by Bruce Catton
As Thayer remembered it, Grant took it rather hard. He made no official protests, and he said nothing to Prentiss about his disappointment, but he was “thoroughly cast down and disappointed”—even more so, it seemed to Thayer, than the facts really warranted. Either then or later, Thayer believed that this was not because he was mortified by being superseded but because the shift canceled Grant’s own plan for occupying all of the southeastern part of the state and getting over to Cairo where he could prepare for a drive down the Mississippi and up the Tennessee.
On the night of August 18—it was nearly midnight, and both Grant and the night were very gloomy—Grant took off for St. Louis. He asked Thayer to go along with him, and the two men had a silent ride in a nearly empty daycoach that bumped along for hours, reaching St. Louis after daybreak. In St. Louis the two men had breakfast at the Planter’s House, after which Grant went to headquarters to report. He returned to the hotel later in the morning, and it seemed to Thayer that Grant was even more dejected than before. Frémont, Grant said, had told him nothing about the reason for the transfer; he had simply ordered him to go to Jefferson City, the capital of the state, on the Missouri River one hundred miles northwest of Ironton, and take charge of the Army Post which had been established at that strategic spot. Affairs at Jefferson City seemed to be in a mess, and the place looked like a side pocket, far removed from the theater of aggressive action. The prospect was not attractive.
“I do not want to go to Jefferson City,” said Grant. “I do not want to go any further into Missouri. But of course I must obey orders.”6
What happened next is hazy. Thayer said that Grant wanted very much to return to Galena for five days, which is indisputable; Grant had just written to Julia saying that he would like to get home briefly, if only to buy a proper general’s outfit. But Thayer went on to say that Grant went back to Frémont, got five days leave, went to Galena, and there saw Congressman Washburne, to whom he explained his plan for an invasion of the south by way of Cairo. Washburne, said Thayer, took or sent the plan to President Lincoln, and it was discussed in cabinet meeting, as a result of which General Frémont was presently told to put Grant back in command in southeast Missouri; and all that happened thereafter in the Mississippi valley, Thayer believed, grew out of the plans Grant had made at Ironton, and out of his hurried trip to Galena in mid-August.7
It did not actually happen that way. Grant did apply for leave, but his application was refused. He was in St. Louis at least through the morning of August 19, and he was in Jefferson City on August 21, which leaves too little time for a visit with Washburne in Galena. In addition, the move would have been most unlike Grant. He was then a brigadier of no more than two weeks’ standing, and the gap between his position and the White House was altogether too broad to be leaped by a quiet little man who had complete indoctrination about the virtue of following the proper channels of the Army hierarchy. Also, when the invasion of the South was actually under way, the following spring, and the great victory at Fort Donelson had been won, Grant wrote to Washburne saying that it was idle to give credit for the move up the Tennessee to any specific general; the strategic soundness of the plan was obvious, he said—“General Halleck no doubt thought of this route long ago, and I am shure I did.”
Yet Emerson wrote, long after the war, that some written exposition of Grant’s plan had reached Washburne that summer, and he said that Washburne himself, when he asked him about it many years later, remembered presenting the plan to Mr. Lincoln; and Emerson added that Montgomery Blair, a member of Lincoln’s cabinet in 1861, recalled having discussed the project at the White House. Whether all of this reflects a dim recollection of something that actually happened—a recollection dredged up after a quarter of a century, by men who would then be entirely ready to concede that General Grant had always been a military genius—is a mildly tantalizing question. The one certainty seems to be that Grant obeyed orders without making complaint to anyone except Thayer, and two days later he had assumed his new command at Jefferson City.8
Jefferson City was no prize package. There were plenty of Union troops there, but no Regular Army man was likely to think of them as soldiers. Many ardent patriots had obtained authority—dubious authority, for the most part, which had no particular standing in law—to recruit volunteer organizations for the Union, and had set up shop all over town, some to raise full regiments, some to raise battalions, others simply to raise companies—in tents and in huts and elsewhere, with rudely lettered signs overhead inviting all corners to join up at once. Some of these recruiters were offering six-month terms of enlistment, others were offering terms of one year; and Grant learned, when he looked into things, that most of their recruits were coming from the legal, three-year regiments which had been stationed in the place. On top of this the city was filled with fugitives—Missouri farmers and their families, who had fled from the western part of the state because it seemed likely that the Confederates would rule there. These folk came in, usually, with a team of horses hauling a farm wagon loaded with household goods; they had no means of support and no place to go, and they had come to Jefferson City not because they especially wanted to be there but simply because they wanted to get away from the Confederacy’s armed forces, which had even less discipline than the Union troops Grant had been looking at and which were harrying Union sympathizers out of every neighborhood which Federal troops did not occupy. All in all, Jefferson City was a complete madhouse.9
Things in Missouri were not going well for the Union just then.
