Never Call Retreat, page 4
Jeb Stuart, as a professional soldier, took a more detached view, and in a letter to Custis Lee he exulted: "The victory won by us here is one of the neatest and cheapest of the war. Englishmen here who surveyed Solferino & all the battlefields of Italy say that the pile of dead on the plains of Fredericksburg exceeds anything of the sort ever seen by them." What had happened to the buildings of the town, however, moved Stuart profoundly, and he added: "Fredericksburg is in ruins. It is the saddest sight I ever saw."15
3. The Politics of War
DURING MANY unrewarding months of war, public men in Washington had become convinced that the country's woes came from bad leadership. This belief was pessimistic but comforting, because there was always somebody to blame for misfortune, and so whenever bad news arrived eloquent letters were written. Thus Congressman William H. Wadsworth of Kentucky, a border state conservative, took heart after Fredericksburg in the reflection that "a nation which Lincoln and his controllers could not destroy in two years is immortal," and he wrote that the President was reported to have said that if a worse place than Hell existed he was in it. The ultra-radical Senator Zachariah Chandler asserted that folly reigned supreme, and complained of "fool or traitor generals." Senator Chandler doubted that Mr. Lincoln was strong enough for the situation, sharing this doubt with Republican Editor Joseph Medill, who said that "Lincoln is only half awake and will never do much better than he has done."1
General Burnside, to be sure, manfully tried to take all the blame. He wrote bluntly, "for the failure in the attack I am responsible," he assured General Halleck that the administration had given him proper support, and he told a friendly newspaperman that an army commander who met with disaster had to assume the responsibility.2 Yet the storm that grew out of this battle centered first of all about the White House—the discontent of the Army of the Potomac officer corps could be aired somewhat later—and it reflected the fact that the very men who most passionately shared Mr. Lincoln's desire for a speedy and unconditional victory were the ones who would most quickly and bitterly criticize him for failing to win it.
Some of these were men of action like Senator Chandler, coarse-gained, tough; others were men of thought, reflective liberal-intellectuals like the historian, George Bancroft, former Secretary of the Navy; and they objected deeply to the fact that although Mr. Lincoln seemed to know where he wanted to go he obviously lacked their own certainty about the best way to get there. Weeks before the battle was fought, Bancroft summed up the complaint in a letter to his fellow liberal, Francis Lieber: "How can we reach our President with advice? He is ignorant, self-willed, and is surrounded by men some of whom are almost as ignorant as himself. So we have the dilemma put to us, What to do, when his power must continue two years longer and when the existence of our country may be endangered before he can be replaced by a man of sense. How hard, in order to save the country, to sustain a man who is incompetent."3 Perhaps the saddest thing about being a good liberal is that at times one is compelled to meditate in that vein.
It was hard to be sure about President Lincoln. Some men thought him a Cromwell, bent on destruction and subjugation; to others he looked like a trimmer, seeking no more than political advantage. He refused to modify the Emancipation Proclamation, which he was to issue in final form on the first day of 1863, but he urged Congress to amend the Constitution so as to provide Federal compensation for any slave state that would abolish slavery before 1900. This seemed to involve a long delay, and the Ohio Congressman Albert Gallatin Riddle spoke for most abolitionists when he declared hotly that the war and slavery ought to end together on some date ever so much nearer than 1900. Mr. Lincoln continued to support his old plan for colonization of freed slaves in some land far away; yet he also asserted that the common objection to permitting freedmen to remain in the United States "is largely imaginary if not sometimes malicious."4 He told one acquaintance that it was pointless to try to make formal definitions of political programs because events were moving too fast; political issues were swept away as soon as they were formed, and "no party will have time to mature until after the war." He told this man, as he told all others, that he was determined to crush rebellion, but he added an oddly phrased qualification—he hoped "to carry a truce in the belly of this war," to be delivered if the South offered to return to the fold. Rebellion that voluntarily ceased to be rebellion need not be crushed; neither it, nor the men who had made it.
