by Ron Chernow
Grant wasn’t bashful about blaming McClernand. Two days later he sounded off to Halleck, noting that McClernand’s dispatches “misled me as to the real state of facts and caused much of this loss. He is entirely unfit for the position of Corps Commander both on the march and on the battle field.”7 Grant had heeded McClernand’s call for more troops against his better judgment, and he came to rank the May 22 assault as one of two wartime decisions he most regretted, the other being the later attack at Cold Harbor in Virginia.
After this second assault, with wounded soldiers writhing at the foot of the Mississippi ridge and dead bodies decomposing in fierce sunlight, Grant had to make an excruciating choice. Lest it signal weakness, he was reluctant to submit a request for a truce to inter the dead and care for wounded soldiers who lay helplessly exposed on the battlefield. It was Pemberton on May 25 who suggested a two-and-a-half-hour cease-fire—his soldiers had begun to gag on the stench of corpses—and Grant agreed, doubtless with relief.
Having despaired of taking the fortress by storm, Grant settled down to a classic siege that would choke off every conduit of food, men, and ammunition for those walled up inside. Taking up shovels and spades, his men gouged parallel lines of entrenchment, some just fifty yards from the enemy. Grant trained 220 land guns and 100 naval guns on the beleaguered city. Embedding heavy cannon in embrasures was perilous work as Confederate marksmen zeroed in on Union soldiers. To allay the fear gripping his men, Grant “deliberately clambered on top of the embankment in plain view of the sharpshooters, and directed the men in moving and placing the guns,” observed one journalist. “The bullets zipped through the air by dozens, but strangely none of them touched his person or his clothing. He paid no attention to appeals or expostulations . . . and smoked quietly and serenely all the time, except when he removed his cigar to speak to the men at work. His example shamed the men into making a show of courage.”8
The prospect of Johnston hastening in from the east to lift the siege and rescue Pemberton haunted Grant, who told Sherman that Johnston “was about the only general on that side whom he feared.”9 To counter this threat, Grant assigned Sherman, his most trusted commander, to fend it off. “I never had a moment’s care while Sherman was there,” Grant reminisced. “I don’t think Sherman ever went to bed with his clothes off during that campaign, or allowed a night to pass without visiting his pickets in person.”10 As Grant besieged Vicksburg, Confederate generals knew he was far different from the pushovers they had trounced in the eastern theater. Johnston wrote soberly to the Confederate war secretary James A. Seddon: “Grant’s army is estimated at 60,000 or 80,000 men, and his troops are worth double the number of northeastern troops. We cannot relieve General Pemberton except by defeating Grant, who is believed to be fortifying.”11 Abraham Lincoln’s faith in Grant was being rewarded. “Whether Gen. Grant shall or shall not consummate the capture of Vicksburg,” he wrote on May 26, “his campaign from the beginning of this month up to the twenty second day of it, is one of the most brilliant in the world”—a judgment in which military historians would concur.12
Grant’s competence stood in striking contrast to the bumbling ineptitude of Fighting Joe Hooker, whose nickname had proven a sad misnomer at Chancellorsville, Virginia, in early May. Despite outnumbering Robert E. Lee by two to one, Hooker had been as timidly erratic as McClellan. When he received the telegram about the Chancellorsville debacle, Lincoln paced the room in despair, hands clasped behind his back. This fresh disappointment with an eastern commander was more than his frazzled nerves could bear. “My God! My God!” he wailed. “What will the country say! What will the country say!”13 Edwin Stanton identified this as “the darkest day of the war.”14 The only consolation anyone in Washington could extract from Chancellorsville was that Stonewall Jackson had been wounded by friendly fire and died in its aftermath. By late June, Lincoln cashiered Hooker, telling his cabinet he had exhibited “the same failings that were observed in McClellan after the battle of Antietam—a want of alacrity to obey, and a greedy call for more troops which could not . . . be taken from other points.”15 Major General George Gordon Meade took command of the Army of the Potomac. Amid such disillusionment, Lincoln valued more highly Grant’s distant victories. If occasionally vexed by his secrecy, Lincoln enjoyed the novelty of a general who took the offensive without any official prodding and had battle in his bloodstream.
