] we give up all hopes of ever getting them up again.”62 Nevertheless, Porter soon gave the plan all the support Grant could wish. Grant’s entire scheme rested on naval cooperation, but he lacked direct power over Porter, who had an ingrained bias against West Point generals. With his long, full beard and heavy eyebrows, Porter had a stern, fiery air. Many people found him insufferably vain and egotistical, but Grant and Porter had struck up a fine working relationship. Porter liked Grant’s “calm, imperturbable face” and his absence of pretension, while Grant deemed Porter “as great an admiral as Lord Nelson.”63 Their rapport established a model for army-navy teamwork in the Civil War.
Right before ten o’clock on the night of April 16, Julia and the children joined Ulysses on the upper deck of a steamer to witness a historic event. Twelve-year-old Fred bustled about while ten-year-old Buck sat in James Wilson’s lap. Julia and Ulysses held hands, like a young couple courting. As they sat on deck chairs behind a white railing, seven ironclads, one wooden gunboat, and three transport ships set out single file to sail south past the Vicksburg batteries. Having remained hidden in the undergrowth of the Yazoo River jungle, the fleet now emerged onto the darkened Mississippi waters. It was a clear, starlit night and Charles A. Dana evoked the passing squadron in painterly terms:
