Recollections of the Civil War
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Title: Recollections of the Civil War
Author: Charles A. Dana
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RECOLLECTIONS OF THE CIVIL WAR ***
RECOLLECTIONS
OF THE CIVIL WAR
_With the Leaders at Washington
and in the Field in the Sixties_
BY
CHARLES A. DANA
_ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF WAR FROM 1863 TO 1865_
WITH PORTRAIT
[Illustration: Publisher's seal]
NEW YORK
_D. Appleton and Company_
1902
COPYRIGHT, 1898,
BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
[Illustration: C. A. Dana. (Signature)]
RECOLLECTIONS OF THE CIVIL WAR
THE WORKS OF CHARLES A. DANA.
=Recollections of the Civil War.=
By CHARLES A. DANA. With Portrait. Large 12mo.
Cloth, gilt top, uncut, $2.00.
The late Charles A. Dana's "Recollections of the Civil War" forms
one of the most remarkable volumes of historical, political, and
personal reminiscences which have been given to the public. Mr. Dana
was not only practically a member of the Cabinet and in the
confidence of the leaders of Washington, but he was also the chosen
representative of the War Department with General Grant and other
military commanders, and he was present at many of the councils
which preceded movements of the greatest importance.
=Appletons' American Cyclopædia.=
A Popular Dictionary of General Knowledge. Edited by
CHARLES A. DANA and GEORGE RIPLEY. Complete in
16 volumes of over 800 pages each. Fully illustrated with
several thousand Wood Engravings and numerous Colored
Lithographic Maps. _Sold only by subscription._
=The Household Book of Poetry.=
Edited by CHARLES A. DANA. Illustrated with Steel Engravings.
New and enlarged edition. Royal 8vo. Cloth,
$5.00; morocco, antique, $10.00; tree calf, $12.00.
=Fifty Perfect Poems.=
Selected and edited by CHARLES A. DANA and ROSSITER
JOHNSON. Royal 8vo. Illustrated. White silk, $10.00;
morocco, $15.00.
=The Household Book of Songs.=
Collected and arranged by CHARLES A. DANA and F. A.
BOWMAN. Half roan, cloth sides, $2.50.
=The Art of Newspaper Making.=
Three Lectures. 16mo. Cloth, $1.00.
=Eastern Journeys.=
Some Notes of Travel in Russia, in the Caucasus, and to
Jerusalem. 16mo. Cloth, $1.00.
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.
PREFACE.
Mr. Dana wrote these Recollections of the civil war according to a
purpose which he had entertained for several years. They were completed
only a few months before his death on October 17, 1897. A large part of
the narrative has been published serially in McClure's Magazine. In the
chapter about Abraham Lincoln and the Lincoln Cabinet Mr. Dana has drawn
from a lecture which he delivered in 1896 before the New Haven Colony
Historical Society. The incident of the self-wounded spy, in the chapter
relating to the secret service of the war, was first printed in the
North American Review for August, 1891. A few of the anecdotes about Mr.
Lincoln which appear in this book were told by Mr. Dana originally in a
brief contribution to a volume entitled Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln
by Distinguished Men of his Time, edited by the late Allen Thorndike
Rice, and published in 1886.
Although Mr. Dana was in one sense the least reminiscent of men, living
actively in the present, and always more interested in to-morrow than
in yesterday, and although it was his characteristic habit to toss into
the wastebasket documents for history which many persons would have
treasured, he found in the preparation of the following chapters
abundant material wherewith to stimulate and confirm his own memory, in
the form of his official and unofficial reports written at the front for
the information of Mr. Stanton and Mr. Lincoln, and private letters to
members of his family and intimate friends.
Charles Anderson Dana was forty-four years old when his appointment as
Assistant Secretary of War put him behind the scenes of the great drama
then enacting, and brought him into personal relations with the
conspicuous civilians and soldiers of the war period. Born in New
Hampshire on August 8, 1819, he had passed by way of western New York,
Harvard College, and Brook Farm into the profession which he loved and
in which he labored almost to the last day of his life. When Secretary
Stanton called him to Washington he had been engaged for nearly fifteen
years in the management of the New York Tribune, the journal most
powerful at that time in solidifying Northern sentiment for the crisis
that was to come. When the war was over and the Union preserved, he
returned at once to journalism. His career subsequently as the editor of
The Sun for thirty years is familiar to most Americans.
It is proper to note the circumstance that the three years covered by
Mr. Dana's Recollections as here recorded constitute the only term
during which he held any public office, and the only break in more than
half a century of continuous experience in the making of newspapers. His
connection with the Government during those momentous years is an
episode in the story of a life that throbbed from boyhood to age with
intellectual energy, and was crowded with practical achievement.
NEW YORK, _October 17, 1898_.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I.--FROM THE TRIBUNE TO THE WAR DEPARTMENT 1
First meeting with Mr. Lincoln--Early correspondence
with Mr. Stanton--A command obtained for General
Frémont--The new energy in the military operations--Mr.
Stanton disclaims the credit--The War Secretary's opinion
of McClellan--Mr. Dana called into Government service--The
Cairo investigation and its results--First acquaintance
with General Grant.
II.--AT THE FRONT WITH GRANT'S ARMY 16
War speculation in cotton--In business partnership
with Roscoe Conkling--Appointed special commissioner
to Grant's army--The story of a cipher code--From Memphis
to Milliken's Bend--The various plans for taking
Vicksburg--At Grant's headquarters--The beginning of
trouble with McClernand.
III.--BEFORE AND AROUND VICKSBURG 35
The hard job of reopening the Mississippi--Admiral
Porter runs the Confederate batteries--Headquarters moved
to Smith's plantation--Delay and confusion in McClernand's
command--The unsuccessful attack on Grand Gulf--The
move to the east shore--Mr. Dana manages with
Grant's help to secure a good horse.
IV.--IN CAMP AND BATTLE WITH GRANT AND HIS GENERALS 47
Marching into the enemy's country--A night in a
church with a Bible for pillow--Our communications are
cut--Entering the capital of Mississippi--The War
Department gives Grant full authority--Battle of Champion's
Hill--General Logan's peculiarity--Battlefield
incidents--Vicksburg invested and the siege begun--Personal
traits of Sherman, McPherson, and McClernand.
V.--SOME CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 61
Grant before his great fame--His friend and mentor,
General Rawlins--James Harrison Wilson--Two semi-official
letters to Stanton--Character sketches for the information
of the President and Secretary--Mr. Dana's early
judgment of soldiers who afterward won distinction.
VI.--THE SIEGE OF VICKSBURG 78
Life behind Vicksburg--Grant's efforts to procure
reinforcements--The fruitless appeal to General Banks--Mr.
Stanton responds to Mr. Dana's representations--A steamboat
trip with Grant--Watching Joe Johnston--Visits to Sherman
and Admiral Porter--The negro troops win glory--Progress
and incidents of the siege--Vicksburg wakes up--McClernand's
removal.
VII.--PEMBERTON'S SURRENDER 91
The artillery assault of June 20th--McPherson springs
a mine--Grant decides to storm the city--Pemberton asks
for an interview and terms--The "unconditional surrender"
note--At the meeting of Grant and Pemberton between
the lines--The ride into Vicksburg and the Fourth
of July celebration there.
VIII.--WITH THE ARMY OF THE CUMBERLAND 103
Appointment as Assistant Secretary of War--Again to
the far front--An interesting meeting with Andrew
Johnson--Rosecrans's complaints--His view of the situation
at Chattanooga--At General Thomas's headquarters--The
first day of Chickamauga--The battlefield telegraph
service--A night council of war at Widow Glenn's--Personal
experiences of the disastrous second day's battle--The
"Rock of Chickamauga."
IX.--THE REMOVAL OF ROSECRANS 120
Preparing to defend Chattanooga--Effect on the army
of the day of disaster and glory--Mr. Dana suggests Grant
or Thomas as Rosecrans's successor--Portrait of Thomas--The
dignity and loyalty of his character illustrated--The
army reorganized--It is threatened with starvation--An
estimate of Rosecrans--He is relieved of the command
of the Army of the Cumberland.
X.--CHATTANOOGA AND MISSIONARY RIDGE 132
Thomas succeeds Rosecrans in the Army of the
Cumberland--Grant supreme at Chattanooga--A visit to the
army at Knoxville--A Tennessee Unionist's family--Impressions
of Burnside--Grant against Bragg at Chattanooga--The
most spectacular fighting of the war--Watching
the first day's battle--With Sherman the second day--The
moonlight fight on Lookout Mountain--Sheridan's
whisky flask--The third day's victory and the glorious
spectacle it afforded--The relief of General Burnside.
XI.--THE WAR DEPARTMENT IN WAR TIMES 156
Grant's plans blocked by Halleck--Mr. Dana on duty at
Washington--Edwin McMasters Stanton--His deep religious
feeling--His swift intelligence and almost superhuman
energy--The Assistant Secretary's functions--Contract
supplies and contract frauds--Lincoln's intercession
for dishonest contractors with political influence--A
characteristic letter from Sherman.
XII.--ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND HIS CABINET 168
Daily intercourse with Lincoln--The great civil leaders
of the period--Seward and Chase--Gideon Welles--Friction
between Stanton and Blair--Personal traits of the
President--Lincoln's surpassing ability as a politician--His
true greatness of character and intellect--His genius
for military judgment--Stanton's comment on the Gettysburg
speech--The kindness of Abraham Lincoln's heart.
XIII.--THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC IN '64 186
Mr. Lincoln sends Mr. Dana again to the front--General
Halleck's character--First visit to the Army of the
Potomac--General Meade's good qualities and bad--Winfield
Scott Hancock--Early acquaintance with Sedgwick--His
death--Humphreys's accomplishments as a soldier and as
a swearer--Grant's plan of campaign against Lee--Incidents
at Spottsylvania--The "Bloody Angle."
XIV.--THE GREAT GAME BETWEEN GRANT AND LEE 200
Maneuvering and fighting in the rain, mud, and
thickets--Virginian conditions of warfare--Within eight
miles of Richmond--The battle of Cold Harbor--The
tremendous losses of the campaign--The charge of butchery
against Grant considered in the light of statistics--What
it cost in life and blood to take Richmond.
