Grant

by Ron Chernow

Grant’s military philosophy called for following up on victories before the enemy had time to recuperate.

After Fort Donelson Grant started to appreciate what he meant to the Union war effort. “I began to see how important was the work that Providence devolved upon me.”

Lacking in guile, he was stunned to encounter it in those who specialized in it.

Another man who would repeatedly rescue Grant from the doldrums was William Tecumseh Sherman.

Grant had been favorably impressed by the way Sherman, his senior in rank, rushed him whatever he needed.

Sherman

Sherman described

Both Grant and Sherman were damaged souls who would redeem tarnished reputations in the brutal crucible of war.

when anything was pending he was invariably abstinent of drink.”

Grant drank when bored or idle

Sherman once remarked, “He stood by me when I was crazy and I stood by him when he was drunk, and now, sir, we stand by each other always.”

whereas Sherman dwelled on what the enemy might do, Grant was often more fearless and flexible in carrying out his own plans.

Fuming over chronic stalling by George McClellan, Lincoln could not afford to sacrifice a general who took the initiative

Grant had begun to move his men into position at an old steamboat stop on the Tennessee River known as Pittsburg Landing that lay twenty miles from Corinth and stood near a tiny Methodist meetinghouse, crafted from rough-hewn logs, called Shiloh.

The charge of being blindsided at Shiloh would long be a sore point with Grant.

Shiloh was a free-for-all of death in which brute force trumped tactical subtleties.

Amid the chaos of that awful day, a nucleus of strength under General Prentiss crystallized at the heart of the federal line, staving off a decisive rebel victory. His 4,500 troops dug in along a woodland path known to history as the Sunken Road.

Prentiss’s men held out until forced to surrender at 5:30 p.m.,

He had the gift of believing in his men and simply refused to concede that things looked so gloomy.

Here was Grant’s matchless strength: he did not crumble in adversity, which only hardened his determination, and knew that setbacks often contained the seeds of their own reversals.

Sherman found him standing there, streaming with rain, hat pulled low over his face, collar upturned, holding a lantern and chewing a cigar. “Well, Grant, we’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we?” Sherman remarked. “Yes,” replied Grant with a drag on his cigar. “Lick ’em tomorrow though.”

Grant implemented a trademark technique: simultaneously applying pressure in as many places as possible.

Opposed to napoleon mass at the point of attack

Men who survived it could never scrub its harrowing imagery from their memories.

Shiloh’s casualties eclipsed the total of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Mexican War combined.

Shiloh peeled away any lingering aura of romance from the war,

This began his conversion to a theory of total warfare in which all of southern society would have to be defeated.

the first day, or the first period of a battle, was most successful to the South; but if we held on to the second or third day, we were sure to beat them,

Grant’s endurance in the face of unexpected setbacks perhaps owed something to having survived the ups and downs of his own improbable life before the war.

He was shocked that the northern press construed the battle as a Union loss.

correspondents who wrote for partisan papers and weren’t overly scrupulous in their methods.

With his faith in George McClellan increasingly shaken, Abraham Lincoln monitored the controversy swirling around Shiloh.

“I can’t spare this man, he fights.”

With the stoicism of a true soldier, however, he kept up an imperturbable facade. “Your paper is very unjust to me,” he told one correspondent, “but time will make it all right.

Grant did not dignify press attacks with responses,

He pleaded with Grant to withhold his resignation for two weeks. When his appeal worked, Sherman rejoiced:

Grant stayed in the army and within two weeks Sherman fell under his command, staying there throughout the war.

Halleck loved the archaic art of the siege and proceeded to institute one with textbook precision.

it was better to strike in timely fashion with a smaller force than lose the advantage awaiting reinforcements.

Now that New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Memphis had been overtaken by Union forces, Vicksburg arose as the major fortress on the Mississippi blocking Union domination of the waterway.

As Lincoln soon learned to his regret, Halleck had a brilliant theoretical mind, but was a world-class procrastinator on a par with McClellan and no less likely to disparage threatening subordinates.

Grant repaid Halleck’s condescension and secret betrayals with awed respect:

federal fortunes took a disastrous turn at the second battle of Manassas.

the Army of Northern Virginia, Lee

Among the military men who disappointed Lincoln was Halleck, whose career went downhill after Second Manassas.

Grant was instructed to “live upon the land,”

Writing to Grant on July 25, Washburne coached him on how to advance in the military by adhering closely to Lincoln’s new policy. “The negroes must now be made our auxiliaries in every possible way they can be, whether by working or fighting. That General who takes the most decided step in this respect will be held in the highest estimation by the loyal and true men in the country.”

spiriting away slaves would destroy the southern economy in a steady progression toward total warfare.

his devout belief in concentrating forces,

Once again, the second day of battle had determined the outcome.

Antietam Creek. On September 17, 1862, they clashed in a battle of staggering ferocity that produced more than twenty thousand casualties, making it the single deadliest day in American history. If by most measures the battle was a draw, it foiled Lee’s plans to invade the North and banished him from Maryland, giving Unionists cause to celebrate. Though he had shamefully let Lee’s army slip away across the Potomac, Little Mac could not refrain from crowing: “Those in whose judgment I rely tell me that I fought the battle splendidly and that it is a masterpiece of art.”24 In truth, McClellan had missed a magnificent chance to destroy a badly outnumbered army and it soon ended his military career.

Antietam represented an important juncture in the war.

Lincoln seized on the quasi-victory as the occasion to issue his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation,