The Man Who Saved the Union (24 page)

At the Union boats he came under fire from Confederates contesting the Federals’ escape. The engineer of the final boat to push off saw him coming and ordered a plank thrown back to the water’s edge, at the bottom of a steep pitch below the field across which Grant was racing. “My horse put his fore feet over the bank without hesitation or urging, and with his hind feet well under him slid down the bank and trotted aboard the boat, twelve or fifteen feet away, over a single gang plank.”

The Confederates raked the transports with small-arms fire. Grant ascended to the captain’s cabin beside the pilot house and collapsed on a sofa. But after a minute to catch his breath he leaped up to check on his men. “I had scarcely left when a musket ball entered the room, struck the head of the sofa, passed through it and lodged in the floor,” he recounted.

His luck was better than that of many of his men that day. At the time and afterward Grant displayed a certain defensiveness about the battle of
Belmont. His losses totaled some six hundred killed, wounded, captured or missing, against about the same number for the Confederates. He nonetheless lavished praise on the performance of his regiments. “
All the troops behaved with great gallantry, much of which is to be attributed to the coolness and presence of mind of the officers, particularly the colonels,” he reported right after the battle. Yet at the end of the war he filed a second report on the battle, emphasizing the orders he had been given to make a show of force. And in his memoir, written another two decades later, he asserted, “
The two objects for which the battle of Belmont was fought were fully accomplished. The enemy gave up all idea of detaching troops from Columbus.… The National troops acquired a confidence in themselves at Belmont that did not desert them through the war.”

These may indeed have been Grant’s objectives. But the first was negative and the second nebulous, and the cost of achieving them was high. Doubtless Grant was speaking of himself as much as of his men when he emphasized the importance of confidence. Belmont was his first battle command. He performed with conspicuous bravery and dash. Proving himself—to himself—was no small matter. But it didn’t come cheaply.

21

L
INCOLN WAS WILLING TO OVERLOOK THE COST.
A
FTER
B
ULL
R
UN
the president had replaced
Irvin McDowell with George McClellan, who captured the hearts of Washington with his manly good looks, his uniformed flair and his solicitude for the defense of the capital. “
By some strange operation of magic I seem to have become
the
power of the land,” McClellan wrote his wife. “I almost think that were I to win some small success now I could become Dictator or anything else that might please me.”

The magic diminished as McClellan declined to challenge the Confederates across the Potomac in Virginia. Lincoln at first said nothing, but others in Washington grumbled till McClellan in late October 1861 felt obliged to probe beyond the river in the direction of Leesburg. The effort began well but ended devastatingly when the Union force was driven back over
Ball’s Bluff into the river, where many drowned. A thousand Federals were killed, captured or wounded; among the Union dead was Colonel
Edward D. Baker, a senator from Oregon and a close friend of Lincoln’s. McClellan conceded privately that the battle was a “
serious disaster”; his critics said the same thing aloud. The most bitter alleged a secessionist conspiracy, with McClellan cast as an agent of the rebellion and Lincoln as his dupe. Congress established a
joint committee on the conduct of the war to second-guess the administration.

Lincoln’s military problems with McClellan were matched by his political problems with John Frémont. The frustrations of partisan warfare in Missouri drove Frémont to issue a proclamation establishing martial law and emancipating the slaves of rebel owners. The emancipation decree elicited applause from abolitionists and other Republicans
who believed the nettle of slavery must be grasped if the war would be won; Frémont became their hero. But the decree immensely complicated Lincoln’s task of keeping the border slave states—
Missouri,
Kentucky,
Maryland and
Delaware—loyal, and it undercut all he was saying about the war’s being solely to save the Union. Lincoln told Frémont’s wife, sent by the general to explain his action, that the war was for “
a great national idea, the Union.” He added—harshly,
Jessie Benton Frémont judged—that “General Frémont should not have dragged the Negro into it.”

Lincoln demanded that Frémont rescind the decree. The general grudgingly did so while continuing to believe he knew better than Lincoln how the war ought to be managed. His arrogance ultimately alienated even some of his friends, allowing Lincoln in November to remove him from his command.

