Grant and Sherman: The Friendship that Won the Civil War (42 page)
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Authors: Charles Bracelen Flood
Tags: #Biography, #History, #bought-and-paid-for, #Non-Fiction
BOOK: Grant and Sherman: The Friendship that Won the Civil War
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Speaking of the relationship between Ulysses and Julia, he said that, in the log cabin in which Grant and his family lived, “They would seek a quiet corner of his quarters of an evening, manifesting the most ardent devotion; and if a staff-officer accidentally came upon them, they would look as bashful as two young lovers spied upon in the scenes of their courtship.” On an evening earlier in the year, when Grant had asked Julia to come to City Point and she had been there without their children, a Confederate ironclad broke through on the river and was expected to begin firing at City Point. Although nothing finally came of the threat, no one could have known it then, and Porter observed: “Mrs. Grant, who was one of the most composed present, now drew her chair a little closer to the general, and with her mild voice inquired, ‘Ulys, what had I better do?’ The general looked at her for a moment, and then replied in a half-serious and half-teasing way, ‘Well, the fact is, Julia, you oughtn’t to be here.’” (Julia later wrote in mock indignation, “And he had sent for me, mind you!”)
As for the Shermans, on June 11, in the middle of the Atlanta campaign, Ellen had given birth to a son, Charles, and had been sick for the next two months. The baby also was not well. After the death of her mother earlier in the year, Ellen had tried to keep house for her ailing father in Lancaster, Ohio, but had recently found the combination of responsibilities too stressful. She decided to move herself and her children to South Bend, Indiana, which she had chosen both because it had Catholic schools into which she was putting the three older children and because of the good medical care it offered her and her baby. Ellen appears to have done this with a minimum of consultation with Sherman, who had always considered her tied to her parents and to Lancaster, but he consented to the move and was perhaps a bit bemused that after all these years she would leave the place and family that he had always found to be such powerful rivals for her affections. In a letter he wrote her just after taking Atlanta, he explained that “there is no chance of my getting north again and therefore you can choose a house utterly regardless of my movements.”
The letters that Sherman and Grant sent their wives throughout the war demonstrated the great respect they had for their intelligence. Sherman, tending to be far more verbose although not more profound, went much further than did Grant in discussing with Ellen the war’s military and political aspects. All through the summer’s campaign he had written her long letters that included clear accounts of his movements. Usually he went into some detail, but at one point he summed up the situation this way: “We have Atlanta close aboard as the Sailors say but it is a hard nut to handle. These fellows fight like Devils & Indians combined, and it calls for all my cunning & Strength.” In another letter, asking Ellen to help the children realize that at the moment he could not answer all their letters individually, he referred both to his army and the masses of both black and white refugees he was feeding when he wrote, “They must understand my present family is numbered by hundreds of thousands all of whom look to me to provide for their wants.”
At this point, the outlines of Grant and Sherman’s grand strategy were in some ways visible, but much remained to be seen. Sherman had indeed penetrated the enemy’s heartland, and Grant was bloodily engaging Lee on the Confederacy’s northern front in Virginia. Within the scope of the objectives still before them, Grant’s task was enormous but clear: defeat Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. When Grant had campaigned in the West, he had the opportunity to exploit those wider areas, which frequently offered him choices of where and how to maneuver his troops. He no longer had those advantages; Lee stood firmly before him in a smaller fixed area.
Sherman certainly had a goal—to tear up the South and defeat Joseph E. Johnston—but he still had the strategic luxury of deciding where to go and when to make his moves. Nonetheless, it was time to make decisions of the greatest importance. Sherman, in concert with Grant, had to decide exactly what to do next with this force of his, which had proved to be such a potent and flexible weapon.
To plan this next phase of the war, Grant sent his aide Horace Porter south, carrying a letter concerning the strategic options and to get Sherman’s ideas as to what should come now. Porter had never seen Sherman and wrote his impression of their first meeting at Sherman’s headquarters in Atlanta.
