Crucible of Command

by William C. Davis

  Lee was not entirely indifferent to the blacks themselves, regarding them much as he would children. Trying to help his aunt Fitzhugh find a new slave overseer, he emphasized that such a man should be “as attentive to their comfort and welfare, as to the discharge of their duties; and to be neither harsh nor severe in his discipline.”158 He personally went to some trouble for the welfare of old Nat, who came down with what was probably tuberculosis soon after Mildred inherited him. Robert had him sent to Georgia for his health, but a terrible twenty-five-day voyage only left him weaker with a terrible cough. Lee moved him into his quarters and began what he called an “experiment” with a treatment of his own concoction, as he had his mother.159 When that failed, Lee moved him into Savannah with a physician, and thereafter called in on Nat when business brought him to town. As Nat sank, Lee blamed the doctor’s medicines, and then on March 29, 1831, Nat died. “I was perfectly shocked to hear of his death,” he told Mary. “So he too is gone,” Lee mused, perhaps in sadness but also in sad reflection on the accumulating deaths of the faces of his youth: his father, his mother, Uncle Fitzhugh, and now Nat. Though reflective, he seemed unmoved, for immediately after penning those words, Lee abruptly moved on to talk of flower seeds, just as in a previous letter he shifted from Nat’s health to the weather.160 Of course he may have been suppressing his feelings again, too saddened to write more. In later years relatives recalled a heavily romanticized version of Nat’s death that had Lee personally nursing him “with the tenderness of a son,” and burying him with his own hands.161

  Lee followed the gathering agitation over abolition, and by January 1840 believed with dismay that it was gaining ground.162 As a soldier, however, his next assignment was of far greater interest. Besides its political ferment, Washington could be boring. “There is not much more doing in the gay world,” he found in January 1840. “The Theatre is not much frequented, and parties are as yet few and far between.163 He expected posting to New York or North Carolina, preferring the former, as “I should hate to see any friend of mine—in North Carolina.”164 Another child, Eleanor Agnes Lee, came that winter before Washington sent him to Fort Hamilton on New York harbor, where he arrived in April 1841. There, at least, his family could join him, and they lived there for much of the next five years, though Lee complained that “I never felt poorer in my life,” and for the first time debts began to accumulate as his family grew.165 Still, Mary went home to Arlington from time to time, leaving Lee lamenting that “I feel very forlorn without you & the house is very cold & cheerless.”166 In October 1843 the next child, R. E. Lee Jr., was born at the only secure home they had known to date. Meanwhile, Lee oversaw modernization and reinforcement of a finished fortress, major masonry projects that considerably broadened his experience and understanding. During the 1845–1846 winter Mary and the children returned once more to Arlington for yet another birth, their seventh and last, Mildred Childe Lee. Years earlier, feeling more secure in the idea of a family of his own without the taint of his father or half-brother, he began trying to devise a coat of arms to use as a seal on his correspondence.167

  The year 1846 looked at its outset to be just like so many before—another child, more dull and unrewarding duty, more periods of family separation. Then politics stepped in to change everything. America was going to war. Tensions between the United States and Mexico had mounted ever since the annexation of Texas in 1845. President Polk deliberately posted American forces provocatively in contested land near the Rio Grande, and in April 1846 a Mexican command attacked and routed a small company of Americans on soil claimed by the United States. That meant war.

  Lieutenant Grant was already there.

  3

  FIGHTING ON THE SAME SIDE

  WHEN GRANT’S REGIMENT moved toward the Rio Grande in February 1846 he estimated the chances of seeing a fight at even odds, but feared they would be defeated if the Mexicans attacked. When they reached Point Isabel on the Gulf Coast, their commander General Zachary Taylor set his soldiers to fortifying their base at Fort Polk, even as the Mexicans fortified themselves at Matamoras, a few miles distant on the other bank of the river. Grant believed they might attack at any moment, and thereafter dismissed any thought of resignation.1