Nathaniel Lyon, the red-haired, fiery little Regular Army Captain who had been made Brigadier General that spring and who had beaten down Confederate sympathizers in St. Louis by displaying a driving eagerness to strike the first blow, had moved beyond the Missouri River early that summer with an army that had neither adequate training nor proper equipment—an army, indeed, which had nothing but passionate leadership—and Lyon had planned to make Missouri secure for the Union by destroying a Confederate army which was operating in the southwestern part of the state. This army was in even worse condition, as far as training and equipment went, than the one Lyon commanded. Its armament was composed mostly of shotguns and flintlock muskets, it had a chief of ordnance who confessed that he had never set eyes on a cartridge and knew not the difference between a howitzer and a siege gun, it had no tents and no uniforms and certain of its units were officered by lawyers who knew nothing about military matters and who had their sergeants assemble their companies, when the morning’s routine was about to start, by standing on the parade ground and bellowing: “Oh yes! Oh yes! All you who belong to Captain Brown’s company fall in here.” Commander of this motley array was a native son, General Sterling Price, a devoted man in whom Missourians had large confidence. Price’s Missouri state troops were joined with Gen. Ben McCulloch’s Confederates from Arkansas and some Arkansas state troops, and in one way or another Price got his outfit up to a site known as Wilson’s Creek, twenty miles or so from Springfield, in the southwest corner of the state, and there on August 10 the Confederates, under the over-all command of McCulloch, had collided with Lyon’s Unionists and had given them a beating. Lyon himself was killed, the remnants of his little army went streaming north and east, Price moved on to lay siege to the important Missouri River town of Lexington (which, some time later, he captured, along with its Federal garrison) and it looked as if the resurgent Confederacy might overrun the entire state.10
Federal affairs in Missouri were in the control—nominally, at least—of a very famous man, an ardent patriot and a dedicated believer in freedom who was, unfortunately, neither a good executive nor a competent soldier: Major General John C. Frémont, famous as the Pathfinder who had helped to open the West, a man with immense political influence. He had been the first Republican candidate for President, in 1856, and he might easily be the party’s next candidate also, and he desperately wanted to rid the state of armed Confederates but had only a foggy notion of the way to
go about it.
