Sherman’s departure from Washington was delayed a short time, because General George B. McClellan, fearful of an attack on Washington—and recognizing Sherman’s worth—refused to release him until the threat from Beauregard had passed. When Sherman finally got loose, he reported to General Anderson, arriving at the latter’s Ohio home on September 1. Of the three key staff officers assigned to assist him, only Sherman and George H. Thomas were present.

Anderson, they found, was in a depressed state of mind. At the age of fifty-six he was finding himself unable to cope with the confusion that was raging in the border state of Kentucky. Anderson was somewhat exaggerating.

The confusion was being caused by the fact that most of the citizenry, though it included many slave owners, tended to hold the Union as more important than slavery. In a referendum held the previous June the legislature had voted by a ratio of four to one to refuse the offer of the cotton states to secede from the Union and join them. Governor Beriah Magoffin, on the other hand, was an avid secessionist and declared his intention to veto any action the legislature might take to declare its loyalty to the Union.

As befitted the tradition of Henry Clay, the “Great Compromiser,” the people of Kentucky had found an interim answer: The governor and the legislature had agreed to declare Kentucky neutral in what was expected to be the coming conflict. In that status, virtually as an independent country, Kentucky had selected as their military chief a capable man, Simon Bolivar Buckner, a West Pointer from the class of 1844, a year behind Grant. In 1860 Buckner had joined with other officers from the South in resigning from the United States Army. But he had worked, as long as it was feasible, to make Kentucky’s neutrality succeed.

As of the time Sherman reported to Anderson, there were neither Union nor Confederate troops on Kentucky’s soil; neutrality was holding up. That fact did not, however, prevent the Union from building up forces in Ohio and the Confederates from doing likewise in Tennessee. Though neither side admitted it, neither expected neutrality to last long, and both were preparing to cross into Kentucky once its borders were violated. Anderson had established camps at Dick Robinson, across the Ohio River, and Albert Sidney Johnston had camps at Nashville.

Anderson knew that the Confederate forces were well organized and prepared. Their overall commander, Albert Sidney Johnston, was a man considered by President Jefferson Davis as the number one Confederate officer. Johnston’s gray-clad rebels were numerically smaller than the Union forces, but he used them so cleverly, through raids and demonstrations, that their weakness was not apparent.

—

Almost immediately after Sherman’s arrival, events began moving rapidly. On September 4, Kentucky’s neutrality was shattered by a blunder on the part of Confederate lieutenant general Leonidas Polk, who crossed the Mississippi River into southern Kentucky and seized the city of Columbus. In retaliation, Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant, commanding the Union troops in southeast Missouri, moved south from his position at Cairo, Illinois, and occupied Paducah, Kentucky. Both sides now invaded Kentucky, but the Kentucky state legislature, holding Polk responsible for taking the first step, ordered the Confederate forces to leave Kentucky and decreed that the United States flag should be raised above the statehouse in Frankfort. Politically, Kentucky had been saved for the Union, but it was now a potential battleground between the opposing armies.

Anderson, with his headquarters now established in Frankfort, was still in a difficult spot, because he was not being provided with troops to maintain his position. Volunteer regiments were being recruited and trained throughout the West, especially by the governors of Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana, but Anderson, with no cadre to organize volunteers, sorely needed help. Unfortunately for Anderson, Lincoln and McClellan were focused on Washington, D.C., and St. Louis, Missouri, and were therefore giving those theaters priority in resources. Some sixty thousand men had been sent to Major General John C. Frémont, commanding in St. Louis. Each of these commands, Washington and St. Louis, held fronts of only a hundred miles each; Anderson, with only about eighteen thousand men, was charged with defending a front of three hundred miles.

Sherman’s first assignment, therefore, was to visit the governors of Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana to ask them for help, to send at least a portion of their newly recruited volunteers to Anderson. Cordially received at all three capitals, he was unsuccessful in securing any resources.

At this point Anderson decided to resort to unusual measures. He sent Sherman to St. Louis to try to wheedle some troops from Frémont. Sherman headed for St. Louis and arrived late in the day. In view of the hour, he decided to wait until the next morning.¹ While at his boardinghouse that evening he was subjected to dire warnings from his companions: He would never, they warned, be granted the privilege of even securing an audience with Frémont, who was preoccupied with converting the sumptuous house he was living in into a fortress. Sherman scoffed.

