THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF GRANT
The "pepper box" policy of employing small bodies of troops everywhere
for the accomplishment of ends of no strategic consequence prevailed
at Washington during all those early months of the war. The results of
that policy are the despair of the historian who would intelligently
trace the progress of the conflict from its beginning to its end. In
very truth there was no progress. So far as the outcome of the war
was concerned those events had no part to play; so far as the history
of the war is concerned, any attempt to relate their insignificant
stories would serve only to confuse the reader's mind, and to distract
his attention from events and operations that bore directly upon the
ultimate outcome of a struggle which involved the fate of the nation.
Let us leave them aside as inconsiderable incidents and trace instead
those significant happenings that served to determine the ultimate
results.
The outcome of all great wars is determined in the end by the
personality of the men who conduct them to a conclusion. Circumstances
and even accidents have their part to play, but in the main it is
personality that determines the event.
So at this point it becomes necessary to consider General Grant as a
factor in the war, "a stone rejected of the builders," but destined to
become the chief cornerstone, nevertheless, of Federal success.
General Grant was a West Point graduate ranking low in his class
at graduation. He served for a time in the regular army with such
capacity as to reach the rank of captain. Then he resigned, as many
other officers did--Stonewall Jackson and William T. Sherman among the
number--because the police duty which seemed to constitute the only
function of the regular army offered no career to him. Captain Grant
became first a farmer and later a clerk in his brother's business
house at Galena, Illinois, upon a meager salary of $800 a year, which
was eked out by the earnings of his slaves in Missouri. When the
war broke out he offered his services to his country, asking for a
restoration to the regular army. His application was not deemed worthy
even of a reply. But presently a regiment of Illinois volunteers, more
appreciative than the Washington authorities, made him its colonel,
and after a little while he was promoted to be a brigadier-general of
volunteers, but still without even so much as a second lieutenant's
commission in the regular army.
In this volunteer capacity he was sent first to Missouri and later to
Cairo in Illinois to command a wide district. He fought the battle of
Belmont and after a partial victory he lost it. A few months earlier,
learning that the Confederates, who were masters of Columbus, twenty
miles down the Mississippi, were planning to seize upon Paducah, fifty
miles up the Ohio, Grant had undertaken without orders an expedition
against that town. He promptly captured it and thus defeated the
Confederate program.
After the battle of Belmont he planned and proposed a campaign which he
hoped might reverse the existing situation at the West and give to the
Union arms their first important and strategically significant victory.
Two great and practically navigable rivers, the Cumberland and the
Tennessee, rise in the very heart of what was then the Southern
Confederacy. Upon substantially parallel though vastly varying lines,
they flow westward and northward till they debouch into the Ohio River
within a few miles of each other.
At a point near the boundary between Kentucky and Tennessee where these
two rivers flow within eleven miles of each other, the Confederates had
erected two fortresses to command them--Fort Henry and Fort Donelson.
These fortresses gave to the South control of the two rivers. It was
Grant's idea that by the reduction of these works he might reverse this
condition of affairs, and make of the two rivers facile avenues of
Federal access to the heart of the Confederacy, where now they served
the Confederates as roadways of approach to positions of the utmost
strategic importance to the side that should master and hold them.
But Grant was only a brigadier-general of volunteers, in no way
entitled to plan campaigns or to make suggestions for campaigns.
Halleck had command of the department, with headquarters at St. Louis.
Halleck was a major-general in the regular army and Grant's "superior
officer." Halleck disliked, distrusted and detested Grant, and so
when Grant asked permission to move against and reduce the Confederate
strongholds on the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, Halleck's reply
was in effect an injunction to the inferior officer to mind his own
business.
Grant was so sure, however, of his ability to accomplish this vitally
important task that he persisted in his entreaties and many weeks were
consumed in fruitless negotiations for the privilege of doing great
work in a great way. At last through the influence of Commodore Foote,
commanding the naval forces in that quarter, the discredited volunteer
general was graciously permitted by his martinet superior to undertake
and execute the first operation of the war which crowned the Federal
arms with a victory of strategic importance. This permission, though
long solicited, did not come to Grant until the very end of January,
1862, and it was in February that the combined land and naval forces
moved for the capture of the Confederate strongholds.
The expedition moved first up the Tennessee river. Grant had about
15,000 men, a force which was presently swelled by reinforcement to
27,000. But his advance was delayed and the fleet, with scarcely any
assistance from him, captured Fort Henry on the sixth of February.
Then the gunboats steamed down the river to its mouth and thence up
the Cumberland to assail Fort Donelson. In the meanwhile Grant pushed
across the narrow neck of land between the two fortresses and closely
invested that fort. The fleet made a determined assault but was beaten
off in a badly crippled condition. Grant continued to assail the
enemy's works throughout three days of storm and sleet and suffering,
and at the end of that time the fortress surrendered with about
fourteen thousand men in addition to a Confederate loss in killed and
wounded of about two thousand. The greater part of the garrison had
previously escaped.
