by Ron Chernow
Grant invited the Lincolns to travel to the north side of the James River and review the Army of the James under General Ord. The latter was one of Grant’s favorites, a twice-wounded West Point veteran whom he appreciated as “skillful in the management of troops . . . brave and prompt.”118 To reach the parade ground at Malvern Hill, Grant rode on horseback with a high-spirited Lincoln, General Ord, and the general’s pretty young wife, Mary. Mary Lincoln and Julia Grant lagged behind in an ambulance, accompanied on this bumpy ride by Badeau and Horace Porter. At one point on the uneven road, the half-open carriage struck a deep rut that threw the ladies violently against the top, smashing their heads and bonnets. The incident rattled the high-strung Mary, who had suffered a serious carriage accident in 1863, and it may have triggered a migraine headache as well.
During the ride, Mary discovered that Mrs. Ord had ridden ahead with her husband and flew into a jealous rage. “What does the woman mean by riding by the side of the President? And ahead of me? Does she suppose that he wants her by the side of him?” When Julia Grant tried to settle her down, Mary turned her wrath on Julia. “I suppose you think you’ll get to the White House yourself, don’t you?” Mary Lincoln was watchful, even paranoid, about potential rivals to her husband and had resented newspaper references to Grant as a possible presidential nominee the year before. Maintaining her dignity, Julia replied that she was quite satisfied with her present position, but Mary refused to relent. “Oh! You had better take it if you can get it. ’Tis very nice,’” she said and went back to maligning Mrs. Ord.119
At Malvern Hill, Mary was enraged that the review had started in her absence—the troops had awaited Lincoln’s arrival for hours—with her husband trotting down the line beside the fetching Mrs. Ord, who wore a plumed hat. As the band played, Grant’s horse pranced and reared its head while Lincoln, in top hat and black frock coat, rode his mount with stately calm. When Mrs. Ord, at Julia’s behest, galloped over to greet Mary, the First Lady lashed out at her in a vituperative outburst. “Mrs. Lincoln positively insulted her, called her vile names in the presence of a crowd of officers, and asked what she meant by following up the President,” wrote Badeau. “The poor woman burst into tears and inquired what she had done, but Mrs. Lincoln refused to be appeased, and stormed till she was tired.” To no avail, Julia gallantly tried to defend Mrs. Ord.120
That night, the Lincolns entertained the Grants aboard the River Queen when Mary again erupted in a tantrum and “berated General Ord to the President, and urged that he should be removed,” Badeau continued. “He was unfit for his place, she said, to say nothing of his wife. General Grant sat next and defended his officer bravely.”121 Mary accused her husband of flirting brazenly with Mrs. Ord. Though Lincoln tried to deflect these attacks, Mary would not desist. Throughout the City Point visit, Badeau claimed, Mary Lincoln kept attacking her husband in front of other officers: “He bore it as Christ might have done; with an expression of pain and sadness that cut one to the heart, but with supreme calmness and dignity.”122 The embarrassed president would hang his head, call his wife “Mother,” attempt to soothe her, then stroll away when all else failed. For the remainder of her visit, Mary Lincoln mostly stayed incommunicado in her cabin before returning to Washington on April 1, leaving her husband and Tad behind. In her memoirs, it should be noted, Julia Grant criticized Adam Badeau for having embellished the story of her contretemps with Mary Lincoln.