The news about Grant and Belmont arrived amid the president’s Frémont troubles and while the evil echoes from
Ball’s Bluff still roiled the capital. Northern papers, hungry for good news, presented Belmont as a signal victory. The
New York Times
praised Grant and his men: “
The late battle at Belmont, Mo., is considered in a high degree creditable to all our troops concerned in it, and the credit of the brilliant movement is due to General Grant.” The
Chicago Journal
declared, “General Grant was everywhere in the thickest of the fight, and performed wonderful deeds of bravery. The men never tire of lauding his gallantry.”

Lincoln didn’t know Grant personally, but he knew
John McClernand, a Democratic congressman who had resigned his seat to command a brigade of Illinois volunteers and fought under Grant at Belmont. “
All with you have done honor to yourselves and the flag and service to the country,” Lincoln congratulated McClernand. “Most gratefully I do thank you and them.” McClernand responded by urging the president to create a new military department for the lower Mississippi Valley. “
An energetic, enterprising and judicious commander would early redeem this department from the thralldom of rebellion,” McClernand said. He was thinking of himself—“
If a department could be established there your promotion would be almost certain,” a Washington ally assured him—but Lincoln began thinking of Grant.

T
he positive
reaction to Belmont reinforced
Grant’s view of the battle. “
The victory was most complete,” he informed his father. “It has given me a confidence in the officers and men of this command that will
enable me to lead them in any future engagement without fear of the result.” He laid plans to exploit his success and telegraphed
Henry W. Halleck, Frémont’s successor and his own new superior, for permission to visit St. Louis and explain what he required by way of troops, arms and provisions.

Halleck brushed him off. He was old army and knew the stories of Grant’s drinking. He doubtless considered the popular reaction to Belmont overblown. He had his hands full dealing with the confusion Frémont had left behind. And he didn’t want Grant getting carried away. He told him to stay where he was. “
You will send reports in writing.”

Grant was left to train his troops, integrate new arrivals into his command, reconnoiter from Cairo and ponder what he would do if given the chance. “
The true line of operations for us was up the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers,” he explained afterward. “With us there, the enemy would be compelled to fall back on the east and west entirely out of the State of Kentucky.” Two Confederate forts commanded the two rivers:
Fort Henry on the Tennessee and
Fort Donelson on the Cumberland. The forts were twins and nearly conjoined, for the rivers were but a dozen miles apart at this location and the outer defenses of the forts came to within cannon shot of each other. Grant proposed to pin Fort Henry between advancing ground forces and ironclad gunboats on the Tennessee and then, with Henry secure, do the same to Donelson.

He discussed his plan with some of his fellow officers, including Charles Smith, who was a decade his senior and a distinguished veteran of the Mexican War. Smith concurred with Grant on the importance of the Tennessee and Cumberland, prompting Grant to renew his request to visit St. Louis.

Halleck this time consented, to Grant’s encouragement. “
I have now a larger force than General Scott ever commanded prior to our present difficulties,” he wrote his sister Mary. “I believe there is no portion of our whole army better prepared to contest a battle than there is within my district, and I am very much mistaken if I have not got the confidence of officers and men. This is all important, especially with new troops.”

Halleck still didn’t share Grant’s hopefulness, though, and he greeted the brigadier coolly. Grant blamed both Halleck and himself for the meeting’s failure. “
I was received with so little cordiality that I perhaps stated the object of my visit with less clearness than I might have done,” he wrote. “I had not uttered many sentences before I was cut short as if my plan was preposterous. I returned to Cairo very much crestfallen.”

But not dissuaded. He again wrote Charles Smith, who reaffirmed the feasibility of the Tennessee campaign. “
Two ironclad gunboats would make short work of Fort Henry,” Smith told John Rawlins, the Galena orator, who had become Grant’s assistant. Navy commander
Andrew Foote, heading the Union squadron on the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, telegraphed Halleck: “
Fort Henry on the Tennessee can be carried with four ironclad gunboats and troops to be permanent-occupied.” Foote, writing in the last week of January 1862, added, “In consultation with General Grant we have come to the conclusion that the Tennessee will soon fall as the Ohio is falling above and therefore it is desirable to make the contemplated movement the latter part of this week.”