A clearer statement of purpose came in a letter he wrote a few weeks after Fredericksburg to the aggressive Douglas Democrat from Illinois, John A. McClernand. As a war Democrat whose support was so valuable in the early days of the war, McClernand had been made major general, and now he was trying to subdue rebellion in the Mississippi Valley. To his intense disgust he was subordinate to U. S. Grant, but he still had a direct line of communication to the White House, and when he reported that prominent Confederates, friends of his in the old days, wanted to know the terms on which they could have peace Mr. Lincoln hastened to give him a frank reply.
Reunion, said the President, was the most and the least he had ever asked. He had tried for nearly a year and a half to get it without touching slavery, and when he found this impossible he had drafted the Emancipation Proclamation, giving fair warning in advance. The proclamation would stand, yet secessionist slave states could still escape serious injury: "Let them adopt systems of apprenticeship for the colored people, conforming substantially to the most approved plans of gradual emancipation; and, with the aid they can have from the general government, they may be nearly as well off, in this respect, as if the present trouble had not occurred, and much better off than they can possibly be if the contest continues persistently." Time was running out, and "if the friends you mention really wish to have peace upon the old terms they should act at once. Every day makes the case more difficult."6
Inasmuch as "the old terms" promised peace upon reunion, with no harm to the peculiar institution, this was strange talk to come from the author of the Emancipation Proclamation; but what Mr. Lincoln was really saying was that the war even now was not entirely and irrevocably a military operation. Men were shooting at each other instead of arguing and debating, but it was still possible for them to recognize the fact of their continuing common interest. Once they admitted that this interest endured in spite of all they had been doing to each other, they could have recourse to the saving devices of politics. They could eventually make a deal, the winner accepting less than the maximum so that the loser could save more than the minimum. Despite all the fury and the bloodshed, this was still a political contest. That was why McClernand had been made a major general in the first place; it was also why he was now in the Mississippi Valley, engaged in a venture which outraged strategy but which made excellent sense politically.
Late in the summer of 1862, when Mr. Lincoln was preparing to proclaim emancipation even though he knew that this would cost him the support of many thousands of war Democrats (beginning with General McClellan and working down to the irreplaceable rank and file) McClernand took leave from his post as division commander in Grant's army and went to Washington to lay a proposition before the President.
Reduced to its elements, the proposition was simple. McClernand would rekindle the flame of patriotism among middle western Democrats and would personally persuade them to send a host of new recruits into the army, despite their hatred of abolitionists and black Republicans. In return, McClernand wanted an independent command, with authority to capture Vicksburg and reopen the Mississippi Valley, despite the fact that both General Halleck and General Grant understood this to be Grant's assignment. To divide the command of the all-important Mississippi campaign might well be dangerous folly—off beyond the picket lines, Confederate Joe Johnston, vexed by the ruinous independence of General Holmes, could have testified on that point—but General McClernand and President Lincoln, veterans of western politics, were considering not so much the object of the campaign as the base on which it had to rest. The drive to open the Mississippi would never succeed unless the whole weight of a united northwest were massed behind it. Here McClernand had something to offer, and Mr. Lincoln made up his mind to use him.
So McClernand went west in October, armed with confidential orders instructing him to raise and organize troops in Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa. He was to forward these to such place as General Halleck might designate, and "when a sufficient force, not required by the operations of General Grant," had been assembled, McClernand could organize and command an expedition against Vicksburg. Vicksburg taken, he was empowered to go on down to New Orleans; reaching which place, at the head of a victorious army, he would unquestionably be the hero of the war with immense political rewards awaiting him.7
It was a bright opportunity, and McClernand went to work vigorously and effectively. By the beginning of December he had sent thousands of soldiers to the chosen staging point of Memphis, and as he tied up the loose ends in his headquarters at Springfield, Illinois, he waited for formal orders to go down to Memphis and assume command. Waiting with rising impatience, he began to see that the arrangement he had made was not quite as solid as it looked.