By late May, Grant was ready to relieve McClernand for his erroneous May 22 dispatch. Sherman had warned him that McClernand was intriguing against him, circulating false stories in the press. Stanton gave Grant full power “to remove any person who by ignorance in action or any cause interferes with or delays his operations.”16 Nevertheless, Grant knew McClernand had the president’s ear and bided his time until Vicksburg was taken, which would enhance his own stature and make it easier to sack his faithless subordinate.
Then McClernand committed a blunder that played straight into Grant’s hands, delivering a self-congratulatory speech to his men that found its way into the press. Not only did McClernand try to steal the glory of the Vicksburg Campaign, he reiterated his bogus claim that the failure to reinforce him on May 22 had stopped him from taking the city. This bombastic, egotistical statement violated War Department rules about publishing such boasts. McClernand hadn’t cleared its publication with Grant, making him insubordinate. Grant now had all the ammunition he needed to banish him. He also fretted that, if he were disabled, his army command would settle on McClernand, who never got along with Sherman and McPherson. He now fired McClernand, with Rawlins heightening the effect by sending Colonel James H. Wilson to his tent at two o’clock in the morning to notify him of the decision. McClernand evidently knew what was coming. Wilson found him seated behind a table, two tapers burning, his sword laid out before him. Grant hadn’t consulted anyone in Washington before handing out this summary justice. Subject to Lincoln’s approval, he replaced McClernand with Major General Edward O. C. Ord. With McClernand exiled, Grant enjoyed undisputed control over the Vicksburg siege, having eliminated all rivals in the west.
The one nemesis Grant could not escape was a whispering campaign about his drinking. The protracted Vicksburg operation had imposed excruciating stress on Grant, who must have been sorely tempted to drink. A remarkable photograph taken of him that spring tells a haunting tale. There is an indescribable look of suffering in his sad, woebegone eyes, showing the terrible toll taken by the previous months. It is less the portrait of a conqueror than of a troubled survivor.
Historians have studied allegations that Grant got roaring drunk at a town called Satartia, northeast of Vicksburg, on an inspection trip up the Yazoo River on June 6, 1863, an episode that has become encrusted with legend. In early June, Grant suffered headaches or a spell of ill health that prompted Dr. Charles McMillan to prescribe wine as a sovereign remedy, not an uncommon practice at the time. This apparently led to more indulgence by Grant. Learning he had strayed from the strict path of sobriety, John Rawlins, his resident conscience, drafted an extraordinary rebuke to him in the wee hours of June 6 that seethed with moralistic outrage:
The great solicitude I feel for the safety of this army leads me to mention what I had hoped never again to do—the subject of your drinking . . . I have heard that Dr. McMillan . . . induced you, notwithstanding your pledge to me, to take a glass of wine, and today, when I found a box of wine in front of your tent and proposed to move it, which I did, I was told that you had forbid its being taken away, for you intended to keep it until you entered Vicksburg, that you might have it for your friends; and tonight, when you should, because of the condition of your health if nothing else, have been in bed, I find you where the wine bottle has just been emptied, in company with those who drink and urge you to do likewise, and the lack of your usual promptness of decision and clearness in expressing yourself in writing tended to confirm my suspicions. You have the full control of your appetite and can let drinking alone. Had you not
pledged me the sincerity of your honor early last March that you would drink no more during the war, and kept that pledge during your recent campaign, you would not today have stood first in the world’s history as a successful military leader.17
Some historians question whether Rawlins actually delivered this letter, but he himself wrote that he gave it to Grant: “Its admonitions were heeded, and all went well.”18 Years later Charles A. Dana said that he was with Grant when Rawlins rode up and handed “that admirable communication” to him.19 Far from bristling at such chastisement, Grant continued to embrace Rawlins as his most valuable staff officer, singling him out in July for his “gallant and meritorious services.”20
Although Rawlins claimed his admonition was heeded, it seems to have been followed by a far more significant lapse by Grant. As his hold on Vicksburg strengthened, Grant still worried that Johnston would roar in from the east and raise the siege, leading him to mass a Union force east of Satartia to forestall that possibility. His fears were further inflamed when Johnston sent a large, threatening force that took Yazoo City, north of Satartia, leading Grant to take a steamer up the Yazoo River, in Dana’s company, to investigate the developing situation for himself.
