Loss of hope is worse than loss of men and land. It was the moral effect, above all, which made Vicksburg the great turning point of the war.
LIDDELL HART
GRANT WASTED LITTLE TIME before following up his victory at Vicksburg. No sooner had the celebration died down the afternoon of July 4 than the 13th Corps, now under Edward Ord, was sent marching to join Sherman. General Joseph E. Johnston, with an army that now exceeded 30,000 men, was coiled somewhere between Vicksburg and Jackson, and Grant wanted to dispose of him before he could strike. “Drive him out in your own way,” Grant told Sherman, “and inflict on the enemy all the punishment you can.”1 This was a new style of warfare. The days of measured combat were past; Grant was unleashing Sherman to do his damnedest.
At the same time, two additional divisions were dispatched southward to assist Banks at Port Hudson. That effort proved unnecessary. When the Confederate garrison downriver learned that Vicksburg had fallen, they surrendered unconditionally on July 9. The following week the steamboat Imperial tied up at the wharf in New Orleans, arriving direct from St. Louis after an undisturbed trip down the Mississippi. “The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea,” President Lincoln announced.2 The South had been split in two.
West of the Mississipi—now virtually an autonomous region—a badly outnumbered Confederate force commanded by Edmund Kirby Smith kept the Union at bay in Arkansas and Texas, while Richard Taylor rode roughshod over Yankee forces in western Louisiana. But despite Confederate success, the trans-Mississippi was a sideshow. The principal fight would be waged in the East, where Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was ensconced once more below the Rapidan, Bragg’s formidable Army of Tennessee stood between Union forces and Chattanooga, and Joseph E. Johnston, with a newly raised Army of the Mississippi, was poised less than fifty miles east of Vicksburg.
While Grant was contemplating his next move, Sherman made quick work of Johnston, who pulled back to Jackson as soon as he got word of Vicksburg’s surrender. Sherman’s forces enjoyed a two-to-one numerical advantage and by July 11 Union troops had invested the Mississippi capital on three sides and severed the city’s rail links with the outside world. A brief frontal attack on July 12 proved costly—Johnston was dangerous when cornered—and Sherman settled in for a siege, moving slowly and deliberately to cut the rebels’ avenue of retreat eastward. Johnston, who had hoped to lure Sherman into another frontal attack, realized the game was up and during the night of July 16 stole away across the Pearl River in a withdrawal that for its effectiveness rivaled Beauregard’s departure from Corinth a year earlier. Unlike Pemberton, Johnston saved his army with all of its artillery and heavy equipment. The price was the abandonment of central Mississippi to the Union army. During the brief siege of Jackson the Confederates lost 604 men, Sherman twice that many. Yet as one historian has written, Johnston’s retreat from Jackson came as icing on the cake of Grant’s Vicksburg campaign.3 “Grant is my man,” the president declared, “and I am his the rest of the war.”4
The emergence of Grant was a godsend for Lincoln. “He is a copious worker, and fighter,” the president confided to another officer, “but a very meagre writer, or telegrapher.”5 That was a new experience for Lincoln. The president said that unlike other generals, Grant “doesn’t worry and bother me. He isn’t shrieking for reinforcements all the time. He takes what troops we can safely give him . . . and does the best he can with what he has got.”6 Lincoln’s description was accurate enough. What few recognized was that Grant’s attitude had been nurtured fifteen years earlier in Mexico watching the way Zachary Taylor operated. In fact, the words used by Lincoln to describe Grant are virtually identical to those chosen by Grant to depict Taylor.7 Perhaps the best example of Grant’s attitude involved his unquestioning acceptance of Lincoln’s policies on emancipation and the recruitment of Negro troops. Unlike McClellan and Buell, Grant dismissed whatever personal doubts he may have had and pitched in wholeheartedly. When Halleck instructed him to assist Lorenzo Thomas, the adjutant general, in enlisting freed slaves, Grant said frankly, “I never was an abolitionist, nor even what could be called anti-slavery. [However,] you may rely upon it I will give him all the aid in my power. I would do this whether arming the negro seemed to me a wise policy or not, because it is an order that I am bound to obey and I do not feel that in my position I have a right to question any policy of the government.”8
Grant’s forthright approach endeared him to Lincoln. The result was that shortly after Vicksburg the president toyed with the idea of bringing him east to command the Army of the Potomac. George Meade had held the line magnificently at Gettysburg, but in the aftermath of battle he allowed Lee’s army to escape. Lincoln was grateful for the victory but despondent there had been no pursuit.9 Grant seemed to be the answer. Assistant Secretary of War Charles Dana, back in Washington after Vicksburg, wrote Grant in late July to apprise him of what was afoot. Halleck likewise sounded Grant out, although the general in chief had already advised Lincoln he was certain Grant would prefer to remain in the West. On August 5, 1863, Grant made it official. Writing to Dana, Grant said, “General Halleck and yourself were both very right in supposing it would cause me more sadness than satisfaction to be ordered to the command of the Army of the Potomac. Here I know the officers and men and what each general is capable of. . . . There I would have all to learn. Here I know the geography of the country and its resources. There it would be a new study. Besides, more or less dissatisfaction would necessarily be produced by importing a general to command an army already well supplied with those who have grown up, and been promoted, within it.” Grant said if ordered he would comply. But he hoped it would not come to that.10
Grant’s reluctance to go east carried the day. But for the time being he was without a mission. In late July he suggested to the War Department that the next target should be Mobile, Alabama—the last deep water port available to the Confederacy on the Gulf Coast east of the Mississippi—and he offered to send Sherman or McPherson to command the operation. Once Mobile was taken the army could move north against Bragg.11 The suggestion made sense militarily, but by this time President Lincoln had become preoccupied with the worsening situation in Mexico.