XV.--THE MARCH ON PETERSBURG 212
In camp at Cold Harbor--Grant's opinion of Lee--Trouble
with newspaper correspondents--Moving south of
the James River--The great pontoon bridge--The fighting
of the colored troops--Failure to take Petersburg at first
attack--Lee loses Grant and Beauregard finds him--Beauregard's
service to the Confederacy.
XVI.--EARLY'S RAID AND THE WASHINGTON PANIC 224
President Lincoln visits the lines at Petersburg--Trouble
with General Meade--Jubal Early menaces the Federal
capital--The excitement in Washington and Baltimore--Clerks
and veteran reserves called out to defend Washington--Grant
sends troops from the front--Plenty of generals, but no
head--Early ends the panic by withdrawing--A fine letter
from Grant about Hunter.
XVII.--THE SECRET SERVICE OF THE WAR 235
Mr. Stanton's agents and spies--Regular subterranean
traffic between Washington and Richmond--A man who
spied for both sides--The arrest of the Baltimore
merchants--Stanton's remarkable speech on the meaning
of disloyalty--Intercepting Jefferson Davis's letters
to Canada--Detecting the plot to burn New York, and the
plan to invade Vermont--Story of the cleverest and
pluckiest of spies and his remarkable adventures.
XVIII.--A VISIT TO SHERIDAN IN THE VALLEY 248
Mr. Dana carries to Sheridan his major-general's
commission--A ride through the Army of the Shenandoah--The
affection of Sheridan's soldiers for the general--How
he explained it--His ideas about personal courage in
battle--The War Department and the railroads--How the
department worked for Lincoln's re-election--Election
night of November, 1864--Lincoln reads aloud passages
from Petroleum V. Nasby while the returns come in.
XIX.--"ON TO RICHMOND" AT LAST! 263
The fall of the Confederacy--In Richmond just after
the evacuation--A search for Confederate archives--Lincoln's
propositions to the Virginians--A meeting with the
Confederate Assistant Secretary of War--Andrew Johnson
turns up at Richmond--His views as to the necessity of
punishing rebels--The first Sunday services at the
Confederate capital under the old flag--News of Lee's
surrender reaches Richmond--Back to Washington with Grant.
XX.--THE CLOSING SCENES AT WASHINGTON 273
Last interview with Mr. Lincoln--Why Jacob Thompson
escaped--At the deathbed of the murdered President--Searching
for the assassins--The letters which Mr. Lincoln
had docketed "Assassination"--At the conspiracy
trial--The Confederate secret cipher--Jefferson Davis's
capture and imprisonment--A visit to the Confederate
President at Fortress Monroe--The grand review of the
Union armies--The meeting between Stanton and Sherman--End
of Mr. Dana's connection with the War Department.
INDEX. 293
RECOLLECTIONS OF THE CIVIL WAR.
CHAPTER I.
FROM THE TRIBUNE TO THE WAR DEPARTMENT.
First meeting with Mr. Lincoln--Early correspondence with Mr.
Stanton--A command obtained for General Frémont--The new energy in
the military operations--Mr. Stanton disclaims the credit--The War
Secretary's opinion of McClellan--Mr. Dana called into Government
service--The Cairo investigation and its results--First acquaintance
with General Grant.
I had been associated with Horace Greeley on the New York Tribune for
about fifteen years when, one morning early in April, 1862, Mr.
Sinclair, the advertising manager of the paper, came to me, saying that
Mr. Greeley would be glad to have me resign. I asked one of my
associates to find from Mr. Greeley if that was really his wish. In a
few hours he came to me saying that I had better go. I stayed the day
out in order to make up the paper and give them an opportunity to find a
successor, but I never went into the office after that. I think I then
owned a fifth of the paper--twenty shares; this stock my colleagues
bought.
Mr. Greeley never gave a reason for dismissing me, nor did I ever ask
for one. I know, though, that the real explanation was that while he
was for peace I was for war, and that as long as I stayed on the Tribune
there was a spirit there which was not his spirit--that he did not like.
My retirement from the Tribune was talked of in the newspapers for a day
or two, and brought me a letter from the Secretary of War, Edwin M.
Stanton, saying he would like to employ me in the War Department. I had
already met Mr. Lincoln, and had carried on a brief correspondence with
Mr. Stanton. My meeting with Mr. Lincoln was shortly after his
inauguration. He had appointed Mr. Seward to be his Secretary of State,
and some of the Republican leaders of New York who had been instrumental
in preventing Mr. Seward's nomination to the presidency, and in securing
that of Mr. Lincoln, had begun to fear that they would be left out in
the cold in the distribution of the offices. General James S. Wadsworth,
George Opdyke, Lucius Robinson, T. B. Carroll, and Henry B. Stanton were
among the number of these gentlemen. Their apprehensions were somewhat
mitigated by the fact that Mr. Chase, to whom we were all friendly, was
Secretary of the Treasury. But, notwithstanding, they were afraid that
the superior tact and pertinacity of Mr. Seward and of Mr. Thurlow Weed,
Seward's close friend and political manager, would get the upper hand,
and that the power of the Federal administration would be put into the
control of the rival faction; accordingly, several of them determined to
go to Washington, and I was asked to go with them.
I believe the appointment for our interview with the President was made
through Mr. Chase; but at any rate we all went up to the White House
together, except Mr. Henry B. Stanton, who stayed away because he was
himself an applicant for office.
Mr. Lincoln received us in the large room upstairs in the east wing of
the White House, where he had his working office. The President stood up
while General Wadsworth, who was our principal spokesman, and Mr. Opdyke
stated what was desired. After the interview had begun, a big Indian,
who was a messenger in attendance in the White House, came into the room
and said to the President:
"She wants you."
"Yes, yes," said Mr. Lincoln, without stirring.
Soon afterward the messenger returned again, exclaiming, "I say, she
wants you!"
The President was evidently annoyed, but instead of going out after the
messenger he remarked to us:
"One side shall not gobble up everything. Make out a list of places and
men you want, and I will endeavor to apply the rule of give and take."
General Wadsworth answered:
"Our party will not be able to remain in Washington, but we will leave
such a list with Mr. Carroll, and whatever he agrees to will be
agreeable to us."
Mr. Lincoln continued: "Let Mr. Carroll come in to-morrow, and we will
see what can be done."
This is the substance of the interview, and what most impressed me was
the evident fairness of the President. We all felt that he meant to do
what was right and square in the matter. While he was not the man to
promote factious quarrels and difficulties within his party, he did not
intend to leave in the lurch the friends through whose exertions his
nomination and election had finally been brought about. At the same time
he understood perfectly that we of New York and our associates in the
Republican body had not gone to Chicago for the purpose of nominating
him, or of nominating any one in particular, but only to beat Mr.
Seward, and thereupon to do the best that could be done as regards the
selection of the candidate.
My acquaintance with Mr. Stanton had come about through an editorial
which I had written for the Tribune on his entrance to the War
Department. I had sent it to him with a letter calling his attention to
certain facts with which it seemed to me the War Department ought to
deal. In reply I received the following letter:
WASHINGTON, _January 24, 1862_.
MY DEAR SIR: Yours of the 22d only reached me this evening. The
facts you mention were new to me, but there is too much reason to
fear they are true. But that matter will, I think, be corrected
_very speedily_.
You can not tell how much obligation I feel myself under for your
kindness. Every man who wishes the country to pass through this
trying hour should stand on watch, and aid me. Bad passions and
little passions and mean passions gather around and hem in the
great movements that should deliver this nation.
Two days ago I wrote you a long letter--a three pager--expressing
my thanks for your admirable article of the 21st, stating my
position and purposes; and in that letter I mentioned some of the
circumstances of my unexpected appointment. But, interrupted before
it was completed, I will not inflict, or afflict, you with it.
I know the task that is before us--I say _us_, because the Tribune
has its mission as plainly as I have mine, and they tend to the
same end. But I am not in the smallest degree dismayed or
disheartened. By God's blessing we shall prevail. I feel a deep,
_earnest_ feeling growing up around me. We have no jokes or
trivialities, but all with whom I act show that they are now in
dead earnest.
I know you will rejoice to know this.
As soon as I can get the machinery of the office working, the rats
cleared out, and the rat holes stopped we shall _move_. This army
has got to fight or run away; and while men are striving nobly in
the West, the champagne and oysters on the Potomac must be stopped.
But patience for a short while only is all I ask, if you and others
like you will rally around me.
Yours truly,
EDWIN M. STANTON.
C. A. DANA, Esq.
A few days after this I wrote Mr. Stanton a second letter, in which I
asked him to give General Frémont a chance. At the breaking out of the
war Frémont had been made a major general in the regular army and the
command of the Western Department had been given to him. His campaign in
Missouri in the summer of 1861 gave great dissatisfaction, and in
November, 1861, he was relieved, after an investigation by the Secretary
of War. Since that time he had been without a command. I believed, as
did many others, that political intrigue was keeping Frémont back. I was
anxious that he should have fair play, in order that the great mass of
people who had supported him for the presidency in 1856, and who still
were his warm friends, might not be dissatisfied. To my letter Mr.
Stanton replied:
WASHINGTON, _February 1, 1862_.
DEAR SIR: If General Frémont has any fight in him, he shall (so far
as I am concerned) have a chance to show it, and I have told _him_
so. The times require the help of every man according to his gifts,
and, having neither partialities nor grudges to indulge, it will be
my aim to practice on the maxim, "the tools to him that can handle
them."[A]
There will be serious trouble between Hunter and Lane. What Lane's
expedition has in view, how it came to be set on foot, and what is
expected to be accomplished by it, I do not know and have tried in
vain to find out. It seems to be a haphazard affair that no one
will admit himself to be responsible for. But believing that Lane
has pluck, and is an earnest man, he _shall have fair play_. If you
know anything about him or his expedition pray tell it to me.
To bring the War Department up to the standard of the times, and
work an army of five hundred thousand with machinery adapted to a
peace establishment of twelve thousand, is no easy task. This was
Mr. Cameron's great trouble, and the cause of much of the
complaints against him. All I ask is reasonable time and patience.
