Crucible of Command

by William C. Davis

  On November 20 Grant made a fast visit back to Cairo on just such a matter, to meet for the first time with Rear Admiral David D. Porter, the new commander of the Mississippi Squadron based there. Porter had contacted him sometime earlier to offer cooperation in his anticipated campaign into Mississippi, and at the same time may have told Grant a little more about McClernand’s impending Vicksburg expedition, with which Porter was supposed to move in concert.33 They met in the evening over dinner, and in the course of a few hours determined to ignore McClernand and act on their own.34 The next day Grant stopped at Columbus, where Sherman met him, and they settled plans for the campaign. Sherman was to move on Holly Springs on November 26, Grant would advance from Lagrange three days later, and the forces coming from Curtis under Brigadier General Frederick Steele were expected to cross the river at Helena, Arkansas, and advance to Grenada. Grant asked Porter the next day to propose a plan whereby he might cooperate with them, and then Grant and Sherman both left for Grand Junction.35 Grant felt confident of succeeding, but he expected a strong enemy in his front.36

  The reason for the hurried activity was the enemy in his rear. Grant had decided that if he was to ignore McClernand, then he would launch his own thrust at Vicksburg first. On November 24 he notified Halleck that he had given orders for an advance. He gave the general-in-chief an opportunity to stay his hand, but Halleck wired back a terse approval, only warning him “don’t go too far.”37 Grant might have pondered just what that meant, but in his experience Halleck was always advising him not to go too far. Either he was approved to move on Vicksburg or he was not, and Grant chose to assume that he was. Orders for the march went out on November 26, dividing his army into a right wing under Sherman moving from Memphis and a left under General Charles Hamilton with the forces at Lagrange.38 McPherson’s division formed a center between Sherman and Hamilton, all of them connected to him by telegraph. By Saturday morning, November 29, Grant rode into Holly Springs, recently evacuated by the enemy. Three days later he was in Abbeville, reestablishing rail and telegraph lines as he marched, and on December 4 he rode into Oxford.39

  Now he was fifty miles into Mississippi, and very conscious of his exposure. “How far south would you like me to go?” he wired Halleck the day before he reached Oxford. It was out of character for Grant to ask such a question, but reflection began to chip at his optimism. Newspapers in the North estimated that McClernand’s expedition, with which Porter must still cooperate by Lincoln’s instruction, would be ready to launch downriver in less than a week.40 When it did, its movement would leave Grant’s right rear at Memphis exposed, opening the door to enemy cavalry to strike at his increasingly extended supply line on the Mississippi Central. He began to doubt that he could safely advance beyond Grenada and still maintain his line of communications. Rain had swelled streams and turned the roads into mires, slowing his advance. Perhaps it might be wiser for his command to hold the Confederates in his front somewhere below Grenada, while another force moved down the river on Vicksburg?41 Grant did not say whose force, but Halleck certainly understood that he did not mean McClernand’s. He advised that Grant not go farther south himself, but to get 25,000 troops back to Memphis for gunboats to take them south, promising that they would be reinforced by men from Curtis.42

  Two days later Grant knew he had to stop, as the roads became all but impossible. Typically, if he could not move on land, he turned to the water. He suggested to Halleck that if he could command Steele’s column, he would put Sherman in charge of it and his own wing and send them by transport to the mouth of the Yazoo River, a few miles upstream from Vicksburg. While Grant kept the main body of the Confederates commanded by Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton occupied in his front near Grenada, Sherman should have an easy time taking the river bastion.43 By December 7 Grant was preparing to start sending divisions to Memphis, but a question remained. He asked Halleck who was to command the downriver expedition. “Do you want me to command,” he asked, “or shall I send Sherman?”44 Again, McClernand simply was not spoken of, as if he did not exist. Given the nature of the politician’s independent command, they could do little else. Halleck wired back that Lincoln might insist on putting someone else in charge—he did not have to say it would be McClernand—but if he did not, then the choice was Grant’s, though he favored Sherman. Halleck wanted Grant in north central Mississippi where he could protect Corinth in case Confederates from middle Tennessee should move west to threaten the vital rail junction and supply base.45

