Crucible of Command

by William C. Davis

  All of this distracted Grant from his primary goal. Back on October 31 he and McClernand met with Congressman Washburne. Grant reiterated that Cairo was the key position for any expedition moving down the Mississippi, and argued that his district ought to be set apart from Frémont’s. With headquarters at Cairo, that would make his command the logical one for any assignment to move south. He had been planning such a campaign for months, recently with help from McClernand, whom he probably enlisted more for his political influence. Grant well understood that Washington might hand such an important command to someone senior, but he was willing to take the risk. Washburne promised to work for him in Washington, and it can hardly be coincidental that one week later Grant attacked Belmont. A success in a small expedition launched from Cairo might just persuade the war department that Cairo was the base and Grant was the man for something more ambitious.

  In fact Washburne made some progress in the capital, perhaps helped by public reaction to Belmont, and thought prospects good for authorization to launch Grant’s campaign.76 Then on November 9 the War Department announced a new arrangement of military districts that had been in the works for some time. It left Grant’s district in its current department, and announced that Major General Henry W. Halleck would be Frémont’s replacement.77 That was an end to Grant’s immediate hopes, though McClernand continued pushing the idea for the rest of the year, coveting the command for himself. The day after Halleck assumed command Grant asked for orders to meet with him in St. Louis, ostensibly to discuss the needs of his command, but more likely to press his case for the move down the Mississippi. Halleck said no.78

  “My inclination is to whip the rebellion into submission,” Grant wrote his father a week later, and Halleck’s refusal to meet made him suspect that the old policy of delay would continue. He also feared for his own tenure. “I am somewhat troubled lest I lose my command here,” he confessed. Regarding his district as strategically the most important in the entire department, he felt apprehensive that Halleck might give it to some senior.79 He soon found his worries groundless, however. Apparently Halleck was satisfied with his subordinate. Certainly he could not fault Grant’s industry. The brigadier worked from breakfast until well after dark seven days a week, and only wrote personal correspondence if he finished his official letters before midnight. His staff had grown and he had able men in adjutant Rawlins, aides Clark Lagow and Hillyer, and Colonel J. D. Webster, his chief of staff who doubled as chief engineer. He also had a quartermaster, a chief commissary, an ordnance officer overseeing artillery, a medical director and assistant, and a paymaster.80 Including a volunteer aide it amounted to eleven men, most of them specialists, which relieved a considerable burden from Grant’s shoulders, and from the first he had no difficulty in delegating authority and did not share Lee’s nagging fear of things going undone if not under his personal supervision.

  It was a huge command: all of southern Illinois, Kentucky west of the Cumberland River, and the Missouri counties south of Cape Girardeau; an area of twelve thousand or more square miles, all but its northern reaches bordering either the Confederacy or questionable portions of Missouri and Kentucky. “There is not a sufficiency of Union sentiment left in this portion of the state to save Sodom,” he complained after a visit to Missouri.81 He kept constantly busy dealing with illicit trade between the lines, Unionist refugees from the South, and Northern businessmen wanting to get to the Confederacy for profit. Secession was killing Union men now, one of them his boyhood friend George B. Bailey, murdered or drowned after being shot in a surprise attack three days after Belmont.82 For the sake of the soldiers, Grant believed it imperative to cut off communication between the sections.83 After mid-November he allowed passage south only to those bearing passes from Halleck himself.84 However, he welcomed Unionist refugees from the Confederacy into his lines and temporarily provided for them until they moved north, and even dealt lightly with disloyal residents so long as they committed no hostile acts other than express their opinions. His goal was “to visit as lightly as possible, the rigors of a state of war upon noncombatants,” and allowed press freedom even when others objected to disunion sentiments appearing in some Missouri and Kentucky papers.85

