CHAPTER SIX

SHILOH

Over the field where April rain

Solaced the parched ones stretched in pain

Through the pause of night

That followed Sunday’s fight

Around the church of Shiloh

“Shiloh”
Herman Melville, 1862

THE FALL OF FORT DONELSON threw Johnston’s forces into disarray. On February 16 the disheartened remnants of Hardee’s Army of Central Kentucky filed through Nashville on their way south. Reduced by straggling and sickness to fewer than 14,000 men, their morale was sapped and their supplies abandoned. In the Mississippi valley, Beauregard began the withdrawal from Columbus. He reinforced the garrisons at New Madrid and Island No. 10, and ordered the bulk of Polk’s force—some 10,000 men—to Humboldt, Tennessee, at the juncture of the Memphis, Clarksville & Louisville and the Mobile & Ohio railroads.

Grant was alert to the opportunity. The two wings of the Confederate army were vulnerable. He wanted to move quickly against Johnston and Hardee before turning on Beauregard and Polk. On February 18, barely forty-eight hours after taking Donelson, he dispatched Flag Officer Foote and the gunboats Conestoga and Cairo to reconnoiter Confederate strength at Clarksville, Tennessee—an important rail center halfway up the Cumberland toward Nashville. Foote found the town evacuated, the rebel troops having decamped to join Johnston’s retreat. The next day Grant informed General Cullum he was sending C. F. Smith’s division to take possession of Clarksville. Grant said if Halleck wished him to do so he could take Nashville the following Saturday. “Please inform me as soon as possible of the Commanding General’s desires.”1

On Thursday Grant made his own reconnaissance of Clarksville and was informed by Sherman of another 12,000 reinforcements on their way to him.² That brought the size of his command to 36,000 men, two thirds of whom were battle-hardened veterans. Grant reorganized his army into four divisions, and resumed his effort to move against Johnston.³ “I am now in possession of Clarksville,” he wrote Cullum on February 21. “It is my impression that by following up our success Nashville would be an easy conquest.”⁴

But it was not to be. Before Grant could take action he received a telegram from Halleck instructing him not to proceed further upstream than Clarksville.⁵ Grant and Foote were stunned. Foote, who was outside the army’s chain of command, launched a broadside at Cullum in Cairo. “Genl Grant and myself consider this a good time to move on Nashville. We were about moving for this purpose, when Genl Grant, to my astonishment, received a telegram from Genl Halleck not to let the gunboats go higher than Clarksville. The Cumberland is in a good stage of water, and Genl Grant and I believe that we can take Nashville—Please ask Genl Halleck if we should do it.”⁶

Halleck was not interested, at least not then, and the evidence suggests he was more concerned with advancing his career than advancing against the Confederate army. Rightly or wrongly he believed that he, not Grant, had been the victor at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, and before setting out in pursuit of Johnston he wanted to secure overall command of Union forces west of the Appalachians.⁷ “I must have top command of the armies [in this theater],” he wired McClellan on February 20. “Hesitation and delay are losing us the golden opportunity. Lay this before the President and Secretary of War. May I assume command? Answer quickly.”⁸ In effect, Grant and Foote were hostage to Halleck’s ambition. Old Brains instructed Cullum to inform them he was awaiting instructions from the War Department and until then everything should remain “in status quo.”⁹

McClellan, who had not replied to Halleck’s earlier request for supreme command,¹⁰ answered quickly—and the answer was an unequivocal no. McClellan said General Buell in Bowling Green was a better judge of the situation than Halleck in St. Louis, and he declined to present Halleck’s request to Stanton and Lincoln. It was another example of the rivalries bedeviling the Union army in the early years of the war; Little Mac simply was unwilling to advance Halleck’s prospects.^I Commodore Foote, a forty-year veteran of dealing with angleworms in the navy, recognized the problem immediately. “I am disgusted that we were kept from going up and taking Nashville,” he wrote his wife. “It was jealousy on the part of McClellan and Halleck. . . . I shall report McClellan and Halleck to the [Navy] Department, and soon there will be a row.”¹¹

Grant was more tolerant. He had little experience with infighting at upper echelons and he put the best face on the delay he could. “I want to push on as rapidly as possible to save hard fighting,” he wrote Julia on February 24. “Gen. Halleck is clearly the same way of thinking and with his clear head I think the Congressional Committee for investigating the Conduct of the War will have nothing to enquire about in the West.”¹² Throughout his life Grant believed that if he had been permitted to pursue Johnston and destroy the Confederate army piecemeal after the fall of Fort Donelson, the war in the West would have ended in 1862. In his view, Chattanooga, Corinth, Memphis, and Vicksburg were all within reach that spring. Their occupation would have split the South, denied the men and resources of the Mississippi and Tennessee valleys to the Confederacy, and avoided the carnage that followed. “Providence ruled differently,” Grant wrote in his Memoirs. “Time was given the enemy to collect armies and fortify his new positions, and twice afterwards he came near forcing his north-western front up to the Ohio River.”¹³

Halleck’s orders prevented Grant from moving on Nashville, but it was clear the city—with its vast supply depot—was ready for capture. On February 23 a group of Nashville surgeons came downriver to Donelson to treat the Confederate wounded. They told Grant that Johnston had evacuated the city and retreated forty miles southeast to Murfreesboro. Nashville, they said, was rent with violence and they urged Grant to push forward “and restore confidence to the people.”¹⁴ Grant assumed the doctors wanted the Union army to protect private property. Nevertheless, he was champing at the bit.¹⁵ The following day he found deliverance when Brigadier General William “Bull” Nelson arrived at Fort Donelson at the head of a division of Buell’s army that had been sent down the Ohio and up the Cumberland to reinforce Grant if Grant needed reinforcing. The fighting at Donelson had been over for a week and there was no need for another division. Grant ordered Nelson not to debark his troops from their transports but to continue upriver to Nashville. The gunboat Carondelet was attached as escort, and Grant told Nelson to wait in Nashville until Buell arrived. If Grant could not take the Tennessee capital with his own troops, he would take it with Buell’s.¹⁶