He was just forty-four years of age, and almost at the summit of his military fame. With his large frame, tall, gaunt form, restless hazel eyes, aquiline nose, bronzed face, and crisp beard, he looked the picture of “grim-visaged war” … I approached him, introduced myself, and handed him General Grant’s letter. He tilted forward in his chair, crumpled the newspaper in his left hand while with his right he shook hands cordially, then pushed a chair forward and asked me to sit down …He exhibited a strong individuality in every movement, and there was a peculiar manner of energy in uttering the crisp words and epigrammmatic phrases which fell from his lips as rapidly as shots from a magazine-gun … He said, “I knew Grant would make the fur fly when he started down through Virginia. Wherever he is the enemy will never find any trouble about starting up a fight. He has all the tenacity of a Scotch terrier. That he will accomplish his whole purpose I have never had any doubt.”
PROFESSIONAL JUDGMENT AND PERSONAL FRIENDSHIP: SAVANNAH FOR CHRISTMAS
After Sherman’s capture of Atlanta in early September of 1864, the remainder of the autumn brought about the supreme test for Grant and Sherman’s personal and military relationship. Four months before, Sherman had received Grant’s approval for his bold campaign that had moved through Georgia for a hundred miles and resulted in his taking Atlanta. Now, in a letter that Horace Porter carried back to Grant, he sent word that he wanted to march on to the southeast from Atlanta, cut through Georgia for 225 more miles, and capture the great coastal port of Savannah.
Sherman initially presented his plan in a confident, high-hearted way. In his letter of September 20 carried by Porter, he closed a long description of his proposed campaign with these words. “I admire your dogged perseverance and pluck more than ever. If you can whip Lee and I can march to the Atlantic I think Uncle Abe will give us a twenty days’ leave to see the young folks.”
Despite the recent superb performance of Sherman and his army, Grant was doubtful that this would be the best use of Sherman’s forces, and Lincoln and Stanton were even more skeptical about the idea. As Grant and Sherman discussed the strategic situation in the South in a series of letters and telegrams in late September, Grant first proposed that Sherman move south to Mobile and crush the remaining Confederate strength on the Gulf Coast. Sherman soon persuaded him that, as a campaign in itself, the march to Savannah would be feasible, but Grant was worried about what Sherman would be leaving in his rear when he did that. If Sherman headed for the Atlantic Ocean, he would be marching away from John Bell Hood’s Army of Tennessee, which would then be opposed only by the Union forces under General George Thomas. Grant feared that Hood, who had been beaten by Sherman, would in his turn be able to defeat Thomas. If that happened, no matter how much progress Sherman was making as he went in the opposite direction southeast of Atlanta, Hood could march his army north into areas that had for some time been under Union control. Hood could move up through Tennessee and Kentucky, and might even reach Cincinnati on the Ohio River. Leaving Hood’s army intact was a terrible risk, and one that need not be taken. With this frightening prospect in mind, Grant told Sherman that he could strike out for Savannah, but only after destroying Hood’s forces.
Relying on Grant’s willingness to hear something more about all this, Sherman argued that Thomas was equal to any threat from Hood, and then he went beyond advocating the purely military aspects of his proposed march to the coast. This, he told Grant, was the chance to break the South’s will, its thus far remarkable fighting spirit. If he could march from Atlanta right to the sea, this demonstrated ability to move through the heart of the South on a path of the Union Army’s choosing would show everyone, North and South, that night was descending upon the Confederacy. Sherman wanted to convince every adult white Southerner that continuing to fight for the cause of secession would result in personal catastrophe and ruin. “Even without a battle,” Sherman now wrote Grant of the dramatic march he wanted to undertake, “the result operating on the minds of sensible men would produce fruits more than compensating for the expense, trouble, and risk.” In another letter to Grant, he unveiled his concept of waging war upon everything in his path, the countryside itself, in a harsher fashion than he had been able to do on the way to Atlanta, when he had to face Johnston’s troops at every turn. Speaking of Georgia, he said that “the utter destruction of its roads, houses and people will cripple their military resources.” He wanted to move ahead and keep going, letting his men and horses live off the land through which they passed, without worrying about what might happen if he had to guard supply lines to his rear: “By attempting to hold the roads, we will lose a thousand men monthly and gain no result.” He added this chilling reassurance to Grant: “I can make the march and make Georgia howl.”