The administration had given him a fair promise but it contained a big loophole, perfectly visible to a lawyer as competent as McClernand once the first burst of enthusiasm had passed. McClernand remained under the control of General Halleck, who was also a competent lawyer, and his striking force was to consist of troops who—in Halleck's opinion—were not needed by General Grant. Grant had begun his campaign against Vicksburg and obviously needed all the men he could get, and although Grant had never been one of Halleck's favorites the general-in-chief had no use at all for McClernand. whom he considered vainglorious, contentious, and unskilled; nor did he like McClernand's program. Grant was already making Joe Johnston's argument for unity of command in the Mississippi Valley, and Halleck would presently give him control of Federal troops from beyond the river. There was no chance whatever that Halleck would now approve an independent command for
McClemand, and although he could not countermand McClernand's orders he could lay down the conditions under which they must be carried out. Halleck in short had all of the resources by which an ingenious administrator can modify a distasteful directive, and he knew exactly how to use them.
Grant moved south from Grand Junction, Tennessee—just north of the Mississippi-Tennessee line, fifty miles east of Memphis—early in November, following the line of the Mississippi Central Railroad, planning to come in on Vicksburg from the east. He had left Sherman in Memphis to bring down promised reinforcements, and a few days after his advance began he notified Halleck that reinforcements were not arriving. Halleck telegraphed that plenty of troops were on the way, then added mysteriously: MEMPHIS WILL BE MADE THE DEPOT OF A JOINT MILITARY AND NAVAL EXPEDITION ON VICKSBURG. Grant had been hearing rumors about McClernand, and this seemed to give them substance. He sent Halleck an urgent inquiry: AM I TO UNDERSTAND THAT I LIE STILL HERE WHILE AN EXPEDITION IS FITTED OUT FROM MEMPHIS, OR DO YOU WANT ME TO PUSH AS FAR SOUTH AS POSSIBLE? AM I TO HAVE SHERMAN SUBJECT TO MY ORDERS, OR ARE HE AND HIS FORCES RESERVED FOR SOME SPECIAL SERVICE?
Halleck's reply was bland: YOU HAVE COMMAND OF ALL
TROOPS SENT TO YOUR DEPARTMENT AND HAVE PERMISSION TO FIGHT THE ENEMY WHERE YOU PLEASE.
Memphis unquestionably was in Grant's department, and if Grant could not keep this joint military and naval expedition from being launched he might at least assert control over the military part of it. He immediately revised Sherman's orders. While Grant continued to advance along the railroad line, Sherman was to collect the troops at Memphis, take them down the river with transports and gunboats as soon as the Navy was ready, and head for the mouth of the Yazoo River, a few miles above Vicksburg. Moving a short distance up that stream he was to put his men ashore and attack the Vicksburg defenses from the north while Grant was coming in from the east. Pemberton could not possibly get together enough men to meet both threats, and one or the other was almost certain to succeed. And if it happened that Sherman and all the troops left Memphis. before ardent McClernand got there . . . well, Halleck's hint was broad enough.8
As the first two weeks in December passed McClernand suspected that something like this was being attempted, and he sent angry protests to Washington. Secretary Stanton's reply was as bland as the message Halleck had sent to Grant: McClernand was by no means being superseded, he was about to be announced in War Department orders as commander of a corps in Grant's army, the plan for the amphibious assault on Vicksburg stood, and as soon as McClernand reached Memphis he could take charge of the expedition because he outranked everybody in Grant's department except Grant himself.
This reassurance was in fact somewhat deflationary, because to command a corps under Grant was not quite the same as to be at the head of an independent army. Still, McClernand could make the best of it; he was to remain leader of the expedition against Vicksburg, and all he needed now was a signed order from Grant telling him to go to Memphis and start his campaign.
But this order was strangely late in reaching him. Nobody except McClernand (who had no control over it) seemed to be in a rousing hurry about it; and anyway there was unanticipated interference by armies of the Southern Confederacy. McClernand's advance toward greatness began with a humiliating anticlimax.