The pressure of members of Congress for clerk and army
appointments, notwithstanding the most stringent rules, and the
persistent strain against all measures essential to obtain time for
thought, combination, and conference, is discouraging in the
extreme--it often tempts me to quit the helm in despair. The only
consolation is the confidence and support of good and patriotic
men; to their aid I look for strength.
Yours truly, EDWIN M. STANTON.
C. A. DANA, Esq., Tribune Office.
Very soon after Mr. Stanton went into office military affairs were
energized, and a forward movement of the armies was apparent. It was
followed by several victories, notably those of Fort Henry and Fort
Donelson. On several occasions the Tribune credited to the head of the
War Department this new spirit which seemed to inspire officers and men.
Mr. Stanton, fearful of the effect of this praise, sent to the paper the
following dispatch:
_To the Editor of the New York Tribune:_
SIR: I can not suffer undue merit to be ascribed to my official
action. The glory of our recent victories belongs to the gallant
officers and soldiers that fought the battles. No share of it
belongs to me.
Much has recently been said of military combinations and organizing
victory. I hear such phrases with apprehension. They commenced in
infidel France with the Italian campaign, and resulted in Waterloo.
Who can organize victory? Who can combine the elements of success
on the battlefield? We owe our recent victories to the spirit of
the Lord that moved our soldiers to rush into battle and filled the
heart of our enemies with dismay. The inspiration that conquered in
battle was in the hearts of the soldiers and from on high; and
wherever there is the same inspiration there will be the same
results. Patriotic spirit, with resolute courage in officers and
men, is a military combination that never failed.
We may well rejoice at the recent victories, for they teach us that
battles are to be won now and by us in the same and only manner
that they were ever won by any people, or in any age, since the
days of Joshua, by boldly pursuing and striking the foe. What,
under the blessing of Providence, I conceive to be the true
organization of victory and military combination to end this war,
was declared in a few words by General Grant's message to General
Buckner: "_I propose to move immediately on your works._"
Yours truly, EDWIN M. STANTON.
On receiving this I at once wired to our representative in Washington to
know if Mr. Stanton meant to "repudiate" the Tribune. I received my
answer from Mr. Stanton himself:
WASHINGTON, _February 19, 1862_.
DEAR SIR: It occurred to me that your kind notice of myself might
be perverted into a disparagement of the Western officers and
soldiers to whom the merit of the recent victories justly belongs,
and that it might create an antagonism between them and the head of
the War Department. To avoid _that_ misconstruction was the object
of my dispatch--leaving the matter to be determined as to
publication to the better judgment of the Tribune, my own mind not
being clear on the point of its expediency. Mr. Hill called to see
me this evening, and from the tenor of your dispatch it seemed to
me that your judgment did not approve the publication, or you would
not speak of me as "repudiating" anything the Tribune says. On
reflection _I am convinced the communication should not be
published_, as it might imply an antagonism between myself and the
Tribune. On this, as on any future occasion, I defer to your
judgment. We have one heart and mind in this great cause, and upon
many essential points you have a wider range of observation and
clearer sight than myself; I am therefore willing to be guided by
your wisdom.
Yours truly, EDWIN M. STANTON.
C. A. DANA, Esq.
On receiving this letter we of course published his telegram at once.
When Mr. Stanton went into the War Department there was great
dissatisfaction in the Tribune office with McClellan. He had been placed
in command of the Army of the Potomac in the preceding August, and since
November 1st had been in command of all the armies of the United States;
but while he had proved himself an excellent drillmaster, he had at the
same time proved that he was no general at all. His friends were loyal,
however, and whatever success our armies met with was attributed to his
generalship.
When the capture of Fort Donelson was announced, McClellan's friends
claimed that he had directed it by telegraph from his headquarters on
the Potomac. Now the terminus of the telegraph toward Fort Donelson was
many miles from the battlefield. Besides, the absurdity of a general
directing the movements of a battle a thousand miles off, even if he had
fifty telegraph wires leading to every part of the field, was apparent.
Nevertheless, McClellan's supporters kept up their claim. On February
20th the Associated Press agent at Washington, in reporting a railroad
convention in Washington at which Mr. Stanton had spoken, said:
"Secretary Stanton in the course of his address paid a high compliment
to the young and gallant friend at his side, Major-General McClellan, in
whom he had the utmost confidence, and the results of whose military
schemes, gigantic and well matured, were now exhibited to a rejoicing
country. The Secretary, with upraised hands, implored Almighty God to
aid them and himself, and all occupying positions under the Government,
in crushing out this unholy rebellion."
I did not believe Stanton had done any such thing, so I sent the
paragraph to him. The Secretary replied:
[Private.]
WASHINGTON, _February 23, 1862_.
DEAR SIR: The paragraph to which you called my attention was a
ridiculous and impudently impertinent effort to puff the general by
a false publication of words I never uttered. Sam Barlow, one of
the secretaries of the meeting, was its author, as I have been
informed. It is too small a matter for _me_ to contradict, but I
told Mr. Kimlen, the other secretary, that I thought the gentlemen
who invited me to be present at their meeting owed it to themselves
to see that one of their own officers should not misrepresent what
I said. It was for them, and due to their own honor, to see that an
officer of the Government might communicate with them in safety;
and if it was not done, I should take care to afford no other
opportunity for such practices.
The fact is that the agents of the Associated Press and a gang
around the Federal Capitol appear to be organized for the purpose
of magnifying their idol.
And if such men as those who composed the railroad convention in
this city do not rebuke such a practice as that perpetrated in this
instance, they can not be conferred with in future.
You will of course see the propriety of my not noticing the matter
and thereby giving it importance beyond the contempt it inspires. I
think you are well enough acquainted with me to judge in future the
value of any such statement.
I notice the Herald telegraphic reporter announces that I had a
second attack of illness on Friday and could not attend the
department. I was in the department, or in the Cabinet, from nine
in the morning until nine at night, and never enjoyed more perfect
health than on that day and at present.
For _your_ kind solicitude accept my thanks. I shall not needlessly
impair my means of usefulness.
Yours truly, EDWIN M. STANTON.
C. A. DANA, Esq.
P.S.--Was it not a funny sight to see a certain military hero in
the telegraph office at Washington last Sunday organizing victory,
and by sublime military combinations capturing Fort Donelson _six
hours_ after Grant and Smith had taken it sword in hand and had
victorious possession! It would be a picture worthy of Punch.
Thus, when the newspapers announced my unexpected retirement from the
Tribune, I was not unknown to either the President or the Secretary of
War.
To Mr. Stanton's letter asking me to go into the service of the War
Department, I replied that I would attempt anything he wanted me to do,
and in May he wrote me that I was to be appointed on a commission to
audit unsettled claims against the quartermaster's department at Cairo,
Ill. I was directed to be in Cairo on June 17th. My formal appointment,
which I did not receive until after I reached Cairo, read thus:
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY, D.C., _June 16, 1862_.
SIR: By direction of the President, a commission has been
appointed, consisting of Messrs. George S. Boutwell, Stephen T.
Logan, and yourself, to examine and report upon all unsettled
claims against the War Department, at Cairo, Ill., that may have
originated prior to the first day of April, 1862.
Messrs. Boutwell and Logan have been requested to meet with you at
Cairo on the eighteenth day of June instant, in order that the
commission may be organized on that day and enter immediately upon
the discharge of its duties.
You will be allowed a compensation of eight dollars per day and
mileage.
Mr. Thomas Means, who has been appointed solicitor for the
Government, has been directed to meet you at Cairo on the
eighteenth instant, and will act, under the direction of the
commission, in the investigation of such claims as may be
presented.
EDWIN M. STANTON,
_Secretary of War_.
Hon. CHARLES A. DANA, of New York,
Cairo, Ill.
On reaching Cairo on the appointed day, I found my associates, Judge
Logan, of Springfield, Ill., one of Mr. Lincoln's friends, and Mr.
Boutwell, of Massachusetts, afterward Governor of his State, Secretary
of the Treasury, and a United States senator. We organized on the 18th,
as directed. Two days after we met Judge Logan was compelled by illness
to resign from the commission, and Shelby M. Cullom, now United States
senator from Illinois, was appointed in his place.
The main Union armies had by this time advanced far to the front, but
Cairo was still an important military depot, almost an outpost, in
command of General William K. Strong, whom I had known well in New York
as a politician. There was a large number of troops stationed in the
town, and from there the armies on the Mississippi River, in Missouri,
and in Kentucky, got all their supplies and munitions of war. The
quartermaster's department at Cairo had been organized hastily, and the
demands upon it had increased rapidly. Much of the business had been
done by green volunteer officers who did not understand the technical
duties of making out military requisitions and returns. The result was
that the accounts were in great confusion, and hysterical newspapers
were charging the department with fraud and corruption. The War
Department decided to make a full investigation of all disbursements at
Cairo from the beginning. Little actual cash had thus far been paid out
upon contracts, and it was not too late to correct overcharges and
straighten out the system. The matter could not be settled by any
ordinary means, and the commission went there as a kind of supreme
authority, accepting or rejecting claims and paying them as we thought
fit after examining the evidence.
Sixteen hundred and ninety-six claims, amounting to $599,219.36, were
examined by us. Of those approved and certified for payment the amount
was $451,105.80. Of the claims rejected, a considerable portion were for
losses suffered in the active operations of the army, either through
departure from discipline on the part of soldiers, or from requisitions
made by officers who failed to give receipts and certificates to the
persons concerned, who were thus unable to support their claims by
sufficient evidence. Many claims of this description were also presented
by men whose loyalty to the Government was impeached by credible
witnesses. In rejecting these the commission set forth the disloyalty of
the claimants, in the certificates written on the face of their
accounts. Other accounts, whose rightfulness was established, were
rejected on proof of disloyalty. The commission regarded complicity in
the rebellion as barring all claims against the United States.
A question of some interest was raised by the claim of the trustees of
the Cairo city property to be paid for the use by the Government wharf
boats of the paved portion of the levee which protected the town against
the Ohio River. We were unable to see the matter in the light presented
by the trustees. Our judgment was that the Government ought not to pay
for the use of necessary landing places on these rivers or elsewhere
during the exigencies of the war, and we so certified upon the face of
the claims. A similar principle guided our decision upon several claims
for the rent of vacant lots in Cairo, which had been used by the
military authorities for the erection of temporary barracks or stables.