  Before he had Halleck’s response, Grant made the decision himself that Sherman should command an expedition of 40,000 to go to the mouth of the Yazoo, then upstream to land and cut Vicksburg’s rail connection with Jackson. After that he would leave the manner of capturing the town to Sherman, while he cooperated from Oxford by keeping Pemberton occupied.46 An erroneous report that Steele had actually crossed the Mississippi and captured Grenada reached Grant on December 8, and with it Halleck’s authorization to assume command of Steele and any other forces of Curtis’s then in his department. Thinking as he wrote to Sherman, he considered sending two divisions to Memphis, and thence downriver while he actually pressed forward his command at Oxford. If he did not, then he might push the entire combined force forward, establish a supply base at Grenada, and then move due south to take Jackson. His thinking was still evolving, but he rather preferred the waterborne option.47 In fact, after that day he came to a decision and ordered Sherman to go to Memphis with one division and assume command of all troops there including any units of Steele’s, and organize them into an army for Porter to transport to the vicinity of Vicksburg. Once there Sherman and Porter were to decide for themselves how best to take the city, and notify Grant so he could move in cooperation.48 Before making up his mind, Grant issued an order assuming command of all of Curtis’s forces then east of the Mississippi, and alerted Steele, who he discovered was actually at Helena on the west bank of the river, to send his men back to the Tennessee side to await Sherman.49

  In the back of his mind always lurked McClernand. Grant did not hold back with Halleck in expressing his views on the politician-general. When he learned on December 9 that McClernand was just a few days from launching his expedition, Grant fired a telegram to Halleck saying that the expedition would “be much safer” in Sherman’s hands, and then seemingly closed the matter by adding that in any case his expedition had already left.50 In fact, Sherman was still at Memphis, but Washington did not know that. If Lincoln thought Sherman was already on his way he might check McClernand, whom Grant now regarded as “unmanageable and incompetent,” dreading the thought that he might be attached to his command somehow.51

  Consequently, that is what happened. On December 18 Halleck ordered Grant to organize his army into four corps, one commanded by McPherson, one by Hurlbut, one by Sherman, and McClernand’s small army as a corps under himself.52 Halleck further directed—at Lincoln’s behest—that McClernand have command of the Vicksburg expedition, though under Grant’s overall direction. Unfortunately Grant knew that McClernand would take little direction from him when he could go directly to the White House. His hope was that Sherman could embark and be at Vicksburg’s doorsteps before McClernand arrived to take command. Dutifully, he wrote McClernand that same day notifying him of the orders. Wisely, he wrote a letter rather than a telegram. By this time Grant was well experienced at turning slow mail delivery versus near-instantaneous telegraphic delivery to his advantage. The later McClernand got notification of his orders, the more time that bought Sherman. By December 19 Grant hoped Sherman was ready to go, as in fact he almost was.53 When he embarked the next day, McClernand was still in Springfield, Illinois, and would not reach Memphis until a week after the expedition departed. The Union needed good news now, for there was news of disaster on the Rappahannock.

  In the weeks following Antietam Lee rebuilt his army in the northern Shenandoah, and McClellan did not interfere. Gradually his ranks grew above 80,000, and the Confederate
Congress authorized the combining of divisions into army corps and the rank of lieutenant general for the new corps commanders, virtually replicating what Lee had been doing already. As a result, instead of commanding informal “wings” of his army, new Lieutenant General Longstreet would command the I Corps, and Lieutenant General Jackson the II Corps. Meanwhile, if he failed to get his army into Pennsylvania, he made his point with Stuart’s cavalry, which he sent in mid-October on a ride around McClellan’s army and all the way to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. The raid accomplished no tangible damage to the enemy, but it threw McClellan off balance, boosted Southern spirits, and embarrassed Lincoln on the eve of the fall elections.