Bull Nelson was the man for the job. Six foot five and pushing 300 pounds, the foul-mouthed, hard-driving brigadier shared the fighting spirit of Foote and C. F. Smith. A native of Maysville, Kentucky, he had been appointed a midshipman in the United States Navy in 1840. When the Civil War broke out he was on duty at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., and had been sent by Lincoln to Kentucky to distribute rifles to the state’s loyalists. Nelson proved so effective he was commissioned a brigadier general of volunteers and given command of the 4th Division of Buell’s army. No fight was too big for Nelson and he admired the audacity of Grant’s plan. Told that ammunition for two of his brigades had been sent mistakenly to Cairo, Nelson said not to worry. “I will endeavor to find the enemy with the bayonets of my division.”¹⁷ Since Johnston’s army had evacuated Nashville that proved unnecessary and Nelson took possession of the city late that evening.^II

Buell meanwhile was making his way cautiously toward the Tennessee capital from Bowling Green, encumbered by a massive wagon train, a desire to repair the railroad as he went, and a Jominian determination to secure all avenues of approach before advancing. As a sympathetic historian has written, Buell preferred preparation to execution and it was not until the morning of February 25 that the lead elements of the Army of the Ohio reached the north bank of the Cumberland opposite Nashville.¹⁸ By then Bull Nelson had already secured the city and raised the Stars and Stripes. Buell was furious, humiliated, and panic-stricken. He believed Johnston had upward of 30,000 men ready to pounce on Nelson, while his own troops were still strung out on the march. Thinking a Confederate attack imminent, Buell sent Nelson’s transports downriver to Clarksville with orders for C. F. Smith’s division to rush to Nashville. Buell said Nelson had occupied the city contrary to his wishes, his division was dangerously exposed, and he needed reinforcements immediately.¹⁹ Smith contemptuously told Grant that Buell’s order “is nonsense,” but “of course I must obey.”²⁰

Don Carlos Buell was two years ahead of Grant at West Point and had been brevetted three times for gallantry during the Mexican War. There he acquired a reputation as an effective combat commander and a strict disciplinarian. But for the past thirteen years he had served in the adjutant general’s department. In that assignment Buell became a friend of detail. He grew less daring and the fire in his soul was extinguished.²¹ A close personal friend of McClellan’s for many years, he came to share Little Mac’s view that war involved maneuver, not bloodshed. “The object is not to fight great battles,” Buell wrote in December 1861, “but by demonstrations and maneuvering to prevent the enemy from concentrating his forces.”²² Lincoln once said McClellan suffered from “the slows.” Of Buell it could be said that he suffered from the very slows.²³ With no opposition facing him, he took nine days to move sixty miles from Bowling Green to Nashville. The Confederate army escaped, and Johnston, rather than preparing to attack Nelson, was hanging on for dear life in Murfreesboro, grateful for the opportunity to replenish his supplies and rekindle the spirit of his demoralized troops.²⁴

With Nelson’s division already in Nashville and Smith’s on the way, Grant decided it was time to confer with Buell. Once again, he was pushing the limits of his authority. “I shall go to Nashville immediately after the arrival of the next Mail, should there be no orders to prevent it,” he informed Cullum on February 25.²⁵ Grant waited a day, heard nothing from headquarters, and on the evening of the 26th wrote Julia he was off to Nashville. “Gen. Buell is there, or at least a portion of his command is, and I want to have an interview with the commanding officer and learn what I can of the movements of the enemy.”²⁶ Grant traveled aboard his headquarters steamer, the W.H. Brown, accompanied by his staff, General McClernand, Colonel William H. L. Wallace of the 11th Illinois, and Colonel Jacob Lauman of the 7th Iowa—men who had served together from the time before Belmont. They arrived in Nashville at dawn on the 27th. Grant and his party went ashore only to find that Buell “for security reasons” was still on the north bank of the Cumberland and had not yet entered the city.²⁷ After meeting with Bull Nelson, Grant visited the wounded, paid a courtesy call on the widow of President Polk (a staunch secessionist), and, to the delight of newsmen who enjoyed contrasting him to Buell, moved freely about the city protected only by his adjutant, Captain Rawlins.²⁸

Late in the afternoon, as Grant was returning to the W.H. Brown for the journey back to Fort Donelson, Buell crossed the river to meet him. The encounter was frosty. Buell was annoyed at Grant’s uninvited presence in his department, while Grant, now the tenth-ranking general in the army, was strutting his newly won stars at Buell’s expense.²⁹ Grant noted cuttingly that the only Union troops in Nashville were those he had sent, while the bulk of the Army of the Ohio was still north of the Cumberland. Repeating what he had learned from Nelson, he told Buell that Johnston was retreating as quickly as he could toward the Alabama line. Buell disagreed. There was fighting just ten miles away, he said, and Nashville was in imminent danger of Confederate attack. Grant said the Confederates “were trying to get away from Nashville and not return to it.”³⁰ Buell insisted he was correct and disaster threatened Union forces on the left bank. Grant pointed out that the troops of C. F. Smith’s division were debarking in Nashville at that moment. If Buell found after a day or two he did not need them, would he please send them back.³¹ Grant, after his lightning victories at Henry and Donelson, was uncharacteristically full of himself in his meeting with Buell. Given Grant’s seven years in the wilderness, his euphoria is understandable. But Buell, who was still commander of the Department of the Ohio, thought he was trying to take charge. Grant was correct concerning Johnston’s withdrawal south, but he strained his relationship with Buell to the point that working together afterward became difficult.