We determined that for these no rent ought, under the circumstances, to
be allowed, but we suggested that in justice to the owners this
temporary occupation should be terminated as soon as possible by the
sale and removal of the buildings.
A very small percentage of the claims were rejected because of fraud. In
almost every case it was possible to suppose that the apparent fraud was
accident. My observation throughout the war was the same. I do not
believe that so much business could be transacted with a closer
adherence to the line of honesty. That there were frauds is a matter of
course, because men, and even some women, are wicked, but frauds were
the exception.
Our commission finished its labors at Cairo on July 31, 1862, and I went
at once to Washington with the report, placing it in the hands of Mr.
Stanton on August 5th. It was never printed, and the manuscript is still
in the files of the War Department.
There was a great deal of curiosity among officers in Washington about
the result of our investigation, and all the time that I was in the city
I was being questioned on the subject. It was natural enough that they
should have felt interested in our report. The charges of fraud and
corruption against officers and contractors had become so reckless and
general that the mere sight of a man in conference with a high official
led to the suspicion and often the charge that he was conspiring to rob
the Government. That in this case, where the charges seemed so well
based, so small a percentage of corruption had been proved was a source
of solid satisfaction to every one in the War Department.
All the leisure that I had while in Cairo I spent in horseback riding up
and down the river banks and in visiting the adjacent military posts. My
longest and most interesting trip was on the Fourth of July, when I went
down the Mississippi to attend a big celebration at Memphis. I remember
it particularly because it was there that I first met General Grant. The
officers stationed in the city gave a dinner that day, to which I was
invited. At the table I was seated between Grant and Major John A.
Rawlins, of his staff. I remember distinctly the pleasant impression
Grant made--that of a man of simple manners, straightforward, cordial,
and unpretending. He had already fought the successful battles of Fort
Donelson and Shiloh, and, when I met him, was a major general in command
of the district of West Tennessee, Department of the Missouri, under
Halleck, with headquarters at Memphis. Although one would not have
suspected it from his manners, he was really under a cloud at the time
because of his operations at Shiloh. Those who did not like Grant had
accused him of having been taken by surprise there, and had declared
that he would have been beaten if Buell had not come up. I often talked
later with Grant's staff officers about Shiloh, and they always affirmed
that he would have been successful if Buell had not come to his relief.
I believe Grant himself thought so, although he never said so directly
in any one of the many talks I had with him about the battle.
FOOTNOTE:
[A] A month later General Frémont was assigned to the command of the
"Mountain Department," composed of parts of Virginia, Kentucky, and
Tennessee.
CHAPTER II
AT THE FRONT WITH GRANT'S ARMY.
War speculation in cotton--In business partnership with Roscoe
Conkling--Appointed special commissioner to Grant's army--The story
of a cipher code--From Memphis to Milliken's Bend--The various plans
for taking Vicksburg--At Grant's headquarters--The beginning of
trouble with McClernand.
As Mr. Stanton had no immediate need of my services, I returned in
August to New York, where I was occupied with various private affairs
until the middle of November, when I received a telegram from
Assistant-Secretary-of-War P. H. Watson, asking me to go immediately to
Washington to enter upon another investigation. I went, and was received
by Mr. Stanton, who offered me the place of Assistant Secretary of War.
I said I would accept.
"All right," said he; "consider it settled."
As I went out from the War Department into the street I met Major
Charles G. Halpine--"Miles O'Reilly"--of the Sixty-ninth New York
Infantry. I had known Halpine well as a newspaper man in New York, and I
told him of my appointment as Mr. Stanton's assistant. He immediately
repeated what I had told him to some newspaper people. It was reported
in the New York papers the next morning. The Secretary was greatly
offended and withdrew the appointment. When I told Halpine I had, of
course, no idea he was going to repeat it; besides, I did not think
there was any harm in telling.
Immediately after this episode I formed a partnership with Roscoe
Conkling and George W. Chadwick to buy cotton. The outcry which the
manufacturers had raised over the inability to get cotton for their
industries had induced the Government to permit trading through the
lines of the army, and the business looked profitable. Conkling and I
each put ten thousand dollars into the firm, and Chadwick gave his
services, which, as he was an expert in cotton, was considered equal to
our capital. To facilitate our operations, I went to Washington to ask
Mr. Stanton for letters of recommendation to the generals on and near
the Mississippi, where we proposed to begin our purchases. Mr. Stanton
and I had several conversations about the advisability of allowing such
traffic, but he did not hesitate about giving me the letters I asked.
There were several of them: one to General Hurlbut, then at Memphis;
another to General Grant, who had begun his movement against Vicksburg;
and another to General Curtis, who commanded in Arkansas. The general
purport of them was: "Mr. Dana is my friend; you can rely upon what he
says, and if you can be kind to him in any way you will oblige me."
It was in January, 1863, that Chadwick and I went to Memphis, where we
stayed at the Gayoso House, at that time the swell hotel of the town and
the headquarters of several officers.
It was not long after I began to study the trade in cotton before I saw
it was a bad business and ought to be stopped. I at once wrote Mr.
Stanton the following letter, which embodied my observations and gave my
opinion as to what should be done:
MEMPHIS, _January 21, 1863_.
DEAR SIR: You will remember our conversations on the subject of
excluding cotton speculators from the regions occupied by our
armies in the South. I now write to urge the matter upon your
attention as a measure of military necessity.
The mania for sudden fortunes made in cotton, raging in a vast
population of Jews and Yankees scattered throughout this whole
country, and in this town almost exceeding the numbers of the
regular residents, has to an alarming extent corrupted and
demoralized the army. Every colonel, captain, or quartermaster is
in secret partnership with some operator in cotton; every soldier
dreams of adding a bale of cotton to his monthly pay. I had no
conception of the extent of this evil until I came and saw for
myself.
Besides, the resources of the rebels are inordinately increased
from this source. Plenty of cotton is brought in from beyond our
lines, especially by the agency of Jewish traders, who pay for it
ostensibly in Treasury notes, but really in gold.
What I would propose is that no private purchaser of cotton shall
be allowed in any part of the occupied region.
Let quartermasters buy the article at a fixed price, say twenty or
twenty-five cents per pound, and forward it by army transportation
to proper centers, say Helena, Memphis, or Cincinnati, to be sold
at public auction on Government account. Let the sales take place
on regular fixed days, so that all parties desirous of buying can
be sure when to be present.
But little capital will be required for such an operation. The
sales being frequent and for cash, will constantly replace the
amount employed for the purpose. I should say that two hundred
thousand dollars would be sufficient to conduct the movement.
I have no doubt that this two hundred thousand dollars so employed
would be more than equal to thirty thousand men added to the
national armies.
My pecuniary interest is in the continuance of the present state of
things, for while it lasts there are occasional opportunities of
profit to be made by a daring operator; but I should be false to my
duty did I, on that account, fail to implore you to put an end to
an evil so enormous, so insidious, and so full of peril to the
country.
My first impulse was to hurry to Washington to represent these
things to you in person; but my engagements here with other persons
will not allow me to return East so speedily. I beg you, however,
to act without delay, if possible. An excellent man to put at the
head of the business would be General Strong. I make this
suggestion without any idea whether the employment would be
agreeable to him.
Yours faithfully, CHARLES A. DANA.
Mr. STANTON.
P.S.--Since writing the above I have seen General Grant, who fully
agrees with all my statements and suggestions, except that imputing
corruption to every officer, which of course I did not intend to be
taken literally.
I have also just attended a public sale by the quartermaster here
of five hundred bales of cotton confiscated by General Grant at
Oxford and Holly Springs. It belonged to Jacob Thompson and other
notorious rebels. This cotton brought to-day over a million and a
half of dollars, cash. This sum alone would be five times enough to
set on foot the system I recommend, without drawing upon the
Treasury at all. In fact, there can be no question that by adopting
this system the quartermaster's department in this valley _would
become self-supporting_, while the army would become honest again,
and the slaveholders would no longer find that the rebellion had
quadrupled the price of their great staple, but only doubled it.
As soon as I could get away from Memphis I went to Washington, where I
had many conversations with Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Stanton about
restricting the trade in cotton. They were deeply interested in my
observations, and questioned me closely about what I had seen. My
opinion that the trade should be stopped had the more weight because I
was able to say, "General Grant and every general officer whom I have
seen hopes it will be done."
The result of these consultations was that on March 31, 1863, Mr.
Lincoln issued a proclamation declaring unlawful all commercial
intercourse with the States in insurrection, except when carried on
according to the regulations prescribed by the Secretary of the
Treasury. These regulations Mr. Chase prepared at once. At the same time
that Mr. Lincoln issued his proclamation, Mr. Stanton issued an order
forbidding officers and all members of the army to have anything to do
with the trade. In spite of all these regulations, however, and the
modifications of them which experience brought, there was throughout the
war more or less difficulty over cotton trading.
From Washington I went back to New York. I had not been there long
before Mr. Stanton sent for me to come to Washington. He wanted some one
to go to Grant's army, he said, to report daily to him the military
proceedings, and to give such information as would enable Mr. Lincoln
and himself to settle their minds as to Grant, about whom at that time
there were many doubts, and against whom there was some complaint.
"Will you go?" Mr. Stanton asked. "Yes," I said. "Very well," he
replied. "The ostensible function I shall give you will be that of
special commissioner of the War Department to investigate the pay
service of the Western armies, but your real duty will be to report to
me every day what you see."
On March 12th Mr. Stanton wrote me the following letter:
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY, _March 12, 1863_.
DEAR SIR: I inclose you a copy of your order of appointment and the
order fixing your compensation, with a letter to Generals
Sumner,[B] Grant, and Rosecrans, and a draft for one thousand
dollars. Having explained the purposes of your appointment to you
personally, no further instructions will be given unless specially
required. Please acknowledge the receipt of this, and proceed as
early as possible to your duties.
Yours truly, EDWIN M. STANTON.