  Like all Union commanders, he had to deal with runaway slaves, but faced a special problem some others did not. While a secessionist’s slave might be legitimate contraband, Kentucky and Missouri slaves were still protected as property by the Constitution. “I do not want the Army used as negro cat[c]hers,” he declared on Christmas Day 1861, “but still less do I want to see it used as a cloak to cover their escape.” So long as the Fugitive Slave Law remained in effect, regulations required the runaways’ return to loyal men on application. Grant dealt with the distraction by ordering the expulsion of any fugitives found in his camps, staying out of the business of returning fugitives to loyal or disloyal men alike.86 He still saw this as a white man’s conflict over loyalty, not slavery, and condemned press efforts to make it into a war for emancipation. “If it cannot be whipped in any other way than through a war against slavery, let it come to that legitimately,” he argued. “If it is necessary that slavery should fall that the Republic may continue its existence, let slavery go.” But he regarded those clamoring for a war for abolition as enemies to the country.87

  Amid all this it helped to have Julia and the children join him for much of November and December, but they had scant free time together, and it helped that his father did not visit. Grant wearied of Jesse’s self-serving requests and ill-informed complaints about virtually all Union generals, to whom his son quickly gave benefit of the doubt.88 ’Lys chided his father that “there is a desire upon the part of people who stay securely at home to read in the morning papers, at their breakfast, startling reports of battles fought.” They did not understand why troops had to be trained, logistics arranged, groundwork laid, and more. “You are very much disposed to criticise unfavorably from information received through the public press,” Grant told him, and “I am very tired of the course pursued by a portion of the Union press.”89

  A few days before Christmas Grant unwittingly found himself in a minor controversy with Halleck; Grant acted on a hoax telegram that countermanded an order by Halleck, who sent him a heated reprimand and would not be mollified by explanations.90 It was a small matter with wide repercussions commencing the very next day when Grant learned that William J. Kountz had arrived in Cairo to oversee river transportation and government claims in the department. He failed to present his orders to Grant first, and soon Grant heard of him making inquiries about matters that Grant thought none of his business. Having just been scolded by Halleck for being gullible, Grant was not in a mood to be taken in by anyone else. He ordered Kountz to explain himself. Kountz was known to be stubborn, interfering, and querulous, and not a man to be reprimanded. He was also a serial slanderer and libeler, and would be taken to court by at least one victim of his intemperate tongue.91 Moreover, his appointment came from McClellan, a man whose associates often mimicked his self-importance. McClernand intervened and cleared any confusion, but Grant had made a noisy and vengeful enemy.92

  He had little time to fret about Kountz, for within a few days it looked like there might be activity ahead. Grant never yielded his urgency about Columbus as he monitored the enemy buildup. He read the Confederate Memphis Appeal when he could, and learned much from its pages.93 Then in December he sent a spy into Columbus to prepare a detailed map showing its defenses, and the man returned with not only the chart but also circumstantial reports that the Confederates had left the place garrisoned by militia.94 In the first week of January further reports came in that the Columbus garrison was reduced even more.95 By this time Grant’s command of about 20,000 were virtually all armed and equipped to take the field.96 Once again he asked for orders to come to St. Louis to meet with Halleck, but that same day an order came from his commander.97 He wanted Grant to make a demonstration into western Kentucky, putting out the story that his real
goal was Dover on the Cumberland River just below the Tennessee line, where rebel batteries commanded the river approach below an earthwork named Fort Donelson. He was also to hint that he might be headed up the Cumberland to Nashville, which would cut off the rebels at Donelson from communication with the enemy army then assembling at Bowling Green, Kentucky, under Albert Sidney Johnston. Probably aware of Grant’s exceeding orders in his attack on Belmont, Halleck emphasized twice that he was to avoid a battle, though he could skirmish a little here and there to give his men experience.98