This was the first conspicuous victory achieved anywhere by the Federal
arms. Its moral effect was incalculable and strategically it was of
the utmost importance. It made an end for the time being of the war in
Kentucky which had been going on for some time, involving actions of
some individual importance, though they had no vital bearing upon the
strategic history of the war. It made Federal instead of Confederate
highways of the two great rivers that in their course penetrated almost
to the heart of the Confederacy. It made easy prey of Nashville as a
vantage point from which the Federal forces might penetrate the South
and assail its strongholds of resistance. Still further, as the event
showed, it opened the way for that campaign which, as many critics
think, resulted at Shiloh, or Pittsburg Landing, in the strategically
decisive action of the war.
However that may be, by the accomplishment of his object in this
campaign General Grant had achieved one of the most conspicuous and
to the country one of the most enheartening victories that were
accomplished by any general on either side from the beginning to the
end of the war. He had every right to expect commendation. He had every
right to expect permission to go on from conquest to conquering, and
to have such forces placed at his command as might be necessary for the
carrying out of his enterprises. But Grant was still only an officer of
volunteers badly at outs with his department commander, and those were
the days of red tape, the days in which achievement counted for nothing
as against "rank" and "seniority."
It is true that Halleck, who had never risen above the grade of captain
in the regular army, was at best only Grant's equal in "old army
rank." But he had the favor of General Scott as Grant had not, and so,
ex-captain that he was, he had been made a major-general in the regular
service while Grant remained a mere brigadier-general of volunteers.
It is true that Grant had captured two fortresses of enormous strength
while Halleck had captured nothing whatsoever anywhere on earth. It is
true that Grant had received the surrender of a powerful and important
fort with fourteen thousand prisoners in addition to a loss on the part
of his enemy of two thousand in killed and wounded, while Halleck had
never received the surrender of anybody and never did to the end of the
story. But Halleck was a major-general in the regular army in spite of
his resignation during his captaincy--Grant also having been a captain
when he resigned--and so Halleck as department commander was authorized
not only to restrain Grant from this expedition, as he had done during
two months of precious opportunity, but afterwards to suspend him for
many weeks from command, to place him under virtual arrest and for
weary weeks to restrain him from carrying out those obviously easy
supplementary enterprises with which he desired to glory-crown his
achievement. Grant wanted to march on Nashville, which lay helpless
before him and offered to the Federals a strategic position of
incalculable value. Halleck ordered him to go to his tent and hammock
instead.
What a wretched story it all is, to be sure! What a record of
imbecility in control of genius, of incapacity in command of the
highest ability, of small men in great places, and of great men
restrained from action by the superior authority of other men
immeasurably their inferiors, who by luck, or circumstance or official
favor came into authority and position which they in no wise deserved,
and which they were utterly incapable of using effectively in behalf of
the cause they were set to serve! And what a price the country--North
and South--was called upon to pay in blood and treasure and heartbreak,
for all this misplacing of men!
But conditions and circumstances must be recognized, and due allowance
must be made for them. The officers in the regular United States army
were strictly professionals. Their first business in life was to secure
all they could of rank and pay for themselves. Whether they remained
in the regular army or resigned to accept Confederate service, their
first concern was to secure all they could of personal preferment,
rank, distinction, and recognition. Why should Beauregard or Johnston
surrender aught of their advantages of regularity in behalf of the
genius of Stonewall Jackson, who had long ago resigned to become a
professor in a military institute? Why should McDowell, who had
remained in the regular army, give place to Sherman, who had resigned
to become a professor in a school? Why should Halleck, who by General
Scott's favor had been raised from the rank of resigned captain to that
of major-general, give place or favor to the ex-Captain Grant, now
by mere popular selection a brigadier-general of volunteers, holding
no place whatsoever in the regular army? Why should General Halleck
permit this interloper Grant to go on winning victories? And why
when the volunteer general had won them--as for example at Pittsburg
Landing--should not Halleck come as he did and take command and thus
assume to himself the credit due to another?
These were the ways of the early war. Moreover the administration on
either side had no means of measuring men's capacities except by army
rank or the favor of commanders. It was not until later that better
counsels prevailed, that demonstrated capacity was recognized, and that
the military martinet learned that something more than seniority was
required as a claim to command.
Stonewall Jackson, it is true, had been made a major-general in the
Confederate service in reward for his conduct at Manassas, but there
were lieutenant-generals and full generals still outranking him and his
was an exceptional case. Grant did not share in the benefits of the
example. He had won a great victory which gave fresh heart and courage
to the country, but in his reports he had been careless of technical
details and had given no special credit for his achievements to the
department commander who had done all he could to prevent him from
achieving anything at all. He had made himself "_persona non grata_" at
department headquarters, though the people everywhere were acclaiming
him as a victor to the sore annoyance of "headquarters." Why should
"headquarters" let the interloper complete his work by seizing upon
the vitally important positions which his victory had made easy of
conquest? Who was Grant, anyhow? Ex-captain, ex-Galena clerk, and only
a brigadier-general of volunteers! What right had he to the credit of
any victories he had been graciously permitted to win?