When the Civil War began, Benito Juárez, newly elected head of the Mexican government, had declared a two-year moratorium on the payment of foreign debt. Britain, Spain, and France intervened militarily and obtained satisfaction, whereupon Britain and Spain withdrew their troops but France did not. Attracted by the wealth of Mexico, Napoleon III (whose sympathies lay with the Confederacy) chose to pursue the course of empire, confident the United States would be powerless to intervene. French occupation forces swelled to 35,000, and in the spring of 1863 the emperor’s army set off from the coast to Mexico City as Winfield Scott had done in 1847. In June the Mexican capital fell to the French, and Napoleon installed Austrian Archduke Maximilian as emperor of Mexico. Aside from the obvious violation of the Monroe Doctrine, Lincoln was concerned about the establishment of a pro-Confederate French satellite on America’s southern flank. Napoleon III had been quietly advocating European intervention in the Civil War for the past two years, and the president wanted to defend the Rio Grande boundary should France decide to move north. As a result, the expedition against Mobile was stillborn.
On August 6 Halleck wired Grant, “There are important reasons why our flag should be restored to some part of Texas without delay. . . . On this matter we have no choice, but must carry out the views of the Government.”12 Ord’s 13th Corps was ordered downriver to New Orleans, and Banks was told to secure the border with Mexico as quickly as possible.13 Grant was disappointed, but Lincoln took it upon himself to pull the sting. “I see by a dispatch of yours that you incline quite strongly toward an expedition against Mobile. That would appear tempting to me also were it not that, in view of recent events in Mexico, I am greatly impressed with the importance of reestablishing national authority in western Texas as soon as possible.”14
Grant spent the remainder of the summer marking time. In July, Halleck asked both him and Sherman for their opinion concerning civil government in the occupied South. “Write me your views,” urged the general in chief, “I may wish to use them with the President.”15 Characteristically, Sherman took a hard line. “I would not coax them, or even meet them halfway, but make them so sick of war that generations would pass before they would again appeal to it.”16
By contrast, Grant inclined toward reconciliation. Like Lincoln, he understood the need to bring the defeated states back into the Union. “The people of these states,” he wrote, “are beginning to see how much they need the protection of Federal laws and institutions. They have experienced the misfortune of being without them, and are now in a most happy condition to appreciate the blessings.”17 Grant said he agreed with Sherman that they should destroy the rebel armies, but “I think we should do it with terms held out that by accepting they could receive the protection of our laws.”18
Grant’s sympathetic approach helped to turn the tide of public opinion in Memphis, a city that had been among the most devoted to the Confederacy. On August 25 the board of trade hosted a dinner in his honor, and on the next night the mayor and city council followed suit. Grant was presented to the 200 guests with the toast, “Your Grant and my Grant,” in which his reopening of the Mississippi to commerce was compared to the exploits of two other local heroes, Hernando de Soto and Robert Fulton. Grant declined to speak on both occasions, but at the second banquet General Stephen Hurlbut, the Memphis commander, read a brief statement Grant had written thanking the citizens for their kindness and expressing his pleasure at the public exhibition of loyalty to the United States. “The stability of this Government and the unity of this nation depend solely on the cordial support and the earnest loyalty of the people. . . . I am profoundly gratified at this public recognition, in the city of Memphis, of the power and authority of the Government of the United States.” When Hurlbut concluded, the audience gave Grant a prolonged standing ovation.19
From Memphis Grant went downriver to New Orleans, where he arrived on September 2. Two days later General Banks staged a massive review in his honor, Ord’s 13th Corps and the Gulf Department’s 19th Corps marching past. As Ord’s veterans went by, moving with that loose, easy stride that marked the Army of the Tennessee, Grant was deeply affected. Ordinarily he cared little for military pageantry, but as each set of regimental colors passed, adorned with the names of recent upriver victories, he lifted his hat in heartfelt tribute, his eyes moist with feeling.20 Riding back to his hotel afterward, Grant’s borrowed mount shied when an approaching locomotive sounded a piercing whistle. The horse lost its footing and fell, knocking Grant unconscious and severely injuring his left side and leg. General Lorenzo Thomas, who was present, wrote in his diary that Grant’s horse “threw him over with great violence. The General who is a splendid rider maintained his seat in the saddle, and the horse fell upon him.”21 Almost immediately word spread that Grant was inebriated and had fallen from his horse in a drunken stupor. It was even said the fall occurred during the review. Grant knew nothing of this at the time, and was carried to the nearby St. Charles Hotel, where he regained consciousness somewhat later to find several doctors hovering over him.22 “My knee was swollen from the leg to the thigh, and the swelling, almost to the point of bursting, extended along the body up to the armpit. The pain was almost beyond endurance. I lay in the hotel something over a week without being able to turn myself in bed.”23
While Grant was confined to bed, first in New Orleans and then back in Vicksburg, disaster visited Union forces in Tennessee. Throughout the spring of 1863 Washington had pressed Rosecrans to take the offensive against Bragg. Finally on August 4 Halleck peremptorily ordered him to advance “without further delay,” and to report daily on the progress he had made. Thus prompted, Rosecrans moved adroitly in late August to force the Confederates back on Chattanooga. Bragg chose to withdraw rather than give battle, and on September 9 Rosecrans entered the Lookout City at the head of 60,000 men without having fired a shot. Encouraged by this initial success, Rosecrans plunged ahead and by September 18 had advanced fifteen miles through the mountainous terrain south of Chattanooga to the vicinity of Chickamauga Creek. The commander of the Army of the Cumberland assumed Bragg was in headlong retreat and that the road to Atlanta lay open. Union troops were strung out along a loosely organized front thirty miles wide with little heed paid to Confederate movements. In effect, the usually cautious Rosecrans was overextending himself. Unbeknownst to Union intelligence, Bragg had been heavily reinforced during the past two weeks with veteran troops from throughout the South, including two divisions of Longstreet’s splendid corps from the Army of Northern Virginia.24 Rather than retreating toward Atlanta, Bragg stood poised with 65,000 battle-hardened troops itching to attack the disjointed Union position and cut Rosecrans to pieces.