C. A. DANA, Esq., New York.
My commission read:
ORDERED, That C. A. Dana, Esq., be and he is hereby appointed
special commissioner of the War Department to investigate and report
upon the condition of the pay service in the Western armies. All
paymasters and assistant paymasters will furnish to the said
commissioner for the Secretary of War information upon any matters
concerning which he may make inquiry of them as fully and
completely and promptly as if directly called for by the Secretary
of War. Railroad agents, quartermasters, and commissioners will give
him transportation and subsistence. All officers and persons in the
service will aid him in the performance of his duties, and will
afford him assistance, courtesy, and protection. The said
commissioner will make report to this department as occasion may
require.
The letters of introduction and explanation to the generals were
identical:
GENERAL: Charles A. Dana, Esq., has been appointed a special
commissioner of this department to investigate and report upon the
condition of the pay service in the Western armies. You will please
aid him in the performance of his duties, and communicate to him
fully your views and wishes in respect to that branch of the service
in your command, and also give to him such information as you may
deem beneficial to the service. He is specially commended to your
courtesy and protection. Yours truly,
EDWIN M. STANTON.
I started at once for Memphis, going by way of Cairo and Columbus.
I sent my first dispatch to the War Department from Columbus, on March
20th. It was sent by a secret cipher furnished by the War Department,
which I used myself, for throughout the war I was my own cipher clerk.
The ordinary method at the various headquarters was for the sender to
write out the dispatch in full, after which it was translated from plain
English into the agreed cipher by a telegraph operator or clerk retained
for that exclusive purpose, who understood it, and by another it was
retranslated back again at the other end of the line. So whatever
military secret was transmitted was at the mercy always of at least two
outside persons, besides running the gantlet of other prying eyes.
Dispatches written in complex cipher codes were often difficult to
unravel, unless transmitted by the operator with the greatest precision.
A wrong word sometimes destroyed the sense of an entire dispatch, and
important movements were delayed thereby. This explains the oft-repeated
"I do not understand your telegram" found in the official correspondence
of the war period.
I have become familiar since the war with a great many ciphers, but I
never found one which was more satisfactory than that which I used in my
messages to Mr. Stanton. In preparing my message I first wrote it out in
lines of a given number of words, spaced regularly so as to form five,
six, seven, eight, nine, and ten columns. My key contained various
"routes," to be followed in writing out the messages for transmission.
Thus, a five-column message had one route, a six-column another, and so
on. The route was indicated by a "commencement word." If I had put my
message into five columns, I would write at the beginning the word
"Army," or any one in a list of nine words. The receiver, on looking for
that word in his key, would see that he was to write out what he had
received in lines of five words, thus forming five columns; and then he
was to read it down the fifth column, up the third, down the fourth, up
the second, down the first. At the end of each column an "extra" or
"check" word was added as a blind. A list of "blind" words was also
printed in the key, with each route, which could be inserted, if wished,
at the end of each line so as still further to deceive curious people
who did not have the key. The key contained also a large number of
cipher words. Thus, P. H. Sheridan was "soap" or "Somerset"; President
was "Pembroke" or "Penfield." Instead of writing "there has been," I
wrote "maroon"; instead of secession, "mint"; instead of Vicksburg,
"Cupid." My own cipher was "spunky" or "squad." The days, months, hours,
numerals, and alphabet all had ciphers.
The only message sent by this cipher to be translated by an outsider on
the route, so far as I know, was that one of 4 P.M., September 20, 1863,
in which I reported the Union defeat at Chickamauga. General R. S.
Granger, who was then at Nashville, was at the telegraph office waiting
for news when my dispatch passed through. The operator guessed out the
dispatch, as he afterward confessed, and it was passed around Nashville.
The agent of the Associated Press at Louisville sent out a private
printed circular quoting me as an authority for reporting the battle as
a total defeat, and in Cincinnati Horace Maynard repeated, the same day
of the battle, the entire second sentence of the dispatch, "Chickamauga
is as fatal a name in our history as Bull Run."
This premature disclosure to the public of what was only the truth, well
known at the front, caused a great deal of trouble. I immediately set on
foot an investigation to discover who had penetrated our cipher code,
and soon arrived at a satisfactory understanding of the matter, of which
Mr. Stanton was duly informed. No blame could attach to me, as was
manifest upon the inquiry; nevertheless, the sensation resulted in
considerable annoyance all along the line from Chattanooga to
Washington. I suggested to Mr. Stanton the advisability of concocting a
new and more difficult cipher, but it was never changed, so far as I now
remember.
It was from Columbus, Ky., on March 20, 1863, that I sent my first
telegram to the War Department. I did not remain in Columbus long, for
there was absolutely no trustworthy information there respecting affairs
down the river, but took a boat to Memphis, where I arrived on March
23d. I found General Hurlbut in command. I had met Hurlbut in January,
when on my cotton business, and he gave me every opportunity to gather
information concerning the operations against Vicksburg. Four different
plans for reaching the city were then on foot, the essential element of
all of them being to secure for the army on the high ground behind the
city a foothold whence it could strike, and at the same time be supplied
from a river base. The first and oldest and apparently most promising of
these plans was that of the canal across the neck of the peninsula
facing Vicksburg, on the Louisiana side. When I reached Memphis this
canal was thought to be nearly done.
The second route was by Lake Providence, about forty miles north of
Vicksburg, in Louisiana. It was close to the western bank of the
Mississippi, with which it was proposed to connect it by means of a
canal. The Bayou Macon connected Lake Providence with the Tensas River.
By descending the Tensas to the Washita, the Washita to the Red, the
Red to the Mississippi, the army could be landed on the east bank of the
Mississippi about one hundred and fifty miles south of Vicksburg, and
thence could be marched north. McPherson, with his Seventeenth Corps,
had been ordered by Grant on January 30th to open this route. It was
reported at Memphis when I arrived there that the cutting of Lake
Providence was perfectly successful, but that Bayou Macon was full of
snags, which must be got out before the Tensas would be accessible.
The third and fourth routes proposed for getting behind
Vicksburg--namely, by Yazoo Pass and Steele's Bayou--were attracting the
chief attention when I reached Memphis. Yazoo Pass opened from the
eastern bank of the Mississippi at a point about one hundred and fifty
miles above Vicksburg into Moon Lake, and thence into the Coldwater
River. Through the Coldwater and the Tallahatchie the Yazoo River was
reached. If troops could follow this route and capture Haynes's Bluff,
fourteen miles from the mouth of the Yazoo, Vicksburg at once became
untenable. The Yazoo Pass operation had begun in February, but the
detachment had had bad luck, and on my arrival at Memphis was lying up
the Yallabusha waiting for re-enforcements and supplies.
An attempt was being made also to reach the Yazoo by a roundabout route
through Steele's Bayou, Deer Creek, the Rolling Fork, and the Big
Sunflower. Grant had learned of this route only a short time before my
arrival, and had at once sent Sherman with troops and Admiral Porter
with gunboats to attempt to reach the Yazoo. On March 27th reports came
to Memphis that Sherman had landed twenty regiments on the east bank of
the Yazoo above Haynes's Bluff, and that the gunboats were there to
support him. Reports from other points also were so encouraging that the
greatest enthusiasm prevailed throughout the army, and General Grant was
said to be dead sure he would have Vicksburg within a fortnight.
Five days later, however, we heard at Memphis that there had been a
series of disasters in these different operations, that the Yazoo Pass
expedition was definitely abandoned, and that General Grant had an
entirely new plan of campaign.
I had not been long at Memphis before I decided that it was impossible
to gather trustworthy news there. I had to rely for most of my
information on the reports brought up the river by occasional officers,
not all of whom were sure of what they told, and on the stories of
persons coming from the vicinity of the different operations.
Occasionally an intelligent planter arrived whom I was inclined to
believe, but on the whole I found that my sources of information were
few and uncertain. I accordingly suggested to Mr. Stanton, three days
after my arrival, that I would be more useful farther down the river. In
reply he telegraphed:
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY, _March 30, 1863_.
C. A. DANA, Esq., Memphis, Tenn., via Cairo:
Your telegrams have been received, and although the information has
been meager and unsatisfactory, I am conscious that arises from no
fault of yours. You will proceed to General Grant's headquarters,
or wherever you may be best able to accomplish the purposes
designated by this department. You will consider your movements to
be governed by your own discretion, without any restriction.
EDWIN M. STANTON,
_Secretary of War_.
As soon after receiving his telegram as I could get a boat I left
Memphis for Milliken's Bend, where General Grant had his headquarters. I
reached there at noon on April 6th.
The Mississippi at Milliken's Bend was a mile wide, and the sight as we
came down the river by boat was most imposing. Grant's big army was
stretched up and down the river bank over the plantations, its white
tents affording a new decoration to the natural magnificence of the
broad plains. These plains, which stretch far back from the river, were
divided into rich and old plantations by blooming hedges of rose and
Osage orange, the mansions of the owners being inclosed in roses,
myrtles, magnolias, oaks, and every other sort of beautiful and noble
trees. The negroes whose work made all this wealth and magnificence were
gone, and there was nothing growing in the fields.
For some days after my arrival I lived in a steamboat tied up to the
shore, for though my tent was pitched and ready, I was not able to get a
mattress and pillow. From the deck of the steamer I saw in those days
many a wonderful and to me novel sight. One I remember still. I was
standing out on the upper deck with a group of officers, when we saw far
away, close to the other shore of the river, a long line of something
white floating in the water. We thought it was foam, but it was too long
and white, and that it was cotton which had been thrown into the river,
but it was too straight and regular. Presently we heard a gun fired,
then another, and then we saw it was an enormous flock of swans. They
arose from the water one after the other, and sailed away up the river
in long, curving, silver lines, bending and floating almost like clouds,
and finally disappearing high up in the air above the green woods on the
Mississippi shore. I suppose there were a thousand of them.