A distinguished correspondent for the Chicago Times and the New York Herald, Sylvanus Cadwallader, a loquacious but prickly man, later conjured up a notorious tale of Grant’s mad, drunken escapade on this trip. Virtually alone among journalists, he lived at camp with Grant, often messed and rode with him, became an ostensible staff member, and was the only reporter with privileged access to headquarters. Despite later writing about Grant’s indiscretions, Cadwallader had inordinate admiration for him, hailing him as “the greatest military chieftain his generation produced.”21 So close did the journalist become with Rawlins that they lived together after the war, and Cadwallader even named his son Rawlins. Grant reserved his highest accolade for Cadwallader, telling him in September 1864, “For two years past I have seen more of you personally probably than of all other correspondents put together,” and he commended his exemplary work in adhering to the legitimate journalistic duties assigned to him.22
Not wishing to violate confidentiality, Cadwallader delayed composing his memoirs until the late 1880s and early 1890s, when he was tending sheep in California. Fred Grant encouraged him to write, saying that “you certainly occupied a position with the Army that gave you great insight into affairs.”23 When the book was belatedly published in 1955, the historian Bruce Catton greeted it as “one of the great books of the Civil War.”24 Far from attempting to debunk Grant, Cadwallader intended to “emphasize his virtues” and show how the “splendor of his achievements will prove amply sufficient to cover all minor imperfections.”25 If Cadwallader had any ax to grind, it came from his belief that Grant in his Memoirs had slighted the wartime contribution of their mutual friend John A. Rawlins.
What we know for certain about the Satartia trip is that on June 6, at Haynes’ Bluff, Grant and Dana boarded a small craft, USS Diligence, which carried them up the Yazoo River. Soon after their departure, Grant became ill—this may have been a euphemism for drunk—and fell asleep in a cabin. When the Diligence approached within two miles of Satartia, it met two Union gunboats heading downstream. Their officers came aboard the steamer and warned that because of Confederate activity in the area and a federal withdrawal, it was too dangerous to proceed any farther. Dana said the officers tried to converse “with General Grant who was not in a condition to conduct an intelligent conversation”—a clear indication Grant was drunk.26 Under the circumstances, it was Dana, not Grant, who made the decision to have the boat turn back and return to Haynes’ Bluff, escorted by gunboats. When Grant awoke the next morning, perfectly sober, he imagined they were at Satartia. Dana had to explain that they had turned around and were back at Haynes’ Bluff, suggesting Grant had blacked out during the trip.27 Later Dana insisted that on the “excursion up the Yazoo River” Grant had gotten “as stupidly drunk as the immortal nature of man would allow; but the next day he came out as fresh as a rose, without any trace or indication of the spree he had passed through.”28 Ironically, Dana, originally sent by Stanton to spy on Grant’s drinking, became, like Rawlins, an unexpected accomplice in concealing the problem.