Grant’s trip to Nashville served no useful purpose. Halleck, when he learned of the visit, was furious. “I have had no communication with General Grant for more than a week,” he wired McClellan on March 3. “He left his command without my authority and went to Nashville. His army seems to be as much demoralized by the victory of Fort Donelson as was that of the Potomac by the defeat of Bull Run. It is hard to censure a successful general immediately after a victory, but I think he richly deserves it.” Halleck, deskbound in St. Louis and desperate for information, told McClellan that he could get no reports and no returns from Grant: “Satisfied with his victory, he sits down and enjoys it without any regard to the future. I am worn-out and tired with this neglect and inefficiency. C. F. Smith is almost the only officer equal to the emergency.”³²

Halleck was testing the ground with Washington. In his opinion Grant had gotten too big for his britches. But Grant was a national hero and Old Brains was cautious not to take disciplinary action unless he was certain of McClellan’s support. Fortunately for Halleck, Grant’s past had not been forgotten. McClellan still had him pegged as the drunken captain he knew at Fort Vancouver, and he was unforgiving: “The future success of our cause demands that proceedings such as Grant’s should at once be checked. Generals must observe discipline as well as private soldiers. Do not hesitate to arrest him at once if the good of the service requires it, and place C. F. Smith in command. You are at liberty to regard this as a positive order if it will smooth your way.”³³ Like Halleck, McClellan recognized he was playing with dynamite and he too wanted to be covered. Before transmitting his reply to St. Louis the general in chief showed the message to Secretary of War Stanton, and retained a file copy with the word “Approved” written in the secretary’s hand.

With the War Department in his corner, Halleck thought it best to bolster Little Mac’s suspicions. The following day he wrote McClellan, “A rumor has just reached me that since the taking of Fort Donelson General Grant has resumed his former bad habits. If so, it will account for his neglect of my oft-repeated orders. I do not deem it advisable to arrest him at present, but I have placed General Smith in command of the expedition up the Tennessee.”³⁴ There was no substance to the rumor Halleck reported. Lieutenant Colonel James McPherson, who had recently returned to St. Louis for medical treatment after serving on Grant’s staff at Donelson, told Halleck just the opposite.³⁵ Grant was on the wagon and Old Brains knew it. Nevertheless, gossip about Grant’s drinking was commonplace in St. Louis and Halleck apparently assumed it would buttress his position if he passed some of it along.

In part the trouble between Grant and Halleck was due to the inevitable friction that accompanies troop movements in wartime. After Donelson’s surrender, the two men lost contact. For over a week they lost communication without realizing it. On February 25 Halleck instructed Grant to assemble his army at Fort Henry preparatory to moving up the Tennessee.³⁶ Grant did not receive the message and continued to focus on the Cumberland. Halleck thought Nelson’s division was at Clarksville and Smith’s at Fort Henry. Grant, unaware of Halleck’s instructions, sent Nelson to Nashville and acquiesced when Buell called for Smith.

On his part, Grant reported regularly on the status of his command to Cullum in Cairo but the messages were not forwarded to St. Louis. Repeatedly Grant cautioned headquarters about the need for fresh beef and potatoes to curb the dysentery (“the Tennessee quickstep”) that had become prevalent among his troops, and he reported the Nashville deployment of Nelson and Smith as soon as it occurred.³⁷ Halleck was not informed. In effect, both men were operating in the dark. Halleck did not realize Grant had not received his instructions, and Grant, with no orders from St. Louis, was operating as he usually did in such circumstances, seeking out the enemy army and edging toward it.

Much of the difficulty lay with the military telegraph system, which was run by civilian operators outside the jurisdiction of local commanders. The operators reported directly to the superintendent of military telegraphs in Washington, who was answerable only to the secretary of war.^III In his Memoirs Grant wrote that the telegraph operator at Paducah proved to be a Confederate sympathizer who deliberately did not relay Halleck’s messages. Grant claimed the operator deserted his post, taking the messages with him.³⁸ Whatever the reason, there can be no doubt the system was so unreliable that Grant and Halleck simply lost contact.

On March 4, armed with the support of McClellan and Stanton, Halleck wired Grant to place C. F. Smith in command of the expedition up the Tennessee. The object was to destroy Confederate rail and telegraph communications in the vicinity of Eastport and Corinth, Mississippi, and then withdraw. Grant was told to avoid a full-scale engagement. “It will be better to retreat than to risk a general battle.”³⁹ Meanwhile, Grant was to remain at Fort Henry. He was not relieved of command—Halleck scrupulously sent his instructions to Smith through Grant—but he was prevented from leading the troops himself. It was a slap on the wrist. “Why do you not obey my orders to report the strength and positions of your command?” asked Halleck.⁴⁰

For Grant, Halleck’s telegram was a lightning bolt.⁴¹ Until then, he was unaware he had incurred his commander’s displeasure. After returning from Nashville, he had written Julia he considered Halleck “one of the greatest men of the age. There are not two men in the United States who I would prefer serving under to McClellan and Halleck.”⁴² Pulled up short, Grant told Halleck the expedition would be sent under the command of General Smith “as directed.”

Grant had been reprimanded, but remained as aggressive as ever. Halleck envisaged the Tennessee River operation as a hit-and-run raid against rebel communications. Grant converted it into a major offensive. “Information received this morning [indicates that] the force going to Eastport and Corinth must go prepared to meet a force of 20,000 men,” he advised Halleck. “This will take all my available troops.”⁴³ Critics who have doubted Grant’s subtlety should study carefully his message of March 5, 1862. Ordered to move south with a small task force, he managed to send his entire command. He also deflected Halleck’s criticism. “I am not aware of ever having disobeyed any order from Headquarters—certainly never intended any such thing. I have reported almost daily the condition of my command and reported every position occupied. . . . My reports have nearly all been made to General Cullum, chief of staff, and it may be that many of them were not thought of sufficient importance to forward.” For Halleck’s benefit Grant summarized his army’s strength: forty-six infantry regiments, three cavalry regiments, and ten batteries of artillery. “In conclusion, I will say that you may rely on my carrying out your instructions, in every particular, to the very best of my ability.”⁴⁴