Shortly before this, fortified by renewed assurances from Washington that he could control all activities in his department, and still officially ignorant of any special orders affecting McClernand, Grant notified Halleck that Sherman would command the amphibious expedition and he ordered Sherman to get under way as soon as men, transports, and naval support were properly organized. Halleck sent a quiet warning: Sherman would be his own choice, but the President might insist on naming a commander for this expedition. Then, on December 18, Grant at last got a positive directive from the general-in-chief: the troops in his department were being organized into four army corps, their commanders designated at Washington. The troops at Memphis, plus a division that was being made available from beyond the Mississippi, would form two of these corps; McClernand would command one of them and Sherman would have the other. Finally: "It is the wish of the President that General McClernand's corps shall constitute a part of the river expedition and that he shall have the immediate command under your direction."9
This of course could not be evaded and Grant did not try to evade it. He did exactly what he was supposed to do; that is, he immediately sent a message to McClernand, at Springfield, explaining the situation and telling him to go at once to Memphis, where Sherman would turn over the command and give him all of the written and oral orders and information that had been issued to date. Grant added that he hoped McClernand would find the expedition ready to move, and he pointed out that quick action was essential; he promised, also, that he himself would co-operate by menacing Pemberton along the line of the railroad. To complete the transaction he ordered a copy of this message transmitted to Sherman at Memphis.10
Now Grant and his troops were at Oxford, Mississippi, and any messages he sent to his subordinates had a long way to go. His line of supply and communication ran straight north along the railroad all the way to Columbus, Kentucky, more than 175 miles away. The fact that on its way through western Tennessee the railroad and its telegraph system passed within fifty miles of Memphis did not help, because Confederate cavalry and guerrilla bands had broken all land communication with Memphis. The message to Sherman, therefore, had to be sent to Columbus by telegraph and then had to go down the river to Memphis by steamboat. Similarly, the message to McClernand had to go to Columbus, to be forwarded thence by boat to Cairo, Illinois, where it could be telegraphed on to Springfield. It was possible for energetic enemies to interfere with all of this, because no matter how diligently the Federals tried to guard this line it remained painfully exposed.
One of the first men to realize this was the Confederacy's General Johnston. Shortly after he took command in the west he telegraphed to General Bragg, urging him to strike that vulnerable line with his cavalry. Apparently Bragg never got this telegram but that did no harm because he thought of the same thing independently and told Nathan Bedford Forrest to assemble his cavalry and go to work; after which he optimistically told President Davis that if this stroke succeeded it might compel Grant to retreat.11
The odds were much against success. Forrest's cavalry was miserably equipped and totally untrained; indeed, it barely existed at all, for it was still being organized when Bragg gave Forrest his orders. The men were the rawest of raw recruits, hundreds of them had neither weapons nor horses, those who were armed carried nothing better than shotguns or flintlock muskets, hardly anyone had any clothing or blankets except what he had brought from home, and supplies were so skimpy that Bragg warned Forrest the men would have to find their own food and forage once they set out. To get at Grant's railroad this cavalry must first cross the Tennessee River, which had no bridges and few boats and was much too deep to wade. Once across they would be in a region swarming with many thousands of Yankee soldiers who had been carefully posted all along the railroad for the specific purpose of beating off raids like this; and no matter how the raid went, in the end these Confederates would have to get back across the river with many times their number hotly pursuing them. By any logical appraisal of the prospects, this expedition had no chance . . . except that it was being led by Forrest.
Forrest was self-made all the way, a brigadier general with no military background whatever and no social background worth mentioning, a man who would be wholly out of place in the gallery of Confederate officers were it not that he was, inexplicably, a military genius: the best man in either the Confederacy or the Union for the kind of exploit Bragg was demanding. The measure of his capacity lies in what he now accomplished. He completely disrupted all of the Federal plans—Halleck's, Grant's, McClernand's, everybody's—and with excellent assistance from the romantic Van Dorn, who launched a simultaneous strike at Grant's immediate rear, he made Bragg's hopeful prediction good: Grant did have to retreat, getting out of Mississippi entirely and going all the way back to Memphis. Quite incidentally, Forrest armed, equipped, recruited and fed his cavalry while he was doing all of this. When the raid ended he had more men than he had when it began, all of them excellently mounted, armed, clad and fed by the United States government.