On September 18 the Confederate counterattack commenced. For three days the desperately bloody battle of Chickamauga raged on, total losses on both sides approaching the staggering figure of 38,000. On September 18 and 19, the fighting was bitterly contested all along the front with neither side gaining an advantage. But on the 20th, Longstreet, with five rebel divisions in tow, broke through the Union line in front of him and split Rosecrans’s army in two. Panic set in on the Union right as troops fled the battlefield in demoralized confusion. Rosecrans was overcome by the catastrophe and, believing his army destroyed, joined the retreat to Chattanooga hoping to salvage what was possible. The disaster would have been complete had not George Thomas, commanding the Union left, stood his ground tenaciously, beating back assault after assault until nightfall. With skill and determination Thomas held his corps in place, resisting the combined efforts of both Confederate wings to sweep the field. “This army does not retreat,” said the imperturbable Virginian, earning him the name by which he would be known thereafter: “The Rock of Chickamauga.”25 In a tribute to Thomas’s gallant stand, Lincoln said that it was doubtful “whether his heroism and skill . . . has ever been surpassed.”26
The defeat on Chickamauga Creek, coming on the heels of Union victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg, caused immediate consternation in Washington. Rumors that Rosecrans was preparing to evacuate Chattanooga swirled menacingly, and the momentum of the war seemed perilously close to shifting once more in favor of the Confederacy. To all but a handful of friends and partisans, it was clear that Rosecrans was unequal to the crisis. Dana, who witnessed the debacle, reported to Stanton that he had never seen a talented officer “with less steadiness in difficulty and greater practical incapacity than General Rosecrans.”27 Lincoln told his secretary that Rosecrans seemed confused and stunned, behaving “like a duck hit on the head.”28 A quick fix was needed urgently, and it was equally obvious that a shakeup in the Union command structure was overdue. Halleck ordered Grant to provide reinforcements for the Army of the Cumberland as quickly as possible, and Stanton prevailed upon Lincoln to transfer two additional corps from the Army of the Potomac. Grant was still confined to bed when the instructions from Washington arrived, but he immediately dispatched Sherman with five divisions to move by rail from Memphis to Chattanooga, repairing the line as he went. By the end of September almost 40,000 reinforcements were rushing to Rosecrans, half from Grant’s Army of the Tennessee under Sherman, half from Meade’s Army of the Potomac under Joe Hooker.
With the situation at Chattanooga hanging in the balance, Halleck told Grant to repair to Cairo as soon as he was able to travel and to report by telegraph to the War Department.29 Grant received the message on October 10, and although he was still laid up, went immediately upriver to the closest telegraph post, arriving on the 16th.30 The following morning Grant received a message from Halleck directing him to proceed at once to Galt House in Louisville, where he would receive further instructions from “an officer of the War Department.” Grant was told to take his staff with him “for immediate operations in the field.”31 He promptly boarded a train for Louisville, by way of Indianapolis. That afternoon, as the train was about to pull out of the Indianapolis depot, a messenger scrambled across the tracks to flag it down. Behind him came a well-dressed gentleman whom Grant had never met. It was Edwin M. Stanton, the secretary of war, whose special train had just arrived, and who was en route to Louisville to meet Grant. Learning that the general’s train was still in the station, Stanton chose to ride the rest of the way with him.32 Grant was still unaware of what was in store, but as the train rocked toward Louisville, Stanton explained the situation at Chattanooga and handed Grant two versions of a War Department order dated October 16. Both versions had the identical first paragraph: “By direction of the President of the United States, the Departments of the Ohio, of the Cumberland, and of the Tennessee, will constitute the Military Division of the Mississippi. Major General U. S. Grant, United States Army, is placed in command of the Military Division of the Mississippi, with his headquarters in the field.”33
Lincoln was reorganizing the Union chain of command between the Appalachians and the Mississippi. Henceforth, the three armies in the region, the Tennessee, the Cumberland, and the Ohio, would report to Grant, whose headquarters would be “in the field”—a clear indication that the president wanted action. That was the first version of the order. The second version contained an additional paragraph that relieved Rosecrans as commander of the Army of the Cumberland and replaced him with George Thomas. Grant was told by Stanton that he could choose whichever version he preferred. “I accepted the latter,” Grant noted laconically.34 Sherman would succeed Grant as commander of the Army of the Tennessee, and Ambrose Burnside would continue to head the Army of the Ohio, at least for the present.
When Grant arrived in Louisville, reports of an impending Union withdrawal from Chattanooga were flooding in. Accordingly, he quickly wrote out an order assuming command of the Military Division of the Mississippi, and then dispatched two orders of his own: the first to Rosecrans informing him that he was relieved of command,35 the second to Thomas instructing him to “hold Chattanooga at all hazards.” Grant said he would be there as soon as possible and he asked how long the army’s provisions would last.36 Thomas replied that he had five days’ rations on hand, with two additional days’ rations expected momentarily. But as if to say not to worry, Thomas added: “We will hold the town till we starve.”37 Grant appreciated the force of Thomas’s reply, but he recognized that the situation was critical. Unless the Army of the Cumberland could be resupplied quickly, its surrender was inevitable.38
The problem was that in its hasty retreat from Chickamauga, the Union army had given up the high ground around Chattanooga to the Confederates. Bragg held Lookout Mountain, Raccoon Mountain, and Missionary Ridge. Artillery mounted on the heights commanded all of the routes into the city except for a torturous wagon road over the mountains to the north, and rebel cavalry had made that route hazardous as well. Forage for Union horses was exhausted, there was no timber within Federal lines for fuel, worn-out shoes and tattered clothing could not be replaced, and, despite Thomas’s vow, the troops were already down to half-rations.
