Crucible of Command

by William C. Davis

  Two days later Grant tried again. He ordered an all-out assault for ten o’clock on the morning of May 22, believing he could take the city and avoid a siege. Once again Porter would assist.102 And once again it failed. Sherman and McPherson were stopped with heavy casualties by enemy artillery and rifle fire, but McClernand reported some success and suggested the moment was ripe if the general assault were renewed. Violating his own rule against believing the politician, Grant gave way to his optimism and ordered Sherman and McPherson to attack. The enemy repulsed them at heavy cost, as well as McClernand, who had overstated the strength of his position. At the end of the day Grant had a long list of casualties and a secure supply line, but he did not have Vicksburg. “I intend to lose no more men,” he told Porter.103 Seeing the strength of the enemy defenses, he wrote that evening to Halleck that “it can only be taken by a siege.” Nevertheless, “it is entirely safe to us in time.” He thought it would take another week.104

  Grant had about 50,000 men for the job, and access to another 10,000 if he stripped west Tennessee, and within a few days ordered Hurlbut to abandon most garrisons north of Memphis to send men south.105 “Concentration is essential,” he avowed.106 He needed cavalry to cover his rear from Johnston, reported to have 45,000 men, which he thought exaggerated, but he resolved to “do the best I can with all the means at hand.”107 He put engineers to work running siege works ever closer to the enemy parapets, and suggested to Sherman that they experiment with tunneling from their trenches to plant explosives beneath Confederate salients.108 Meanwhile, he ordered artillery to shell the city occasionally to keep the Confederates anxious in case another assault should come. By June 3, with his works progressing well, Grant hopefully predicted that another five days ought to see his men in possession of the enemy parapets.109

  He was so confident of success that he kept a box of wine in front of his headquarters tent for his officers to celebrate the fall of Vicksburg. That upset Rawlins, especially since he had heard that a few days earlier Grant drank a glass of wine with Sherman. Then on the evening of June 5 at headquarters, at an hour when Grant would ordinarily be asleep, Rawlins found him in conversation with others near an empty wine bottle. He feared that Grant had consumed too much, and thought he detected “the lack of your usual promptness of decision and clearness in expressing yourself in writing.” At one that morning he wrote a long letter reminding Grant that in March 1863 he pledged not to drink for the rest of the war, and that “your only salvation depends upon your strict adherence.” The general accepted the letter without offense or response, and Rawlins later wrote that he never had to remind Grant again.110

  That is because he was not along on the evening of June 6 when Grant, James H. Wilson, and others rode to Haynes’ Bluff to board a steamer to go up the Yazoo reconnoitering. Grant almost certainly had too much to drink that evening, Wilson noting in his diary “Genl G. intoxicated.”111 The next morning he awoke amazingly refreshed. No one was better aware that he should not start to drink than Grant himself, which perhaps explains why one of the first things he did on returning to his headquarters was to write to his wife, saying, “I want to see you very much dear Julia,” urging her to come to Vicksburg as soon as she could.112

  By the middle of the month, with the siege in its third week, Grant still had no doubt of success. Every few minutes his guns shelled the town, driving inhabitants to the cover of caves, while his siege works had advanced so close to the enemy defenses that a Confederate scarcely dared raise his head above the parapet. “They must give out soon even if their provisions do not,” he told Julia, since every night deserters brought stories of soldiers on half rations and citizens starving. “Everything looks highly favorable now,” he said, but his enthusiasm was tempered.113 Had he been able to take Vicksburg with the May 22 assault, he believed he could have taken most of central Mississippi by this time. Now with the summer heat and dust, he feared it would be difficult to find water for a marching army. Taking Vicksburg would open the Mississippi except for Port Hudson, but he had wanted more.114 To the extent that he blamed McClernand, it was one more black mark against his would-be nemesis.