The next morning Sherman arose early and reached the gate of Frémont’s headquarters before the normal workday. The corporal of the guard, noticing the star on Sherman’s shoulder, admitted him into the house. There the first man Sherman encountered was Isaiah C. Woods, a man whom he had known years earlier in San Francisco. He then ran across Major Eaton, another old friend. Within a few minutes he was ushered into Frémont’s office.

The meeting was friendly. Both men recalled their first encounter in California back in 1847, fifteen years previously. Yet Frémont declined the request for troops. His job, a major one, was to prevent Missouri from joining the Confederacy, and he needed every man he could get. Sherman was probably not surprised. Talking a commander into voluntarily giving up any troop units is a near impossibility.

As Sherman left Frémont’s headquarters, he noticed strange things going on. Frémont was indeed building the headquarters into a fortress, with the construction of a large wall around it. He noted that there was nothing inexpensive about any of the works planned. His suspicions of corruption were confirmed when he spied a man he had known in California, a shady but prosperous entrepreneur, “Baron” John B. Steinberger, noted for his ability to plunder the United States treasury. Though Sherman avoided the baron, he admitted he saw him doing nothing wrong. Yet he recalled thinking, “Where the vultures are, there is a carcass close by.”² His conjecture soon appeared to be at least partially correct.

Frémont was replaced after his visit by Sherman’s old friend Major General Henry Wager Halleck. Frémont’s wrongdoings had involved more than the simple matter of corruption. On August 30, 1861, General John C. Frémont declared martial law in the border state of Missouri, a measure that included the immediate emancipation of Missouri slaves. Frémont issued the order without consulting President Lincoln. When Lincoln learned of his actions, he publicly rescinded Frémont’s order and removed him from command. Lincoln feared the emancipation edict might push the state of Missouri (and perhaps even neighboring Kentucky), with its heavy Southern sympathies, into the arms of the Confederacy.

—

Soon after Sherman’s return to Louisville, the development he had feared most came to pass. General Anderson, under strain from his days at Sumter and basically a Confederate sympathizer, concluded that the political confusion and the threat of Confederate attack from Tennessee were too much for him to contend with. His request for relief as commander of the Department of the Cumberland was readily accepted, and his departure automatically made Sherman the commanding general. Rather than being elated over this elevation in status, Sherman was furious. He did not yet consider himself ready, and he blamed President Lincoln for breaking a promise. Assurance from McClellan that General Buell would soon arrive to replace him did little to assuage his anger.

Part of Sherman’s deep concern was his conviction that the Civil War was to be won in the West, not the East. He considered the Ohio–Indiana–Illinois region the true heart of the United States, and contended that whoever controlled the Mississippi River would win the war. And to his mind, Washington, with Scott gone,* placed all emphasis on the Washington–Richmond front at the expense of the West.

—

Sherman was a tense and nervous man by nature, and his concern was exacerbated by the skill of his principal opponent, Albert Sidney Johnston, who continued to maneuver his troops so swiftly that Sherman’s intelligence reports, not too competent, vastly multiplied the real strength of Johnston’s force. Accordingly, Sherman began sending messages from Louisville back to Washington, sometimes to Lincoln, and in his agitated state of mind sometimes overstepping the bounds of propriety for a general writing to a president. At one time he demanded an answer.

On October 16, Sherman saw his chance to express his views directly to someone in authority. Secretary of War Simon Cameron was on his way back from St. Louis to Washington and came by Louisville, planning to stay over for only a few hours. When he sensed Sherman’s state of mind, however, he changed plans and booked a later train. In the meantime he conferred with Sherman in the company of the secretary’s entire entourage, including the newspaper reporters who were traveling with him. It was a disastrous scenario. Sherman detested the press, and he was forced to deal directly with its members because Cameron, in bad health, lay on a bed while the others conferred. Cameron did, however, take in everything.

The conference might have been quickly forgotten except for one aspect: Cameron asked from his bed how many troops Sherman would need to hold Kentucky or commence operations into Tennessee, adding that the latter was something that Lincoln very much desired. Sherman answered without hesitation: He would need sixty thousand men to defend Kentucky, he said, but it would take two hundred thousand to drive southward to the sea. “Great God!” Cameron burst out. “Where are they to come from?”³