Grant was unable to walk without assistance. Nevertheless, he set out by rail for Chattanooga the next morning. A fellow passenger wrote to his wife that the general “was seated entirely alone on the side of the car next to me. He had on an old blue overcoat, and wore a common white wool [cap] drawn down over his eyes, and looked so much like a private soldier, that but for the resemblance to the photographs . . . it would have been impossible to recognize him.”39 At Stevenson, Alabama, Grant met Rosecrans, who was on his way north. “He was very cheerful, and seemed as though a great weight had been lifted off his mind,” said Grant.40 “He came into my car and we held a brief interview in which he described very clearly the situation at Chattanooga, and made excellent suggestions as to what should be done. My wonder was that he had not carried them out.”41
From Stevenson the train proceeded to Bridgeport, Alabama, near the Tennessee border, where, thanks to Confederate raiding parties, railroad transportation ended. Grant made the last sixty miles on horseback, his crutches strapped to his saddle. Fall rains had turned low-lying portions of the road into a quagmire, while other stretches were completely washed out. Grant had to be lifted from his saddle and carried across the roughest places, which were not safe to traverse on horseback. This road was Chattanooga’s lifeline and it offered a grim preview of what lay ahead. The route was strewn with discarded military equipment and the debris of shattered wagons, while the carcasses of thousands of starved mules and horses littered the roadside, their decaying bodies putrefying the atmosphere. Rawlins called the road “the roughest and steepest ever crossed by army wagons and pack mules.”42 At one time 500 wagon teams were hung up in the mud, unable to move in either direction. Grant’s party, traveling light, required two full days, pelted by wind and rain, to make the sixty-mile journey. At dusk on October 23, a bone-weary Grant was assisted from his horse and hobbled into the small frame house that served as Thomas’s headquarters. “Wet, dirty, and well,” as Lincoln learned the next day, the commanding general of the Division of the Mississippi had arrived in Chattanooga.43
Emotionally, Grant and Thomas were cut from the same cloth. Both were tight-lipped stoics who prided themselves on never showing the slightest feeling. Yet under that shell both were warm and sensitive, Thomas affectionately known as “Old Pap” by his troops. The two men greeted each other formally and Grant was served a warm meal, after which they sat together by the fireside, neither saying a word.44 Members of Grant’s staff, quick to take offense, thought they sensed hostility in Thomas’s reserve. Grant knew better. And so did Thomas. The two old soldiers were simply enjoying a rare moment of solitude, bonding with one another in the quiet by the hearth. Grant, for his part, was well aware that the Army of the Cumberland could not have been in better hands, and Thomas, like C. F. Smith in front of Fort Donelson, was patiently waiting for his commander to express his wishes. Both Smith and Thomas had ranked Grant in the old army, but their new relationship was not a problem. “Tell Grant to have no hesitancy about giving me orders,” Thomas had told General Joseph Reynolds, his chief of staff, who was one of Grant’s oldest friends. “I will be ready to obey his every wish.”45 Eventually a member of Thomas’s staff called his attention to the fact that Grant’s clothes were soaked and that he might like to change. Thomas was mortified that he had overlooked something so obvious. His old-time Virginia hospitality was aroused and he begged Grant to step into a nearby bedroom and change his clothes. Grant politely declined, lit another cigar, and pulled his chair closer to the fire. Both Thomas and Grant were more or less oblivious to creature comforts, and in their silent way each was inwardly focusing on the military situation at hand.
For Grant, the initial task was to reestablish a viable supply route for the Army of the Cumberland—what he called “a cracker line.” It would do no good to bring Sherman’s and Hooker’s troops to Chattanooga if they could not be fed. But that was merely the first step. Bragg had the city besieged and the trap had to be sprung. As the evening progressed, it became clear that Grant’s thoughts were about how to resume the Union offensive as quickly as possible. General Thomas had arranged for his staff to call after supper, and for the next several hours Thomas and his chief engineer, General William F. “Baldy” Smith, briefed Grant on the situation. Smith had been at West Point with Grant and he had commanded a corps in the Army of the Potomac, but his differences with Burnside and Hooker caused him to be transferred to Chattanooga. Here he found his calling. Grant wrote later that Smith “explained the situation of the two armies and the topography of the country so plainly that I could see it without inspection.”46 Grant was greatly taken with Smith, particularly when Baldy laid out in detail a plan to regain possession of the Tennessee River and reestablish easy contact with the army’s supply depot at Bridgeport.
According to a participant at the conference, Grant sat “immovable as a rock and as silent as the sphinx” as he listened to Thomas and Smith. When they finished, he became animated and fired question after question at the pair. “So intelligent were his inquiries, and so pertinent his suggestions, that he made a profound impression upon everyone by the quickness of his perception and the knowledge which he had already acquired. . . . Coming to us with the laurels he had gained in Vicksburg, we naturally expected to meet a well-equipped soldier, but hardly anyone was prepared to find one who had the grasp, the promptness of decision, and the general administrative capacity which he displayed at the very start.”47
Early the following morning, Grant, Thomas, and Smith set out on a personal inspection of the Union lines. At several points the three dismounted and approached the riverbank on foot. Grant wrote afterward that they were within easy range of Confederate pickets on the opposite shore but were never fired upon. “I suppose they looked upon the garrison of Chattanooga as prisoners of war, feeding or starving themselves, and thought it would be inhuman to kill any of them except in selfdefense.”48
That night Grant approved Smith’s plan to reopen the route to Bridgeport. Thomas’s troops would secure both banks of the Tennessee and move downriver while Hooker would march overland from Bridgeport, retake the railroad, and link up with Thomas at Brown’s Ferry, about halfway between. Because of his familiarity with the topography, Grant placed Smith in command of the operation, despite the fact that he was then a staff officer and not with troops. It was a felicitous decision. Smith’s planning and supervision left little to be desired and by October 29, five days after Grant arrived, the Confederate blockade had been broken and the cracker line to Bridgeport established.I
Within a week the Army of the Cumberland was receiving full rations. “It is hard for anyone not an eye-witness to realize the relief this brought,” Grant wrote later. “The men were soon reclothed and also well fed; an abundance of ammunition was brought up, and a cheerfulness prevailed not before enjoyed in many weeks.”49 Grant wired Halleck that the supply question “may now be regarded as settled.” He said the danger of losing Chattanooga had passed, and that he was preparing for offensive operations.50 Grant gave credit to Thomas and Smith, making it clear that “the plan had been set on foot before my arrival.”51 Nevertheless, it was inevitable that Grant would garner most of the praise simply because reopening the line to Bridgeport happened a few days after his arrival. A junior Union officer spoke for most when he said that when Grant came on the scene “we began to see things move. We felt that everything came from a plan.”52
