Grant and Sherman: The Friendship that Won the Civil War

by Charles Bracelen Flood

  Sherman went on the offensive. On May 6, sitting aboard the steamer Russia while she rode out a storm in the harbor at Beaufort, North Carolina, during his trip north to rejoin his main army, he issued his blistering Special Field Orders 69, an astonishing military document. It began: “The General commanding announces to the Armies under his command that a most foul attempt has been made on his fair fame.” Suggesting that there were some mysterious figures behind “this base attempt,” who “used the Press[,] the common resort of libellers,” he promised his soldiers that they “will be discovered and properly punished.” Then, after saying that these shadowy people “made use of the gossiping official Bulletins of our secretary of war, with their garbled statements and false contexts,” he stopped using the image of nebulous conspirators and took aim at the man he had thought was his friend. It was bold language to describe a man who through date of rank was still nominally senior to him. “Maj. Gen. Halleck, who as long as our Enemy stood in bold & armed array sat in full security in his Easy chair at Washington, was suddenly seized with a Newborn Zeal & Energy, when that Enemy has become (by no agency of his,) defeated, disheartened & submissive. He publicly disregarded [a] Truce of which he was properly advised.” Sherman criticized the countermanding of orders, saying that the instruction to his generals to do that had been withheld from him “but paraded before the Northern Public in direct violation of the Army regulations, of the orders of the War Department … as well as Common decency itself.”

  As Sherman portrayed it, in contrast to the villains Stanton and Halleck, there was a hero. “But thanks to our noble and honest commanding officer, Lt. Genl. Grant, [who] after coming in person to Raleigh, and seeing and hearing for himself was enabled to return to the North” with, as Sherman assured his troops, the proper resolution to confound these calumnies against “one of the most successful results of the war.”

  This was, of course, a selective picture, absolving Sherman of any blame for his own actions, but Halleck immediately ran up the white flag. On May 9, when Sherman, reunited with his northward-moving army, was nearing Richmond, he received an obsequious letter from Halleck, who as the post-Appomattox commander of the Army of the James [River] had his headquarters in the former Confederate capital. “You have not had during this war nor have you now a warmer admirer than myself,” Halleck told Sherman. “If in carrying out what I knew to be the wishes of the War Department in regard to your armistice I used language which has given you offense it was unintentional, and I deeply regret it. If fully aware of the circumstances under which I acted I am certain you would not attribute to me any improper motives. It is my wish to continue to regard and receive you as a personal friend.” Knowing that Sherman was marching his army north to be demobilized and would be passing through Richmond, Halleck invited Sherman to stay at his headquarters and apparently expected to review Sherman’s army as it passed through, standing in a place of honor and receiving the salutes of his regiments as they marched by.

  Sherman answered this the next day. Contrasting these professions of friendship with the published letter in The New York Times in which Halleck had assured Stanton that he was countermanding Sherman’s orders, he told Halleck that “I cannot possibly reconcile the friendly expressions of the former with the deadly malignity of the latter, and cannot consent to the renewal of a friendship I had prized so highly.” As for the idea that Halleck would be receiving the salutes of his men at a review, Sherman had this to say: “I will march my Army through Richmond quietly and in good order without attracting attention, and I beg you to keep slightly perdu [lost], for if noticed by some of my old command I cannot undertake to maintain a model behavior, for their feelings have become aroused by what the world adjudges an insult at least to an honest commander. If loss of life or violence result from this you must attribute it to the true cause, a public insult to a Brother officer when he was far away on public service, perfectly innocent of the malignant purpose and design.”