Sherman’s statement and Cameron’s reaction were reported with zest by the newsmen, who began a not-so-muted whispering campaign against Sherman, magnifying a casual remark made by Cameron that Sherman’s requirements were “insane.” The press interpreted Cameron’s words as meaning that Sherman himself was insane. A reporter for The New York Times told another correspondent that Cameron saw Sherman as “unbalanced,” questioning whether it was wise to leave Sherman in command. The Chicago Tribune went so far as to accuse Sherman of disloyalty.⁴ These comments cut Sherman to the quick. His rage grew stronger, and he was once quoted as saying, “I know they will ruin me, but they will ruin the country too. Napoleon himself would have been defeated with a free press.”⁵

—

By now it was generally accepted that Sherman was at least temporarily unbalanced. The situation continued for a month, pending Buell’s arrival at Louisville to take command on November 12. Sherman then headed for St. Louis to consult with his old friend Henry Halleck, who was in command there.

Fortunately for Sherman and for the Union, those close to him stuck by him. Ellen, Thomas Ewing, and his brother John were familiar with his nervous nature and eccentricities, but they also appreciated his intelligence, basic stability, and rigid set of personal principles. More important at the moment, the only man who could render real help to Sherman was Halleck. While aware of Sherman’s unacceptable behavior, Halleck acted as if nothing untoward had occurred. He gave Sherman an assignment as an inspector general to examine the conditions at Sedalia, Missouri.

The change in assignment, surprisingly, did not alleviate Sherman’s condition; instead it seemed to grow worse. As described by one biographer,

By now Sherman was almost a completely other-directed person. Extremely concerned about his image in the eyes of others, he grew even more nervous and hyperactive. Instead of relaxing and approaching his new duties calmly, he set a frantic pace. Inspecting, planning, and training filled most of his working hours. Burning the candle at both ends, he attempted to compensate for the negative things people were reading and saying about him. Instead of improving his situation, he worsened it. To [his brother] John, he wrote, “Some terrible disaster is inevitable. . . . Could I now hide myself in some obscure corner, I would do so, for my conviction is that our Government is destroyed . . .”⁶

And Sherman himself later admitted his condition:

. . . I saw and felt, and was of course deeply moved to observe, the manifest belief that there was more or less in the rumor that the cares, perplexities, and anxiety of the situation had unbalanced my judgment and mind. . . . Of course I could not deny the fact, and had to submit to all its painful consequences for months, and, moreover, I could not hide from myself that many of the officers and soldiers subsequently placed under my command looked askance and with suspicion. Indeed, it was not until the following April that the battle of Shiloh gave me personally the chance to redeem my good name.⁷

—

Sherman’s condition finally reached a point where Halleck decided to take further action. On November 29, 1861, Sherman received a message from Halleck’s aide saying that the general was now satisfied that the Confederates intended no attack on Sedalia and therefore Sherman should return to St. Louis to report his observations. Sherman returned immediately and, on finding Ellen in a distraught mood, on December 18 applied for a twenty-day leave of absence, which was granted. In so doing, Halleck wrote graciously,

The newspaper attacks are certainly shameless and scandalous, but I cannot agree with you, that they have in their power “to destroy us as they please.” I certainly get my share of abuse, but it will not disturb me. . . . I hope to see you well enough for duty soon. Our organization goes on slowly, but we will effect it in time.⁸

Sherman and Ellen returned to Lancaster, where the two were afforded a chance to relax. With the assistance and sympathy of Ellen, Thomas Ewing, and John, Cump made a miraculous recovery in the short period of three weeks. He then considered himself fit for at least a limited form of duty.

—

When Sherman returned to St. Louis, Halleck could see the change, but was not certain whether his friend was yet fit for assignment to a field command. He therefore played it safe by assigning him to a training unit at Benton Barracks. There he could be well watched.

Sherman never allowed personal grief to interfere with his performance of duty, and he trained the twelve thousand men at Benton Barracks well. Nevertheless, his depression continued to haunt him. He wrote home to Ellen in pathetic terms: “. . . having so signally failed in Kentucky, I am in about the same health as at Lancaster but the idea of having brought so much disgrace on all who are associated with me is so horrible to contemplate that I really cannot endure it.”⁹ Eventually, by February 13, 1862, Halleck gave him an active assignment in command of a support unit. The officer he was to support was Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant, whose headquarters were still located at Cairo, Illinois.