In his headquarters at City Point, Grant considered all of this, balancing his confidence in Sherman against his responsibility to avoid a disaster that could change the entire course of the war. Fighting Lee in Virginia was supremely hard, taxing the Union’s strength and resolve to its utmost. If Hood should get loose, bring his forces north on the inland side of the Appalachian Mountains, and open a new front well to the west of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, no one could foretell the calamities that might visit upon the Union.
Halfheartedly at first, Grant began to make a great act of faith in his friend Sherman. He started in early October by writing him, “If there is any way of [your] getting at Hood’s army, I would prefer that, but I must trust to your own judgement.” A few days later, he added, “On reflection, I think better of your proposition.” Sherman realized that he still did not have the kind of support from Grant that he needed. He knew that only Grant could convince Lincoln and Stanton to agree with this hazardous strategy—on October 13, Stanton wired Grant that Lincoln was worried that “a misstep now by General Sherman might be fatal to his army”—and he sensed that Grant was still not ready to approve his plan. On November 1, with Hood already moving up toward Chattanooga to confront the Union army under George Thomas, Grant worriedly wrote Sherman, “Do you not think it would be advisable now that Hood has gone so far north, to entirely settle him before starting on your proposed campaign? With Hood’s army destroyed, you can go where you please with impunity.”
Sherman responded to this on the same day with two telegrams. In the first, he assured Grant that Thomas would be able to stop Hood before he could do any significant damage. In the second, he told Grant that “if I turn back, the whole effect of my campaign will be lost … I am clearly of [the] opinion that the best results will follow my contemplated movement through Georgia.”
Grant was reluctantly persuaded. Within hours, he gave his approval: “I do not really see that you can withdraw from where you arc to follow Hood, without giving up all that we have gained in territory. I say, then, go on as you propose.”
The two friends had disagreed and set forth their positions. Grant, Sherman’s superior and a man capable of saying no to anything, had decided that Sherman had made his case and agreed to let him go forward, even though Lincoln and Stanton remained doubtful about the movement. Grant knew that the stakes were huge but acted in accordance with his conviction that if a thing was worth doing, it was worth doing wholeheartedly. Five days after giving his approval, when Sherman had his forces ready to head out of Atlanta toward Savannah, Grant wrote him, “Great good fortune attend you. I believe you will be eminently successful, and, at worst, can only make a march less fruitful of results than hoped for.”
Sherman’s preparations for leaving Atlanta indicated that this march would be unlike anything seen before. He cut his own telegraph lines to the North, as well as the railroad links. For a month, no one, not Grant, not Halleck, not Stanton, was going to be able to find him. Sherman was moving out with sixty-two thousand men, to advance in four huge columns, on a front sixty miles wide; the Confederates in the path of this advance, most of them in understrength cavalry units, were not going to know just where this behemoth was going, let alone be able to stop it. This army was taking a twenty-day supply of food, including three thousand beef cattle they herded along, but as Sherman’s columns cut their wide swath through Georgia, they would have no supply lines behind them; in language that profoundly understated the harsh reality to come, Sherman’s orders were that “the army will forage liberally on the country during the march.”
The night before the Union troops marched out of Atlanta, much of which had earlier been laid waste by the withdrawing Confederates, Sherman ordered the commercial and manufacturing sections of the city to be burned. When he rode from the city at seven o‘clock on the morning of November 16, he looked back and saw the results of his orders: “Behind us lay Atlanta, smouldering and in ruins, the black smoke rising high in the air, and hanging like a pall over the city.” As for his army, he remembered “the white-topped wagons stretching away to the south” and the troops with their “gun-barrels glistening in the sun … marching steadily and rapidly, with a cheery look and swinging pace … Some band had, by accident, struck up the anthem of ‘John Brown’s soul goes marching on’; the men caught up the strain, and never before or since have I heard the chorus of ‘Glory, glory, hallelujah!’ done with more spirit.”
