Camm was among a small handful of military diarists or letter writers of the period who expressed abolitionist sentiments as opposed to salvation of the Union as the prime reason for their service. It is not to say that Camm himself was an active abolitionist. But when a young lieutenant off one of the gunboats remarked to him, “Colonel, you put your mark on these fellows, and put it on them good,” Camm understood the irony and replied, “Yes, but we call ourselves Christians, and pretend to be civilized, yet we glory in such work as this.” He added silently, and to himself, “Somewhere in human policy, there is a great wrong. I hope that we have found it, and that I am helping to blot it out—Slavery!”
Now that the road to Nashville was open Grant wanted to take it, but Halleck inexplicably held him up. Nevertheless, Grant’s accomplishment was impressive. Not only had he taken the fort with all its artillery and stores, he had captured an entire Rebel army of more than 12,000 and inflicted some 2,000 casualties, while taking nearly 3,000 casualties of his own. Here was the first great victory for the Union, and Grant was the hero of the hour.
From the Confederates’ standpoint the loss of Fort Donelson was an unmitigated disaster. Why Sidney Johnston chose Floyd and Pillow to defend it rather than more experienced generals such as Hardee or even Buckner remains a puzzle. Maybe it had to do with seniority, but that doesn’t wash since a commanding general could certainly overrule it. Johnston might have gone forward with his whole army to face Grant, but then he would have left the path clear for Buell, who had been inching his way toward Bowling Green for weeks. In any case the failure was a severe blow. Kentucky was now lost, and from the Cumberland Gap to the Mississippi the whole Confederate line had collapsed. Nashville was now exposed, and Johnston ordered it evacuated by the military.
This caused a near panic as civilian mobs threatened to break into warehouses and military stores, but the timely arrival of Bedford Forrest and his cavalry troopers put an end to that, and order was quickly restored. Forrest organized the removal of hundreds of wagons containing food, ammunition, and uniforms, sending them south toward Atlanta and other Southern cities. He had his men dismantle arms factories and sent their precious machinery away on railcars. Forrest was a man with no military schooling—in fact little schooling of any sort—who had worked himself up from private to general by dint of courage, ingenuity, and raw military horse sense. There is much to be said for the suggestion that if he had held higher command sooner the war in the West may have had another outcome.
As the Yankees moved into town the Nashvillians shuttered themselves inside their homes and hoped for the best. Union commanders, however, had issued stern orders against looting or vandalism, and soon citizens began to reappear on the streets. Among the Union force was Capt. G. P. Thruston, adjutant of the First Ohio, who, while attending Miami University of Ohio, had become close friends with Joel Allen Battle, Jr., of Nashville, now Captain Battle of the 20th Tennessee, Confederate States Army. There had been a little clique of roommates and messmates at the college and Battle was among the most popular. “A handsome young Southern student, and refined,” was the way Thruston described him, “with an intellectual face, graceful and cordial in manner. He seemed an ideal type of young American manhood and was greatly beloved by all his associates.”
Most of his associates, however, were now officers in the Federal army, in particular Buell’s army, which was soon to be on its way to Pittsburg Landing to join forces with Ulysses Grant. One day a local physician came into Thruston’s camp south of the city seeking a pass through Union lines. When Thruston asked him, casually, if he knew Allen Battle, the doctor’s face lit up and he replied that not only did he know him, they were closely related. Moreover the doctor, whose name was W. C. Blackman, insisted that Thruston come to his home for dinner and meet Battle’s wife and sisters. This created a somewhat awkward situation for all concerned, since a southerner inviting a Yankee soldier into his home was at the least apt to raise suspicion, and likewise a Union officer venturing beyond his lines into what amounted to an enemy camp was taking his life in his hands.