—

Fate had been kinder to Grant than to Sherman since the two had met by chance at St. Louis five years earlier, and a word about that period is in order. Grant, like Sherman, had waited until he was absolutely certain that war was inevitable before negotiating a commission. When Beauregard pulled the lanyard on the first shot at Fort Sumter, Grant joined throngs of other citizens attempting to sign up for duty. But he was still cautious. Fortunately his fifteen-year record as an army officer was well-known in Galena, and he was able to assist the Illinois governor, Richard Yates, in organizing the volunteers that were streaming in—such of those as could be accepted. Eventually the governor himself asked him to stay on longer. Grant was glad to do so.

In organizing the six regiments that Lincoln had levied on Illinois, Grant had no intention of joining them himself. Instead, he wrote a modest letter to the secretary of war offering his service. He was realistic in evaluating his capabilities:

Having served for fifteen years in the regular army, including four years at West Point and feeling it the duty of everyone who has been educated at the Government expense to offer their services for the support of that Government, I have the honor, very respectfully, to tender my services, until the close of the war, in such capacity as may be offered. I would say, in view of my present age and length of service, I feel myself competent to command a regiment, if the President, in his judgment, should see fit to intrust one to me.¹⁰

Eventually, on June 14, 1861, Grant received notice that he was to command the 21st Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment, in charge of defending the southern tip of the state. He was soon replaced by another, more senior officer, however, and reported to Halleck at St. Louis. After a very brief command of another regiment, he was made a brigadier general and placed in command of the Department of Southwest Missouri. He established his headquarters at Cairo, Illinois, a short distance away, and his command now became known as the District of Cairo.

The assignment was an important one. Cairo was located in one of the most critical areas in the West, where all the main waterways of the eastern part of the country converged. Cairo and Paducah, Kentucky, were about a hundred miles apart along the roaring Ohio River. It was at Cairo that the Ohio joined the Mississippi. From there the Mississippi rolled down to St. Louis, where another gigantic tributary, the Missouri, joined it.

Two other smaller but strategic rivers also joined the Ohio at Paducah, both from the southeast. They were the Cumberland River, which flowed westward from Nashville, in northern Tennessee, and the Tennessee, flowing northwestward from southern Tennessee. For the last few miles of their courses, the two rivers run only about a dozen miles apart. In an effort to dominate the state of Tennessee by controlling these rivers, General Albert Sidney Johnston had erected two forts, Henry and Donelson, south of the state border between Tennessee and Kentucky. At the time of their construction, Kentucky had not yet decided whether or not to remain neutral, and Johnston respected Kentucky’s insistence that military force was not to come on her soil, even though slightly better positions were farther north across the border.

Grant, at Cairo, was not constitutionally disposed to defend southern Illinois passively. He eyed the two forts, Henry and Donelson, and applied to Halleck for permission to take offensive action against them. After one rebuff he finally received permission on February 1, 1862, to advance against Fort Henry.

Grant was fortunate to win his first, all-important battle. The garrison at Fort Henry was small compared to Grant’s seventeen thousand men. Furthermore, the fort was poorly located, actually underwater at times. Another crucial help to Grant was the cooperation of Flag Officer Andrew Foote, whose seven ironclad gunboats had been attached to him for this operation. Therefore, when Foote’s gunboats appeared at Fort Henry on February 6, Confederate general Lloyd Tilghman put up no fight; he simply evacuated the fort and managed to deliver most of the garrison to Fort Donelson, though becoming a prisoner himself.

With Fort Henry in Union hands, Grant left on February 7, not bothering to ask Halleck’s permission, hoping to seize Fort Donelson by the eighth. But it was not to be so easy. Unlike Fort Henry, Donelson was a hard nut to crack. It had twelve thousand in the garrison. Its commander, Brigadier General John Floyd, had once been secretary of war in the administration of President James Buchanan. Also present were Gideon Pillow, a prominent troublemaker from the Mexican War, and Simon Bolivar Buckner, who had by now joined the Confederates. The future cavalry leader Nathan Bedford Forrest was also part of the garrison.

Fort Donelson itself was only the core of the position. A total of twenty-one thousand Confederates defended the area. Surrounding it were strong fortifications. Here Grant’s familiarity with some of the Confederate generals came to good use. He considered Floyd no soldier, and knew Gideon Pillow from the Mexican War. Grant therefore dared to take the risk of besieging Donelson closely, assuming that Pillow would not venture far out from his fortifications. Grant’s judgment was borne out, and by February 13, in bitter cold weather, he was investing Fort Donelson closely on three sides, the rear being on the Tennessee River.