The burst of activity did wonders for Grant’s injured leg. Three days after arriving in Chattanooga he wrote Julia that he was almost well. “The very hard ride over here and necessary exercise since to gain full knowledge of the location, instead of making my injury worse has almost entirely cured me. I now walk without the use of a crutch or cane, and mount my horse from the ground without difficulty.”53
One of the best descriptions of Grant was provided by a member of Thomas’s staff, who was struck by his modesty and gentleness of manner:
Many of us were not a little surprised to find him a man of slim figure, slightly stooped, five feet eight in height, weighing only 135 pounds. His eyes were dark-gray, and were the most expressive of his features. His hair and beard were of a chestnut brown color. The beard was worn full, no part of the face being shaved, but, like the hair, was always kept closely and neatly trimmed. His face was not perfectly symmetrical, the left eye being lower than the right. His voice was exceedingly musical, and one of the clearest in sound and most distinct in utterance that I have ever heard. It had a singular power of penetration, and sentences spoken by him in an ordinary tone could be heard at a distance which was surprising. His gait of walking [was] decidedly unmilitary. He never carried his body erect, and having no ear for music or rhythm, he never kept step to the airs played by the bands, no matter how vigorously the bass drums emphasized the accent. . . . When not pressed by any matter of importance he was often slow in his movements, but when roused to activity he was quick in every motion, and worked with marvelous rapidity. He was civil to all who came in contact with him, and never attempted to snub anyone, or treat anybody with less consideration on account of his inferiority in rank.54
Another officer wrote that Grant could pass for a “slouchy little subaltern,” yet “he is a man of the most exquisite judgment and tact. He handles those around him so quietly and well, he so evidently has the faculty of disposing of work and managing men, he is cool and quiet, almost stolid and as if stupid, in danger, and in a crisis he is one against whom all around, whether few in numbers or a great army as here, would instinctively lean.”55
Chattanooga, which, in the Cherokee language means “the hawk’s nest,”56 lies on the south bank of the Tennessee River, at a point where the Cumberland mountains crowd together. Standing at Thomas’s headquarters and looking south, Grant saw on his left the long spine of Missionary Ridge, 300 feet high, seven miles long, and swarming with Confederates who had had a month to dig in.57 Dead ahead, Lookout Mountain rose twelve hundred feet above the city and the river, its upper third a vertical reach of sheer rock. Through his glasses Grant could see rebel cannoneers lounging about in various stages of repose, as if to emphasize the advantage they enjoyed over the Union troops below. Beyond Lookout Mountain to Grant’s right lay Raccoon Mountain; not as high, broader at its base and more gently sloping, it too was covered from top to bottom with Southern soldiers. Not only did the Confederates hold the high ground, but for one of the few times in the Civil War they enjoyed a significant numerical advantage. Bragg had deployed almost 70,000 men on the heights surrounding Chattanooga, while Thomas had no more than 45,000 effectives present for duty. Hooker, it is true, was standing by at Bridgeport with 18,000 men, and Sherman was coming east with another 20,000 from the Army of the Tennessee. But they had not yet arrived.
Grant saw his work cut out for him. Once the cracker line was opened, he undertook a personal inspection of the picket lines, riding from west to east. As he often did he rode alone, except for a bugler who trailed at a respectful distance. When he reached Chattanooga Creek, a tributary of the Tennessee that drained the area between Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain, he found the picket lines of the two armies set on either side, separated by little more than a stone’s throw. As Grant approached, the Union sentinel called, “Turn out the guard for the commanding general.” Across the creek, the Confederate sentry responded: “Turn out the guard for the commanding general, General Grant.” The rebel line formed swiftly, front-faced north, and came to the salute, which Grant returned. It was, as Grant occasionally remarked, a war between countrymen, and at Chattanooga friendly relations existed between the pickets of the two armies. As Grant continued his ride he noticed a tree that had fallen across the creek, which was used by the soldiers of both armies in drawing water for their camps. The Confederates manning the line were from Longstreet’s corps and in Grant’s words, “wore blue in a different shade from our uniform. Seeing a soldier in blue on this log, I rode up to him, commenced conversing with him, and asked whose corps he belonged to. He was very polite, and, touching his cap to me, said he belonged to General Longstreet’s corps. I asked him a few questions—not with a view of gaining any particular information—all of which he answered, and I rode off.”58
While Grant planned his attack, the Confederate army opposite fell to bickering. Bragg was never easy to get along with, and, in the aftermath of Chickamauga, Southern generals vied with one another castigating him for his failure to destroy Rosecrans when he had the chance. Bragg, for his part, blamed his corps commanders for the tardiness and lassitude that allowed the Army of the Cumberland to escape. Polk, D. H. Hill, and Buckner petitioned Jefferson Davis to remove Bragg, and Longstreet sent a personal note to the Confederate secretary of war, James A. Seddon, asserting that “nothing but the hand of God can save us or help us as long as we have our present commander.” Davis decided he had no alternative but to visit Bragg’s headquarters and straighten out the mess. The Confederate president, who had never forgotten how Bragg saved the day (and his own Mississippi Rifles) at Buena Vista, had a warm spot in his heart for the brittle North Carolinian, and he was reluctant to relieve the one general who had gained an advantage over the Yankees. When the four corps commanders repeated their view that Bragg must go, Davis procrastinated. Longstreet did not want the job, Beauregard was still in Davis’s black book for surrendering Corinth, and Joseph E. Johnston, who would have been ideal, was blamed by the president for the loss of Vicksburg. Bragg would stay, the corps commanders would go. Polk and D. H. Hill were relieved, Buckner was transferred, and Davis urged Bragg to detach Longstreet’s corps for an independent campaign against Burnside at Knoxville. The Confederate chieftain believed that the Army of the Cumberland, then beaten and starving, must inevitably surrender, and there was no reason to keep Southern troops idle. Burnside’s hold on Knoxville was as tenuous as the Union position at Chattanooga, and Davis assumed Longstreet would make quick work of the Army of the Ohio.
Confederate strategy proved fatally flawed, but it was not necessarily so. Burnside’s position at Knoxville was vulnerable, and a logical Union response would have been to send men from Chattanooga to reinforce him. Indeed, that is precisely what Halleck and Lincoln urged when they learned Longstreet had moved north. What Southern strategy failed to take into account was that Grant was in command. As he saw it, the departure of Longstreet’s corps from Chattanooga meant the Confederates no longer enjoyed numerical superiority. When Grant discovered on November 5 that Bragg had diminished his force by one quarter, he wanted to attack immediately. In his view, the most effective way to help Burnside was to defeat Bragg at Chattanooga. That would open the road to Atlanta, compel Longstreet to fall back, and place the Confederates on the defensive. Sherman and Hooker were not yet up, but on November 7 Grant ordered Thomas to move between Longstreet and Bragg, turn Bragg’s right flank, and dislodge the Confederates from Missionary Ridge.
