Crucible of Command

by William C. Davis

  “I suffer the mortification of seeing myself attacked right and left by people at home professing patriotism and love of country who never heard the whistle of a bullet,” he complained to his sister Mary on December 15 from Oxford. Especially he resented the assaults of “speculators whos patriotism is measured by dollars & cents,” men for whom “country has no value with them compared to money.”109 Now he was about to enter the heart of Mississippi’s cotton belt, and those speculators drooled more than ever. All Jews were not unpatriotic, of course. There were Jewish soldiers in his command, and at least a few officers who had heard the bullets’ whistle. But he now regarded Jews who followed the army as speculators as a separate class, and definitely not patriots. If he needed proof it came that same December 15 when his post commander at Abbeville wired him that a man named Shultz had tried a new subterfuge. Finding a Confederate whose cotton had been seized, Shultz “bought” it from him for a fraction of its value and got a predated receipt to demonstrate his ownership prior to seizure. The officer in Abbeville called it whipping “the Devil around the stump,” and refused to hand over the cotton, whereon Shultz brazenly lied that he had Grant’s authorization.110

  That same day he learned that his father was at Holly Springs with Julia and would reach him at Oxford in a day or two. On December 6 Jesse entered a partnership with the firm of Mack & Brothers of Cincinnati for what Simon Mack called “an adventure in the purchase of cotton.” Jesse’s role was to secure from his son a permit for the Macks’ agents to come buy cotton and get his permission for rail or boat transportation of the bales to New York. In return the Macks would pay Jesse one-fourth of their profits. A week later Jesse left with Simon Mack and agent Solomon Goldsmith, reaching Holly Springs on or before December 15, where Goldsmith apparently began buying without waiting for Jesse to approach his son.111 As yet Grant knew nothing of the purpose of Jesse’s visit or of Goldsmith and Mack being along.112

  He was feeling the weight of his responsibility more than usual. That same day he told his sister that “I am extended now like a Peninsula into an enemies country with a large Army depending for their daily bread upon keeping open a line of rail-road running one hundred & ninety miles.” Thousands of lives rested on his judgment, and he did not have to add that the fate of the Union had a stake in his actions. For some time now he envied the man who could conduct his daily business and then “retire to a quiet home without a feeling of responsibility for the morrow.”113 Within hours he learned that Confederate cavalry had been seen near the Tennessee River, and on a path to threaten his communications via Jackson to Cairo.114

  Then a telegram came from Jesse asking if he and “a friend” could come on to Oxford. Ordinarily Grant’s aide at Holly Springs would have issued a pass. Jesse’s approaching his son directly may have raised suspicion, soon confirmed when a telegram arrived informing Grant that Jesse’s friend was “a Jew.” Grant surely knew nothing yet of the December 6 partnership, but he knew his father’s unerring instinct for conflicts of interest. He was also out of patience with his father for his rudeness to Julia, who simply could not please Jesse. “This is not pleasing to me,” Grant told him a few weeks earlier. The bully in Jesse also picked on his grandson Fred, who was often sickly, and sensitive as a result.115 Now Grant wired back that his father was welcome to come, but not his friend.116

  Two days later something more arrived.117 It may have been a telegram or a packet of letters referred from Washington. The import was yet another warning that Jews in particular were buying with gold and silver that would surely find its way to the Confederacy. An angered Grant took this as criticism of his management of the problem, and he could easily envision the outcry against him in the press if his own father got involved by using his son’s influence. He responded to an assistant secretary of war, recapitulating his long concerns that “unprincipled traders” were routinely violating the Treasury Department’s regulations, reminding Washington that he had tried to stop it by refusing “all permits to Jews” to come south, “but they come in with their Carpet sacks in spite of all that can be done to prevent it.” They bought cotton themselves, or else acted as agents for someone who had a legitimate permit to buy cotton with Treasury notes, and then purchased the bales from them at discounted rates using gold. In short, there was nothing else he or any other department commander could do. He suggested that the solution was for the government to buy all cotton at an established rate and ship it North for sale. Then “all traders” could be expelled, for “they are a curse to the Army.”118

  Grant confronted the problem as he confronted all others, head-on and, he hoped, decisively. He drafted General Orders No. 11, the culmination of months of personal, military, and administrative frustration.119 “The Jews, as a class” were to be expelled from his departmental command. He ordered post commanders to give them twenty-four hours’ notice to leave on penalty of arrest. Moreover, no passes should be given “these people” to come to his headquarters to apply for trade permits, which should take care of Jesse’s partners.120 This was no sudden reaction to his father’s appearance with Goldsmith or other frustrations. It was the logical extension of a policy he had been evolving for at least five months, though the irritants surrounding him may have prevented the mature reflection such a bombshell needed.

  Since all speculators had been a besetting nuisance to him, it seems unlikely that he would act only against those who were Jews, for that addressed only a part of the problem, and in his letter to the assistant secretary of war that day he spoke interchangeably of Jews and “all traders.” Yet he intentionally singled out Jews “as a class.” His own degree of anti-Semitism, the fact that Jewish buyers seemed to stand out from the rest, the reinforcement of his feelings by Sherman and others, and warnings from Washington of the unpatriotic—if not treasonous—actions of traders providing gold, silver, or contraband goods that quickly found their way to Confederate hands, all seemed to call for a preemptive act to halt such practice.121

  Grant later confessed that he issued the order “without any reflection, and without thinking of the Jews as a sect or race to themselves.” They were just those most successful in “whipping the Devil around the stump” and had to be stopped.122 He was not given to impulse, but it was his habit to confront a difficult subordinate or an administrative problem directly. Influences acting on him in mid-December clouded his judgment. Anti-Semitism did not impel him to issue an order, which was certainly needed, but it did influence his concept of the order’s imposition. Far greater responsibility for Grant’s misstep rests on exactly what he said, not enough reflection, and the desire to stop wasting time on this niggling and unpatriotic business so he could address the urgent matters before him. A host of trenchant reasons led him to the right decision—banishment of speculators—but promulgated with terribly wrong stipulations. He spent the rest of his life trying to cope with and overcome its repercussions.

  Lee faced no such problem since his army did not occupy enemy soil, offering no opportunity for Confederate speculators to profit. He did, however, have a number of what he called “soldiers of the Jewish persuasion” in his army, mostly from Louisiana and South Carolina, and his notion that they were Jews by choice of faith rather than by birth suggests that his own personal feeling about Jews differed little from Grant’s. He sought to maintain their good will and commitment to the cause, even when demands of the service forced him to deny a request just after Antietam from the rabbi in Richmond for a general furlough to “that class of soldiers” for the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur holidays. Still, Lee encouraged individual Jews to apply to their regimental commanders to be furloughed as exigency allowed.123

  If he did not share Grant’s challenge with one ethnic interest, Lee’s challenge with another continued. He collected all the names he could from Mary and his sons and had an attorney draft a deed of manumission listing 201 slaves at Arlington, White House, and Romancoke, among them familiar people like Wesley Norris and his sister M
ary. On December 29 Lee took it to the county court house in Fredericksburg and signed it before a justice of the peace.124 Perhaps it was just coincidental that three days later Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation went into effect. By its terms if the Confederacy lost the war, the resultant freedom of the Custis slaves would date from the proclamation. Punctilious as always, Lee wanted their freedom to date from his manumission, the fulfillment of his responsibility to them under Custis’s will. Ironically, the proclamation applied only to areas still resisting Federal authority, which no longer included Arlington and Alexandria. Thus Lincoln did not free slaves at Arlington, but Lee did.

  That was not an end of it, however. Lee needed to locate the slaves and get their manumission papers to them before they could walk as free men. He sent word to Arlington to inform the people there of their freedom, and sent emancipation papers to an agent to distribute at Richmond, White House, and elsewhere, meanwhile continuing the search for more names.125 He also enjoined his agents to help find the people employment, emphasizing that any wages currently due them were theirs to keep.126 “I wish to emancipate the whole,” he told Mary. “They are entitled to their freedom and I wish to give it to them.”127 Still sensitive to the accusations of violating Custis’s will, Lee told his son, “I wished to give a complete list & to liberate all, to Show that your Grd Fathers wishes so far as I was Concerned had been fulfilled.”128

  The manumission put an end to Lee’s use of the Custis slaves, a few of whom had been with him in the field since his first command in western Virginia in 1861.129 Henceforth he would hire his servants, and he continued to employ Perry Parks, who came to him from Arlington in May 1861, despite his being “not entirely reliable.” Lee complained that Perry was slow, inefficient, and lazy in the mornings, yet “does as well as he can.” He did not expect to keep him indefinitely, hoping that his next employer would take good care of him, but in fact Parks remained with him at least another two years, for which Lee paid him $8.20 a month. He also employed other Arlington slaves as cooks: first Michael Meriday and later George Clarke.130 Nothing suggests that Lee still owned Nancy Ruffin and her children, but if he or Mary did still have any slaves, he may have arranged their emancipation around this time as well.131

  The storm of protest from both Jews and gentiles alike was predictable, but peculiarly delayed. Rumors of Grant’s order did not reach the Northern press until New Year’s Day, when a dispatch from Cairo said merely that he had issued an order for “all Jews in his department to leave.”132 The actual text did not appear until January 5, a day after Halleck directed Grant to revoke the order. Grant felt severely embarrassed, but kept it to himself, and thereafter avoided the subject. It was a valuable lesson hard learned, though he had his defenders.133 Yet the storm all lay in the future, as Grant returned to planning Sherman’s expedition. Then 3,500 Confederate cavalry led by Van Dorn swept out of nowhere onto Holly Springs on December 20, captured the garrison, and destroyed those million rations husbanded for the campaign. At the same time more rebel horse led by Brigadier General Nathan Bedford Forrest struck rail and telegraph lines elsewhere, nearly closing down the flow of information out of the department, and thus delaying word of General Orders No. 11 reaching the North.

  Grant had his cavalry out looking for the rebels, who simply moved faster than his own troopers. As a precaution he temporarily postponed an advance on December 19 until he felt secure, but when word of the disaster reached him he immediately pulled in his divisions and began making plans to defend Corinth should it be threatened. As ever, Grant reacted aggressively. Falling back meant some of his divisions could be sent to Sherman, and Grant concluded to go with them himself in overall command. Being present in person, he would outrank McClernand when he arrived.134 Thanks to the disruption at Holly Springs, however, he did not know if Sherman had embarked already. Grant’s supply base was gone, the rebels almost captured Julia, who left Holly Springs the day before, his overland campaign was stymied, his communications disrupted, and he had no sure idea of where the Vicksburg expedition might be, or even if it would depart Memphis before McClernand came to make his life miserable. The only good news for Grant that yuletide were things his downed telegraph lines delayed. The North did not yet know about General Orders No. 11, and he did not yet know the full extent of Burnside’s disaster on the Rappahannock the week before. Good news from Vicksburg would go a long way toward brightening Union spirits.

  The aftermath of victory only dampened Lee’s spirits. “I have no time to think of my private affairs,” he told Mary. “I expect to die a pauper, & I see no way of preventing it. So that I can get enough for you & the girls I am content.”135 He felt a longing for an earlier period of his life. He missed Arlington, but now that was lost to them forever. Only one other place inspired that sort of affection in him: Stratford. Often his thoughts turned back to his father’s house and his few memories of life there. Nostalgia made him daydream frequently of buying the place and spending his last years there if ever the war should end. There was not much left of the farm, he feared, but he expected they could produce enough corn bread and bacon to get by. A year earlier he had made inquiries to see if it might be for sale, and for how much.136

  No wonder Christmas made him pensive. He thought of the happy holiday meals of past years, wistfully wishing they might all be reunited at Arlington.137 The past year had seen innumerable evidences of divine favor. “I have seen his hand in all the events of the war,” he said, and if only the Confederate people would put aside their “vain self boasting & adulation” and acknowledge their debt to Him, Lee felt he could have confidence in ultimate independence. “What a cruel thing is war,” he lamented. It destroyed families and fostered hate rather than brotherhood. He prayed for Yankee hearts to turn to peace. He spoke of the recent battle, lamenting that if he had known Burnside would not renew his attacks on December 14, Lee would have given him “more of it” on the thirteenth. Amid Christmas lamentations over the loss of brotherly love, he was sorry he had not killed more.138 With Mildred he was more playful, saying he was happy that “Genl. Burnside and his army will not eat their promised Xmas dinner in Richmond to day.”139 A few weeks later he told Custis that “if honour & independence is delt us I will be content,” and hope seemed a bit brighter when Davis returned from a visit to Mississippi encouraged that they might hold that line against Grant, “and the integrity of the Confederacy may be thus preserved.”140

  If only the people and the government would put their country first. “The people must help themselves, or Providence will not help them,” he had told Custis before the battle.141 Governors still erected defenses against Richmond rather than bridges to cooperate.142 For more than a year he urged that regiments be organized for the duration of the war and placed under Richmond’s control, not the governors’. His strength at Fredericksburg had been his greatest since the Peninsula, yet he knew the Union could call forth vastly more. The easy victory changed nothing. Rather, it revealed to him that the South could not win preemptively. It could only persuade the North to lose, and to do that he must continue taking risks to even the odds. On the very day of the battle he wrote to Richmond that “the people must turn out to defend their homes, or they will be taken from them.”143 Soon he warned that the people did not feel the extent of their danger or the growing power of the North. The South had won signal victories, but he feared that made the people complacent. Against the might of the Union, more wins must cost “the most precious blood of the country,” blood on the hands of those who failed to join their brothers in arms. Even after a great success his army had not the strength to press its advantage to its fullest, as at Antietam where “victory itself has been made to put on the appearance of defeat, because our diminished and exhausted troops have been unable to renew a successful struggle against fresh numbers of the enemy.”

  Lincoln’s proclamation encouraged slaves to revolt, overthrow white rule, and bring anarchy and violence in vengeance for ancient grie
vances. Rape and perhaps even forced racial amalgamation would follow, a “brutal and savage policy” that left them “no alternative but success or degradation worse than death, if we would save the honor of our families from pollution, our social system from destruction.”144 A rumor had appeared in the Northern press of a letter Lee supposedly wrote Halleck condemning the proclamation as an incitement to servile rebellion, and promising bloody retaliation on Union prisoners. Some questioned the rumor when the War Department issued no transcript, though the letter’s inflammatory nature had considerable propaganda value. By the end of the month the story died.145 No one took credit for the hoax, if such it was, and Lee ignored it. “As to the attacks of the Northern papers I do not mind them,” he told Mary.146 Still, he condemned Lincoln’s act as a declaration of war on civilization itself that severed any remaining cords of attachment he felt to the old Union. Ironically, as the war pushed Grant toward embracing black freedom, it pushed Lee further away.

  Lee became even more pessimistic when he learned that the Yankee Congress would authorize $900 million to finance the war and make as many as three million men subject to service. “Nothing can now arrest during the present administration the most desolating war that was ever practiced,” he forecast. Only revolution within the Union could stop Lincoln, and that demanded “systematic success” on their part.147 The enemy would strain every sinew to crush them by June, he believed, and they would have to exhaust every resource to resist.148 In February he reiterated that prediction. “Our salvation will depend on the next four months,” he wrote, yet their own Congress spent its time passing special acts to exempt men from service. In disgust he groused that “I shall feel very much obliged to them if they will pass a law relieving me from all duty and legislating some one in my place, better able to do it.”149