by Ron Chernow
The next morning, Lincoln steamed up the James River for a meeting with General Butler and Admiral Samuel Phillips Lee and was shown places the Union army had seized. “When Grant once gets possession of a place,” Lincoln commented approvingly, “he holds on to it as if he had inherited it.”92 The tour abounded in dreadful sights. “The weather was hot and the roads dusty beyond anything you can imagine,” Badeau wrote; “dead horses filled the air with their stench, crowds of wagons and mules choked the way, and I was glad enough when the trip was over, for all the horror!!”93 By the time Lincoln returned to Washington the next day, he and Grant “both felt that their acquaintance had already ripened into a genuine friendship,” said Porter.94 The sunburned Lincoln had benefited from the change of scenery, and when he got back to Washington, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles declared the trip had “done him good, physically, and strengthened him mentally.”95 Grant had lifted his morale and Lincoln enjoyed repeating his parting words: “You will never hear of me farther from Richmond than [I am] now, till I have taken it . . . It may take a long summer day, but I will go in.”96
CHAPTER TWENTY
—
Caldron of Hell
BY LATE JUNE, Grant wanted Union forces to stake everything on destroying the two principal Confederate armies under Lee in Virginia and Johnston in Georgia. He was resigned to the stalemate of a long siege in Virginia. For the moment, his army was stifled by oppressive heat, the mercury reaching 108 degrees as a plague of flies descended on his soldiers. A ubiquitous, drought-induced dust reached almost biblical proportions. Visiting City Point, George Templeton Strong gagged at the arid landscape: “Drought and travel have done their work on this region and pulverized the soil . . . beyond what I had dreamed possible. Miles and miles of what were meadow and cornfield are now seas of impalpable dust of unknown depth, and heated to a temperature beyond what the hand can bear.”1 The devastated terrain around Petersburg was a scene of deserted houses and flattened fences, with many soldiers buried in shallow graves that gave off a sickening odor. The war had reduced much of Virginia to a sterile wasteland, while drought choked off the harvest. “Indeed it would be difficult to form an idea of a territory more trampled and blasted by the hoof of war than the greater part of Virginia,” Charles A. Dana reported from City Point.2
Awaiting the arrival of siege guns, Grant extended his line west and south of Petersburg, forcing Lee to imitate him, mile for mile, and throw up earthworks at every turn. Grant wanted to make Lee stretch his thinly staffed lines to the bursting point. Lee worried more about the steady provision of supplies for his men than an attack by Grant’s army. Grant’s overriding objective was to strike at the five railroads that crisscrossed Petersburg and fed Richmond. Starting on June 22, he threw cavalry units against the South Side and Danville Railroads, damaging vast stretches of the tracks but incurring heavy losses.
Grant hoped to choke Richmond through a slow, stealthy process of strangulation. “Every road leading from Richmond is now destroyed,” he reported to Halleck, “and the Danville road so badly I hope, as to take a long time for its repair.”3 Grant erred in his optimism, for the rebel army had grown proficient at repairing tracks quickly. He drew encouragement from the fact that Lee’s army was starting to include the very young and old, an unmistakable sign of desperation. As he told his father, his opponents had robbed “the grave and the cradle. Old men like yourself, and little boys like my Fred are now fighting; the Grandfather and Grandson side by side.”4 No less fervently Grant wrote, “The last man in the Confederacy is now in the Army. They are becoming discouraged, their men deserting, dying and being killed and captured every day.”5 With the South unable to replace lost men, Grant thought it only a matter of time before the Confederacy yielded.
To replenish the Army of the Potomac, he had appropriated a large number of soldiers previously manning Washington’s defenses. In an emergency, he thought he could transfer an entire corps northward from Virginia in two days. Halleck feared that when Grant moved south of the James River, Lee would be tempted to dispatch a raiding party against the capital. Indeed, Lee imagined such a strategy would force Grant to divert a significant fraction of his army to defend the capital, contracting his presence outside Petersburg. In a fortuitous development for Lee, General David Hunter withdrew from the Shenandoah Valley into West Virginia, opening the way for a Confederate force to tear into Baltimore or Washington, defended only by militia, invalided soldiers, and convalescents. On June 12, Lee sent Jubal Early, with a considerable corps, to storm through the valley and deal a stinging blow to the federal capital. After defeating Hunter at Lynchburg, Early advanced steadily north, reaching Harpers Ferry by July 3.
A balding, full-bearded West Point graduate, riddled with arthritis, Early had functioned as a lawyer and politician in his native Virginia. Fiercely moralistic and notoriously ill-tempered, he didn’t suffer fools gladly. Lee referred to him as “my bad old man.”6 Urged on by a crusading fervor, Early now led his fifteen thousand men toward Washington, their numbers magnified in the minds of panicky northerners. By July 4, Grant was informed by a deserter of the threat posed by Early and warned Halleck the Confederate general would try to punish Washington. He ordered cavalry and an infantry division to hasten to the capital’s defense. “We want now to crush out & destroy any force the enemy dares send north,” Grant told Halleck in a midnight telegram on July 5.7 As always, the two-faced Halleck was quick to distance himself from Grant if things went wrong and equally quick to grab credit if things prospered. He now reproached Grant behind his back. “I predicted this to Genl Grant before he crossed the James River,” he told a friend, “and that Lee would play the same game of shuttle-cock between him & Washington that he did with McClellan.”8
On July 8, alarm mounted in the capital as Early’s raiders penetrated western Maryland, spreading terror as they ripped up railroad tracks, torched mills and workshops, and sent local residents fleeing toward Washington and Baltimore. The hysteria intensified the next day as Union soldiers retreated toward Washington after Early administered a beating to a Union force under General Lew Wallace at the Monocacy River, outside of Frederick. With a far smaller contingent, Wallace slowed Early’s march by a day, giving Grant precious time to transfer more troops to Washington. “If Early had been but one day earlier,” Grant wrote, “he might have entered the capital before the arrival of the reinforcements I had sent.”9 Train traffic was halted in and out of the city, government clerks packed weapons at work, and Lincoln had a boat ready to spirit him away if Confederates ransacked the city. The situation was grave enough that an unusually nervous Grant volunteered to go to Washington, if Lincoln thought it advisable.
Lincoln felt queasy enough to suggest that Grant leave sufficient men to guard his position at Petersburg and bring the rest to the capital. He saw an opportunity to protect Washington and destroy an invading army at once. Having worked hard not to interfere with Grant, Lincoln made a point of treading gingerly. “This is what I think, upon your suggestion, and is not an order,” he told Grant.10 This was the closest Lincoln ever came to handing Grant orders. Upon reflection, Grant decided that traveling to Washington was “probably just what Lee wants me to do,” and refused to allow Lee to divert him from his plans.11 Rawlins was insistent that Grant’s “appearance in Washington would be heralded all over the country as an abandonment of his campaign, a faltering at least in his purpose,” and Grant was swayed by his typically assertive viewpoint.12 It spoke to the personal strength that Grant developed during the war that he didn’t agree with the president merely to placate him and that Lincoln abided by his decision.
On July 11, Lincoln appeared at Fort Stevens, north of Washington, which was under fire from Early’s men. To soothe an alarmed populace, Lincoln and Stanton rode there in an open carriage. The tall, angular president, peeping over the fort’s parapet, made a prime target for Confederate marksmen, and one Union soldier (possibly Captain Oliv
er Wendell Holmes Jr.), unaware it was Lincoln, shouted, “Get down, you fool.”13 It was the only time in American history a sitting president came under fire in combat. Luckily for the Union side, the corps sent by Grant under Horatio Wright arrived at Fort Stevens that afternoon and the national capital was spared. Early made no further inroads, fading back into Virginia. “Well Major,” he told an aide, “we haven’t taken Washington, but we scared Abe Lincoln like hell.”14 Lincoln expressed annoyance that Wright didn’t pursue the retreating rebels, saying sardonically the general feared “he might come across the rebels and catch some of them.”15 Grant sent troops to harass Early and leave a trail of devastation in their wake or, in his indelibly ghoulish words, “to eat out Virginia clear and clean as far as they go, so that Crows flying over it for the balance of this season will have to carry their provender with them.”16 At the War Department, Halleck faced serious internal criticism for not better coordinating Washington’s defenses.
Although Early never entered Baltimore or Washington, he delivered a psychological jolt not soon forgotten. Grumbling against Grant broadened into a critique of his whole campaign. On July 15, unnerved by Early’s raid, Dana let loose a blast about him to Rawlins. Without quite endorsing them, he set down critical shafts that could be directed at Grant—how he had stripped Washington of troops, rendering it vulnerable; how he had allowed Early to advance up the Shenandoah; how he had dallied in sending troops to Washington until it was too late to do anything other than chase the enemy back across the Potomac. He even disparaged the Wilderness Campaign as a costly fiasco with nothing to show but mass casualties. Dana warned that Grant’s troubles might lead to Lincoln’s defeat in the upcoming election, installing McClellan in the White House. “The black & revolting dishonor of this siege of Washington with all its circumstances of poltroonery & stupidity,” Dana concluded, “is yet too fresh & its brand is too stinging for one to have a cool judgment regarding its probable consequences.”17
Realizing that he needed to shore up Washington’s defenses without compromising his plans against Richmond, Grant proposed that newly recruited troops be trained there to solidify its protection. He also proposed consolidating several departments under a lone commander who could single-handedly deal with threats to Maryland or Pennsylvania, suggesting General William B. Franklin. Most important, and contrary to customary practice, Grant sent a cipher telegram to Lincoln calling for another three hundred thousand men in the field. Noting widespread Confederate desertions, he predicted: “With the prospect of large additions to our force these desertions would increase. The greater number of men we have the shorter and less sanguinary will be the war.”18 Lincoln anticipated this plea, calling for five hundred thousand more men, “which I suppose covers the case,” Lincoln told Grant. “Always glad to have your suggestions.”19
Ever since Chattanooga, Grant had esteemed Brigadier General William F. “Baldy” Smith, a Vermont native who attended West Point with him. Short and stout, with a Vandyke beard, Smith had a sharp analytic mind that he applied to opening the “cracker line” that fed ravenous Union troops in Chattanooga. Grateful for this breakthrough, Grant endorsed his elevation to major general. “[Smith] is possessed of one of the clearest Military heads in the Army, is very practical, and industrious,” he told Stanton. “No man in the service is better qualified than he for our largest command.”20 But Smith frequently made enemies, sniped privately at other generals, and fumed whenever Grant ignored his advice. His subordination to Ben Butler so grated on him that he swore to his wife that “I cannot live under this man much longer.”21 Smith was no less antagonistic toward Meade, complaining to Grant that he was “as helpless as a child on the field of battle and as visionary as an opium eater in council,” and he challenged Grant to explain why he tolerated such barefaced ineptitude.22
Gradually Grant’s enthusiasm for Smith cooled since he didn’t care for grumblers and Smith was a professional malcontent. That May, Grant had written that Smith was “obstinate, and is likely to condemn whatever is not suggested by himself.”23 In mid-June, Smith sat down with Grant and delivered a harsh critique of the Overland Campaign, pouring blame on Meade: “I tried to show [Grant] the blunders of the late campaign of the Army of the Potomac, and the terrible waste of life that had resulted from what I had considered a want of generalship in its present commander. Among other instances, I referred to the fearful slaughter at Cold Harbor on the 3d of June.” According to Smith, Grant conceded there had been “butchery” at Cold Harbor, but thought it pointless to criticize Meade.24 Smith believed his rank entitled him to such candor, though it must have strengthened Grant’s view of him as notoriously quarrelsome and vindictive. The touchy relationship between the two men formed the backdrop to a controversy that now unfolded.
With Grant’s drinking history, it would have been surprising had he not relapsed in the aftermath of Cold Harbor. At the end of June, he visited the headquarters of Ambrose Burnside and, allegedly egged on by Ben Butler, asked for a drink to relieve a migraine headache. When Grant subsequently visited Baldy Smith’s headquarters, he told him the earlier drink had helped and asked for another. As Smith recounted the incident:
My servant opened a bottle for him, and he drank of it . . . I was aware at this time that General Grant had within six months pledged himself to drink nothing intoxicating . . . After the lapse of an hour or less, the general asked for another drink, which he took. Shortly after, his voice showed plainly that the liquor had affected him, and after a little time he left . . . as soon as I returned to my tent I said to a staff officer of mine who had witnessed his departure, “General Grant has gone away drunk. Gen. Butler has seen it, and will never fail to use the weapon which has been put into his hands.”25
Smith claimed Grant mounted his horse with some difficulty and rode off “in a most disgusting state after having vomited all over his horse’s neck & shoulders.”26 This detail is highly suspect since it would have been the talk of the army and nobody else recorded the incident. Grant’s departure from abstinence that day is echoed in a lament from the ever-vigilant Rawlins to his wife: “The General was at the front today, and I learn from one of his staff he deviated from the only path he should ever travel by taking a glass of liquor.” Pained that he hadn’t accompanied Grant to the front, Rawlins vowed, “I shall hereafter, under no circumstances, fail to accompany him.”27 Butler denied having seen Grant touch a drop of hard liquor and contested the allegation that he had cajoled him into drinking. Had he done so, Butler wrote, “I should have expected Grant to dismiss me from the service at once, as he ought to have done, and as I would have done to him under the same circumstances.”28
In early July, when Smith asked for a leave of absence, Grant disclosed he had lost faith in Butler, was trying to get rid of him, and wanted to replace him with Smith. Indeed, on July 1, Grant wrote a damning letter to Halleck, citing Butler’s lack of military knowledge and inability to execute orders. Instead of sacking Butler outright, Grant wanted to allow him to save face by transferring him to another theater of war, perhaps Kentucky. In a neat piece of sarcasm, Halleck replied, “To send him to Kentucky would probably cause an insurrection in that state.”29 Halleck suggested that Grant keep Butler in place but neutralize his battlefield influence.
When Halleck suggested that Baldy Smith replace Butler on the battlefield, Grant liked the idea and Lincoln endorsed it on July 7. This would exile Butler to administrative purgatory at Fort Monroe, giving Smith a free hand with field troops. But on July 9, before the order was published, Butler met with Grant at City Point to discuss the decision, which he thought a plot cooked up by Halleck and Smith. Whatever Butler said at the meeting, the offending order was rescinded the next day. When Smith returned from his furlough, he learned, to his everlasting suspicion, that Grant had overturned his decision, reinstated Butler to his former command, and dispatched him, Smith, to New York. In meeting with Smith on July 19, Grant referred to Smith’s
habit of slandering colleagues and creating mischief as the primary reason behind the reversal. It may have been that Lincoln decided he could not afford to alienate the politically powerful Butler and intervened to save him. At the end of the interview, Grant rebuked Smith flatly: “You talk too much!”30
The only way Smith could explain Grant’s change of heart was that Butler had blackmailed Grant about the drinking episode: “I was convinced that General Butler had used his knowledge of the fact that General Grant . . . had temporarily become the victim of a habit which had at one time disqualified him for command, to force him to act against his judgment and inclination.”31 Eleven days after being relieved, an irate Smith wrote to Senator Solomon Foot of Vermont—the letter’s authenticity has been questioned—laying out his case for what had happened. After the colossal deaths of the Overland Campaign, Smith speculated, Grant felt vulnerable to dismissal: “At that gloomy time, the blackest in the history of the war, when General Grant’s movements in the East had been attended with awful sacrifices of life and with little substantial success, an indictment against him, based upon these failures and a recurrence of his old habit [i.e., drinking], supported by General Butler, might have swept him from power.”32
What Smith didn’t acknowledge were the many factors that might have compelled Grant to yield to Butler. It was widely thought that McClellan would emerge as the Democratic nominee for president at the August convention in Chicago. Grant might have feared political repercussions if he crossed swords with Butler at such a delicate moment, harming Lincoln’s reelection chances. According to Adam Badeau, from the time Grant became general in chief he wanted to get rid of Butler, but at a meeting with Lincoln and Stanton “was informed that political considerations of the highest character made it undesirable to displace Butler.”33 In a newspaper interview in 1887, Smith admitted that “General B[utler] had threatened to make public something that would prevent the President’s reelection. General Grant told me that he had heard that Gen. B. had made some threat with reference to the Chicago convention which he said he ‘had in his breeches pocket.’”34