I had not been long at Milliken's Bend before I was on friendly terms
with all the generals, big and little, and one or two of them I found
were very rare men. Sherman especially impressed me as a man of genius
and of the widest intellectual acquisitions. Every day I rode in one
direction or another with an officer, inspecting the operations going
on. From what I saw on my rides over the country I got a new insight
into slavery, which made me no more a friend to that institution than I
was before. I had seen slavery in Maryland, Kentucky, Virginia, and
Missouri, but it was not till I saw these great Louisiana plantations
with all their apparatus for living and working that I really felt the
aristocratic nature of the institution, and the infernal baseness of
that aristocracy. Every day my conviction was intensified that the
territorial and political integrity of the nation must be preserved at
all costs, no matter how long it took; that it was better to keep up the
existing war as long as was necessary, rather than to make arrangement
for indefinite wars hereafter and for other disruptions; that we must
have it out then, and settle forever the question, so that our children
would be able to attend to other matters. For my own part, I preferred
one nation and one country, with a military government afterward, if
such should follow, rather than two or three nations and countries with
the semblance of the old Constitution in each of them, ending in wars
and despotisms everywhere.
As soon as I arrived at Milliken's Bend, on April 6th, I had hunted up
Grant and explained my mission. He received me cordially. Indeed, I
think Grant was always glad to have me with his army. He did not like
letter writing, and my daily dispatches to Mr. Stanton relieved him from
the necessity of describing every day what was going on in the army.
From the first neither he nor any of his staff or corps commanders
evinced any unwillingness to show me the inside of things. In this first
interview at Milliken's Bend, for instance, Grant explained to me so
fully his new plan of campaign--for there was now but one--that by three
o'clock I was able to send an outline of it to Mr. Stanton. From that
time I saw and knew all the interior operations of that toughest of
tough jobs, the reopening of the Mississippi.
The new project, so Grant told me, was to transfer his army to New
Carthage, and from there carry it over the Mississippi, landing it at or
about Grand Gulf; to capture this point, and then to operate rapidly on
the southern and eastern shore of the Big Black River, threatening at
the same time both Vicksburg and Jackson, and confusing the Confederates
as to his real objective. If this could be done he believed the enemy
would come out of Vicksburg and fight.
The first element in this plan was to open a passage from the
Mississippi near Milliken's Bend, above Vicksburg, to the bayou on the
west side, which led around to New Carthage below. The length of
navigation in this cut-off was about thirty-seven miles, and the plan
was to take through with small tugs perhaps fifty barges, enough, at
least, to transfer the whole army, with artillery and baggage, to the
other side of the Mississippi in twenty-four hours. If necessary, troops
were to be transported by the canal, though Grant hoped to march them by
the road along its bank. Part of McClernand's corps had already reached
New Carthage overland, and Grant was hurrying other troops forward. The
canal to the bayou was already half completed, thirty-five hundred men
being at work on it when I arrived.
The second part of the plan was to float down the river, past the
Vicksburg batteries, half a dozen steamboats protected by defenses of
bales of cotton and wet hay; these steamboats were to serve as
transports of supplies after the army had crossed the Mississippi.
Perhaps the best evidence of the feasibility of the project was found in
the fact that the river men pronounced its success certain. General
Sherman, who commanded one of the three corps in Grant's army, and with
whom I conversed at length upon the subject, thought there was no
difficulty in opening the passage, but that the line would be a
precarious one for supplies after the army was thrown across the
Mississippi. Sherman's preference was for a movement by way of Yazoo
Pass, or Lake Providence, but it was not long before I saw in our daily
talks that his mind was tending to the conclusion of General Grant. As
for General Grant, his purpose was dead set on the new scheme. Admiral
Porter cordially agreed with him.
An important modification was made a few days after my arrival in the
plan of operations. It was determined that after the occupation of Grand
Gulf the main army, instead of operating up the Big Black toward
Jackson, should proceed down the river against Port Hudson, co-operating
with General Banks against that point, and that after the capture of
Port Hudson the two united forces should proceed against Vicksburg.
There seemed to be only one hitch in the campaign. Grant had intrusted
the attack on Grand Gulf to McClernand. Sherman, Porter, and other
leading officers believed this a mistake, and talked frankly with me
about it. One night when we had all gathered at Grant's headquarters and
were talking over the campaign very freely, as we were accustomed to do,
both Sherman and Porter protested against the arrangement. But Grant
would not be changed. McClernand, he said, was exceedingly desirous of
the command. He was the senior of the other corps commanders. He was an
especial favorite of the President, and the position which his corps
occupied on the ground when the movement was first projected was such
that the advance naturally fell to its lot; besides, he had entered
zealously into the plan from the first, while Sherman had doubted and
criticised, and McPherson, whom Grant said he would really have much
preferred, was away at Lake Providence, and though he had approved of
the scheme, he had taken no active part in it.
I believed the assignment of this duty to McClernand to be so dangerous
that I added my expostulation to those of the generals, and in reporting
the case to Mr. Stanton I wrote: "I have remonstrated so far as I could
properly do so against intrusting so momentous an operation to
McClernand."
Mr. Stanton replied: "Allow me to suggest that you carefully avoid
giving any advice in respect to commands that may be assigned, as it may
lead to misunderstanding and troublesome complications." Of course,
after that I scrupulously observed his directions, even in extreme
cases.
As the days went on everybody, in spite of this hitch, became more
sanguine that the new project would succeed. For my part I had not a
doubt of it, as one can see from this fragment written from Milliken's
Bend on April 13th to one of my friends:
"Like all who really know the facts, I feel no sort of doubt that we
shall before long get the nut cracked. Probably before this letter
reaches New York on its way to you the telegraph will get ahead of it
with the news that Grant, masking Vicksburg, deemed impregnable by its
defenders, has carried the bulk of his army down the river through a
cut-off which he has opened without the enemy believing it could be
done; has occupied Grand Gulf, taken Port Hudson, and, effecting a
junction with the forces of Banks, has returned up the river to
threaten Jackson and compel the enemy to come out of Vicksburg and fight
him on ground of his own choosing. Of course this scheme may miscarry in
whole or in parts, but as yet the chances all favor its execution, which
is now just ready to begin."
FOOTNOTE:
[B] General E. V. Sumner, who had just been relieved, at his own
request, from the Army of the Potomac and appointed to the Department of
the Missouri. He was on his way thither when he died, on March 21st.
CHAPTER III.
BEFORE AND AROUND VICKSBURG.
The hard job of reopening the Mississippi--Admiral Porter runs the
Confederate batteries--Headquarters moved to Smith's
plantation--Delay and confusion in McClernand's command--The
unsuccessful attack on Grand Gulf--The move to the east shore--Mr.
Dana secures a good horse.
On the new lines adopted by General Grant, the work went on cheeringly,
though every day changes were made in the details. I spent my days in
riding from point to point, noting the progress. I went out often with
Colonel G. G. Pride, the engineer officer, in whose mess I was, and who
was superintending the construction of the canal which led from Duckport
to the bayou. The work on this canal was a curious sight to see, for
there was a force equal to five regiments at the digging, while a large
number of pioneers were engaged in clearing the bayou beyond. The canal
was opened on April 13th, and the authorities agreed that there was no
reason to doubt its usefulness, though the obstructions in the bayou
were so numerous that it was thought that it would require several days
more to clear a passage for tugs and barges.
One of my most interesting trips from Milliken's Bend was made with
Major James H. Wilson to view the casemated batteries our engineers were
constructing on the shore opposite Vicksburg. They hoped with the
thirty-pound Parrotts they were putting in to be able to destroy any
building in the town. From behind the levee of the peninsula we were
able with our glasses to examine the fortifications of Vicksburg.
The best look I had at that town, however, while I was at Milliken's
Bend was not from the peninsula opposite, but from a gunboat. On April
12th I went down with a flag of truce to the vicinity of Vicksburg, so
that I got a capital view. It was an ugly place, with its line of bluffs
commanding the channel for fully seven miles, and battery piled above
battery all the way.
Admiral Porter's arrangements for carrying out the second part of
Grant's scheme--that is, running the Vicksburg batteries--were all
completed by April 16th, the ironclads and steamers being protected in
vulnerable parts by bulwarks of hay, cotton, and sand bags, and the
barges loaded with forage, coal, and the camp equipment of General
McClernand's corps, which was already at New Carthage. No doubt was felt
that the design was known in Vicksburg, and it was arranged that Admiral
Porter should open fire there with all his guns as he swept past the
town, and that the new batteries on the levee opposite the city should
also participate. Admiral Porter was to go with the expedition on a
small tug, and he invited me to accompany him, but it seemed to me that
I ought not to get out of my communications, and so refused. Instead, I
joined Grant on his headquarters boat, which was stationed on the right
bank of the river, where from the bows we could see the squadron as it
started, and could follow its course until it was nearly past Vicksburg.
Just before ten o'clock on the night of April 16th the squadron cast
loose its moorings. It was a strange scene. First a mass of black things
detached itself from the shore, and we saw it float out toward the
middle of the stream. There was nothing to be seen except this big black
mass, which dropped slowly down the river. Soon another black mass
detached itself, and another, then another. It was Admiral Porter's
fleet of ironclad turtles, steamboats, and barges. They floated down the
Mississippi darkly and silently, showing neither steam nor light, save
occasionally a signal astern, where the enemy could not see it.
The vessels moved at intervals of about two hundred yards. First came
seven ironclad turtles and one heavy armed ram; following these were two
side-wheel steamers and one stern-wheel, having twelve barges in tow;
these barges carried the supplies. Far astern of them was one carrying
ammunition. The most of the gunboats had already doubled the tongue of
land which stretches northeasterly in front of Vicksburg, and they were
immediately under the guns of nearly all the Confederate batteries, when
there was a flash from the upper forts, and then for an hour and a half
the cannonade was terrific, raging incessantly along the line of about
four miles in extent. I counted five hundred and twenty-five discharges.
Early in the action the enemy put the torch to a frame building in front
of Vicksburg to light up the scene and direct his fire.
About 12.45 A.M. one our steamers, the Henry Clay, took fire, and
burned for three quarters of an hour. The Henry Clay was lost by being
abandoned by her captain and crew in a panic, they thinking her to be
sinking. The pilot refused to go with them, and said if they would stay
they would get her through safe. After they had fled in the yawls, the
cotton bales on her deck took fire, and one wheel became unmanageable.
The pilot then ran her aground, and got upon a plank, on which he was
picked up four miles below.