On March 27, William Tecumseh Sherman, who hadn’t set eyes on Grant for a year, arrived at City Point for an overnight visit devoted to strategy sessions with Grant, Admiral Porter, and Lincoln. Sherman, having consummated his long-sought juncture with General Schofield at Goldsboro, was ready to launch the next stage of war. In fine fettle, he jested that he wanted to see Grant and “stir him up” out of fear that the long Petersburg stalemate had “fossilized him.” With typical zest, he said, “I’m going up to see Grant for five minutes and have it all chalked out for me, and then come back and pitch in.”123 When Sherman arrived aboard the steamer Russia, Grant hurried to the wharf to embrace his foremost colleague. According to Horace Porter, the hyperactive Sherman didn’t simply step ashore but “jumped ashore and was hurrying forward with long strides to meet his chief.” Such was the bonhomie of Grant and Sherman as they shook hands that they reminded Porter of two schoolboys fondly reunited after summer vacation.124 For an hour, as Grant enjoyed a cigar by the campfire, Sherman entertained his staff with tales of his march to the sea and through the Carolinas before Grant decided it was time to pay court to the president. “I know he will be anxious to see you,” Grant assured him. “Suppose we go and pay him a visit before supper?”125
Based on an encounter earlier in the war, the headstrong Sherman wasn’t prepared to like Lincoln, but he was now utterly beguiled as they chatted aboard the River Queen. The president wasn’t the simple rube he had imagined so much as a man of feeling, wisdom, and sincerity. Sherman noted how the careworn Lincoln came alive when he spoke, his face growing animated, his long, slack arms flying into motion. “Of all the men I ever met,” he concluded, Lincoln “seemed to possess more of the elements of greatness, combined with goodness, than any other.”126 Insatiably curious about the historic march, Lincoln listened raptly to Sherman’s sparkling rendition. According to Sherman, the president “seemed to enjoy very much the more ludicrous parts—about the ‘bummers,’ and their devices to collect food and forage when the outside world supposed us to be starving.”127 Overshadowed by the talkative Sherman, Grant was content to sit back and say relatively little during two meetings with Lincoln.
The first meeting lasted an hour. When Grant and Sherman returned to Julia Grant, who had readied tea for them, she asked if they had seen Mrs. Lincoln. Grant confessed they had not asked for her. “Well, you are a pretty pair!” she chided them. “I do not see how you could have been so neglectful.”128 The two men, conceding their faux pas, pledged to ask after her the next day. It speaks well of Julia Grant that, despite her treatment by Mary Lincoln, she still observed the social amenities and remained concerned about her mental state. When Grant duly inquired after Mrs. Lincoln the next day, the president bore the message to her stateroom and returned to say she was indisposed and begged the gentlemen to excuse her.
At the second session, the military men got down to business with Lincoln. Grant described how Sheridan was crossing the James River by a pontoon bridge with plans to shatter the South Side and Danville Railroads that propped up Lee’s army. If Lee responded by striking out for North Carolina, Lincoln feared he might escape by southern railroads. Sherman insisted his men had destroyed their tracks beyond redemption. “What is to prevent their laying the rails again?” Grant probed. “Why, my ‘bummers’ don’t do things by halves,” Sherman explained. “Every rail, after having been placed over a hot fire, has been twisted as crooked as a ram’s-horn, and they never can be used again.”129 Sherman insisted he could defeat the joint forces of Lee and Johnston if Grant came up behind them in a day or so. On the other hand, if Lee mistakenly clung to his Richmond defenses, Sherman would roar up from North Carolina and he and Grant would starve out Lee or drub him in open combat. Whatever happened, Grant and Sherman saw an inescapably bloody battle ahead, and Lincoln reacted with anguish. “Must more blood be shed?” he cried. “Cannot this last bloody battle be avoided?”130 On this the generals could promise nothing.
As they pondered postwar reconciliation, Lincoln preached leniency toward the South, saying he didn’t want reprisals. Facetiously he added that he didn’t want to hang Confederates so much as hang on to them. Though he couldn’t say so publicly, he hinted he would be happy if Jefferson Davis fled the country, avoiding a treason trial that might inflame sectional tensions. “I want no one punished; treat them liberally all round,” Lincoln advised. “We want those people to return to their allegiance to the Union and submit to the laws.”131 While the pacific spirit of his postwar policy seemed clear, the specifics
were maddeningly vague, as befit a president still bent on winning the war. Grant came away believing that in dealing with Lee’s army, he should be magnanimous in his terms of surrender. “Let them have their horses to plow with, and, if you like, their guns to shoot crows with,” Lincoln stated.132 Sherman came away with a sense of a broad mandate that extended to more political matters, remembering Lincoln’s belief that “to avoid anarchy the State governments then in existence, with their civil functionaries, would be recognized by him as the government de facto till Congress could provide others.”133 Sherman soon had reason to cling to this recollection.