—

The siege lasted only three days, involving a confused melee of small units outside the fort. At one point Floyd made an attempt to break out of the perimeter by hitting Grant’s right flank along the river. Initially successful, Floyd apparently lost his nerve; in any event he pulled back into the fort. He did not seem to recover his courage, because he called a conference of war with himself, Pillow, and Buckner, to discuss surrender.

At that meeting the three generals decided that surrender was necessary. Furthermore they decided—or Floyd ordered—that he and Pillow should make their escapes before the capitulation and that Buckner should be left behind to execute the unpleasant duty of negotiating the surrender. Floyd, in particular, had every reason to avoid falling into Yankee hands. As the secretary of war he was known to have taken every possible measure to weaken the Union Army, such as scattering it into small garrisons instead of concentrating it. He could well be tried for treason. Pillow, once a major general of volunteers in Mexico, had less cause for fear, but he still elected to flee.

That decision made, Floyd and Pillow escaped by water in the early hours of February 16. Soon thereafter Buckner sent a message to Grant proposing a meeting to negotiate a surrender. He was jolted to receive Grant’s reply:

Sir: Yours of this date, proposing armistice and appointment of Commissioners to settle terms of capitulation, is just received. No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works.¹¹

Simon Buckner, a friend and classmate of Grant’s from West Point, was doubtless sincere in expressing his resentment at the tone of Grant’s message. Nevertheless, he had no choice:

Sir—The distribution of forces under my command, incident to an unexpected change of commanders, and the overwhelming strength of the forces under your command, compel me, notwithstanding the success of the Confederate army yesterday, to accept the ungenerous and unchivalric terms which you propose.¹²

Grant had established a new concept in what had previously been a matter of military courtesy. He had put a new term in the English language, “unconditional surrender.” And he had achieved the first significant Union victory in the Civil War.

—

Sherman watched Grant’s exploits at Henry and Donelson from the sidelines, but he had an excellent vantage point, because Fort Belmont, where he was still commanding, was located near Halleck’s headquarters in St. Louis. When it came to giving credit for the operation, Sherman was inclined to favor Halleck, as Grant had been serving under Halleck’s orders. His judgment was also influenced in all likelihood by the fact that he and Halleck had been friends ever since the long voyage from New York to San Francisco in 1846. More important, Halleck had been instrumental in bringing Sherman back from the depths. At this point Sherman owed Halleck a great deal.

Of one thing Sherman was certain: Halleck had always intended to take forts Henry and Donelson as his first move south. One night in January, when Sherman was visiting with Halleck in St. Louis, Halleck laid out a large map on a table and asked, “Where is the rebel line?” His chief of staff, General George Cullum, took a pencil and drew a line that ran roughly east to west in southern Kentucky. On the east was Bowling Green, in the center were Forts Henry and Donelson, and on the west was Columbus, Kentucky, still under the command of General Leonidas Polk.

Halleck, possibly testing his subordinates, asked, “Now, where is the proper place to break it?” Either Sherman or Cullum—Sherman could not recall which—blurted out that the place was in the center. Halleck then drew another line running southward from Cairo and Paducah, through forts Henry and Donelson and up the Tennessee River. “That,” he declared, “is the true line of operations.” Sherman noted later that this incident took place a whole month before Grant moved out along that line in early February.¹³

—

Despite Sherman’s close relations with Halleck, his career took a critical turn as a result of Grant’s campaign. On February 13, 1862, after the capture of Fort Henry but before the fall of Fort Donelson, Halleck finally began to grasp what Grant had done—pushing on without orders. Highly concerned about Grant’s supply situation, he ordered Sherman to turn over the command of Fort Benton and proceed immediately to Paducah, Grant’s vital supply hub. Sherman left immediately.

Sherman’s arrival in a supporting role was potentially the cause of some embarrassment, because he was senior to Grant by three years and by law should have assumed command. But Sherman had better sense than to do so. He made it easy. As Grant described their meeting,

During the siege General Sherman had been sent to Smithland at the mouth of the Cumberland River to forward reinforcements and supplies to me. At that time he was my senior in rank and there was no authority of law to assign a junior to command a senior of the same grade. But every boat that came up with supplies or reinforcements brought a note of encouragement from Sherman, asking me to call upon him for any assistance he could render and saying that if he could be of service at the front I might send for him and he would waive rank.¹⁴

The problem of rank was quickly solved, because in the national exhilaration of Grant’s victory he was appointed to the grade of major general. But Sherman’s offer began an association immortal in American military history. Joining Grant gave Sherman the chance to rise out of the depths he had been suffering in for months.