Grant had no qualms about entrusting the expedition to C. F. Smith—if that was Halleck’s preference.^IV Looking back on the incident years later, Grant said the general opinion probably was that “Smith’s long services in the army and distinguished deeds rendered him the more proper person for such command. Indeed I was rather inclined to this opinion myself at that time.”⁴⁵ On the evening before the expedition sailed, Grant and Smith walked the deck of the W.H. Brown for several hours. Grant revered Smith, although Dr. Brinton, who observed the scene, thought the admiration was mutual. “I could not help noticing that there was an unconscious deference on the part of Smith to Grant as a soldier. It was apart from rank; it seemed indescribable; but it was there, it was the recognition of the master.”⁴⁶ Grant expressed their relationship best when he said he “would have served as faithfully under Smith as he had done under me.”⁴⁷

At this point Halleck should have let matters rest. But there was a hectoring streak in the department commander. Sherman wrote that Halleck was “working himself into a passion [about Grant], but was too far from the seat of war to make due allowance for the actual state of facts.”⁴⁸ On March 6, after receiving Grant’s reply, Old Brains fired another volley, disingenuously invoking the authority of the War Department:

General McClellan directs that you report daily the number and positions of the forces under your command. Your neglect of repeated orders to report the strength of your command has created great dissatisfaction and seriously interfered with military plans. Your going to Nashville without authority, and when your presence with your troops was of utmost importance, was a matter of very serious complaint at Washington, so much so that I was advised to arrest you on your return.⁴⁹

It was a letter that Halleck, having vented his frustration, should have torn up after writing. Grant’s disappointment turned to anger. Choosing his words carefully he told Halleck he had done everything possible to keep him informed. “I have averaged writing more than once a day, since leaving Cairo, to keep you informed of my position; and it is no fault of mine, if you have not received my letters.” As for his going to Nashville, Grant said the trip “was strictly intended for the good of the service, not to gratify any desire of my own.” Then he raised the ante. “If my course is not satisfactory remove me at once.” Grant said he thought there must be enemies “between you and myself who are trying to impair my usefulness,” and he closed by asking to be relieved from further duty in the department.⁵⁰ Whether Grant did so himself; whether it was Captain Rawlins acting on Grant’s instructions; or whether it was Rawlins acting alone, is not clear, but copies of Halleck’s message of March 6 and Grant’s reply were forwarded immediately to Congressman Elihu Washburne in Washington.⁵¹

The contretemps continued. On March 8 Halleck told Grant “There is no enemy between you and me.” The problem was he and McClellan were still waiting for a status report after Fort Donelson and they were running out of patience. “What is the number and position of your command? Answer by telegraph in general terms.”⁵²

Grant did not realize the various returns he had filed with General Cullum had not arrived in St. Louis, and he was perplexed why Halleck was hounding him. He replied testily that Halleck was better placed to know the size of his command during the fighting at Donelson than he was. “Troops were reporting daily, by your order, and immediately assigned to brigades. There were no orders received from you until the 28th of February to make out returns, and I made every effort to get them in as early as possible. . . . I renew my application to be relieved of further duty.”⁵³

In a separate telegram on March 9 Grant provided Halleck with a summary report. His present for duty strength included 35,147 infantry, 3,169 cavalry, and 12 batteries of field artillery, aggregating 54 pieces and 1,231 men. Of the total, 25,206 were embarked with Smith, and 5,740 were at the landing above Fort Henry awaiting transportation. The remainder were garrisoned at Clarksville and Fort Donelson. Grant said the figures included 7,829 men in a newly organized 5th Division under General William Tecumseh Sherman.⁵⁴

That seemed to end the matter. The lengthy status report Grant mailed from Paducah on March 6 arrived in St. Louis, and Halleck replied soothingly. He told Grant that he may have been partially at fault because he had not enforced discipline sufficiently. “I really felt embarrassed to telegraph back to Washington time and again that I was unable to give the strength of your command.” It was not an apology; as a rule, generals don’t apologize. But it was close to it. Halleck then got down to business. General Samuel Curtis had just routed the Confederate army of Earl Van Dorn at Pea Ridge, Arkansas, and the pressure on Union troops west of the Mississippi had eased. Grant was told reinforcements intended for Curtis were being redirected his way. Halleck said they should be sent up the Tennessee as rapidly as possible. “As soon as these things are arranged you will hold yourself in readiness to take command. There will probably be some desperate fighting . . . and we should be prepared.”⁵⁵

Grant was off the shelf. Or almost off. On March 11 he wrote Smith that reinforcements from Arkansas were on the way and when they arrived Halleck expected him to take the field. “I think it exceedingly doubtful whether I shall accept; certainly not until the object of the expedition is accomplished.”⁵⁶ Grant thought Smith was entitled to finish what he had begun, and he was reluctant to supersede his old mentor. Smith on the other hand was delighted. “I wrote you yesterday to say how glad I was to find that you were to resume your old command from which you were so unceremoniously and (as I think) improperly stricken down.” To reassure Grant, Smith said he would likely have to relinquish command in any event because he had become immobile. “I cannot mount a horse. In jumping into a yawl two days ago I miscalculated the distance and the seat scraped my leg and shin in a rude manner—hurting the bone. I hope for the best but it is with great difficulty that I limp thro’ the cabin from one chair to another.”⁵⁷

The affection between Grant and Smith—similar to that between Grant and Sherman in the later years of the war—contrasts sharply with the backbiting that afflicted less accomplished commanders. It was a relationship that epitomized the military profession at its best. Smith captured the spirit in a letter to a friend, March 17, 1862:

The public are all astray about General Grant. His habits (drink) are unexceptionable. His absence during the [Donelson] engagement to see Flag Officer Foote was explained to the satisfaction of General Halleck, and his going to Nashville was perfectly proper if he thought fit to go. The reason why both McClellan and Halleck were down upon him was they had no information for two weeks, although he always wrote once and sometimes twice or thrice a day and sent daily reports of the strength of his force. Why these reports were not received is not known, but the moment Halleck had Grant’s explanation he was restored to command.

Grant is a very modest person. From awe of me—he was one of my pupils from 1838 to 1842 (I think)—he dislikes to give me an order and says I ought to be in his place. Fancy his surprise when he received no communication from the General for two weeks after the fall of Donelson, and then a telegram of bitterest rebuke! He showed it to me in utter amazement, wondering at the cause, as well he might.⁵⁸

Halleck’s timely reinstatement of Grant preceded by one day the bombshell that landed on his desk from the adjutant general in Washington. Elihu Washburne had not been idle. As soon as he got word of the fracas between Halleck and Grant he made a beeline to the White House. Grant was Washburne’s man and he was not going to let him be pushed aside. Lincoln needed no convincing. Desperate to find a general who would fight, the president had developed a quick affection for the man who demanded “unconditional surrender.” A year earlier, Lincoln would have let matters in the military take their course. Now, he intervened immediately. “By direction of the President,” General Lorenzo Thomas wired Halleck, “the Secretary of War desires you to ascertain and report whether General Grant left his command at any time without proper authority, and if so, for how long; whether he has made to you proper reports and returns of his force; whether he had committed any acts which were unauthorized or not in accordance with military subordination or propriety, and, if so, what.”⁵⁹

Halleck ran for cover. Grant, he told Thomas, explained everything satisfactorily. He had gone to Nashville with “good intentions” and acted “from a praiseworthy although mistaken zeal for the public service. I respectfully recommend that no further notice be taken of it.” Halleck said Grant made all of the required reports; he simply had not received them. And “there never has been any want of military subordination on the part of Genl Grant.” Whatever irregularities there might have been in his command “have now been remedied.”⁶⁰

That ought to have ended it. But on March 13 Grant received a belated letter of harsh criticism Halleck had written during his funk the previous week.⁶¹ Grant wired back heatedly asking for a third time “to be relieved from further duty.”⁶² Halleck, who recognized the mail had been delayed and that the letter to which Grant was responding was out of date, was unruffled. “You cannot be relieved from your command,” he wired back. “There is no good reason for it. I am certain that all which the authorities in Washington ask, is, that you enforce discipline and punish the disorderly. The power is in your hands; use it, and you will be sustained by all above you. Instead of relieving you, I wish you, as soon as your new army is in the field, to assume the immediate command and lead it on to new victories.”⁶³

The pieces were back in place. Grant told Halleck he would resume command “and give every effort to the success of our cause.”⁶⁴ Over the years that followed, Grant grew increasingly bitter about his treatment after Donelson. In his Memoirs he wrote he was “virtually in arrest and without a command.”⁶⁵ That was not true. And the fact is Grant benefited from the experience. He immediately reorganized his staff and assigned each member specific duties to insure the reports required by higher headquarters were filed on time.⁶⁶ He personally undertook to write the essential dispatches from the field, which became markedly crisper and more businesslike. And he learned to weather criticism. Grant was always ready to meet the enemy in his front; the post-Donelson period taught him to withstand attacks from his rear. Even more important, he was brought back to earth. Grant’s brief bout with obscurity was a happy accident. The two weeks’ punishment Halleck administered restored his perspective.

On March 16 Grant headed upriver to rejoin his command. “What you may look for is hard to say,” he wrote Julia. “Possibly a big fight. I have already been in so many that it begins to feel like home to me.”⁶⁷ Halleck, who had finally realized his dream of commanding all Union forces in the West,^V may have trembled at the thought of unleashing his action-prone subordinate. Before sending him off, he warned Grant against anything rash. “As the enemy is evidently in strong force, my instructions not to advance so as to bring on an engagement must be strictly obeyed.” Halleck said Buell was coming to join forces and that 10,000 to 15,000 additional reinforcements would soon be en route from Missouri. “We must strike no blow till we are strong enough to admit no doubt of the result.”⁶⁸

After an overnight boat trip Grant arrived at C. F. Smith’s headquarters in Savannah, Tennessee—a small village on the east bank of the Tennessee River, 100 miles above Fort Henry and twenty-eight miles from the all-important rail junction of Corinth, Mississippi: the point at which the north–south Mobile & Ohio Railroad intersected with the east–west Memphis & Charleston line. These were the two principal railroads in the Mississippi Valley. Grant found Smith eager to see him but hobbling badly on his injured leg. His condition was worsening, exacerbated by a recurrence of the erysipelas he had contracted in Mexico fourteen years earlier. Nevertheless, Smith’s ardor was intact. “I occasionally send out a few thousand men to look at the enemy in the direction of Corinth and wake them up,” he told Grant.⁶⁹ “By God, I ask nothing better than to have the rebels come out and attack us! We can whip them to hell.”⁷⁰

Grant’s army, soon to be known as the Army of the Tennessee, consisted of five divisions. The 1st and 2nd divisions, veteran units commanded by McClernand and Smith, were encamped near Savannah, Tennessee. Lew Wallace’s 3rd Division, another veteran force, was across the river at Crump’s Landing, six miles upstream. Also on the west bank, nine miles upstream at Pittsburg Landing, were the army’s two newest divisions, the 4th under Brigadier General Stephen A. Hurlbut, and the 5th under Sherman. Neither had fought at Donelson, yet Smith, trusting to Sherman’s experience, placed them closest to the enemy at Corinth. Recognizing the faulty deployment of his army—half on one side of the Tennessee, half on the other—Grant ordered the 1st and 2nd divisions to Pittsburg Landing.⁷¹

The site had been selected by Sherman the week before. “The ground itself admits of easy defense by a small command, and yet affords admirable camping ground for a hundred-thousand men.”⁷² Grant took Sherman’s word for it. Pittsburg Landing was no more than a good day’s march from Corinth, and landing sites on the west bank of the Tennessee were few and far between. The landing was narrow—no more than five vessels could dock at the same time—but it offered easy access up a steep bluff to a broad plateau covered with old-growth hardwood timber, interrupted by scattered clearings cut by farmers for orchards and crops. Some fields were as large as seventy or eighty acres, some no larger than three or four.⁷³ Numerous paths and wagon trails crisscrossed the area, and the flanks were protected by Lick Creek and Owl Creek, each of which emptied into the Tennessee.⁷⁴ The creeks were roughly three miles apart and ran parallel to each other for about five miles. Both were swollen with spring rains and impassable. The area between the creeks, a rough quadrilateral, sloped gently away from the bluff at the river’s edge. Any rebel attack would have to be made uphill through the three-mile gap between the creeks. The Union encampment was a natural fortification: hard to assail, easy to defend. When Grant saw it, he hastened the movement of the 1st and 2nd divisions from Savannah, and, with reinforcements arriving daily, created a 6th Division under Brigadier General Benjamin Prentiss, which he told Sherman to deploy as he deemed best.

On March 18 Grant thought he discovered an opening that would allow him to take the offensive. Halleck telegraphed from St. Louis that the Confederates had moved away from Corinth, intending to cut Grant’s supply line somewhere between Savannah and Fort Henry. “If so, Genl Smith should immediately destroy R.R. connexion at Corinth.”⁷⁵ Grant knew the Confederates were not attempting any such thing. But Halleck’s instructions to destroy the rail junction at Corinth sounded like an authorization to attack. Grant ordered Smith to prepare the command at Pittsburg Landing to march at a moment’s notice, “three days rations in Haversacks, and seven in wagons.”⁷⁶ Then he wired Halleck: “Immediate preparations will be made to execute your perfectly feasible order. I will go in person, leaving General McClernand in command here.”⁷⁷

Halleck saw through Grant’s gambit. “Keep your forces together until you connect with Buell,” he shot back. “Don’t let the enemy draw you into an engagement now. Wait until you are properly reinforced and you receive orders.”⁷⁸ Even without Halleck’s admonition, Grant’s effort to move against Corinth in mid-March would have been difficult. Spring rains rendered the roads impassable for his artillery, and Confederate troop trains were arriving daily with reinforcements. Grant estimated the rebel force at 30,000. He told Halleck “this would indicate that Corinth cannot be taken without a general engagement, which from your instructions is to be avoided.” Grant said he would sit tight at Pittsburg Landing until he received further orders.⁷⁹ “The temper of the rebel troops is such that there is little doubt but that Corinth will fall much more easily than Donelson did, when we do move. All accounts agree in saying that the great mass of the Rank and file are heartily tired.”⁸⁰ Writing to Smith two days later Grant expressed his impatience at the restrictions Halleck imposed. “I do not hear one word from St. Louis,” he complained. “I am clearly of the opinion that the enemy are gathering strength at Corinth quite as rapidly as we are here, and the sooner we attack the easier will be the task of taking the place.”⁸¹ Grant saw opportunity slipping away. While Halleck cautiously waited for the even more cautious Buell to reach Pittsburg Landing, Johnston was massing his army at Corinth.

When Fort Donelson fell on February 16 the Confederate position was desperate. Hardee’s bedraggled force was moving retrograde from Bowling Green and Nashville toward Decatur, Alabama, hoping to reach the Memphis–Charleston railroad before the Union army overtook them. Two hundred miles to the west, Beauregard was retreating with another 10,000 men. Both Grant and Buell were between the two Confederate armies, and both were closer to Corinth than either Beauregard or Hardee. But the advantage was wasted. Halleck hesitated while the South, confronted with disaster, moved quickly. Major General Braxton Bragg, with 10,000 troops scattered along the Gulf Coast between Pass Christian and Pensacola, was ordered north to Corinth forthwith. So was Brigadier General Daniel Ruggles with 5,000 men from New Orleans. Across the Mississippi, Van Dorn was instructed to march the survivors of Pea Ridge to Memphis, where boxcars were waiting to rush them to Corinth. Added to the forces of Beauregard and Hardee, the Confederates planned to assemble almost 60,000 men at Corinth—less than Grant and Buell combined, but substantially more than either on their own. It was a race against time. If Johnston could concentrate his force before Buell reached the Tennessee, he would attack Grant, destroy his six divisions, and then move against Buell. Grant had the opportunity to defeat the separate wings of the Confederate army after Donelson but was restrained from doing so. Now Johnston was about to turn the tables. In six weeks he had nudged the Confederacy from the rim of certain defeat to the threshold of victory.

While the Confederates were converging on Corinth, Buell was inching his way across central Tennessee. Lead elements of the Army of the Ohio departed Nashville on March 16, and although Halleck had instructed Buell to link up with Grant “as rapidly as possible,”⁸² ten days later the army was still on the outskirts of the state capital. Part of the problem was Buell’s inbred caution, plus a grudging reluctance to speed to Grant’s support. A more formidable obstacle was the rain-swollen Duck River at Columbia, forty-two miles south. Retreating Confederates had burned the only bridge and Buell, who had prepared for almost every contingency, ironically neglected bridging equipment.⁸³ For more than a week 37,000 troops idled their time while inexperienced engineers wrestled with the task of bridging the river.⁸⁴ Buell insisted on building a permanent replacement, and on March 27 he wired Halleck the project was more complicated than anticipated. The bridge probably would not be finished until March 31.⁸⁵ Neither Buell nor Halleck seemed concerned, nor for that matter was Grant.⁸⁶ It was also on the afternoon of March 27 that Buell learned Grant was no longer at Savannah but had moved his army across the Tennessee and was encamped at Pittsburg Landing. Buell was surprised, but once again he was not concerned.⁸⁷ The fact is neither he, nor Halleck, nor Grant, nor any of Grant’s division commanders believed they were in the slightest danger from Johnston’s army at Corinth. As Grant subsequently noted, “I regarded the campaign we were engaged in as an offensive one and had no idea that the enemy would leave strong entrenchments to take the initiative when he knew he would be attacked where he was if he remained.”⁸⁸

Bull Nelson was an exception to the prevailing Union consensus. The not-so-genial giant was sitting on the north bank of the Duck River on the afternoon of March 27 watching the bridge-building efforts when he learned that the Tennessee no longer stood between Johnston and Grant. “By God,” he exclaimed to a startled staff officer, “we must cross that river at once [pointing to the Duck] or Grant will be whipped.”⁸⁹ Nelson galloped off to Buell’s headquarters and eventually obtained permission for his division to ford the unbridged stream. That night Nelson assembled his brigade commanders. They would cross at dawn on the morning of the 29th, he told them.