Nevertheless, Thruston consented on grounds that Blackman was “a gentleman of high character and I felt safe in his promised protection,” and Blackman presumably had enough standing in the community to ward off any misgivings. At the dinner party the Blackman family, and including Battle’s wife and sisters, showered Thruston “with every kind, cordial, consideration,” he said, and as he left he jokingly promised that “when we got down there and captured Captain Battle I would see that he received the kindest treatment,” to which one of Battle’s sisters assured him with a smile that her brother “would have no occasion to accept his kindness,” adding that “it will probably be more than you can do to hang on to your own scalp.”
On that happy note Thruston departed next day for Shiloh with the odd feeling that soon enough he might be in the business of killing his close friend—or vice versa.
Meantime, Sidney Johnston now had to draw himself a new anti-Yankee barrier—across the bottommost parts of Tennessee instead of the top—beginning at Chattanooga and stretching 300 miles to Memphis on the Mississippi. And he had to defend it with one-quarter fewer troops, thanks to the fiasco at Fort Donelson.
This new Confederate line also ran through an unkempt backwater in the far southwest corner of Tennessee, a place of no intrinsic military value. In fact, it had almost negative military value, with its dark, serrated flora and mazy terrain. There was a small wooden church there called Shiloh chapel, which meant nothing to anyone but the locals, that had taken its name from a Hebrew expression meaning “Place of Peace.”
1 Chevaux-de-frise are sharpened wooden spikes designed to impale attacking troops.
2 At that point Grant usually smoked a pipe; cigars were expensive.
CHAPTER 6
THIS CRUEL WAR
ULYSSES GRANT HAD PRODUCED THE FIRST GREAT victory of the war, cleared two major arteries into the heart of the rebellion, and captured an entire Rebel army; in the process he managed to get most of his superiors angry at him. Halleck in particular was spiteful enough to go behind Grant’s back to McClellan, accusing Grant of “neglect and inefficiency.”
In a telegram on March 3, Halleck groused: “I have had no communication with General Grant for a week. He left his command without my authority and went to Nashville. His army seems as much demoralized by the victory at Fort Donelson as was that of the [Army] of the Potomac by the defeat at Bull Run. It is hard to censure a successful general immediately after a victory, but I think he richly deserves it. Satisfied with his victory, he sits down and enjoys it without any regard to the future. I am worn out and tired with this neglect and inefficiency. C. F. Smith is almost the only officer equal to the emergency.”
As if this were not damaging enough, Halleck followed up a few days later with a postscript: “Word has just reached me that since the taking of Fort Donelson General Grant has resumed his former bad habits [the drinking].”
This unseemly outburst was prompted by Grant’s failure to reply, on several occasions, to requests by Halleck for troop strengths and movements, and also a snide report from Buell that Grant had made an unauthorized trip to Nashville. In his memoirs Grant attributes the failure to communicate to a telegraph operator “who proved afterwards to be a Rebel; he deserted his post a short time later and went south taking [the] dispatches with him.”
But McClellan—perhaps recalling the scene from Fort Vancouver, Oregon—deduced that Grant was probably up to his old tricks, and sent Halleck this reply: “Your dispatch of last evening received. The future success of our cause demands that proceedings such as Grant’s should at once be checked. Generals must observe discipline as well as private soldiers. Do not hesitate to arrest him at once if the good of the service requires it, and place C. F. Smith in command. You are at liberty to regard this as a positive order if it will smooth your way.”
Now both Halleck and McClellan were irate at Grant, but
there is every indication that behind and beyond these charges was the green goddess jealousy. While “Unconditional Surrender” Grant was being celebrated on a national scale for marching on Fort Donelson, Halleck, the general in charge of the Department of the West, had been marching a desk in St. Louis, receiving no credit for the victory. Apparently Halleck was beginning to see a rival in Grant. Furthermore, Halleck had ordered Grant not to take Nashville after Grant had telegraphed that he could have it in Union hands—“in 8 days”—and Grant had found a way to disobey him in that matter also.