Thomas agreed it was important to attack Bragg, but he told Grant that he was not ready. Thomas pointed out that he did not have enough draft horses to move his artillery out of the gun park, much less put the guns into battery to support the infantry. Grant once said that “Old Tom” was too brave to run away, but too slow to move forward,59 yet in this instance Thomas was right. The cracker line had been open for a week and the troops were back on full rations, but no replacements had yet arrived for the artillery horses that had starved to death. Without artillery support, any attack was bound to fail. Grant suggested that Thomas hitch mules to the guns, or use officers’ mounts to tow them, but Thomas, an old artilleryman, patiently explained to Grant why that would not work. Unlike horses, the mules were undependable under fire, and the officers’ horses had not been broken to work in traces and were too light for heavy pulling in any event. It is understandable that Grant was eager to attack, but he was acting impetuously. Thomas’s rocklike refusal to move prematurely saved the Union army from disaster. Two weeks later, when the attack was finally mounted, Federal troops were fought to a standstill in the area that Grant had wanted Thomas to assault, and without artillery they would have been slaughtered. Neither Thomas nor Grant was happy about the situation, but it was clear the artillery could not move. Eventually, Grant was convinced. “Nothing was left to be done,” he wrote, “but to answer Washington dispatches as best I could; urge Sherman forward, although he was making every effort to get forward, and encourage Burnside to hold on, assuring him that in a short time he should be relieved.”60
Grant was frustrated. The opportunity to attack Bragg’s diminished force was too good to be true. “I have never felt such restlessness before as I have at the fixed and immovable condition of the Army of the Cumberland,” he wired Halleck.61 By sending Longstreet’s corps away, Bragg had prepared the way for his own defeat. Grant knew it, yet he found himself unable to strike, at least until Sherman came up and Thomas’s draft horses were replaced. The best he could do was to hurry things along. “Twenty days hence,” he wrote Julia, Union forces will be “in a more favorable position . . . than they have been in since the beginning of the rebellion.”62
On November 13 Sherman reached Bridgeport—sixty miles away. The bulk of his corps was two days behind, but he hurried on to Chattanooga to see Grant. The following evening as he rode up to Thomas’s headquarters, he found Grant waiting for him. The exuberant Sherman bounded up the stairs into a remarkable welcome. Sherman and Thomas had been classmates at West Point and were the closest friends, while Grant treasured Sherman above all others.
“Take the chair of honor, Sherman,” said Grant, motioning toward a rocking chair by the fire.
“Take the chair of honor? Oh no—that belongs to you, General.”
“Never mind that,” Grant replied. “I always give precedence to age.”
“Well, if you put it on that ground I must accept,” said Sherman, as he sat down in the most comfortable chair and lit a cigar.63 The three general officers sat by the fire enjoying their smokes, bantering easily, and then turned to the business at hand. The informality startled observers unaccustomed to Grant’s ways. General Oliver Otis Howard, fresh from the Army of the Potomac, wrote later that he’d never witnessed a strategy conference so relaxed. Grant, Thomas, and Sherman simply talked things out. Sherman bubbled with ideas, Thomas waded in with stubborn facts, describing the roads, the rivers, and the mountains in the area, and Grant mostly listened. Howard thought it was like being in a courtroom. Sherman was the flamboyant lawyer, Thomas the stern judge, and Grant the jury whose verdict would settle everything.64
The next morning the three generals rode out to inspect the terrain, Grant pointing out how he envisaged the battle unfolding. Sherman was amazed as he looked out at the Confederate entrenchments on Missionary Ridge. Rebel sentinels, in a continuous chain, were walking their posts in plain view, not a thousand yards off. “Why, General Grant, you are besieged,” the red-haired Sherman exclaimed, not altogether in jest.
“It’s too true,” Grant nodded, and then proceeded to tell Sherman and Thomas what he had in mind.65 A frontal assault was out of the question. Vicksburg had taught Grant that it was hazardous to attack a heavily fortified position and the Confederates were not only well entrenched, but held a mass of high ground that appeared impregnable. Instead, Grant proposed to turn Bragg’s flanks, force him out of his breastworks, and deny him the advantage of topography. It would be a double envelopment. Thomas’s Army of the Cumberland, located in the center, would maintain its position facing Missionary Ridge and hold Bragg in place while Hooker and Sherman rolled up the Confederate left and right respectively. If Bragg shifted troops from the center to reinforce his flanks, then Thomas could storm forward and carry Missionary Ridge against a depleted Confederate force. Grant had worked on the plan since his arrival in Chattanooga and was confident of its success. He also liked the flexibility. He could reinforce the attack on whichever flank was successful, or he could advance Thomas to render the coup de main.
Grant placed primary emphasis on turning Bragg’s right and moving down the long axis of Missionary Ridge from the north—the direction Bragg least expected. This he assigned to Sherman and his corps from the Army of the Tennessee. These were Grant’s troops and he was relying on them to carry the principal attack. With his four divisions still on their approach from the west, Sherman was instructed to leapfrog Hooker, slip northeast behind Thomas, and take up a position on the Union left. Hooker, on the right, would prepare to move against Lookout Mountain with his veterans from the Army of the Potomac and attack Bragg from that direction. Grant had less confidence in the Army of the Cumberland. It had been mauled at Chickamauga and almost starved afterward. He did not believe the men could spearhead the attack, but if Sherman and Hooker could turn Bragg’s flanks, Grant counted on Thomas to finish the job by moving against the Confederate center. Given the weather and the condition of the roads, Grant allowed five days for Sherman’s troops to reach their position. Accordingly, he set the attack for November 21. The final order of battle assigned four divisions to Sherman, four to Thomas, three to Hooker, with two in reserve under General Howard—a total of 75,000 men. For the second time in the Civil War, troops from three Union armies would fight shoulder to shoulder. At the capture of Corinth in 1862, Halleck commanded the armies of Buell, Pope, and Grant. At Chattanooga, Grant commanded men from the Army of the Cumberland, the Army of the Potomac, and the Army of the Tennessee.