  Tragic news quickly damped any elation at Stuart’s feat. Thirty years earlier Lee had said a man should communicate his joy but conceal his grief. Now tragedy gave him a chance to practice his precept. Mary went to Jones’s Springs in Warren County, North Carolina, that fall, taking their twenty-three-year-old daughter Annie with her. Neither was well, but Annie gradually sank until she died on October 20. It was not practical to take her body home—indeed, the Lees had no home to take her to—and so she was buried there.54 The doleful news reached Lee a few days later. He knew his daughter had been ill but duty prevented him going to see her. “I cannot express the anguish I feel,” he wrote Mary. He could offer no comfort but the belief that she had been called away “at the time and place when it is best for her to go.”55 For weeks thereafter in the stillness of the night his uncomforted grief crept over him until he felt all but overwhelmed. He had hoped a time might come with wars done when he could have a few years with her, “but year after year my hopes go out, and I must be resigned.”56

  No wonder that more and more Lee spoke nostalgically of “happier days” when he could enjoy his family’s company. “Now that death has entered my home and nipped in the morning one of the flowers God had planted there,” life’s small luster was more dulled than ever, he told Carter. Despite all he and his army had achieved, “I feel as if nothing had been accomplished,” he mused in his gloom, “but we must endure to the end.” There was still so much to do if they were to be independent. “Nothing can surpass the valor and endurance of our troops,” he told his brother Carter in late October, yet no sooner did he disperse one enemy army than another appeared in its place. “This snatches from us the fruits of victory and covers the battle fields with our gallant dead.” Too many Antietams might bleed him to death. “We may be annihilated,” he said, “but we cannot be conquered.” And yet he asked, “what have we to live for if not victories.”57

  While Lee grieved, McClellan did not move again until October 26 when he commenced a glacial crossing of the Potomac just east of the Blue Ridge. Lee had anticipated the enemy would occupy Martinsburg and then move south into the Shenandoah, aptly guessing McClellan’s original intent, but by the first week of November he believed the whole Union army was concentrating to the east.58 His own army was divided, Jackson’s corps of nearly 40,000 in the Shenandoah Valley around Winchester, while in response to McClellan’s crossing Lee brought Longstreet’s 45,000 east of the Blue Ridge to Culpeper Court House. For the moment he felt comfortable leaving Jackson on his own menacing the Federal flank from the valley. He did not have an accurate assessment of Federal strength, but he expected it to be well beyond his own—as it was—making the Yankees too strong for him to meet in battle. Consequently, Lee concluded to “baffle his designs by maneuvering.”59 If he could keep them uncertain along the Blue Ridge, perhaps dividing themselves to watch Jackson on the west and Longstreet on the east, then they might give him an opportunity to strike separate elements at advantage.60

  By November 7 the Army of the Potomac had reached the vicinity of Warrenton, still north of the Rappahannock. Then Lincoln replaced McClellan with Major General Ambrose E. Burnside on November 7. Within a few days Lee knew that Burnside commanded.61 By November 12 he expected the Yankees either to cross the Rappahannock to move against Longstreet, or else go to Fredericksburg, perhaps with a view of using Aquia Creek a few miles north as the staging area for another waterborne shift below Richmond.62 For the next several days Lee watched and read what he could from enemy movements, considering the alternatives available to Burnside, and his own options, aware that his response might better be a little late than a little wrong. Three days later the Federals started moving southeast from Warrenton and Lee closely monitored their movements. Not until November 20 did he conclude that Burnside was going to Fredericksburg, and it was nearly too late, for by then the enemy army was already massing across the Rappahannock from the city.63 Lee had been neither complaisant nor careless in waiting before moving, but he had been lucky. Had Washington not failed to get Burnside equipped with pontoons for building bridges, he might have been across the river and on the road to Richmond before Lee could stop him. Lee put Longstreet’s corps in motion that same day, then rode ahead accompanied by his son Robert, and after midnight reached Fredericksburg.64