  No one tried Grant’s maturity as an executive more than McClernand, who had regarded Grant as an unsophisticated but useful tool and ally until he perceived in him a threat to his own ambition. For his part, Grant may have been suspicious of McClernand early on, but from at least the time of Fort Donelson he recognized that the politician had a personal agendum at variance with his own concept of their mission. Worse, the interference of Halleck, Stanton, and even Lincoln made McClernand a quasi power unto himself, or so it appeared, forcing Grant to find his way through shoals of conflicting authority as he tried to manage the man. McClernand’s egotism made him a constant challenge, and though Grant would be accused often of political naïveté, his reading of the political situation with McClernand was clear. The support of others helped him put up with it, especially Sherman, whose opinion of McClernand was dramatically more outspoken than Grant’s.

  Grant had been spoon-feeding McClernand for some time now. When the corps commander left Milliken’s Bend, he ignored his own sick, leaving them neither tents nor surgeons. On April 27 when the troops were supposed to be concentrated at New Carthage and ready to board their boats, McClernand caused delay by detailing one of the steamers to carry his new wife and her servants and baggage. Then he formed his corps in review for Governor Yates of Illinois to address, following that by firing an artillery salute in direct violation of Grant’s orders not to waste ammunition that would be needed on the other side of the river. Grant forbore to reprimand him, but then on May 6 Secretary of War Stanton implied that Grant could relieve McClernand should he wish, and initially Grant determined to do so the day after Raymond, telling Halleck that he blamed his losses in that fight on the politician. “McClernands dispatches misled me as to the real state of facts and caused much of this loss,” Grant declared. “He is entirely unfit for the position of Corps Commander both on the march and on the battle field.” Sensing his own power now, Grant added that “looking after his Corps gives me more labor, and infinitely more uneasiness than all the remainder of my Dept.”115

  Then he changed his mind. Thinking that another few days would see him in Vicksburg, he determined to wait and then “induce” McClernand to ask for a leave of absence. Until then, Grant would continue to supervise personally all movements of McClernand’s corps.116 He explained a few weeks later that “a disposition and earnest desire on my part to do the most I could with the means at my command . . . made me tolerate Gen. McClernand long after I thought the good of the service demanded his removal.”117 As an executive, Grant had a related concern. His other corps commanders were unanimous in their distrust and lack of respect for McClernand as a man and soldier. Yet should Grant be disabled or killed, the next senior officer was McClernand, who would succeed to command, at least briefly. The harm he could do did not bear contemplation.118 Of course, Vicksburg did not fall, so Grant bided his time.

  He did not wait long. On May 30 McClernand issued a congratulatory order to the XIII Corps for its achievements to date. It slighted the rest of the army and was implicitly dismissive of Grant, referred to him only once by name, and more often as “the commander of the department.” Scorning “indulgence in weak regrets and idle criminations” to explain the failure of the May 22 assault, McClernand implied that the fault was Grant’s for refusing assistance.119 A week later McClernand complained of a “systematic effort to destroy my usefulness and reputation” after hearing unspecified allegations of poor performance by him in the fight on May 22.120 Then on June 9 he complained that a report in the Northern press attributed a decisive role at Champion Hill to one of McPherson’s divisions rather than his own.121 The rumors may have been indiscreet leaks from Grant’s staff, or Sherman’s or McPherson’s, representing feeling in those quarters, but given Grant’s history of confronting subordinates head-on, it seems unlikely.

 
; Grant did not learn of the congratulatory address until Sherman sent a clipping from a Memphis newspaper on June 17, calling it “an effusion of vainglory and hypocrisy.” By official decree, no such documents were to be published without approval from Washington, with violation punishable by dismissal. Clearly, said Sherman, the real audience was not the XIII Corps but constituents in Illinois.122 As soon as Rawlins showed Grant the clipping he sent it to McClernand with a terse demand to know if it was accurate.123 The politician replied that it was correct and that he could support its claims.124 His timing was poor, for that same day he submitted his report of operations from March 30 through the May 22 assault. Once again McClernand and his corps apparently did everything from opening the route to New Carthage to the victory at Champion Hill, while most of Grant’s orders really were McClernand’s ideas.125 Grant found it “pretentious and egotistical,” and riddled with inaccuracies.126

  The combination of the two documents persuaded him to act, especially as Grant told a visitor that day that “most pernicious consequences” would result if McClernand should succeed him. On June 18 Grant issued a special order relieving him and ordering him to return to Illinois, explaining to Halleck that “I should have relieved him long since for general unfitness.”127 McClernand appealed to Stanton and Lincoln repeatedly over the following months, but they wearied of him, and he never again held a significant command east of the Mississippi. While Grant would encounter jealousy from other senior officers in the years ahead, the eclipse of McClernand ended any serious threat to his hold on this and future commands.