The morning after Admiral Porter had run the Vicksburg batteries I went
with General Grant to New Carthage to review the situation. We found the
squadron there, all in fighting condition, though most of them had been
hit. Not a man had been lost.
As soon as we returned to Milliken's Bend Grant ordered that six
transport steamers, each loaded with one hundred thousand rations and
forty days' coal, should be made ready to run the Vicksburg batteries.
The order was executed on the night of the 22d. The transports were
manned throughout, officers, engineers, pilots, and deck hands, by
volunteers from the army, mainly from Logan's division. This dangerous
service was sought with great eagerness, and experienced men had been
found for every post. If ten thousand men had been wanted instead of one
hundred and fifty, they would have engaged with zeal in the adventure.
In addition to bulwarks of hay, cotton, and pork barrels, each transport
was protected by a barge on each side of it. Orders were to drop
noiselessly down with the current from the mouth of the Yazoo, and not
show steam till the enemy's batteries began firing, when the boats were
to use all their legs. The night was cloudy, and the run was made with
the loss of one of the transports, the Tigress, which was sunk, and a
few men wounded.
The day after these transports with supplies ran the Vicksburg batteries
General Grant changed his headquarters to Smith's plantation, near New
Carthage. All of McClernand's corps, the Thirteenth, was now near there,
and that officer said ten thousand men would be ready to move from New
Carthage the next day. McPherson's corps, which had been busy upon the
Lake Providence expedition and other services, but which had been
ordered to join, was now, except one division, moving over from
Milliken's Bend. Sherman's corps, the Fifteenth, which had been
stationed at Young's Point, was also under marching orders to New
Carthage.
Grant's first object now was to cross the Mississippi as speedily as
possible and capture Grand Gulf before it could be re-enforced; but
first it was necessary to know the strength of this point. On the 22d
Admiral Porter had gone down with his gunboats and opened fire to
ascertain the position and strength of the batteries. He reported them
too strong to overcome, and earnestly advised against a direct attack.
He suggested that the troops either be marched down the west side from
New Carthage to a point where they could be ferried over the Mississippi
just below Grand Gulf, or that they be embarked on the transports and
barges and floated past the batteries in the night.
The day after Grant changed his headquarters to Smith's plantation he
went himself with General Porter to reconnoiter Grand Gulf. His
reconnoissance convinced him that the place was not so strong as Admiral
Porter had supposed, and an attack was ordered to be made as soon as the
troops could be made ready, the next day, April 26th, if possible.
An irritating delay occurred then, however. McClernand's corps was not
ready to move. When we came to Smith's plantation, on the 24th, I had
seen that there was apparently much confusion in McClernand's command,
and I was astonished to find, now that he was ordered to move across the
Mississippi, that he was planning to carry his bride with her servants,
and baggage along with him, although Grant had ordered that officers
should leave behind everything that could impede the march.
On the 26th, the day when it was hoped to make an attack on Grand Gulf,
I went with Grant by water from our headquarters at Smith's plantation
down to New Carthage and to Perkins's plantation below, where two of
McClernand's divisions were encamped. These troops, it was supposed,
were ready for immediate embarkation, and there were quite as many as
all the transports could carry, but the first thing which struck us both
on approaching the points of embarkation was that the steamboats and
barges were scattered about in the river and in the bayou as if there
was no idea of the imperative necessity of the promptest movement
possible.
We at once steamed to Admiral Porter's flagship, which was lying just
above Grand Gulf, and Grant sent for McClernand, ordering him to embark
his men without losing a moment. In spite of this order, that night at
dark, when a thunderstorm set in, not a single cannon or man had been
moved. Instead, McClernand held a review of a brigade of Illinois troops
at Perkins's about four o'clock in the afternoon. At the same time a
salute of artillery was fired, notwithstanding the positive orders that
had repeatedly been given to use no ammunition for any purpose except
against the enemy.
When we got back from the river to headquarters, on the night of the
26th, we found that McPherson had arrived at Smith's plantation with the
first division of his corps, the rear being not very far behind. His
whole force would have been up the next day, but it was necessary to
arrest its movements until McClernand could be got out of the way; this
made McClernand's delay the more annoying. General Lorenzo Thomas, who
was on the Mississippi at this time organizing negro troops, told me
that he believed now that McPherson would actually have his men ready to
embark before McClernand.
Early the next morning, April 27th, I went with Grant from Smith's
plantation back to New Carthage. As soon as we arrived the general wrote
a very severe letter to McClernand, but learning that at last the
transport steamers and barges had been concentrated for use he did not
send the rebuke. Grant spent the day there completing the preparations
for embarking, and on the morning of the 28th about ten thousand men
were on board. This force was not deemed sufficient for the attack on
Grand Gulf, so the troops were brought down to Hard Times landing, on
the Louisiana side, almost directly across the river from Grand Gulf,
where a portion of them were debarked, and the transports sent back for
Hovey's division, six thousand strong. We spent the night at Hard Times
waiting for these troops, which arrived about daylight on the morning of
the 29th.
There were now sixteen thousand men at Hard Times ready to be landed at
the foot of the Grand Gulf bluff as soon as its batteries were silenced.
At precisely eight o'clock the gunboats opened their attack. Seven, all
ironclads, were engaged, and a cannonade was kept up for nearly six
hours. We soon found that the enemy had five batteries, the first and
most formidable of them being placed on the high promontory close to the
mouth of the Big Black. The lower batteries, mounting smaller guns and
having no more than two pieces each, were silenced early in the action,
but this one obstinately resisted. For the last four hours of the
engagement the whole seven gunboats were employed in firing at this one
battery, now at long range, seeking to drop shells within the parapet,
now at the very foot of the hill, within about two hundred yards,
endeavoring to dismount its guns by direct fire. It was hit again and
again, but its pieces were not disabled. At last, about half past one
o'clock, Admiral Porter gave the signal to withdraw. The gunboats had
been hit more or less severely. I was on board the Benton during the
attack, and saw that her armor had been pierced repeatedly both in her
sides and her pilot house, but she had not a gun disabled; and except
for the holes through her mail, some of them in her hull, she was as
ready to fight as at the beginning of the action.
The batteries having proved too much for the gunboats, General Grant
determined to execute an alternative plan which he had had in mind from
the first; that was, to debark the troops and march them south across
the peninsula which faces Grand Gulf to a place out of reach of the
Confederate guns. While the engagement between the gunboats and
batteries had been going on, all the rest of McClernand's corps had
reached Hard Times, having marched around by land, and three divisions
of McPherson's corps had also come up. This entire body of about
thirty-five thousand men was immediately started across the peninsula to
De Shroon's plantation, where it was proposed to embark them again.
Late in the evening I left Hard Times with Grant to ride across the
peninsula to De Shroon's. The night was pitch dark, and, as we rode side
by side, Grant's horse suddenly gave a nasty stumble. I expected to see
the general go over the animal's head, and I watched intently, not to
see if he was hurt, but if he would show any anger. I had been with
Grant daily now for three weeks, and I had never seen him ruffled or
heard him swear. His equanimity was becoming a curious spectacle to me.
When I saw his horse lunge my first thought was, "Now he will swear."
For an instant his moral status was on trial; but Grant was a tenacious
horseman, and instead of going over the animal's head, as I imagined he
would, he kept his seat. Pulling up his horse, he rode on, and, to my
utter amazement, without a word or sign of impatience. And it is a fact
that though I was with Grant during the most trying campaigns of the
war, I never heard him use an oath.
In order to get the transports past Grand Gulf, Porter's gunboats had
engaged the batteries about dusk. This artillery duel lasted until about
ten o'clock, the gunboats withdrawing as soon as the transports were
safely past, and steaming at once to De Shroon's plantation, where
General McClernand's corps was all ready to take the transports. The
night was spent in embarking the men. By eleven o'clock the next
morning, April 30th, three divisions were landed on the east shore of
the Mississippi at the place General Grant had selected. This was
Bruinsburg, sixty miles south of Vicksburg, and the first point south of
Grand Gulf from which the highlands of the interior could be reached by
a road over dry land.
I was obliged to separate from Grant on the 30th, for the means for
transporting troops and officers were so limited that neither an extra
man nor a particle of unnecessary baggage was allowed, and I did not get
over until the morning of May 1st, after the army had moved on Port
Gibson, where they first engaged the enemy. As soon as I was landed at
Bruinsburg I started in the direction of the battle, on foot, of course,
as no horses had been brought over. I had not gone far before I overtook
a quartermaster driving toward Port Gibson; he took me into his wagon.
About four miles from Port Gibson we came upon the first signs of the
battle, a field where it was evident that there had been a struggle. I
got out of the wagon as we approached, and started toward a little white
house with green blinds, covered with vines. The little white house had
been taken as a field hospital, and the first thing my eyes fell upon as
I went into the yard was a heap of arms and legs which had been
amputated and thrown into a pile outside. I had seen men shot and dead
men plenty, but this pile of legs and arms gave me a vivid sense of war
such as I had not before experienced.
As the army was pressing the Confederates toward Port Gibson all that
day I followed in the rear, without overtaking General Grant. While
trailing along after the Union forces I came across Fred Grant, then a
lad of thirteen, who had been left asleep by his father on a steamer at
Bruinsburg, but who had started out on foot like myself as soon as he
awoke and found the army had marched. We tramped and foraged together
until the next morning, when some officers who had captured two old
horses gave us each one. We got the best bridles and saddles we could,
and thus equipped made our way into Port Gibson, which the enemy had
deserted and where General Grant now had his headquarters. I rode that
old horse for four or five days, then by a chance I got a good one. A
captured Confederate officer had been brought before General Grant for
examination. Now this man had a very good horse, and after Grant had
finished his questions the officer said:
"General, this horse and saddle are my private property; they do not
belong to the Confederate army; they belong to me as a citizen, and I
trust you will let me have them. Of course, while I am a prisoner I do
not expect to be allowed to ride the horse, but I hope you will regard
him as my property, and finally restore him to me."
"Well," said Grant, "I have got four or five first-rate horses wandering
somewhere about the Southern Confederacy. They have been captured from
me in battle or by spies. I will authorize you, whenever you find one of
them, to take possession of him. I cheerfully give him to you; but as
for this horse, I think he is just about the horse Mr. Dana needs."