As it happened, a week after Donelson had capitulated a convoy containing the infantry division of William “Bull” Nelson came steaming up the Cumberland River and arrived at Clarksville, south of Fort Donelson, where Grant had gone the day before. Nelson, a portly and obstreperous giant with a full beard and side whiskers, had been given an army division after he set up a Union recruiting station in his native Kentucky. The division had been loaned to Grant as reinforcements from Buell on a temporary basis when it was thought a long siege would be necessary to capture Fort Donelson. Now Grant, being the good soldier that he was, and realizing that the occupation of Nashville would be an important prize in winning the war, had a bright idea. If he himself was not permitted by Halleck to take Nashville, somebody needed to, so Grant declared to his chief of staff, according to Dr. Brinton, who was present in Grant’s office on the steamboat Tigress: “I have it, Rawlins! That must be Nelson and his command. I will order him to report to Buell in Nashville.”
The fact that Buell was as yet many miles from Nashville, and “was headed thither at a snail’s pace,” did not faze Grant in the least. He saw a chance to capture and occupy a major enemy city and did not hesitate. Nelson and his people steamed up that night and occupied Nashville without a shot being fired. For his trouble Grant now had Buell—who complained to McClellan, “My troops are being filched from me”—furious with him too.
Under cover of McClellan’s instructions, Halleck issued an order that relieved Grant of command and replaced him with C. F. Smith. “Remain yourself at Fort Henry,” Halleck instructed Grant. “Why do you not obey my orders to report troop strength and positions of your command?”
Grant was flabbergasted, and maintained that this was the first he had heard of Halleck’s requests. His demotion could not have come at a worse time. Something important was brewing—a big expedition up the Tennessee River, and not just gunboats this time but a major infantry action. Ostensibly it was to be in the nature of a raid to break up the Memphis and Charleston Railroad to deny the Confederacy its ability to send reinforcements against McClellan’s operations in Virginia. And, if successful, it would indeed have dealt the Rebels a severe blow. A worried LeRoy P. Walker, until recently the Confederate secretary of war, telegraphed to Richmond, “The Memphis and Charleston road is the vertebrae of the Confederacy, and there are no troops for its defense.”
Grant’s reaction to his demotion at first was disbelief, then indignation, and at one point it actually brought him to tears. “I was virtually under arrest,” he said later, “and I had lost my command.” He responded to Halleck in the tone of a hurt friend. “I am not aware,” Grant wrote, “of ever having disobeyed any orders from headquarters—certainly never intended such a thing.” In the throes of humiliation, he asked to be relieved from further duties in the department, but Halleck was silent on the request. Clearly, though, there was more to this than Grant simply not responding to Halleck’s telegrams. Halleck could easily have sent his chief of staff down to Grant on a steamboat to find out what was going on.
While Grant remained in limbo at Fort Henry, with only his staff to keep him company, C. F. Smith organized and, with 60 steamboats, got the expedition under way into the darkest heart of Rebel territory. Grant had walked with his old commandant up and down the levee the night before the army departed, according to surgeon Brinton, who remained with Grant during this period. Unfortunately their conversation is lost to history. Brinton nevertheless put in his impressions: “The treatment received by General Grant at this time cut him bitterly. I formed the opinion at the time that General Buell’s complaints had not a little to do in leading to the misunderstandings.” Brinton characterized the action of Halleck and McClellan as “infamous,” and concluded that “[Grant’s] fault was in being too strong and active.”
Now it was Halleck who found himself in an unenviable position, for word of Grant’s travails had leaked out, as always it must in Washington, and among the recipients of the news was the President of the United States. Still in agony over the death of his son Willie, who at last had expired two weeks earlier, Lincoln at least was thankful to find a winning general—Grant—only to discover that he had asked to be relieved from duty. The lawyer in Lincoln quickly determined that almost all of the accusations against Grant were based on rumor and hearsay, and he told Halleck, in so many words, to “put up or shut up” (i.e., either court-martial him or return him to duty). Thus, on March 13, Grant received a letter from Halleck, saying, “You cannot be relieved from your command. There is no good reason for it. Instead of relieving you, I wish you as soon as your new army is in the field to assume the command and lead it on to new victories.”