  Three days after the landing, he wrote to Julia that “management I think has saved us an imense loss of life and gained all the results of a hard fight.”128 Like Lee and other West Point graduates before him, Grant received no training in the art of management, largely because scarcely one officer in a hundred ever rose to a command level calling for a staff. Working for Governor Yates on an informal basis, Grant had two volunteer officers helping out, but no real system. On taking command of his regiment he found no staff in place, and quickly engaged an adjutant and an aide who was also an engineer. Almost immediately on getting his commission as brigadier he replaced them with regular appointments—Rawlins as adjutant, and Lagow and Hillyer as aides—all of them, he thought, “able men.”129 That was the extent of his authority for appointments, though he could appoint unpaid volunteer aides. Grant resorted to a bit of nepotism when he tried to get a brother-in-law appointed brigade surgeon on his staff. Instead, the army medical department assigned Surgeon James Simmons, who had served in the 4th Infantry years before, so Grant was not at all displeased.130

  He seems to have had some instinctive grasp of the benefit of a good staff, and of his own time management.131 Intermittently during the first two years of the war he worked himself from dawn until well after dark, but after just a month in command at Cairo he saw his staff taking some of the workload from his shoulders, meaning he was learning to delegate.132 After eight months Rawlins single-handedly took care of the majority of Grant’s official correspondence, freeing him for more pressing matters.133 Once he commanded a district Grant was entitled to general staff commensurate to his responsibilities, but those officers were not his to appoint. At the end of 1861 he had a quartermaster, a commissary of subsistence, a chief of ordnance, a chief engineer, a medical director and medical purveyor, and a paymaster. He might recommend someone he wanted to fill one of those posts, but the decision rested elsewhere, and he was often denied. However, with Colonel Joseph D. Webster already on his general staff as chief engineer, Grant was able to appoint him chief of staff.134

  Beyond their usefulness at routine headquarters tasks, Grant used his staff vigorously in action when necessary. His performance and theirs was mixed in their first real action at Fort Donelson. In the crisis of the Confederate assault of February 15, while Grant was away visiting Foote, he left orders for all units to remain in place but left no overriding discretionary orders under his authority with his staff. Hence when the attack hit, none of the staff attempted to move reinforcements to McClernand’s battered line. Webster performed admirably at Donelson, but otherwise the staff role was minimal.

  Soon afterward Grant and Rawlins recognized the need to organize duties more formally, and either on his own or at Grant’s instruction the adjutant issued a general order outlining responsibilities. Rawlins assigned himself the paperwork. Hillyer was to ensure that subordinates sent returns of strength to headquarters regularly, though Grant would use him as a jack-of-all-trades: mustering officer, inspector, prisoner escort, and more. Lagow was to handle passes into and out of the department, and monitor commissary and quartermaster stores, reflecting Grant’s special emphasis—like Lee’s—on high performance in his supply officers. Webster became Grant’s special advisor and virtual intelligence officer.135 At Shiloh Grant put him in charge of all of the artillery massed as a last line of defense. His chief engineer McPherson surveyed the ground around the camps and made maps, and spent two days constantly in the saddle during the fighting. Grant kept his aides in motion carrying orders, looking for Lew Wallace, guiding regiments into position, and more.136 Hillyer, Lagow, and Rawlins helped rally the fugitives early in the day on April 6; all sent messages on their own initiative to hurry Buell, while Hillyer actually got some of those reinforcements to the field by taking boats to Savannah for them, then wrote an order over Grant’s name instructing other waiting units to march toward the battlefield. He had the confidence to assume authority on behalf of his commander, a discretion Grant must have given him. In that same battle volunteer aide George Pride kept the ammunition flowing constantly through the first day from an ordnance steamer on the river to the front ranks. Where Grant’s staff had been largely idle at Fort Donelson, at Shiloh they were all over the field and exerting an influence on the battle’s outcome on their own initiative as well as under Grant’s supervision.137