  In fact, Halleck was responding nominally to pressure from Lincoln to advance, but he felt no hurry to take the field. He sent the order by mail rather than telegraph, and gave Grant no date for the movement. Strangely, he asked Brigadier General Don Carlos Buell, who had replaced Sherman at Louisville, to cooperate and pick a date that suited him best, but suggested that he “put it off as long as possible.”99 Grant did not share Halleck’s timidity. Less than twenty-four hours after receiving his order, he had his expedition ready to go. After pondering such a move for so long, he had a campaign outline ready whenever opportunity arose, as always, allowing himself leeway to adapt on the road as contingencies arose.100 Again he left detailed management to the judgment of his commanders.101 Bad weather and Halleck’s interference delayed the movement, and then Kountz reappeared. Grant and Foote wanted to make a quick reconnaissance down the Mississippi toward Columbus before the infantry started, but Kountz had so alienated local rivermen that Foote was short of volunteers to man his gunboats. Regarding himself as a law unto himself, Kountz refused to take orders from Grant until the general had him arrested.102 He remained under arrest until early March when Halleck ordered his release, but he would retaliate well before then.103 Grant had no problem dealing with confrontation, and at the same time finally ordered the arrest of quartermaster Hatch as well.104 He also had no problem admitting error and righting a wrong. More than a year later, when a full investigation completely exonerated Hatch, Grant wrote directly to Lincoln recommending him for promotion from captain to colonel, adding that “I regard it as a positive act of duty to him to give this testimonial.”105

  Finally by January 17 his columns were deep in Kentucky, Grant himself personally doing much of the reconnaissance to find passable roads.106 This time there would be no exceeding orders, and the next day, having made his “demonstration,” he began pulling his men out.107 He was back at Cairo late on January 20, unsure of the impact of what he facetiously called “the great expedition into Kentucky.” He and Foote met and concluded that the moment was prime for them to repeat the movement, but this time amphibiously up the Tennessee to take Fort Henry, just a dozen miles from Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River. Foote could take gunboats and troop transports up the Tennessee and bombard the fort from his gunboats while Grant marched a column overland and the two of them then pinched the fort between them to force its surrender. Holding Fort Henry would open the Tennessee to Union warships all the way to the Muscle Shoals near Florence, Alabama, and position Grant to isolate the Columbus garrison from supply, force its evacuation, and endanger the supply line and security of Johnston’s army at Bowling Green. The plan revealed his focus beyond the immediate battlefield to calculate the maximum capital to be made from taking a strategic position. “I have now a larger force than General Scott ever commanded,” he wrote. Now was the time to act, and he warned his sister that “I expect to see but little quiet from this on.”108

  He left for St. Louis late January 23 to put his case to Halleck, who reacted slowly and probably reluctantly. Grant left a few days later with neither assent nor refusal, though in fact Halleck, McClellan, and Buell all had the river forts in their sights. There was little genius in the concept. A good map revealed the advantages of taking control of the twin rivers. A few weeks later Grant himself said it was pointless to argue about who first conceived this line of campaign. Their gunboats had been going up and down the rivers for months keeping an eye on progress on the forts, and practically illustrating how troops could be transported to attack. Grant felt certain that Halleck had thought of it, and that “I am shure I did.”109 The genius lay in the execution if it worked. Grant and Foote met again and decided to wear down Halleck. Both sent telegrams saying Fort Henry could be taken and asked for permission to act.110 The next day Grant sent a follow-up letter pointing out that from Fort Henry he could move on Fort Donelson, or Columbus, or even Memphis, while setting his soldiers’ boots on rebel territory would have a good effect on morale.111 Grant and Foote might not move Halleck to quick decision, but McClellan did. He informed Halleck on January 29 of reports of a major reinforcement on the way to Bowling Green. Implicit was the suggestion to take Fort Henry and have Foote steam up the Tennessee River to prevent the reinforcements’ use of the railroad bridges at Decatur and Stevenson, Alabama, to get to Bowling Green.112 Halleck immediately ordered Grant and Foote to take Fort Henry and cut the railroad linking Fort Donelson with Memphis.113

  Even before he received the order, Grant had his command ready, and intended to start on February 2, just three days after getting Halleck’s nod. Foote’s gunboats would escort his infantry on transports to a landing on the east bank of the Tennessee as close to Fort Henry as possible, then Grant would march overland to hit the fort from the land side while Foote moved in to bombard from the river. At the last moment Halleck sent him further instructions to take control of the road linking Fort Henry and Dover, thus cutting off reinforcements from that quarter. He made no mention of Fort Donelson.114

  Amid the flurry of preparations, Grant did not need more trouble from Kountz. Bent on revenge, Kountz sent Halleck a series of invented charges accusing Grant of being repeatedly drunk on duty in December. Halleck may not have seen them before they were referred back to Grant, and he in turn gave them back to Kountz telling him to submit a copy to his office according to regulations. Grant sent the original on to St. Louis the same day that orders came for the expedition against Fort Henry.115 That is all he did. His mind fixed on the looming campaign, he did not allow himself to be distracted, an example of Grant’s capacity for compartmentalizing issues. Years before, while struggling to stay afloat economically, he still left financial woes behind in the evenings when he devoted himself to reading with Julia and playing with his children. He would hear more of Kountz, who was already elaborating his libels to implicate Grant in the contract frauds at Cairo.