  On April 19 and 20, 1846, a contingent of 2,000 Mexican cavalry surprised a small party of United States soldiers in the contested area of Texas between the Nueces and Rio Grande Rivers, killing several and capturing others. Taylor responded by taking 2,000 soldiers out of Fort Polk on May 1; Grant’s regiment marched in the column. Once at Point Isabel, Grant for the first time heard hostile fire: the distant sound of artillery as Mexican cannon at Matamoras bombarded Fort Polk behind them. “Dont fear for me My Dear Julia for this is only the active part of our business,” he wrote his future wife on May 3. For the first time he expressed an attitude he would declare over and again in coming years, saying “ the sooner it begins the sooner it will end.”2

  A few days later the lieutenant experienced action for the first time at Palo Alto on May 8 and at Resaca de la Palma the next day, the first battles of the war. The first was fought mainly by the artillery on both sides while the infantry like Grant’s acted in support. Again he felt calm in the face of danger. “Although the balls were whizing thick and fast about me I did not feel a sensation of fear,” he wrote three days later, “until nearly the close of the firing a ball struck close by me killing one man instantly.” The foe withdrew during the night, and at dawn Grant joined others in their first experience of the aftermath of battle. “It was a terrible sight to go over the ground the next day and see the amont of life that had been destroyed,” he wrote Julia. “The ground was litterally strewed with the bodies of dead men and horses.”

  Later that day Taylor pursued the Mexicans, and found them in a dry creek bed and reinforced to twice his numbers. Now the infantry were in the thick of it as they advanced into combined Mexican artillery and infantry fire. After his first experience facing fire actually directed at him, Grant confessed to Julia that “there is no great sport in having bullets flying about one in evry direction but I find they have less horror when among them than when in anticipation.” In the thickest of the fighting he found himself thinking of her.3 The fear of battle could be far more terrifying than the actual event, the first of many valuable lessons he learned there and in the days ahead.

  Writing a brief account of the twin engagements on the head of a captured drum, Grant took particular interest in other important matters. One was the human loss, of course, but he devoted much more time to assessing the logistical losses of the enemy: the number of cannon and small arms captured, the ammunition, sabers, and swords left on the field. More than that, he counted the wagons, mules, pack saddles and harness, camp equipment, and even bugles and drums. These were trophies, of course, but more than that he saw in them the materiel that kept an army in the field, and moved it to battle. He freely admitted the Mexicans had fought well, but he seemed more interested in how well prepared they had been for the campaign. That meant careful planning. In setting down his scant narrative of the fights and their aftermath, he also emphasized that initial impressions might be inaccurate, and resolved to keep his version brief until he could compare his facts with the accounts of others.4 Accuracy seemed important to him.

  Grant remained untroubled by fear for the rest of the war, telling his fiancée “do not feel alarmed about me my Dear Julia for there is not half the horrors in war that you imagine.”5 He told friends much the same. “I do not know that I felt any particular sensation,” he wrote a few weeks later. “War seems much less horrible to persons engaged in it than to those who read of the battles.”6 Yet that hardly meant that he enjoyed it, despite its glorification in the popular literature he liked to read. Barely three months after his first actions he mused that “wherever there are battles a great many must suffer, and for the sake of the little glory gained I do not care to see it.”7 By September, he told Julia “I do wish this [war] would close,” a
nd a month later declared that “fighting is no longer a pleasure.”8 One year to the day after he first heard those Mexican batteries shelling Fort Polk, he told a friend back home that “I am hartily tired of the wars.”9

  Soon Grant began to see in newspapers from home how some officers, politicians given commissions in volunteer units, were lionized for their deeds in action, real or invented, and felt a growing cynicism toward such manufactured heroes. “I begin to see that luck is a fortune,” he remarked in October 1846. “It is but necessary to get a start in the papers and there will soon be deeds enough of ones performances related.”10 Months later, after the fall of Mexico City, he grumbled about “the courage and science shown by individuals” in the press, adding that “even here one hears of individual exploits (which were never performed) sufficient to account for the taking of Mexico throwing out about four fifths of the army to do nothing.” Worse was the way such journalistic heroics overshadowed the real bravery and sacrifice of the men and officers of the Regular Army.11 When his name appeared for the first time in the Eastern press on a list of officers engaged at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, he briefly acquired yet another orphaned initial when it appeared as “Lieut. W. S. Grant.”12