In narrating this tale, Sylvanus Cadwallader made a startling imaginative leap, placing himself aboard the boat to Satartia in lieu of Dana, even though contemporary records confirm that Cadwallader was absent and Dana present. Cadwallader described Grant’s clownish behavior when tipsy: “He made several trips to the bar room of the boat in a short time, and became stupid in speech and staggering in gait.”29 According to Cadwallader, he prevailed upon the captain to bolt the barroom, denying Grant access to more liquor. Casting himself in a heroic light, Cadwallader said he locked himself into a cabin with Grant and began to chuck whiskey bottles from the window to protect him. When Grant protested angrily, the journalist supposedly got him to lie down and behave. “As it was a very hot day and the State-room almost suffocating, I insisted on his taking off his coat, vest and boots, and lying down in one of the berths. After much resistance I succeeded, and soon fanned him to sleep.”30
The wildest part of Cadwallader’s story involved Grant mounting a horse named Kangaroo after they returned to Haynes’ Bluff and then careering through the woods. “The road was crooked and tortuous, following the firmest ground between sloughs and bayous, and was bridged over these in several places . . . He went at about full speed through camps and corrals, heading only for the bridges, and literally tore through and over everything in his way.” Cadwallader allegedly charged after him on horseback and overtook him. “I secured his bridle rein to my own saddle and convinced him that I was master of the situation. His intoxication increased so in a few minutes that he became unsteady in the saddle.” So subordinates would not see Grant intoxicated, Cadwallader “induced the General to lay down on the grass with the saddle for a pillow. He was soon asleep.”31 Cadwallader summoned an ambulance to fetch them back to camp. As they arrived at midnight, an alarmed Rawlins stood waiting. When Grant emerged from the ambulance, he “shrugged his shoulders, pulled down his vest, ‘shook himself together,’ as one just rising from a nap, and seeing Rawlins and [Colonel John] Riggin, bid them good-night in a natural tone and manner, and started to his tent as steadily as he ever walked in his life.”32
What to make of this fantastic tale? Aside from the fact that Cadwallader wasn’t on the trip to Satartia, many preposterous details strain credulity. If Grant engaged in a drunken, high-speed chase across bridges and through Union camps, many people would have noticed and recorded the shocking sight. No one did. It is also the only account of Grant drinking where he gets drunk, sobers up, then immediately gets drunk again. Grant also never allowed his men to see him drunk. It is impossible to take the Cadwallader story at face value.
At the same time, it shows remarkable consistency with other drinking stories about Grant—the granite self-command breaking down under the influence; the slurred speech, wobbly gait, and sudden personality change; the strange reversion to a babbling, childlike state; the straightening up and getting sober and resuming his official personality in a twinkling. These factors make one suspect that the story, though hugely embellished, may contain a kernel of truth instead of being concocted whole cloth by Cadwallader’s overwrought imagination. In all likelihood, Cadwallader heard the story of the Satartia trip from Dana or Rawlins and presented it as his own eyewitness account for dramatic effect or self-aggrandizement.
In his memoir, Cadwallader did provide a sound analysis of Grant’s drinking habits: how he would resolve after a bender never to drink again; how that pledge would hold for several months; how many people close to him never saw him drunk; how he sat soberly at banquets with his glass turned upside down. “He was not an habitual drinker. He could not drink moderately. When at long intervals his appetite for strong drink caused him to accept the invitation of some old cl
assmate, or army associate, to take ‘just one glass before parting,’ he invariably drank to excess unless some one was with him (whose control he would acknowledge) to lead him away from temptation.”33 Cadwallader also noted the merciless retribution Rawlins visited on anybody who led Grant down the primrose path: “Later on it was no secret that any staff officer who offered the General a glass of liquor, or drank with him . . . would be disgracefully dismissed and actually degraded in rank.”34
Like Cadwallader, Dana left a knowing description of Grant’s drinking, arguing that he always had a degree of control over it—somewhat unusual for an alcoholic. He noted that Grant never drank when it might imperil his army, but “always chose a time when the gratification of his appetite for drink would not interfere with any important movement that had to be directed or attended by him.”35 Of the Satartia trip, he said, “It was a dull period in the campaign. The siege of Vicksburg was proceeding with regularity.”36 Dana provided a convincing explanation of why some people close to Grant claimed, in all honesty, that they never saw these drinking episodes: “The times were chosen with perfect judgment, and when it was all over, no outsider would have suspected that such things had been.”37 He asserted that Grant drank only at three- or four-month intervals and that he knew of only “two or three other occasions” when he got seriously drunk.38 In other words, Charles A. Dana had arrived at the same conclusion as John A. Rawlins: that Ulysses S. Grant was so essential to the Union cause that it was better to shield his sporadic binges than expose him to official censure. The story of the Yazoo River bender was an isolated case of Grant’s drinking in a dangerous war zone where enemy forces were concentrated.