Frémont lived in state, in St. Louis, surrounded by a colorful set of bodyguards, glittering aides-de-camp (many of whom, as it turned out, had been extra-legally commissioned and very few of whom knew anything at all about the way Western troops should be officered and led) and a pervasive odor of inefficiency and corruption. Frémont had been sent to Missouri with orders which, in effect, told him to raise and equip an army, get the Rebels out of the state, and win the Mississippi Valley for the Union; orders which he was most anxious to execute, for he was a highminded man, of unquestioned loyalty to the Union, but for whose execution he was not getting much help from Washington. Missouri was a long way from the Potomac, the administration’s attention was largely centered on matters in Virginia, and Frémont had to play it by ear under circumstances which would have taxed even the ablest of administrators. Professional soldiers and revolutionists-in-exile from Europe had flocked to his standard, for he was one of the few Americans famous in Europe when the war broke out, and Frémont had taken many of these into the service, at fairly exalted rank, without regard for their own capacity or for his own administrative powers. Under his authority there had been placed orders for vast quantities of tents, mules, uniforms, rifles, wagons and all the other things an army needs. The pressure of time lay on the man, purchases had to be made in an immense hurry and on credit, and many of these orders had been placed without regard for the Army’s legal forms; numerous canny traders, scenting a wide-open opportunity, had sold poor goods at inflated prices. Things at St. Louis, in short, were in a mess, and there would presently be a scandal about it; and through all of it Frémont was doing his best to get more troops, hold such strategic spots as Cairo and arrange things so that he could ultimately take the offensive11
With all of his deficiencies, Frémont had aggressive instincts. He had seen the need to possess southeast Missouri just as Grant had seen it, and even while he was desperately trying to retrieve the loss occasioned at Wilson’s Creek he was dreaming exalted dreams about an offensive campaign that would cut deeply into the South, capture Memphis and Little Rock, and land Union armies in New Orleans itself. When he sent Prentiss to Ironton he seems to have had in mind the same sort of campaign Grant had been thinking of, and he ordered Grant to Jefferson City, apparently, on the theory that it would be well to have a trained soldier in this place which, in the latter part of August, was practically an outpost on the edge of Confederate territory.
Frémont was a little too aggressive for his own good, or for the good of the cause; too aggressive, or too poorly balanced, or perhaps both. He had carried the banner for the Republican party when the fight against slavery (to those who had chiefly supported him) was a high and a holy thing. Also, he commanded Union troops in a state where half of the people seemed to be dedicated to the Union and the other half were equally devoted to secession; a state, moreover, whose people had a way of burning the barns and assaulting the persons of those who disagreed with them on vital issues like slavery and disunion. Under the circumstances it was quite impossible for Frémont to consider this situation without feeling that a belief in slavery went arm-in-arm with a belief in secession, and that abolitionist principles were the stamp of a true Union man. He was very shortly to issue a proclamation which would free the slaves of all persons who were giving aid and comfort to the rebellion—a proclamation which Mr. Lincoln would make haste to disown and to rescind. Eternally beyond Frémont’s comprehension would be the down-to-business attitude which led Grant to deny help both to fugitive slave and bereaved slave-pursuer. Frémont could not see that there were many slaveowners, in Missouri and all through the border states, who would willingly fight and die for the Union. Grant himself had owned a slave, his wife had owned several, his father-in-law had owned many; he hated neither the institution nor those who believed in it—and Frémont hated both.
Yet Frémont, in a way, was making progress. He was bombarding Washington with appeals for help, and the Midwestern governors were under orders to send troops to him as fast as the new regiments could be raised and mustered into Federal service. These regiments were coming in now, almost totally lacking in training, frequently lacking in arms and equipment, and Frémont’s own supply arrangements, hastily improvised at St. Louis, were exceedingly inefficient, but a reserve of potential strength was being built up. Arriving at Jefferson City, Grant found himself obliged to deal with one of the centers of this reserve.
Grant found plenty of recruits, but little more. Clothing, tents, blankets, and weapons were wanting; the stock of artillery consisted of four 6-pounders (without any gunners) and one 24-pounder, too cumbersome for field service, and there was no artillery ammunition whatever. In the whole camp the supply of rifle ammunition amounted to no more than ten rounds to a man. Neither the post commissary officer nor the post quartermaster seemed to be present, and there were no rations to issue. Grant reported that “the whole country is in a state of ferment,” with Rebel marauders driving Union men from their homes and appropriating their property, and he urged that companies of mounted home guards be recruited to deal with this menace.12
On August 23, Grant notified St. Louis: “I am not fortifying here at all. With the picket guard and other duty coming upon the men of this command there is but little time left for drilling. Drill and discipline are more necessary for the men than fortifications.” Also, Grant confessed, there was no engineer officer to lay out fortifications and he himself had forgotten what little West Point had taught him about this art; and “I have no desire to gain a ‘Pillow notoriety’ for a branch of service that I have forgotten all about.” The reference was to the Confederacy’s General Gideon Pillow, who commanded something styled vaguely an “army of liberation” in the extreme southeast corner of the state; an inept, quarrelsome soldier who, in the Mexican War, had won derision by building a fortified line with the ditch on the wrong side. Grant somehow remembered Pillow with extreme distaste, and Pillow was the one Confederate officer for whom Grant consistently and openly expressed personal contempt.