  McClernand’s division of eleven regiments and several artillery batteries were aboard the gunboats and transports on their way up the Tennessee by dawn on February 3. Twenty-four hours later the flotilla landed three miles downstream from the fort and the troops went ashore, whereupon Grant went upstream with Foote and three gunboats to test the range of Fort Henry’s batteries. Then he took the transports back to Paducah to board another eight regiments and more artillery under Brigadier General Charles F. Smith, making in all something over 15,000 men in the operation. On the way he had time to pen a hasty note to Julia. “I do not want to boast,” he told her, “but I have a confidant feeling of success.”116

  The next day saw him back on the Tennessee with McClernand’s division on the east bank and Smith’s on the west. He ordered McClernand to move out late in the morning of February 6 to take control of the road to Dover as Halleck instructed, and be ready to move west against Fort Henry if so ordered. Smith would take two brigades and march south to a bluff opposite the fort and occupy an unfinished earthwork called Fort Heiman, emplacing artillery to defend it and to play on Fort Henry. Meanwhile, another brigade was to move quickly down the east bank to a position from which it could launch an assault on the fort itself.117 Operating on barely three hours’ sleep, Grant spent the balance of February 5 watching what movement he could see in Fort Henry. “Tomorrow will come the tug of war,” he wrote Julia.118

  The next morning all he could do was set things in motion and try to keep up with developments. At eleven o’clock Foote’s gunboats moved up to
occupy the fort’s guns while the infantry began its march, but then unanticipated circumstances changed everything. During the night all but a few score Confederates evacuated the fort, which the high water made virtually untenable, to march to Fort Donelson. The remainder manned a few cannon for an hour, then before the infantry could arrive, the fort surrendered to Foote. Grant sent word back to Halleck, then closed it by adding, “I shall take and destroy Fort Donaldson on the 8th.”119 It was a statement, not a request for authorization, and setting his attack two days hence meant he might take the fort before Halleck even got his letter. He ordered remaining units at Cape Girardeau and elsewhere to rush to him, sent a steamer upriver to destroy the Memphis, Clarksville & Louisville Railroad bridge a dozen miles above the fort, and finished a busy day by sending Julia a brief note. “Fort Henry is taken,” he told her. “This is news enough for to-night.”120

  Grant had devised to move his army by river as close to his objective as possible without exposing his men to enemy fire, then march inland to cut off routes of escape and approach from one or more land sides while the gunboats engaged the fort’s attention. It was Belmont with variations, and now he planned to use it again to take Fort Donelson. The strengths of the plan were manifest. It assayed not to drive the Confederates in retreat, but to capture the entire garrison and fort and take both out of the war. One fact apparent in northern Virginia was that the victory at Manassas decided nothing. Six months later the contending sides were preparing to fight for the same ground again. By contrast, in taking Fort Henry Grant took control of more than 150 miles of the Tennessee River, and at high water light draft gunboats could steam upstream even farther. He cut off virtually all Confederates west of the river, including Columbus and Memphis, from direct access to Johnston’s army at Bowling Green, imperiling their tenure in their positions. In return, Grant’s only real exposure was his supply line, but so long as he controlled the river back to Paducah, with sufficient water for Foote’s gunboats to operate, he could get supplies as needed. Still, there was a risk. Confederates at Columbus seventy miles to his west, the garrison at Fort Donelson just twelve miles to his east, and Johnston’s growing army ninety miles northeast at Bowling Green heavily outnumbered Grant’s 15,000 should they concentrate, but he could calculate on having time to react should they try.