Sherman was late getting into position, mainly because of the weather. It rained steadily for two days and the roads, which were already bad, became impassable. A pontoon bridge across the Tennessee washed away and another threatened to do so. As a result, Sherman’s men did not arrive at their jump-off point until late in the day on November 23. By this time Grant was worried that Bragg might slip away. Already two Confederate divisions had been dispatched to assist Longstreet, and rumors were flying that Bragg was about to pull out toward Atlanta. Grant could not bear to see his covey escape. He was also under increasing pressure from Washington to assist Burnside. Accordingly, at 11 A.M. on November 23, with Sherman still on the march, Grant instructed Thomas to extend his lines toward Missionary Ridge and gauge Bragg’s response. It was another example of Grant’s battlefield flexibility. If Sherman wasn’t ready, he’d use Thomas. Thomas’s lines were separated from the base of Missionary Ridge by a rolling, open plain roughly two miles wide. Grant wanted Thomas to probe Bragg’s front, drive in his skirmish line, and move closer to the base of the ridge. That would provide Thomas with a better takeoff point should he be required to assault the main Confederate battle line. It would also capture Bragg’s attention and prevent him from running.
Thomas outdid himself. The Army of the Cumberland was smarting because of the secondary role they had been assigned, and from Thomas down the troops wanted to dispel the image of defeat at Chickamauga. In addition, Thomas’s normally placid manner had been set on edge. Several days earlier Thomas, with utmost courtesy, had sent through the lines a personal letter addressed to a Confederate officer from his kinfolks. Thomas attached a note to Bragg, requesting his former battery commander to pass it along. The letter was promptly returned with Bragg’s endorsement: “Respectfully returned to General Thomas. General Bragg declines to have any intercourse with a man who has betrayed his State.” Thomas was furious. Sherman, who had known Thomas for almost thirty years, said that he had never seen him so angry.66 Old Pap was itching to get even.
Ninety minutes after receiving Grant’s order, Thomas had three divisions on line, with a fourth massed in reserve, all ready to move out. Rather than merely feel Bragg’s position, Old Pap was readying a sledge hammer. On the open plain, in clear view of the Confederates high on Missionary Ridge, the Army of the Cumberland ostentatiously dressed their ranks for almost an hour. A staff officer recalled the inspiring sight. “Flags were flying; the quick, earnest steps of thousands beat equal time. The sharp commands of hundreds of company officers, the sound of drums, the ringing notes of the bugles, companies wheeling and countermarching and regiments getting into line . . . all looked like preparations for a peacetime pageant, rather than for the bloody work of death.”67 Rebel soldiers, watching from above, concluded the Yankees were going to hold a parade. They stood on their parapets and called to one another to watch the men in blue pass in review. About 1:30 Thomas’s artillery roared into action and the drums and bugles changed tempo. The regiments wheeled to face the enemy and Thomas sent the troops charging forward, the divisions of Wood and Sheridan in the van. The attack was in full force before the Confederates realized it. The massive blue tide flooded the plain between the lines, swept over the rebel outposts, and drove the defenders back to Bragg’s main battle line. Thomas’s men took over the rebel trenches, reversed the parapets to face the other way, and settled down for the night, one mile in advance of where they were in the morning. Casualties were light. Thomas lost less than 200 men; Confederate figures were similar.68
The assault by the Army of the Cumberland was executed flawlessly. In Grant’s eyes, Thomas’s men had redeemed themselves. They also proved that Bragg was not retreating. That too pleased Grant. “The advantage was greatly on our side now,” he wrote, “and if I could only have been assured that Burnside could hold out ten days longer I should have rested more easily.”69 A Southern newsman, watching the fight from the top of Missionary Ridge, agreed that the initiative had shifted to the Union. “General Grant has made an important move that is likely to exert an important influence on military operations,” he wrote, and predicted that Bragg would have to weaken his line on Lookout Mountain to reinforce the troops on Missionary Ridge that now seemed menaced by Thomas’s advance.70
November 24 dawned with a cold drizzle. Thomas’s men continued to strengthen their position, while on the left and the right Sherman and Hooker moved to turn Bragg’s flanks. Sherman encountered heavy opposition. Poor reconnaissance and bad map reading placed his corps not on the north end of Missionary Ridge but on a detached spur separated by a deep ravine from the main spine. Traversing the unexpected obstacle was proving more difficult than either Grant or Sherman anticipated.
On the right, Hooker moved ahead quickly. Bragg had indeed shifted two divisions from Lookout Mountain and as a result the Confederate line was lightly held. Troops from three Union divisions scrambled up the mountain over boulders and fallen logs through an intermittent fog that in later years was romanticized as the “battle above the clouds.” Grant was with Thomas in the center of the Union line, sitting their horses at Thomas’s command post, and straining to catch a glimpse of the fighting on the right. “The day was hazy,” Grant wrote later, “so that Hooker’s operations were not visible to us except at moments when the clouds would rise. But the sound of his artillery and musketry was heard incessantly.”71 Suddenly, in mid-afternoon, the sun came out and the fog drifted away. From Grant’s vantage point the entire battle could be seen. The Confederates were in full retreat and around the mountain wall came rank after rank of Union troops, regimental flags aloft, rifle barrels glinting in the sunlight, victory in plain view of both armies below. Thomas’s troops cheered wildly and regimental bands spontaneously broke into tune, until the celebration engulfed the entire Federal line. Just as suddenly, clouds moved in front of the sun and hid the battle from view. Hooker’s troops had not reached the summit, but there was no doubt Lookout Mountain had fallen.