Grant approached Halleck a third time. “
I would respectfully suggest the propriety of subduing Fort Henry, near the Kentucky and Tennessee line, and holding the position,” he wrote Halleck on January 29. “If this is not done soon there is but little doubt but that the defenses of both the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers will be materially strengthened.” Taking Fort Henry would preempt such strengthening. “It will besides have a moral effect upon our troops to advance them towards the rebel states.” With what might have struck Halleck as smugness, Grant concluded: “The advantages of this move are as perceptible to the General Commanding Department”—Halleck—“as to myself. Therefore further comments are unnecessary.”

Grant’s arguments finally caught on, and Halleck let himself be persuaded. “
Make your preparations to take and hold Fort Henry,” he telegraphed Grant.

G
rant had already begun. “
Very little preparation is necessary for this move,” he wrote Smith, who commanded the garrison at Paducah. The small need for preparation was fortunate, as secrets were impossible to maintain where Southern sympathizers abounded. “If possible, the troops and community should be kept from knowing anything of the design.”

“
I will leave here tomorrow night,” Grant telegraphed Halleck on February 1. The next day he issued marching orders to the officers and men. “
No firing, except when ordered by proper authority, will be allowed.… Plundering and disturbing private property is positively prohibited.… Regimental commanders will be held strictly accountable for the acts of their regiments.”

To
John McClernand he gave particular orders: “
On your arrival at Paducah you will proceed immediately up the Tennessee River, debarking all your cavalry excepting one company at the first ferry above, on the side between the two rivers.” The cavalry should march to a spot several miles below Fort Henry and the transports return to Paducah. Pending the arrival of additional troops McClernand should hold the ground below Henry. “For this purpose you will dispose your forces to the best advantage.”

Grant himself probed the defenses of Fort Henry. “
I went up on the
Essex
this morning with
Captain Porter, two other ironclad boats accompanying, to ascertain the range of the rebel guns,” he wrote Halleck on February 4. “From a point about one mile above the place afterwards decided on for place of debarkation, several shells were thrown, some of them taking effect inside the rebel fort. This drew the enemy’s fire, all of which fell far short, except from one rifled gun which threw a ball through the cabin of the
Essex
and several near it.” This ball determined the point of debarkation, just out of range of the rifled guns.

That night Grant wrote Julia from the steamer
Uncle Sam
. “
All the troops will be up by noon tomorrow,” he said. “And Friday morning, if we are not attacked before, the fight will commence. The enemy are well fortified and have a strong force. I do not want to boast but I have a confident feeling of success.” The troops did arrive the next morning, and they were arrayed, per Grant’s order, along the river. “
The sight of our campfires on either side of the river is beautiful and no doubt inspires the enemy, who is in full view of them, with the idea that we have full 40,000 men,” he wrote Julia that evening. The reckoning was but hours away. “Tomorrow will come the tug of war. One side or the other must tomorrow night rest in quiet possession of Fort Henry.”

At eleven o’clock on the morning of February 6 the attack commenced. McClernand’s infantry and cavalry approached the fort on land; Foote’s gunboats closed by the river. The boats did the greater damage, as high water impeded McClernand’s march. The Union boats exchanged fire with the Confederate artillery, tentatively at first but escalating after noon. “
The fire on both sides was now terrific,” Confederate commander
Lloyd Tilghman reported afterward. One by one the guns of the fort were silenced. Meanwhile only the
Essex
of the Union gunboats suffered serious damage, when a shell hit the boiler and caused an explosion that killed or wounded nearly fifty of the crew.

Gradually Tilghman’s battle plan became clear. The Confederate
commander had fewer than 3,000 troops, too few to defend both Fort Henry and
Fort Donelson. “Fort Donelson might possibly be held, if properly re-enforced, even though Fort Henry should fall; but the reverse of this proposition was not true,” Tilghman recounted. He knew he was outnumbered, though he overestimated his deficit—as Grant intended he would. “I had no hope of being able successfully to defend the fort against such overwhelming odds,” Tilghman declared. He sent his infantry, cavalry, and light artillery away from Fort Henry toward Fort Donelson. He kept no more than a hundred men to fire the guns and cover the others’ escape. “My object was to save the main body by delaying matters as long as possible.”