  On the same day, May 10, Sherman wrote a letter to Grant, marked “Private & Confidential,” that showed him not only to be still enraged against Halleck and Stanton but also puzzled and troubled about the state of their own relationship. Until a brief telegram had come that morning ordering him to march his army to Washington and encamp at Alexandria, Virginia, about three miles down the Potomac from the capital, he had not heard from Grant since they had parted at Raleigh thirteen days before. There had been no answer to his letters to both Grant and Rawlins attacking Stanton and asking that his sentiments be passed on to Stanton and published. At midnight two days before, Sherman had penned a plaintive note to Grant, saying that he had immediate reason to issue some orders to General James H. Wilson, one of the officers who had been told “not to obey” him, and asked, “Does the Secretary of War’s news-paper order take General Wilson from my command, or shall I continue to order him—If I have proven incompetent to manage my own command, let me know it.” The following day, still not hearing from Grant, he communicated with him again, saying that Wilson, needed some instructions, but that because of “secretary Stanton’s newspaper order taking Wilson substantially from my command I wish you would give the orders necessary.”

  Although Sherman had not yet received it, these messages had produced a brief, businesslike telegram from Grant sent on May 9, saying, “I know of no order which changed your command in any particular.” Referring to the fact that Sherman had been all over the South since they parted, Grant added, “Gen. Wilson is in telegraphic communication with Washington whilst you have not been[,] consequently instructions have been sent to him direct.” The unspoken message: you have been wronged, but I consider you to be in full command, just as you were before you got yourself into trouble and I did my best to get you out of it, and we need to get on with our duties, and you need to spend less time feuding.

  Now, still having heard nothing from Grant except a brief order to bring his army on to encamp across the river opposite Washington, Sherman poured out his emotions to Grant in his letter. “I do think a great outrage has been enacted against me,” he wrote. “Your orders and wishes shall be to me the Law, but I ask you to vindicate my name … If you do not I will … No man shall insult me with impunity … No amount of retraction or pusillanimous excusing will do. Mr. Stanton must publicly confess himself a Common libeller or—but I won[’]t threaten. I will not enter Washington except on yours or the Presidents emphatic orders, but I do wish to stay with my army, till it ceases to exist, or till it is broken up and scattered to other duty.”

  Having expressed his own feelings, he told Grant that Stanton “seeks your life and reputation as well as mine … Whoever stands in his way must die.” About Halleck, a copy of whose recent sycophantic letter he enclosed, Sherman said, “Read Halleck’s letter and see how pitiful he has become. Keep above such influences, or you also will be a victim—See in my case how soon all past services are ignored & forgotten. Excuse this letter. Burn it, but heed my friendly counsel. The lust for Power in political minds is the strongest passion of Life, and impels Ambitious Men (Richard III) to deeds of Infamy.”

  With that, Sherman subsided for the moment. In fact, not only had Grant written Sherman the recent telegram saying “I know of no order which changed your command,” with its implicit signal that Grant considered him to still have all the authority he held prior to the political explosion, but Grant had sent him a longer letter on May 6 that in effect dealt with much of what Sherman now expressed. In his earlier letter, Grant had explained that Sherman’s long letters to Rawlins and himself about Halleck and Stanton had been delayed and had only just arrived, but what he went on to say about the controversy was much less than what Sherman wanted to hear. Grant wrote that he did “not know how to answer” Sherman’s concerns about what he agreed was an “insult”—Halleck’s countermanding of Sherman’s orders and publishing the fact he had done that. Evidently trying to deflect some of Sherman’s anger against Halleck, Grant had written, “I question
whether it was not an answer, in Halleck[’]s style, to directions from the Sec. of War giving him instructions to do as he did.” Then, as if keeping the targets difficult to hit, he added, “I do not know this to be the case although I have spoken to Mr. Stanton on the subject.” Without comment on Sherman’s wisdom in doing so, Grant stated that, having received Sherman’s denunciation of Stanton and his request to have it published, “I requested its publication. It is promised for tomorrow.”

  Tentative as his language on political matters seemed to be in this response to Sherman, on another subject—Sherman as a soldier—Grant spoke with his usual directness. Telling him that there was room for disagreement between Sherman and himself concerning Sherman’s original negotiations with Johnston, he said that what had happened then “made no change in my estimate of the services you have rendered or of the services you can still render, and will, on all proper occasions.”