Grant was immensely grateful and reassured. The thing had blown over. He had not seen Halleck’s treacherous correspondence, and would not until the war was over, and somehow believed it was all a simple misunderstanding. In fact, such was his naïveté that amid all this backstabbing he wrote to Julia, “There are not two men in the United States who I would prefer serving under than Halleck and McClellan.” If Grant had one notable fault it was that he too often failed to discern the true character of his fellow men. This bedeviled his entire career, especially after he became President of the United States.
With Grant now out of the doghouse, another quirk of fate threw him together with the man who would become his closest confidant, almost his alter ego: William Tecumseh Sherman. Sherman had arrived at Cairo beneath an even darker cloud than Grant had just escaped from under, for it had been widely reported that Sherman was “crazy.” Having rehabilitated himself from these accusations, Sherman was given command of a reinforced division of 9,000 raw recruits with which to spearhead operations against the Memphis and Charleston Railroad somewhere along the Tennessee-Mississippi border.
In time, the size and mission of the Tennessee River expedition was greatly expanded. Orders now were that when the railroad was destroyed, C. F. Smith was to select a base of operations deep in Rebel territory, where he would be joined by five more divisions totaling nearly 50,000 men. As well, Buell was to march 20,000 men of his army overland from Nashville and meet up with Grant at some point close to the river. Once established, this combined army was to “operate against the enemy” as the situation dictated. It was generally assumed that a large and decisive battle would be brought on, since the Confederates could not allow such a force to roam about their country unmolested. Grant was now headed south to take command. It would become Sherman’s finest hour.
Sherman was born in Lancaster, Ohio, on February 8, 1820, into the comfortable family of a prominent lawyer and state supreme court justice. When he was nine, however, Sherman’s father died, leaving behind his wife with nine children and an ocean of debt. From then on the family relied on relatives and friends for their survival, and young William was sent to live with the neighboring Ewing family. He developed into a tall, awkward redhead with a promising intellect and an edgy, anxious temperament. His foster father, Thomas Ewing, had become a United States senator and secured for him a place at West Point, which he entered in 1836 at the age of 16, proving to be a better than average student and graduating near the top of his class in 1840. In Sherman’s final year, a plebe arrived at the Academy with the name of U. S. Grant, and Sherman often claimed that he was the one to nickname him “Sam,” as in “Uncle Sam” Grant.
Sherman’s military career took him to posts throughout the South where the wealth
and prominence of Thomas Ewing opened doors for the young lieutenant. He mixed and mingled well with the upper crust of Southern society, for whom he acquired a lasting affection. In 1846 the army sent Sherman to California when war broke out with Mexico, and he got caught up in the Bear Flag Rebellion and the famous set-to between his boss Gen. Stephen Kearny and (then a colonel) John C. Frémont. With California occupied by the Americans, Sherman spent the duration consigned to supply duty and was present for the Gold Rush of ’49 brought on by the discovery of nuggets at Sutter’s Mill.
In 1850 Sherman returned to the East Coast and became engaged to his foster sister, Eleanor “Ellen” Ewing, a practice that was not uncustomary in the 19th century. By then Ewing had been named secretary of the interior, and Sherman’s wedding was attended by nearly all the top political celebrities, including the President of the United States.
Unfortunately, the California gold rush had created such an overwhelming monetary inflation that it left Sherman, who had become a captain, almost destitute, and he resigned from the army and wound up running a bank in San Francisco. But the gold bubble soon burst and the bank failed, and eventually Sherman found himself in Cincinnati employed as, of all things, a bill collector.
At last his luck began to turn when he got wind through family channels from the new secretary of the army, John Floyd, that the state of Louisiana intended to establish a new military academy in Baton Rouge and was looking for a superintendent. Sherman applied for the job and was soon en route down the Mississippi to oversee the building construction and the education and military training of 56 cadets at the Louisiana Seminary of Learning and Military Academy, which would one day become Louisiana State University.