The afternoon session lasted three hours, at the end of which Lincoln, Sherman, and Grant, having been cooped up all afternoon, rambled by the riverside. A reporter captured the vivid contrasts presented by the three men: “Lincoln, tall, round-shouldered, loose-jointed, large-featured, deep-eyed, with a smile upon his face, is dressed in black and wears a fashionable silk hat. Grant is at Lincoln’s right, shorter, stouter, more compact; wears a military hat with a stiff, broad brim, has his hands in his pantaloon pockets, and is puffing away at a cigar. Sherman, tall, with a high, commanding forehead, is almost as loosely built as Lincoln; has sandy whiskers, closely cropped, and sharp, twinkling eyes, long arms and legs, shabby coat, slouched hat, his pantaloons tucked into his boots.”134 As they strolled, Lincoln suddenly presented an odd question. “Sherman, do you know why I took a shine to Grant and you?” Abashed, Sherman replied, “I don’t know, Mr. Lincoln. You have been extremely kind to me, far more than my deserts.” “Well, you never found fault with me.”135 Lincoln had been betrayed by so many generals, he was endlessly grateful for the loyalty of Grant and Sherman. It was the last time William Tecumseh Sherman ever set eyes on Lincoln.
On the morning of March 29, in a farewell imbued with poignant emotion, Lincoln returned to Washington. For Julia Grant, it amounted to a double farewell since her husband was switching headquarters to Gravelly Run for the opening of the Appomattox Campaign, which he would personally direct. Horace Porter recounted how Grant “bade an affectionate good-by to Mrs. Grant, kissing her repeatedly as she stood at the front door of his quarters. She bore the parting bravely, although her pale face and sorrowful look told of the sadness that was in her heart.”136
When Grant and his staff escorted Lincoln to the train station, the president’s mood turned grave. Porter thought the lines were more deeply incised in his face, the rings darker beneath his eyes. Lincoln gave each officer an affectionate handshake. As his train began to move, Grant and his officers lifted their hats in unison in a gesture of profound respect, and Lincoln repaid them with a salute. “Good-by, gentlemen,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion. “God bless you all! Remember, your success is my success.”137
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
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Dirty Boots
DURING LINCOLN’S STAY AT CITY POINT, Phil Sheridan and his hard-charging cavalry rode in with many jaded, even shoeless, horses, exhausted from operations on muddy plains in ceaseless rain. Grant knew it would take several days before the animals were freshly shod and replenished. The rangy Lincoln had been agog at the exploits of the doughty little Sheridan. As they shared a boat ride on the James River, the president had stared down at the diminutive general. “General Sheridan, when this peculiar war began I thought a cavalryman should be at least six feet four inches high, but I have changed my mind. Five feet four will do in a pinch.”1
Grant issued written instructions for Sheridan to move his cavalry against Lee’s right flank and, if this misfired, to break off, proceed to North Carolina, and assist Sherman to destroy Johnston before circling back to help take Richmond and Petersburg. After absorbing these instructions, a disgruntled Sheridan, who didn’t relish a long trek into North Carolina, slunk off in a terrible funk. Sensing his displeasure, Grant drew him aside and confided thoughts he dared not commit to paper. The northern public had grown so eager to end the war, Grant explained, that unless the current Virginia campaign proved an unqualified success, “it would be interpreted as a disastrous defeat.”2 For that reason, he had stated, for the record only, that Sheridan might move south. Now Grant elaborated privately, saying he “intended to close the war right here, with this movement, and that he should go no farther.” Sheridan’s “face at once brightened up, and slapping his hand on his leg he said: ‘I’m glad to hear it, and we can do it.’”3 Convinced the war neared its close, Sheridan wanted his cavalry “to be in at the death.”4
Several political realities colored Grant’s thinking in these waning days of battle. He had already informed Lincoln of his plan to attack Lee’s extreme right flank, blocking Lee’s ability to aid Johnston, when the roads dried up. Some skeptics wondered why he didn’t wait until Sherman finished off Johnston and could then fortify him against Lee. The true motivation was political. For much of the war, western armies had won the lion’s share of acclaim, and Grant, like Sheridan, thought it imperative that the Army of the Potomac claim the main credit for the demise of Lee’s army. In that way, each section of the nation would share the final victory laurels, helping to restore postwar unity. The fear of Sherman dashing north and stealing their glory pervaded the Army of the Potomac. (Some also suspected Grant didn’t want Sherman to upstage him.) Not only did Grant show political instincts that matched his military reflexes, but he demonstrated how seriously he meditated the shape of postwar politics. He also knew the war cost a stupendous $4 million a day and, if it persisted, could easily bankrupt the federal government.