  The town offered a fine place to an engineer’s eye for defense. The Rappahannock ran too deep to ford here and Burnside would have to throw pontoon bridges over the stream to cross. Ordinarily those would make fine concentrated targets for a defender, but Stafford Heights on the north side of the river afforded enemy artillery a commanding field of fire over the town, meaning that any units Lee sent to contest a crossing could be shattered. However, just a few hundred yards west rose Marye’s Heights with an equally commanding view of the town, and southeast of it Prospect Hill offered fine high ground to defend should the enemy try to cross downstream. Lee was too weak to strike at Burnside, even if he had means of crossing the river. With only half his army present Lee could only assume the defensive and make the enemy come to him as he had at Antietam. He could not keep Burnside from crossing the river, but he was confident he could keep him from getting on the road to Richmond.65

  When Longstreet’s column began arriving during the day Lee put it in line along Marye’s Heights and high ground extending from either side. That same day Burnside’s demand to city authorities that they surrender or he might start shelling the town erased any doubt Lee might have had of the Yankee’s intent. Through most of the next day Lee employed army wagons to evacuate women and children from town and gave his promise not to occupy the city for military purposes, but to defend it should Burnside attempt to cross the river.66 Meanwhile, he spent the days out in the cold and rain on his own heights with field glasses studying the Federal positions on Stafford. Then on the evening of November 22 Burnside moved his camps and supply trains to the rear, and by the following morning most of his artillery appeared to have left. Could Burnside be moving his army, intending to hold Lee here while changing base to strike west at Jackson in the Shenandoah or launch a North Carolina expedition? “They seem to be hesitating but are very numerous,” he told Mary. “I do not now know what I can do.”67

  Fortunately, Lee read Northern newspapers when he could get them and knew that their public were fed up with delay, from which he concluded that Burnside did not dare delay action for fear of an outcry at home “equivalent to a defeat.” He decided that Burnside had just pulled back to protect his camps from Confederate artillery, while establishing his communications line by rail and water back to Washington. When ready, the Yankees would cross the river and try to push through to take the road to Richmond. That being the case, Lee intended to delay Burnside to push any action deeper into the winter so that weather would make enemy movement more difficult. Of course that also applied to Lee’s movements, but so long as he kept Burnside in his front he would have less distance to move than an enemy army trying to get around him. His readings on Napoleon at the Military Academy perhaps came to mind, with their account of how the Russians fell back before the emperor, drawing him deeper and deeper into a brutal winter. Still, Lee deferred to Davis, saying he would defend a line closer to the capital if the president wished. Unsaid was that Lee thought it would be foolish to give up any ground without a fi
ght.68

  He had 38,000 men on the heights under Longstreet, almost exactly one-third the enemy numbers across the river, and concluded now that it was time to call Jackson from the valley. Typically, Lee did not send an order. He merely laid out his view of the strategic situation at the moment, observed that he did not see what further good Jackson could do in the Shenandoah, and then suggested that if Stonewall agreed, “I wish you would move east.” He did not even call Jackson to Fredericksburg, leaving it to him to decide where, though Lee favored Culpeper where he would be in speedy rail communication with Fredericksburg. While facing what could be a difficult defense in his front should Burnside move quickly, Lee still wanted to keep options open to the west, where Jackson’s presence threatened Burnside’s right flank.69

  With the prospect of a battle imminent, Lee once more dealt with his most onerous task as army commander: handling an inadequate subordinate. Where Grant addressed such problems frontally, Lee recoiled from direct confrontation. For months now his division commanders had complained of Brigadier General Thomas Drayton. At Second Manassas he was so slow that his brigade missed the action. At Antietam his command all but dissolved. As one division commander after another complained of him, Lee had transferred his brigade repeatedly. He could not risk another poor performance in the next action, and reluctantly told Davis that Drayton “seems to lack the capacity to command.” Yet rather than turn over the brigade to a better general, he resorted to the same roundabout means he used to get G. W. Smith out of his army. Citing Davis’s preferred, though hardly universal, policy of composing brigades entirely of regiments from the same state, Lee notified the War Department that since Drayton’s contained both South Carolina and Georgia units, he would dissolve it and reassign them to other brigades from their states. That, of course, left Drayton with no command. As he usually did with officers he did not want, Lee suggested that Drayton be sent to the Deep South or perhaps Louisiana or Texas.70 It was certainly a way to solve Lee’s problem. He seems not to have considered that he merely shifted his problem to someone else.