In a diary entry, a sergeant from Iowa captured the esprit de corps of Sherman’s men, many of whom had been fighting for more than two years under the man most of them now called “Uncle Billy”: “Started this morning early for the Southern coast, somewhere, and we don’t care, as long as Sherman is leading us.” Other men were less confident. Captain Orlando Poe of Sherman’s staff, an engineer officer who was teaching the troops how to tear up Confederate rail lines, looked at this army as it headed into thousands of square miles of the enemy heartland, hoping to reach the coast, and wrote his wife that “this may be the last letter that you ever get from me.” As for Sherman’s own frame of mind, he felt that he and Grant were working in complementary fashion, toward a common end. He was in command of the largest force acting as light infantry the world had seen, an enormous flying column with which he intended to destroy both the enemy’s rear area and its will to fight, while Grant, 450 miles to the northeast, continued to bleed Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia to death in a form of trench warfare at Petersburg. (Lincoln put it this way: “Grant has the bear by the hind leg while Sherman takes off its hide.”) Adding to the pressure being put on Confederate military resources in Grant’s overall Northern theater of operations, Grant’s cavalry chief Philip Sheridan had defeated Confederate general Jubal Early’s outnumbered forces in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.
For thirty-one days, no one in Washington knew just where Sherman and his army were or how they were faring. When Sherman’s brother Senator John Sherman saw Lincoln one day, he asked if there had been any communications from his brother in Georgia. The recently re-elected president answered, “Oh, no, we have heard nothing from him. We know what hole he went in, but we don’t know what hole he will come out of.”
If Grant was angry about this lack of information, there is no record of it. When Lincoln told Grant that he was concerned about what might be happening to Sherman and his army, Grant answered that he was confident that Sherman would reappear “on Salt Water some place.” Grant’s biggest worry was the one he had discussed with Sherman weeks before; as he had expected, Hood was marching his Confederate columns north into Tennessee, and it remained to be seen whether George Thomas could stop him from going on up through Kentucky to Cincinnati. At first, it seemed that Grant had been all too right and should have insisted that Sherman “settle” Hood’s forces before heading from Atlanta to the coast. For many weeks, Thomas repeatedly delayed executing Grant’s orders to attack Hood promptly, citing such reasons as bad weather, which finally brought him a pointed response in a telegram from Grant sent on December 11: “If you delay attack longer the mortifying spectacle will be witnessed of a Rebel army moving for the Ohio River and you will be forced to act, accepting such weather as you find. Let there be no further delay.” Four days later, Thomas attacked Hood’s twenty-three thousand men at Nashville with his own force of forty-nine thousand in a two-day battle, and, as Sherman had predicted, decisively defeated Hood’s army and removed the threat to Tennessee and Kentucky.
On his march, Sherman set the astonishing initial goal of moving his sixty-two thousand men fifteen miles a day and kept to that for a week. No ordinary men could have done this. A soldier from Illinois wrote that his comrades “had been in the service from the beginning and what they did not know about campaigning was not worth inquiring into. Each soldier was practically a picked man. Such was the ratio of casualties that he may be said to be the sole survivor of four men who had set out from Cairo [Illinois] in 1861; all but he having succumbed to disease or death.” Sherman’s aide Major Henry Hitchcock expanded on this theme of confident pride: “It is a magnificent army of
veterans,
brimful of spirit and deviltry, literally ‘spoiling for a fight,’ neither knowing nor caring where they are going, blindly devoted to … the ‘old man[,]’ in splendid condition, weeded of all sick, etc., and every man fully understanding that there is no return, no safety but in fighting through.”
veterans,
brimful of spirit and deviltry, literally ‘spoiling for a fight,’ neither knowing nor caring where they are going, blindly devoted to … the ‘old man[,]’ in splendid condition, weeded of all sick, etc., and every man fully understanding that there is no return, no safety but in fighting through.”
The “old man” watched over his army like a nervous mother hen, moving around to check his different units at night and “prowling around a camp fire in red flannel drawers and a worn dressing gown.” He was also seen, like his men, swimming naked in a river to get himself clean, and on the march he sometimes hiked along beside the enlisted men, talking with them as equals. A major new to Sherman’s command described him:
General Sherman is the most American looking man I ever saw, tall and lank, not very erect, with hair like thatch, which he rubs up with his hands, a rusty beard trimmed close, a wrinkled face, sharp prominent red nose, small bright eyes, coarse red hands; a black felt hat slouched over his eyes … field officer[’]s coat with high collar and no shoulder stripes, muddy trousers and one spur. He carries his hands in his pockets, is very awkward in his gait and motions, talks continually and with rapidity.
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