  Sherman made no immediate answer to this. The next day, as he marched his main army through Richmond on its way north, Halleck stood for a time on the portico of the house he was using as his headquarters, apparently believing that Sherman’s divisions would feel compelled to salute him as they passed by a few yards away. Every officer and man of the leading column of Sherman’s army—fifty-three thousand of his sixty-five thousand soldiers—marched past that headquarters with eyes straight ahead as if Halleck were not in Richmond. Not a single officer’s sword lifted in salute, and one of Sherman’s ragged riflemen stepped out of the passing column and spat a stream of tobacco juice all over the polished boots of the “very spick and span” sentry standing guard there. (As soon as Ellen learned of this monumental snub, she wrote Sherman that the Ewing clan was “truly charmed” that he had “so good an opportunity of returning the insult of that base man Halleck … I would rather have seen that defiant parade through Richmond than anything else since the war began.”)

  As Sherman’s men, many of them barefoot, left Richmond behind and began the last marches and bivouacs on their way to Washington, throughout the North other voices began to be heard. The Cincinnati Commercial, which four years before had carried the headline, “General William T. Sherman Insane,” now said, “As to the charge of insanity being made … We wish there were a few more such insane men in the Army.” The Louisville Journal, published in the Kentucky city where Sherman had made panicky claims of an impending advance by overwhelming Confederate forces, deplored “the most cruel attacks … upon the integrity and patriotism of the illustrious soldier.”

  Among the Shermans and Ewings, there had been some dismay about Sherman’s first agreement with Johnston. On reading the earliest newspaper accounts, Ellen immediately wrote him that “I think you have made a great mistake” in giving such lenient terms to what she called “perjured traitors [and] deserters,” but added, “I know your motives are pure … I honor and respect you for the heart that could prompt such terms.” Then the family closed ranks and began one more of their campaigns to help him in Washington. Sherman’s brother John told him candidly that “for a time you lost all popularity gained by your achievements” but added that public opinion was turning against Stanton and Halleck for their “gross and damnable perversions” of what Sherman had done, and his brother Charles advised him that if Sherman would “act prudently,” it might all turn out well for him.

  By no means placated, Sherman sent ahead a letter to a friend in Washington that said, “It is amusing how brave and firm some men become when all danger is past,” and made an unmistakable comparison between Halleck and Shakespeare’s Falstaff. At Sherman’s request, that letter too would soon be published in the Washington papers and, in a demonstration that Sherman was not the only member of the family who knew how to strike fear into the enemy’s heart, his brother the senator wrote anonymously in the Washington Chronicle of May 15 that Stanton “must expect open defiance and insult, and neither his person nor his rank can shield him.” What the public did not hear, fortunately, was the sentiment expressed in a letter from Sherman to Ellen in which he told her that the men against him in Washington were “a set of sneaks who were hid away as long as danger was rampant” and that he would “take a regiment of my old Division & clear them out.”

  As it was, there were those in Washington who really believed that Sherman was going to march his army straight into the capital. (Their opinion of Sherman was not improved by the fact that Ellen’s brother Tom, a lawyer who had risen to brigadier general before resigning from the army in 1864, had since May 12 been the attorney defending three men accused as lesser conspirators in Lincoln’s assassination.) Sherman had not the remotest idea of participating in or permitting some sort of coup—he had already written Grant that he would enter Washington only upon his express wish, or that of the president, and in addition he would soon go out of his way to reject any suggestions that he would make a good future presidential candidate for the Democratic Party. Nonetheless, his army was still angry about what they considered to be the slurs upon him: Theodore Upson, the combat-hardened sergeant of the 100th Indiana who had described the celebrations among Sherman’s men when they heard of Appomattox, complete with a general marching through camp banging on a bass drum in the midst of drunken revelry, wrote in his diary that newspapermen had better “look out … or they would have General Sherman’s army to reckon with the first thing they know.”

