Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete
Sherman assumed command of the military division of the Mississippi on
the 18th of March, and we left Nashville together for Cincinnati. I had
Sherman accompany me that far on my way back to Washington so that we
could talk over the matters about which I wanted to see him, without
losing any more time from my new command than was necessary. The first
point which I wished to discuss was particularly about the co-operation
of his command with mine when the spring campaign should commence. There
were also other and minor points, minor as compared with the great
importance of the question to be decided by sanguinary war--the
restoration to duty of officers who had been relieved from important
commands, namely McClellan, Burnside and Fremont in the East, and Buell,
McCook, Negley and Crittenden in the West.
Some time in the winter of 1863-64 I had been invited by the
general-in-chief to give my views of the campaign I thought advisable
for the command under me--now Sherman's. General J. E. Johnston was
defending Atlanta and the interior of Georgia with an army, the largest
part of which was stationed at Dalton, about 38 miles south of
Chattanooga. Dalton is at the junction of the railroad from Cleveland
with the one from Chattanooga to Atlanta.
There could have been no difference of opinion as to the first duty of
the armies of the military division of the Mississippi. Johnston's army
was the first objective, and that important railroad centre, Atlanta,
the second. At the time I wrote General Halleck giving my views of the
approaching campaign, and at the time I met General Sherman, it was
expected that General Banks would be through with the campaign which he
had been ordered upon before my appointment to the command of all the
armies, and would be ready to co-operate with the armies east of the
Mississippi, his part in the programme being to move upon Mobile by land
while the navy would close the harbor and assist to the best of its
ability. (*22) The plan therefore was for Sherman to attack Johnston and
destroy his army if possible, to capture Atlanta and hold it, and with
his troops and those of Banks to hold a line through to Mobile, or at
least to hold Atlanta and command the railroad running east and west,
and the troops from one or other of the armies to hold important points
on the southern road, the only east and west road that would be left in
the possession of the enemy. This would cut the Confederacy in two
again, as our gaining possession of the Mississippi River had done
before. Banks was not ready in time for the part assigned to him, and
circumstances that could not be foreseen determined the campaign which
was afterwards made, the success and grandeur of which has resounded
throughout all lands.
In regard to restoring officers who had been relieved from important
commands to duty again, I left Sherman to look after those who had been
removed in the West while I looked out for the rest. I directed,
however, that he should make no assignment until I could speak to the
Secretary of War about the matter. I shortly after recommended to the
Secretary the assignment of General Buell to duty. I received the
assurance that duty would be offered to him; and afterwards the
Secretary told me that he had offered Buell an assignment and that the
latter had declined it, saying that it would be degradation to accept
the assignment offered. I understood afterwards that he refused to
serve under either Sherman or Canby because he had ranked them both.
Both graduated before him and ranked him in the old army. Sherman
ranked him as a brigadier-general. All of them ranked me in the old
army, and Sherman and Buell did as brigadiers. The worst excuse a
soldier can make for declining service is that he once ranked the
commander he is ordered to report to.
On the 23d of March I was back in Washington, and on the 26th took up my
headquarters at Culpeper Court-House, a few miles south of the
headquarters of the Army of the Potomac.
Although hailing from Illinois myself, the State of the President, I
never met Mr. Lincoln until called to the capital to receive my
commission as lieutenant-general. I knew him, however, very well and
favorably from the accounts given by officers under me at the West who
had known him all their lives. I had also read the remarkable series of
debates between Lincoln and Douglas a few years before, when they were
rival candidates for the United States Senate. I was then a resident of
Missouri, and by no means a "Lincoln man" in that contest; but I
recognized then his great ability.
In my first interview with Mr. Lincoln alone he stated to me that he had
never professed to be a military man or to know how campaigns should be
conducted, and never wanted to interfere in them: but that
procrastination on the part of commanders, and the pressure from the
people at the North and Congress, WHICH WAS ALWAYS WITH HIM, forced him
into issuing his series of "Military Orders"--one, two, three, etc. He
did not know but they were all wrong, and did know that some of them
were. All he wanted or had ever wanted was some one who would take the
responsibility and act, and call on him for all the assistance needed,
pledging himself to use all the power of the government in rendering
such assistance. Assuring him that I would do the best I could with the
means at hand, and avoid as far as possible annoying him or the War
Department, our first interview ended.
The Secretary of War I had met once before only, but felt that I knew
him better.