“Will the bridge be completed?” asked Colonel Jacob Ammen, an old soldier (West Point 1831) commanding the 10th Brigade.

“No,” said Nelson.

“Are there boats?” Ammen inquired.

“No,” Nelson responded, “but the river is falling, and damn you, get over for we must lead the advance and get the glory.”⁹⁰

The Duck was a sprawling flood 200 yards wide, and at dawn on the 29th the men of Nelson’s 4th Division stripped to their underdrawers and waded into the waist-deep water.^VI Miraculously they made it across without the loss of a single man or wagon. The remainder of the army followed. Savannah was eighty-two miles away and the roads were wretched, but Nelson’s division set a fast pace. On his own authority Nelson sent his cavalry ahead to secure every remaining bridge between Columbia and Savannah, determined to link up with Grant before Johnston could attack. After a series of forced marches, the 4th Division cleared Waynesboro on April 3. The Tennessee River was thirty miles away. Nelson wired Grant he would reach Savannah on Saturday morning, April 5. Grant said not to hurry. Boats would not be available to ferry Buell’s army across the river until the 8th. Nelson ignored the message and continued to press full speed ahead.⁹¹

It was also on April 3—with Nelson thirty miles from Savannah—that Albert Sidney Johnston put his army in motion toward Pittsburg Landing. Van Dorn’s legion had not arrived, but the Army of the Mississippi, as Johnston’s force was called, numbered 43,968 men present for duty (out of about 56,000 on the muster rolls). This was the largest Confederate concentration thus far, and about 6,000 more combatants than Grant commanded.^VII Numbers were not everything, however. Half of Grant’s men were victorious veterans of Fort Donelson and Fort Henry; whereas only a sprinkling of the Southerners had seen combat, either at Belmont or with Forrest’s cavalry regiment. The Union army was better armed, better clothed, and better fed. Artillery was distributed more or less equally, each army boasting about 110 pieces, but the Federal tubes were professionally cast by experienced munition makers, while most of Johnston’s cannons were homemade.⁹² Only in spirit had the Confederates regained an edge. “You can but march to a decisive victory over the agrarian mercenaries sent to subjugate and despoil you of your liberties, property, and honor,” Johnston exhorted the army as it moved out. “Remember the dependence of your mothers, your wives, your sisters, and your children on the result; remember the fair, broad, abounding land, the happy homes and the ties that would be desolated by your defeat. The eyes and hopes of eight millions of people rest upon you.”⁹³

The key to Johnston’s strategy was surprise: to hit Grant before he knew what was coming. To accomplish that Johnston divided his army into four corps: 10,000 men under Major General Leonidas Polk, still on leave from the Army of the Lord; 16,000 under Bragg; 9,000 under Hardee; and 7,000 under Brigadier General John C. Breckinridge, who had served as Buchanan’s vice president from 1857 to 1861, and who was the Southern Democrats’ nominee for president in 1860. Beauregard would serve as deputy army commander, Bragg as chief of staff. Johnston planned to move quickly from Corinth along two separate roads on April 3, converge southwest of Pittsburg Landing at dusk, and attack the Union camp at dawn on the 4th. His intention was to turn Grant’s left flank, drive him away from the Tennessee, cut off his retreat, and pin him against Owl Creek, where he would be obliged to surrender.⁹⁴

Nothing went as planned. Polk’s lead corps did not get underway until noon on the third. Hardee, jammed up behind, was twelve hours late leaving and Bragg was even later. By noon of the 4th his corps was only halfway from Corinth to the rendezvous point. Breckinridge’s corps did not even clear Corinth until dawn on the 4th. Recognizing that his forces would not be in place in time, Johnston postponed the attack for a day. But on the evening of the 4th it began to rain, a Mississippi torrential rain. Roads washed out and troop columns were unable to move. Once more Johnston postponed the attack. Not until sundown on the 5th was the Army of the Mississippi in position to attack.

Having conquered the elements, Johnston faced a crisis among his subordinates. With the army poised to assault, Beauregard decided the approach had taken too long. “There is no chance for surprise. They will be entrenched to their eyes.”⁹⁵ Beauregard thought the offensive should be canceled and the entire army returned to Corinth. Bragg initially agreed. Provisions were low and he too thought the element of surprise had been lost. Johnston listened courteously, then said he still hoped to find the enemy unprepared. “Gentlemen, we shall attack at daylight tomorrow.”⁹⁶ It was a momentous decision—the type commanding generals are expected to make. Beauregard and Bragg were soldiers of proven ability and high moral courage. Yet Johnston was confident of victory. “Tomorrow at twelve o’clock we will water our horses in the Tennessee River.”⁹⁷

Grant was caught napping. At Belmont he had not anticipated a rebel counterattack. At Donelson he had been absent with Foote when the Confederates came out of their lines. Again at Shiloh he was not ready. Grant’s experience in Mexico served him poorly on these occasions, for he never credited the enemy with a capacity to take the offensive. C. F. Smith shared that prejudice. He thought they would have to march to Corinth and “root the badger out of his hole.”⁹⁸ Sherman, whose division fronted the Federal position, agreed. On April 5 he reported “All is quiet along my lines. I have no doubt that nothing will occur today. . . . I do not apprehend anything like an attack on our position.”⁹⁹ When a colonel of volunteers nervously reported Confederate infantry massing in the woods, Sherman contemptuously told him to “Take your damn regiment back to Ohio. Beauregard is not such a fool as to leave his base of operations and attack us in ours.”¹⁰⁰ That evening Grant wired Halleck, “I have scarcely the faintest idea of an attack (general one) being made upon us, but will be prepared should such a thing take place.”¹⁰¹ Unbeknownst to Grant, the Army of the Mississippi had advanced undetected twenty-three miles from Corinth. It had been three days on the road with all of its accoutrements and impedimenta, its march discipline lax, its inexperience evident, yet it was drawn up in line of battle two miles from the Union encampment. Rebel pickets were so close that evening they could hear Sherman’s drums beat the tattoo. In the distance, a Yankee band sounded the melancholy strains of “Home Sweet Home.”¹⁰²