  It is evident that Grant had some embryonic idea of a staff keeping his army functioning even in his absence. “In the selection of my Staff,” he told the adjutant general a few days before crossing the Mississippi, “it has been with a view to their competency and without reference to their present or previous party politics.”138 In the years ahead as his staff grew, he relied where possible on men whose capabilities were known to him. Grant and his staff evolved during the balance of 1862. While he devoted his time to operations planning, as well as administering his large department, he delegated principal field action to Rosecrans at Iuka and Corinth and did not immediately command on the field, but sent staff officers to urge him forward and to explain and reinforce his plans. Hindsight suggests he ought to have placed staff with Rosecrans throughout the campaign, but it is unlikely that Rosey would have accepted having surrogates telling him what to do. Meanwhile, Grant used staff in ways that expanded their authority, as when he made Webster commander of Memphis and then entrusted him with building defenses around the city, and in November put him in charge of all military railroads. At the same time he used Hillyer as provost marshal of Memphis, and kept Lagow on special assignments from escorting prisoners to investigating civilian traders.139

  Near the end of 1862 Grant had seven officers on his personal staff: Rawlins, now chief of staff, six aides, and ten general staff officers handling specific functions from railroads to mapmaking.140 He even used Hillyer and Lagow to verbally convey information between himself and Sherman, rather than risk letters or telegrams whose content might somehow reach McClernand.141 Grant regarded Rawlins, McPherson, Wilson, and aide Theodore Bowers as especially indispensable, along with volunteer aide George Pride.142 When they were away on detached duty he told Julia that “I have felt the necessity of staff officers, that is of a class that can do something.”143 In the Vicksburg operations he put Lagow in charge of the second fleet of transports that ran the batteries, left Bowers at Milliken’s Bend in charge of that end of the line of communications, and of course had Hillyer forwarding supplies f
rom Grand Gulf. During that march, Rawlins and Wilson even oversaw rebuilding burned bridges.

  Grant made little complaint of the officers assigned to him, except in the supply departments. At the end of 1862 he told Halleck that his quartermaster and commissary were “all I want.”144 Then on the verge of his heading south, Washington assigned him five new assistant quartermasters, not one of whom had ever done a day’s duty as a supply officer. He asked that they be replaced by four experienced men, and got what he wanted.145

  A deep loyalty developed between Grant and his staff. It was two years before one of them resigned, when Hillyer, suffering from rheumatism, needed to attend to business back in St. Louis. Even then he stayed on an extra month to help arrange for men and supplies to get below Vicksburg for the landing. “I am lothe to lose him,” Grant told the adjutant general in Washington.146 Clark Lagow also left during the campaign to Vicksburg due to illness, never to return.147 Grant watched the progress of others, and when he saw signs of greater promise he went out of his way to promote their careers even if it meant losing them from his staff. McPherson went from being his engineer officer to major general of volunteers and corps command under Grant’s tutelage, and in time Wilson followed a similar path. Grant repeatedly recommended Rawlins for promotion for his capabilities, and Rawlins became so devoted that he virtually appointed himself Grant’s conscience and protector, especially in the delicate matter of alcohol. When men like Hillyer and Lagow left, Grant’s replacements were not always of equal caliber, evidence that his judgment could be erratic and occasionally controlled by good, but unproductive motives. He made one underage boy an aide simply because he repeatedly ran away from home to be a soldier, and Grant thought he could at least protect him from harm by putting him on his staff. Another replacement during the Vicksburg campaign was Julia’s cousin Peter Hudson, Grant’s only truly nepotistic appointment.148