Grant went to work. He tried to find some way to make use of the home guard outfits which, he had hoped, might be useful in suppressing Confederate guerilla bands, but the task was beyond him: “I have not been able to make head or tail about them, notwithstanding all my efforts.” He could only find out that there were a lot of them, some mounted and some not, some with weapons and some unarmed; where they came from or how they could be used seemed insoluble problems. As an old hand with teams and wagons, Grant was disturbed by the quality of the transportation equipment that was being sent to him. The harness with which he was supplied was so weak that it broke whenever a strain was put on it, and trace chains were so light and brittle as to be worthless. He had spies out, and they were keeping him posted about Confederate movements; he was arresting Confederate spies; by orders from Department headquarters, he would send out an expedition to the towns of Lexington, Bonneville and Chillicothe, to seize the assets of local banks—assets which otherwise would disappear into Confederate hands. He was solving his transport problem by hiring refugees and their teams; also, he suggested to St. Louis that if adequate forces were stationed at Jefferson City it would be possible to give proper protection to Unionists in all counties bordering on the Missouri.13
And so on; military drudgery, necessary but uninspiring, a comedown after the growing challenge of the situation around Ironton. To his father, Grant wrote that any attack on his post was highly unlikely; there seemed to be no organized body of Confederate troops anywhere near him, and although there were plenty of Southern encampments in nearby counties “the object seems to be to gather supplies, horses, transportation, etc., for a Fall & Winter campaign.” The effect of this was to inflict misery on the inhabitants:
The Country West of here will be left in a starving condition for next Winter. Families are being driven away in great numbers for their Union sentiments, leaving behind farms, crops, stock and all. A sad state of affairs must ex
ist under the most favorable circumstances that can take place. There will be no money in the Country and the entire crop will be carried off together with all stock of any value.… [Meanwhile, Grant himself was so busy that Jesse Grant must not expect to hear from him very often.] I am interrupted so often while writing that my letters must necessaryly be very meager and disconnected. … I think it is doubtful whether I will go home at all.14
The Jefferson City experience, as things worked out, lasted no more than one week. One morning, while Grant was sitting in his office, there appeared before him an undersized, pale, bearded, intense little colonel with the mildly improbable name (for a Federal officer) of Jefferson C. Davis: an old-time Regular from Indiana who had served in the Mexican War as an enlisted man, had won a commission at the war’s end and had stuck to soldiering ever since. He had been in the Fort Sumter garrison, and on being exchanged after the surrender of that post he had gone to Indiana to help organize Volunteers; now, as Colonel of the 22nd Indiana infantry, he was showing up with orders relieving Grant of his command and instructing him to report at St. Louis at once for an important new assignment.
Grant spent an hour explaining the Jefferson City situation to Davis and turning the details of command over to him; then he boarded a train and left for St. Louis, to find out what new twist the military fates had applied to his career.
As to precisely what happened next there is some dispute. Emerson always believed that Grant was recalled because of representations Congressman Washburne had made at the White House, and long after the war he quoted from a letter he said Washburne had written to him, in which Washburne expressed the opinion that Secretary of War Simon Cameron had told Frémont to put Grant in a more important assignment. According to Frémont himself (also writing long after the war), the idea had been Frémont’s own, and it had grown logically out of headquarters’ belated realization that Grant ranked Prentiss, who had replaced him at Ironton. In any case, Grant was about to get the opportunity he had been hoping for, and it was coming to him because of a threatening new situation that was developing along the Mississippi.15