The five divisions of Grant’s army at Pittsburg Landing were drawn up like the five spot in a set of dominoes. It was not a tactical arrangement designed for mutual support but rather for comfort and convenience, the various division camps selected because of the availability of fresh water and open fields for drilling. Sherman and Prentiss occupied the front between Owl and Lick creeks, McClernand’s 1st Division was in the middle, and the 2nd and 4th divisions held the rear. Smith’s health had deteriorated to the point he could no longer take the field and command of the 2nd Division was entrusted to Brigadier General William H. L. Wallace.

The magnitude of the Union encampment awed recruits and veterans alike. “There is no end to the tents,” a Michigan soldier wrote his parents. “We can see them scattered in all directions as far as we can see.”¹⁰³ An Iowa volunteer thought the camp had the appearance of “a gigantic picnic.”¹⁰⁴ An Illinois infantryman concurred. “The scene reminds one of a camp meeting, only on a very large scale. No doubt a ‘looker-on’ would be led to think war ‘a glorious thing.’ ”¹⁰⁵ A holiday atmosphere prevailed. Spring had arrived, a light foliage covered the trees, and peach orchards turned pink with blossoms. Drill was light and men lulled themselves playing cards and dice, pitching horseshoes, writing letters, reading old newspapers, and browsing about numerous peddler wagons that attended the camp.¹⁰⁶ Overconfidence was pervasive. “I think the rebellion is getting nearly played out, and I expect we will be home soon,” an Ohio soldier wrote his brother and sister on March 27.¹⁰⁷ Smith had chosen not to dig in or fortify the encampment. “Our men have come here to fight, and if we begin to spade it will make them think we fear the enemy.”¹⁰⁸ Sherman said the purpose was to move forward, “not to fortify our camps against attack. Such a course would have made our raw men timid.”¹⁰⁹ When Grant arrived he directed Colonel James McPherson, the senior engineer officer, to lay out a line of entrenchments. But when McPherson reported the best location was to the rear of the campsite, Grant dismissed the matter.¹¹⁰

Grant retained his headquarters at Savannah but spent each day at Pittsburg Landing. In his Memoirs he acknowledged he should have moved his operations forward sooner, but was waiting for Buell and believed Savannah, which had become the major Union supply point on the upper Tennessee, was the best place to meet. On the night of April 4, during the same heavy rainstorm that delayed Johnston, Grant was inspecting his perimeter when his horse lost its footing and fell, pinning him beneath it. “The extreme softness of the ground, from the excessive rains, no doubt saved me from a severe injury. As it was, my ankle was very much injured, so much so that my boot had to be cut off. For two or three days after I was unable to walk except with crutches.”¹¹¹

Because of his injury Grant remained in Savannah Saturday morning, April 5. Nelson reported at noon, requesting permission to march on and establish his division at Pittsburg Landing. “Not immediately,” Grant replied. “Encamp for the present at Savannah.” Nelson was churning like a riverboat and asked Grant if he was not concerned about Johnston attacking. “The wonder to me is that he has not done so before.” Grant replied casually that he had more men at Pittsburg Landing than at Fort Donelson and they could hold their own. Smith, who was sitting nearby, reassured Nelson the rebels were still in Corinth and unlikely to come out.¹¹² When Colonel Ammen, commanding Nelson’s lead brigade, volunteered that his men were not tired and could easily push on, Grant told them to relax. Ammen, like Grant, hailed from Georgetown, Ohio. He had taught Grant mathematics at West Point and later approved his appointment as an instructor. They were well acquainted and spoke freely. Grant told Ammen, “You cannot march through the swamps [from Savannah to Pittsburg Landing]. Make the troops comfortable. I will send boats for you Monday or Tuesday, or sometime early in the week. There will be no fight at Pittsburg Landing. We will have to go to Corinth, where the rebels are fortified.”¹¹³

So much for Union awareness. Johnston’s luck was holding. Just before first light on Sunday, April 6, the Confederate picket line moved forward. Johnston delegated to Beauregard the task of drawing the attack plan and that may have been his first mistake. Known as Special Orders No. 8, it was modeled on Napoleon’s blueprint for the battle of Waterloo.¹¹⁴ Common sense suggests Beauregard should have recalled what happened to Napoleon at Waterloo, but like most West Pointers he was mesmerized by the military reputation of the emperor. (Curiously, the stodgy tenacity of the Duke of Wellington never excited much respect at West Point, although it was exactly this trait in Grant that prevailed at Shiloh.) Like Napoleon, Beauregard aligned the four Confederate corps in echelon rather than side by side. Normally, three corps would have been abreast with the fourth in reserve. In Beauregard’s view such an alignment would have diminished the shock of the attack, and, with Johnston’s approval, he stacked the corps one behind the other. This would permit the Confederate attack to come in successive waves as each corps advanced. Beauregard spoke euphorically of “an Alpine avalanche.”

Aside from its romanticism, the plan posed two major problems. First, each corps would be operating over the same area. Units would become intermingled, rendering command and control difficult. Second, the tandem deployment of the corps minimized the amount of artillery that initially could be brought to bear on the enemy. Each corps moved with its own guns, and when the first wave went forward only the guns of that corps were available. By contrast, a side-by-side deployment would have allowed all 110 Confederate guns to open on the Union position simultaneously.