  It was the beginning of his lifelong suspicion of politicians and the press, especially after a newspaper caused him no little embarrassment. Jesse Grant read guests his son’s latest letters from Mexico, then allowed a local newspaperman to publish one in which Grant described the shabby condition of a newly arrived company of volunteers from their own county.13 When copies reached that company’s men in Mexico, they raised a cry of indignation, including perhaps threats to Grant himself.14 “Hereafter,” he resolved, “I intend to be careful not to give them any news worth publishing.”15

  He approved of men distinguishing themselves in battle, of course, and perhaps dreamed of heroic deeds himself. Thanks to casualties among the company officers of the 4th Infantry, on July 22 he was assigned temporary command of Company C. That was a captain’s post, and if he performed well, there was hope of promotion. After less than a month his colonel reassigned him to support duty as acting assistant quartermaster and commissary of the regiment, performing the vital tasks of keeping accurate account of uniforms and equipment, and making sure the soldiers were fed. Grant’s own observations of the Mexicans’ logistical attainments showed how well he understood that, but quartermaster and commissary was a rear-echelon posting. Supply officers might keep an army functioning, but there were few opportunities for action. Grant asked to return to his post in the field, but his brigade commander Lieutenant Colonel John Garland quickly replied that at the moment Grant was where he might best serve, saying that he chose him for that duty because of “his observed ability, skill and persistency.” Major George Allen, commanding the 4th Infantry, agreed, and so did General Taylor.16

  Quartermaster Grant could read a map. He saw that if Taylor took Monterey, some 225 miles due west near the upper tip of the Sierra Madre mountains, he would command all of Mexico northeast of the range, and be poised to move due south the 400 miles to Mexico City. Grant thought that might force the enemy to terms.17 In so doing, he actually predicted Taylor’s next move, and had ideas about conduct of operations. “We are very anxious to push forward for that is our only hope of a speedy peace,” he told Julia. Having seen Mexicans overwhelm isolated detachments, he forecast that his outnumbered army could defeat anyone if concentrated.18 Also they should move quickly. “If we have to fight,” he said, “I would like to do it all at once and then make friends.” An army wasting time wasted opportunity. He believed that delay was the Mexican strategy, retreating to draw the Americans deeper into their country until isolated and strung out maintaining supply lines over hundreds of miles of bad roads.19

  When Taylor laid siege to Monterey on September 20, a frustrated Quartermaster Grant was three miles to the rear guarding his regiment’s camp. “Curiosity got the better of my judgment,” he later confessed, and the next day he rode to the front, disobeying—or at least ignoring—orders and abandoning his post and government property. He found the 4th Infantry on the verge of assaulting Mexican works. “Lacking the moral courage to return to camp,” he admitted, he accompanied his regiment in the charge, being one of only a few mounted. At first the Mexicans drove them back with heavy loss, and as they reformed Grant saw the adjutant of the regiment, Lieutenant Charles Hoskins, one of Julia’s one-time fleeting suitors, lagging in frail health and exhausted from running in the attack. Grant gave him his horse and then found another animal to rejoin the next assault. Hoskins was killed moments afterward, and Major Allen appointed Grant acting adjutant.

  By September 23 the fighting was block-by-block through the city streets. Sniping from rooftops stopped Garland’s brigade of the 3d and 4th Infantries just one square from the central plaza. When their ammunition dwindled, Garland asked for a volunteer to take a plea for reinforcements or more ammunition to Taylor, and Lieutenant Grant stepped forward. Wrapping an arm around his horse’s neck and one leg around the cantle of the saddle, he left at a gallop, the horse’s body shielding him from most enemy fire. He stopped momentarily at a house filled with wounded pinned down by the fire, promising to send them aid, then remounted and continued his gauntlet of fire. He reached safety uninjured, but before ammunition could be sent Garland’s brigade withdrew.20

  Grant showed bravery and initiative, not to mention youthful impetuosity in leaving his original post in the rear, but Garland ignored that. That evening Grant wrote to Julia, setting the mold for almost all his future correspondence when he made no mention of his daring ride other than to say that “I passed through some severe fireing but as yet have escaped unhurt.”21 The next day the city surrendered, the combatants agreeing on an eight-week armistice, and Grant feared they would advance no farther.22 After two months of inactivity his frustration erupted. “Here we are, playing war a thousand miles from home,” he said, “making show and parades, but not doing enough fighting to much amuse either the enemy or ourselves.” Meanwhile, inured to being a quartermaster, he grumbled that the army had consumed enough rations in idleness to subsist them on a march to Mexico City. “If our mission is to occupy the enemy’s country, it is a success, for we are inertly here; but if to conquer, it seems to some of us who have no control that we might as well be performing the job with greater energy.”23

  During those weeks he confronted the cost of war. A walk through his regiment’s camp reminded him of those lost, sending him back to his tent with what he called “the Blues.”24 His close friend Lieutenant Charles Hazlitt fell in the first day’s fighting not long after the two shook hands on the field.25 Harder was the death from illness of his benefactor Congressman Thomas L. Hamer, who arrived as major of the 1st Ohio Volunteers, which included the company Grant’s letter had offended. Theirs was a friendship that proved useful to Hamer, for he was entirely ignorant of the military, and West Point–educated Grant acted as his mentor despite the disparity in their ages.26 In November Hamer came down with inflammation of the bowels and died on December 2.27 Grant visited with him during his illness, and took the loss hard.28

  Adding to Grant’s disenchantment was Washington’s management of the conflict. He did not vote in the 1844 election that put Polk in power, since he was on station far from Ohio.29 Like many military men of all ages and ranks, Grant viewed politics through the limited lens of its impact on his profession and, of course, himself. Polk was not destined to be popular with professional soldiers. He gave too many high commissions to influential Southern or Democratic politicians with little or no military experience; men like his former law partner Gideon Pillow, or Franklin Pierce who was now a colonel in spite of never having worn a uniform in his life. Still, Grant actually became friendly with Pierce, however much he distrusted the policy that put him in the army.30

  Then Polk generated perhaps Grant’s first political comment. New regiments of volunteers were raised to augment the Regular Army in
the conflict, and the first one ready came from Mississippi. To Grant’s outrage, all of the officers in the regiment were themselves volunteers elected by their men, rather than professionals. “Mr. Polk has done the Officers of the Army injustice by filling up the new Regt. of Riflemen from citizens,” he complained in June. “It is plain to be seen that we have but little to expect from him.”31 The “we” were the officers of the army, men like himself who might have expected to get promotions and assignments to lead those new volunteers. Instead, Second Lieutenant Grant would now find himself subordinate to any upstart politico who persuaded volunteers to elect him captain.

  He still felt resentful a few weeks later when he told Julia that “after the way in which the President has taken to show his feelings for the Army, especially I think we have but little reason to want to see fighting.”32 Months later it still irked him. “If Mr. Polk does the Army another such insult as he did in officering the Rifle Regt. I think I will leave,” he told Julia, then crossed out the words “I think” to make his determination unconditional.33 It was a feeling born of disillusionment. By the end of 1846, Zachary Taylor loomed ever larger as a potential Whig candidate for the presidency in 1848. The senior professional officer, Major General Winfield Scott, was also a Whig, and feuding with Polk. The president wanted to put a man of his own party in charge of the war in hopes of boosting him to the White House instead of Taylor, but the highest-ranking Democrats in the army were unsuitable. “While the authorities at Washington are at sea as to who shall lead the army,” Grant complained, “the enterprise ought and could be accomplished.”34 Then and thereafter he regarded the conflict as “a political war.”35