With fifty thousand men lined up behind a creek called Hatcher’s Run, Grant prepared for his final campaign, a major offensive southwest of Petersburg. On March 28, Lee knew something big was afoot. “Genl Grant is evidently preparing for something,” he told his daughter, “& is marshalling & preparing his troops for some movement, which is not yet disclosed.”5 The next day, before dawn, riding on boggy roads, Sheridan shifted west around Lee’s right with nearly ten thousand cavalry, hoping to knock out two railroads that formed Lee’s lifelines. Lee swung his troop strength to the south to confront this massive threat, dispatching George Pickett with eleven thousand soldiers to guard a crucial crossroads at Five Forks. “Hold Five Forks at all hazards,” Lee instructed him.6 Bowing to Grant’s overwhelming strength, Lee decided to commit everything to a desperate gamble and abandon Petersburg. Reflecting his dire predicament, he admitted to Jefferson Davis that Grant’s move “seriously threatens our position, and diminishes our ability to maintain our present line.”7 No reasonable alternative existed except to discard the Confederate stronghold on the Appomattox River. With Richmond menaced, Jefferson Davis’s wife and children fled, feeding rumors that the capital might be transferred to Georgia.
With so much riding on the outcome, Grant paced in a “profoundly anxious” state, keeping Lincoln minutely informed by telegraph.8 Never before had he enjoyed such daily, almost hourly, access to the president, signaling that the climactic battle lay just ahead. Grant was haunted by the prospect that Lee and his men might flee to the mountains and fight on in scattered, irregular units, a guerrilla force difficult to run aground. “The General feels like making a heavy push for everything we have hoped for so long, and I am not slow in seconding all such feelings,” Rawlins wrote.9 With everything set for a major advance the next morning, Grant blustered to Sheridan that “I now feel like ending the matter.”10 Then the skies opened and heavy rains drenched roads already flooded with standing pools. So many horses and mules were swallowed by quicksand and had to be yanked from thick muck that the army laid down corduroy roads to advance artillery and wagon trains. Writing to Julia amid a heavy downpour on March 30, Grant allowed himself a witticism, saying it was “consoling to know that it rains on the enemy as well.”11
Plunging through sheets of rain, Sheridan galloped to Grant’s headquarters, hoping to steel Grant’s wavering resolve and lobby for the final thrust against Lee. When he arrived, a pall had
settled over the officers in Grant’s tent. Supported by Rawlins, Sheridan sought to embolden them. According to Horace Porter, he stalked up and down “like a hound in the lash,” asserting that, if strengthened by infantry, he could crush Lee’s right wing or “break through and march into Petersburg.” He summed up his stance with a dash of bravado: “I tell you, I’m ready to strike out tomorrow and go to smashing things.”12 Badeau related that Sheridan “talked so cheerily, so confidently, so intelligently of what he could do, that his mood was contagious” and Grant’s low spirits evaporated.13 “We will go on,” he informed Sheridan, ordering him to seize Five Forks.
The next day, Grant sent Lincoln a running commentary on the fierce fighting, based on dispatches Sheridan transmitted from a spot near Dinwiddie Court House. Plagued by “heavy rains and horrid roads,” Union forces had retreated before two infantry divisions commanded by George Pickett, but Grant was sure Sheridan would retrieve lost ground.14 He was ecstatic at having coaxed Lee from his fortifications, giving him a fair chance to end the war. He trusted only one general to complete the job: Phil Sheridan, who, with his bottomless courage, seemed heedless of death. “I have never in my life taken a command into battle,” Sheridan maintained, “and had [not] the slightest desire to come out alive unless I won.”15 This encapsulated why Grant reposed such supreme confidence in him. At 10:45 that night, he directed Sheridan: “You will assume command of the whole force sent to operate with you, and use it to the best of your ability to destroy the force which your command has fought so gallantly today.”16