  So there matters stood. Since Grant and Sherman had mapped out their grand strategy in a hotel room in Cincinnati fourteen months before when Grant was taking command of the entire Union Army, they had met twice, both times within the last seven weeks. On the first occasion, they had conferred with President Lincoln at City Point. Since then, Lee had surrendered, Lincoln had been assassinated, and Grant had rushed to North Carolina to correct Sherman’s dealings with Johnston, his worst mistake of the war. Grant was deeply involved with the myriad issues and details of moving the army from a wartime footing to a peacetime status in a politically tense postwar situation. Sherman was coming to Washington, angry and determined to clear his name. How all this would affect their friendship remained to be seen.

  18

  GRANT, SHERMAN, AND THE RADICALS

  As Sherman’s army marched north through Virginia, now only days away from Washington, at his office in the War Department Grant was trying to juggle a number of matters in the middle of a volatile atmosphere. The congressional Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, a powerful body formed to give the Senate and the House authority to investigate, and thus influence, war policies and the conduct of military affairs, was holding hearings concerning the end of the war and what might lie ahead in dealing with the South. With the sudden vacuum in power caused by Lincoln’s death, and the succession to office of the untried, little-known Andrew Johnson, both political parties were maneuvering vigorously to further their interests. As the Radicals saw it, the white South must be punished for seceding, and the freed blacks be given the vote, or else the war had been fought for nothing. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the former “Peace Democrats” (sometimes called “Copperheads”) believed in gentler treatment for the defeated Confederacy and no vote for the blacks for the time being. Millions of Northern voters found themselves between the two positions.

  Grant had been summoned to appear at a session of the committee on May 18, and when Sherman arrived in the Washington area on May 19 he would discover that he had been similarly requested to testify within the next few days. The senior committee chairman, Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio, was a Radical Republican who was Stanton’s political colleague and friend. (In an interesting example of how political positions could harden, and perceptions change, earlier in the war, after Shiloh, Wade had teamed with his fellow senator from Ohio, John Sherman, to endorse Halleck’s recommendation that William Tecumseh Sherman be promoted to major general of Volunteers.) Lincoln’s death had further hardened some positions: more than before, some Radicals in Congress viewed more moderate Republicans, and the great majority of
Democrats, as their enemies.

  On one issue, Grant soon confronted the position of those who wanted revenge against the Confederacy. Jefferson Davis, captured in Georgia on May 10, was on his way to confinement at Fortress Monroe on the Virginia coast as a political prisoner, but the Radicals also wanted to arrest Robert E. Lee, now at his house in Richmond, and try him for treason, a crime punishable by death. This would lead to an angry exchange between Grant and President Andrew Johnson. When Grant pointed out that Lee, along with all his army, had left Appomattox with a valid parole that guaranteed he could not be arrested as long as he lived a law-abiding life, the new president demanded to know on what grounds “a military commander interferes to protect an arch-traitor from the laws.”

  Grant had an answer to that. Referring to the document he and Lee signed at Appomattox, he said, “My terms of surrender were according to military law, and as long as General Lee observes his parole, I will never consent to his arrest. I will resign the command of the army rather than execute any order to arrest Lee or any of his commanders so long as they obey the law.” Johnson knew better than to precipitate the resignation of the victorious commanding general of the United States Army, and for the time being the matter was put aside.

  The paperwork piling up on Grant’s desk also dealt with matters having important implications for the future: the continuing settlement of the Great Plains and the Indian wars. On May 17, Grant wrote to General John Pope, commander of army frontier outposts well to the northwest of any remaining Confederate holdouts. Responding to Pope’s request that he be allowed to keep the people of the Sioux tribe “placed in that relation to the military forces which ensures their protection both against white and red rascals and enemies,” Grant expressed an opinion seldom heard on this subject. After approving Pope’s request, Grant added, “It may be the Indians require as much protection from the whites as the whites do from the Indians. My own experience has been that but little trouble would ever have been had from them but for the encroachments & influence of bad whites.”