At 6 P.M. Grant passed the word to Halleck. “The fight today progressed favorably. Sherman carried the end of Missionary Ridge . . . and troops from Lookout Valley carried the point of the Mountain and now hold the eastern slope and a point high up. Our loss is not heavy. Hooker reports 2000 prisoners taken besides which a small number have fallen into our hands from Missionary Ridge.”72
The relief in Washington was palpable. President Lincoln wired his personal congratulations to Grant: “Well done. Many thanks to all. Remember Burnside.”73 Halleck was equally pleased. “I congratulate you on the success,” said the general in chief. “Burnside is hard pressed and any further delay may prove fatal. I know that you will do all in your power to relieve him.”74
Grant was thinking less about Burnside than about destroying Bragg’s army the next day. Shortly after midnight he ordered Sherman to move forward “at early dawn” and attack the north end of Missionary Ridge.75 Hooker was instructed to move eastward from Lookout Mountain, cross the Chattanooga valley, and assault the Confederate position on the southern end of the ridge.76 Thomas was told to be prepared to assist Sherman, but to await Grant’s order before moving. “Your command will either carry the rifle pits and ridge directly in front of them, or move to the left as the presence of the enemy may require.”77
November 25 opened clear and bright. And for the next eight hours that was the best Grant could say about it. Nothing went as planned. During the night Bragg had reinforced his right with a hard-fighting division commanded by one of the most able combat commanders in the Confederate army, Major General Patrick Cleburne—a Texas original. Sherman went forward at dawn, found Cleburne’s division in his path, and was stopped cold. By eleven o’clock Sherman had yet to make a dent in the Confederate line and Grant sent Howard’s two divisions to assist. It was six divisions against one but the rebels, defending a narrow stretch of high ground, held their position against everything Sherman could throw at them. By early afternoon, after six hours of solid fighting and almost 2,000 casualties, it was clear that the principal Union assault had bogged down. Sherman signaled Grant that he was facing heavy opposition and was stuck. “Attack again,” Grant replied, but he realized that the effort to turn the north end of Bragg’s line had come to naught.78
It was no better at the south end of Missionary Ridge. Hooker’s advance through the Chattanooga valley required him to cross Chattanooga Creek, which was more of an obstacle than the word “creek” implied. Retreating Confederates had burned the only bridge, and it required four hours for Union engineers to construct another one. The result was that it was almost 3 P.M. before any of Hooker’s men were in position to attack Bragg’s left. Grant’s plan for a double envelopment had come unhinged. With Sherman stuck and Hooker late, he turned to Thomas. Grant had spent the entire day with the Army of the Cumberland, and now he asked Old Pap to carry the attack. Grant had hesitated to order Thomas forward because of the imposing strength of the main Confederate battle line. He was also concerned that the rebel flanks had not been turned, which meant that Bragg could devote his entire attention to repelling Thomas’s attack. What Grant did not know was that his original plan had worked better than he realized. Bragg had already thinned his ranks on Missionary Ridge to support his flanks, and he was on the verge of sending more men to resist Sherman—although Cleburne didn’t need them. General William Hardee, who commanded the troops on the ridge, acknowledged to a nervous staff officer that the Confederate line was thinly held, but he saw no reason to worry. The natural strength of the position was so formidable, said Hardee, that the Yankees probably would not attack it at all.79
It was close to 3:30 when Grant ordered Thomas forward. Old Pap was instructed to carry the rifle pits at the base of the ridge preparatory to assaulting the summit itself.80 For a while nothing happened and Grant grew impatient. It took time for orders to filter down and the remaining hours of daylight were slipping away. Suddenly the signal guns went off and from behind a rise the soldiers appeared, three double-ranks deep, a grand panorama of massed infantry along a front that stretched for more than a mile from flank to flank. Thomas, wielding a sledgehammer again, placed all four divisions of the Army of the Cumberland on line: Sheridan and Wood in the center, Absalom Baird on the left, Richard Johnson on the right. At Old Pap’s command, almost 24,000 men—sixty regiments of infantry—began their dash across a mile of open plain toward the first line of rebel entrenchments. It was Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg revisited with a vengeance: Thomas deployed twice as many men as Lee had used, and the Confederate position on Missionary Ridge was far more imposing than the line Meade had held in Pennsylvania.
As soon as the blue phalanx moved forward, rebel artillery on the ridge opened a devastating barrage. Bragg had 112 guns, and as one Union soldier recalled, “A crash like a thousand thunderclaps greeted us.”81 Philip H. Sheridan rode in front of his division, and as the projectiles burst over and among the advancing troops the men broke into a run. Sheridan looked back and said the line suddenly became a crowd, all glittering with bayonets, a “terrible sight” for the rebels who had to look at it.82 Brigadier General Montgomery Meigs, the army’s quartermaster general, who was in Chattanooga to confer with Grant, wrote afterward that, “Every gun on Missionary Ridge broke out with shell and shrapnell upon the heads of our gallant troops, who never halted until they reached the [enemy] breastworks.”83
As the men drew near Bragg’s battle line they saw unmistakable signs of panic setting in. Here and there defenders began to waver, flinching at the sight of the oncoming mass, deserting their posts and running up the ridge. As Thomas anticipated, the immense weight of the charging infantry simply rolled over the rebel defenses and swamped them. Grant wrote, “Our men drove the troops in front of the lower line of rifle pits so rapidly, and followed them so closely, that rebel and Union troops went over the first line of works almost at the same time.”84
Having taken their first objective, the soldiers of the Army of the Cumberland now performed a magnificent act of insubordination. Rather than dig in and regroup as their officers commanded, the men kept going. The fact is, it was too hot to stay where they were. A murderous, plunging fire from the Confederate second line, midway up the slope, made their position untenable. They were sitting ducks for rebel gunners and the only practical solution was to continue the charge. At first by squads and platoons, then by companies and regiments, the blue mass swarmed up the steep slope of Missionary Ridge, aligning their ragged lines as best they could, caught up in the exhilaration of the moment. “Chickamauga! Chickamauga!” soldiers yelled with sweet revenge as the stunned rebels panicked, broke, and fled.85 Soon sixty regimental flags appeared to be racing each other to the summit.
Back at Thomas’s command post, Grant watched the unexpected development—first with bewilderment, then with growing alarm. Bragg had a well-deserved reputation as a counterpuncher, and if his troops repulsed the charge and then counterattacked as a demoralized Army of the Cumberland tumbled back down into the valley, a first-class disaster would be at hand. Thomas had sent all four of his divisions forward, nothing was kept in reserve, and there were no troops to form a straggler line on which to rally. Aside from that, the odds of charging into the face of the Confederate guns seemed outrageous. “Thomas, who ordered those men up the ridge?” Grant asked sharply. Thomas, his composure restored, replied matter-of-factly, “I don’t know. I did not.”86 Grant realized the situation was beyond their control. Someone would catch hell if it turned out badly, he muttered, but he said he would not order the men back. Instead, he clamped his teeth on his unlit cigar and turned his attention back to the ridge.