While commanding in West Tennessee we had occasionally held
conversations over the wires, at night, when they were not being
otherwise used. He and General Halleck both cautioned me against giving
the President my plans of campaign, saying that he was so kind-hearted,
so averse to refusing anything asked of him, that some friend would be
sure to get from him all he knew. I should have said that in our
interview the President told me he did not want to know what I proposed
to do. But he submitted a plan of campaign of his own which he wanted
me to hear and then do as I pleased about. He brought out a map of
Virginia on which he had evidently marked every position occupied by the
Federal and Confederate armies up to that time. He pointed out on the
map two streams which empty into the Potomac, and suggested that the
army might be moved on boats and landed between the mouths of these
streams. We would then have the Potomac to bring our supplies, and the
tributaries would protect our flanks while we moved out. I listened
respectfully, but did not suggest that the same streams would protect
Lee's flanks while he was shutting us up.
I did not communicate my plans to the President, nor did I to the
Secretary of War or to General Halleck.
March the 26th my headquarters were, as stated, at Culpeper, and the
work of preparing for an early campaign commenced.
CHAPTER XLVII.
THE MILITARY SITUATION--PLANS FOR THE CAMPAIGN--SHERIDAN ASSIGNED TO
COMMAND OF THE CAVALRY--FLANK MOVEMENTS--FORREST AT FORT PILLOW--GENERAL
BANKS'S EXPEDITION--COLONEL MOSBY--AN INCIDENT OF THE WILDERNESS
CAMPAIGN.
When I assumed command of all the armies the situation was about this:
the Mississippi River was guarded from St. Louis to its mouth; the line
of the Arkansas was held, thus giving us all the North-west north of
that river. A few points in Louisiana not remote from the river were
held by the Federal troops, as was also the mouth of the Rio Grande.
East of the Mississippi we held substantially all north of the Memphis
and Charleston Railroad as far east as Chattanooga, thence along the
line of the Tennessee and Holston rivers, taking in nearly all of the
State of Tennessee. West Virginia was in our hands; and that part of
old Virginia north of the Rapidan and east of the Blue Ridge we also
held. On the sea-coast we had Fortress Monroe and Norfolk in Virginia;
Plymouth, Washington and New Berne in North Carolina; Beaufort, Folly
and Morris islands, Hilton Head, Port Royal and Fort Pulaski in South
Carolina and Georgia; Fernandina, St. Augustine, Key West and Pensacola
in Florida. The balance of the Southern territory, an empire in extent,
was still in the hands of the enemy.
Sherman, who had succeeded me in the command of the military division of
the Mississippi, commanded all the troops in the territory west of the
Alleghanies and north of Natchez, with a large movable force about
Chattanooga. His command was subdivided into four departments, but the
commanders all reported to Sherman and were subject to his orders. This
arrangement, however, insured the better protection of all lines of
communication through the acquired territory, for the reason that these
different department commanders could act promptly in case of a sudden
or unexpected raid within their respective jurisdictions without
awaiting the orders of the division commander.
In the East the opposing forces stood in substantially the same
relations towards each other as three years before, or when the war
began; they were both between the Federal and Confederate capitals. It
is true, footholds had been secured by us on the sea-coast, in Virginia
and North Carolina, but, beyond that, no substantial advantage had been
gained by either side. Battles had been fought of as great severity as
had ever been known in war, over ground from the James River and
Chickahominy, near Richmond, to Gettysburg and Chambersburg, in
Pennsylvania, with indecisive results, sometimes favorable to the
National army, sometimes to the Confederate army; but in every instance,
I believe, claimed as victories for the South by the Southern press if
not by the Southern generals. The Northern press, as a whole, did not
discourage these claims; a portion of it always magnified rebel success
and belittled ours, while another portion, most sincerely earnest in
their desire for the preservation of the Union and the overwhelming
success of the Federal armies, would nevertheless generally express
dissatisfaction with whatever victories were gained because they were
not more complete.
That portion of the Army of the Potomac not engaged in guarding lines of
communication was on the northern bank of the Rapidan. The Army of
Northern Virginia confronting it on the opposite bank of the same river,
was strongly intrenched and commanded by the acknowledged ablest general
in the Confederate army. The country back to the James River is cut up
with many streams, generally narrow, deep, and difficult to cross except
where bridged. The region is heavily timbered, and the roads narrow,
and very bad after the least rain. Such an enemy was not, of course,
unprepared with adequate fortifications at convenient intervals all the
way back to Richmond, so that when driven from one fortified position
they would always have another farther to the rear to fall back into.
To provision an army, campaigning against so formidable a foe through
such a country, from wagons alone seemed almost impossible. System and
discipline were both essential to its accomplishment.
The Union armies were now divided into nineteen departments, though four
of them in the West had been concentrated into a single military
division. The Army of the Potomac was a separate command and had no
territorial limits. There were thus seventeen distinct commanders.
Before this time these various armies had acted separately and
independently of each other, giving the enemy an opportunity often of
depleting one command, not pressed, to reinforce another more actively
engaged. I determined to stop this. To this end I regarded the Army of
the Potomac as the centre, and all west to Memphis along the line