I rode my new acquisition afterward through that whole campaign, and
when I came away I turned him over to the quartermaster. Whenever I went
out with General Grant anywhere he always had some question to ask about
that horse.
CHAPTER IV.
IN CAMP AND BATTLE WITH GRANT AND HIS GENERALS.
Marching into the enemy's country--A night in a church with a Bible
for pillow--Our communications are cut--Entering the capital of
Mississippi--The War Department gives Grant full authority--Battle
of Champion's Hill--General Logan's peculiarity--Battlefield
incidents--Vicksburg invested and the siege begun--Personal traits
of Sherman, McPherson, and McClernand.
It was the second day of May, 1863, when I rode into Port Gibson, Miss.,
and inquired for Grant's headquarters. I found the general in a little
house of the village, busily directing the advance of the army. He told
me that in the battle of the day before the Confederates had been driven
back on the roads to Grand Gulf and Vicksburg, and that our forces were
now in full pursuit. By the next morning, May 3d, our troops had
possession of the roads as far as the Big Black. As soon as he was sure
of this, General Grant started with a brigade of infantry and some
twenty cavalrymen for Grand Gulf. I accompanied him on the trip. When
within about seven miles of Grand Gulf we found that the town had been
deserted, and leaving the brigade we entered with the cavalry escort.
During this ride to Grand Gulf Grant made inquiries on every side about
the food supplies of the country we were entering. He told me he had
been gathering information on this point ever since the army crossed
the Mississippi, and had made up his mind that both beef and cattle and
corn were abundant in the country. The result of this inquiry was that
here at Grand Gulf Grant took the resolve which makes the Vicksburg
campaign so famous--that of abandoning entirely his base of supplies as
soon as the army was all up and the rations on the way arrived, boldly
striking into the interior, and depending on the country for meat and
even for bread.
We did not reach Grand Gulf until late on May 3d, but at one o'clock on
the morning of the 4th Grant was off for the front. He had decided that
it was useless to bring up the army to this place, to the capture of
which we had been so long looking, and which had been abandoned so
quickly now that our army was across the Mississippi. I did not follow
until later in the day, and so had an opportunity of seeing General
Sherman. His corps was marching from above as rapidly as possible down
to Hard Times landing, and he had come over to Grand Gulf to see about
debarking his troops there; this he succeeded in doing a couple of days
later.
That evening I joined Grant at his new headquarters at Hankinson's Ferry
on the Big Black, and now began my first experience with army marching
into an enemy's territory. A glimpse of my life at this time is given in
a letter to a child, written the morning after I rejoined Grant:
"All of a sudden it is very cold here. Two days ago it was hot like
summer, but now I sit in my tent in my overcoat, writing, and thinking
if I only were at home instead of being almost two thousand miles away.
"Away yonder, in the edge of the woods, I hear the drum-beat that calls
the soldiers to their supper. It is only a little after five o'clock,
but they begin the day very early and end it early. Pretty soon after
dark they are all asleep, lying in their blankets under the trees, for
in a quick march they leave their tents behind. Their guns are all ready
at their sides, so that if they are suddenly called at night they can
start in a moment. It is strange in the morning before daylight to hear
the bugle and drums sound the reveille, which calls the army to wake up.
It will begin perhaps at a distance and then run along the whole line,
bugle after bugle and drum after drum taking it up, and then it goes
from front to rear, farther and farther away, the sweet sounds throbbing
and rolling while you lie on the grass with your saddle for a pillow,
half awake, or opening your eyes to see that the stars are all bright in
the sky, or that there is only a faint flush in the east, where the day
is soon to break.
"Living in camp is queer business. I get my meals in General Grant's
mess, and pay my share of the expenses. The table is a chest with a
double cover, which unfolds on the right and the left; the dishes,
knives and forks, and caster are inside. Sometimes we get good things,
but generally we don't. The cook is an old negro, black and grimy. The
cooking is not as clean as it might be, but in war you can't be
particular about such things.
"The plums and peaches here are pretty nearly ripe. The strawberries
have been ripe these few days, but the soldiers eat them up before we
get a sight of them. The figs are as big as the end of your thumb, and
the green pears are big enough to eat. But you don't know what beautiful
flower gardens there are here. I never saw such roses; and the other day
I found a lily as big as a tiger lily, only it was a magnificent red."
Grant's policy now was to push the Confederates ahead of him up the Big
Black River, threatening Jackson, the State capital, and the Big Black
bridge behind Vicksburg, and capturing both if necessary. His opinion
was that this maneuver would draw Pemberton out of Vicksburg and bring
on a decisive battle within ten days.
From Hankinson's Ferry, the headquarters were changed on the 7th to
Rocky Springs, and there we remained until the 11th. By that time
McClernand and McPherson had advanced to within ten or twelve miles of
the railroad which runs from Vicksburg to Jackson, and were lying nearly
in an east and west line; and Sherman's entire corps had reached
Hankinson's Ferry. Supplies which Grant had ordered from Milliken's Bend
had also arrived. The order was now given to Sherman to destroy the
bridge at Hankinson's Ferry, the rear guards were abandoned, and our
communications cut. So complete was our isolation that it was ten days
after we left Rocky Springs, on May 11th, before I was able to get
another dispatch to Mr. Stanton.
This march toward Jackson proved to be no easy affair. More than one
night I bivouacked on the ground in the rain after being all day in my
saddle. The most comfortable night I had, in fact, was in a church of
which the officers had taken possession. Having no pillow, I went up to
the pulpit and borrowed the Bible for the night. Dr. H. L. Hewitt, who
was medical director on Grant's staff, slept near me, and he always
charged me afterward with stealing that Bible.
In spite of the roughness of our life, it was all of intense interest to
me, particularly the condition of the people over whose country we were
marching. A fact which impressed me was the total absence of men capable
of bearing arms. Only old men and children remained. The young men were
all in the army or had perished in it. The South was drained of its
youth. An army of half a million with a white population of only five
millions to draw upon, must soon finish the stock of raw material for
soldiers. Another fact of moment was that we found men who had at the
first sympathized with the rebellion, and even joined in it, now of
their own accord rendering Grant the most valuable assistance, in order
that the rebellion might be ended as speedily as possible, and something
saved by the Southern people out of the otherwise total and hopeless
ruin. "Slavery is gone, other property is mainly gone," they said, "but,
for God's sake, let us save some relic of our former means of living."
In this forward movement the left of the army was ordered to hug the Big
Black as closely as possible, while the right moved straight on Raymond.
On the 12th, the right wing, under McPherson, met the enemy just west of
Raymond. Grant at the time had his headquarters about at the center of
the army, with Sherman's corps, some seven miles west of Raymond. I left
him to go to the scene of the battle at once. It was a hard-fought
engagement, lasting some three hours. McPherson drove the Confederates
back to and through Raymond, and there stopped. The next day the advance
of the army toward Jackson was continued. It rained heavily on the march
and the roads were very heavy, but the troops were in the best of
spirits at their successes and prospects. This work was a great
improvement on digging canals and running batteries. On the afternoon of
the 14th, about two and a half miles west of Jackson, McPherson and
Sherman were temporarily stopped by the enemy, but he was quickly
defeated, and that night we entered the capital of Mississippi.
At Jackson I received an important telegram from Stanton, though how it
got to me there I do not remember. General Grant had been much troubled
by the delay McClernand had caused at New Carthage, but he had felt
reluctant to remove him as he had been assigned to his command by the
President. My reports to the Secretary on the situation had convinced
him that Grant ought to have perfect independence in the matter, so he
telegraphed me as follows:
WASHINGTON, D.C., _May 6, 1863_.
C. A. DANA, Esq., Smith's Plantation, Ia.
General Grant has full and absolute authority to enforce his own
commands and to remove any person who by ignorance in action or any
cause interferes with or delays his operations. He has the full
confidence of the Government, is expected to enforce his authority,
and will be firmly and heartily supported, but he will be
responsible for any failure to exert his powers. You may
communicate this to him.
E. M. STANTON, _Secretary of War_.
The very evening of the day that we reached Jackson, Grant learned that
Lieutenant-General Pemberton had been ordered by General Joe Johnston to
come out of Vicksburg and attack our rear. Grant immediately faced the
bulk of his army about to meet the enemy, leaving Sherman in Jackson to
tear up the railroads and destroy all the public property there that
could be of use to the Confederates. I remained with Sherman to see the
work of destruction. I remember now nothing that I saw except the
burning of vast quantities of cotton packed in bales, and that I was
greatly astonished to see how slowly it burned.
On the afternoon of the 15th I joined Grant again at his headquarters at
Clinton. Early the next morning we had definite information about
Pemberton. He was about ten miles to the west, with twenty-five thousand
men, as reported, and our advance was almost up with him. We at once
went forward to the front. Here we found Pemberton in a most formidable
position on the crest of a wooded ridge called Champion's Hill, over
which the road passed longitudinally. About eleven o'clock in the
morning of the 16th the battle began, and by four in the afternoon it
was won.
After the battle I started out on horseback with Colonel Rawlins to
visit the field. When we reached Logan's command we found him greatly
excited. He declared the day was lost, and that he would soon be swept
from his position. I contested the point with him. "Why, general," I
said, "we have gained the day."
He could not see it. "Don't you hear the cannon over there?" he
answered. "They will be down on us right away! In an hour I will have
twenty thousand men to fight."
I found afterward that this was simply a curious idiosyncrasy of
Logan's. In the beginning of a fight he was one of the bravest men that
could be, saw no danger, went right on fighting until the battle was
over. Then, after the battle was won, his mind gained an immovable
conviction that it was lost. Where we were victorious, he thought that
we were defeated. I had a very interesting conversation with Logan on
this day, when he attempted to convince me that we had lost the battle
of Champion's Hill. It was merely an intellectual peculiarity. It did
not in the least impair his value as a soldier or commanding officer. He
never made any mistake on account of it.
On leaving Logan, Rawlins and I were joined by several officers, and we
continued our ride over the field. On the hill where the thickest of the
fight had taken place we stopped, and were looking around at the dead
and dying men lying all about us, when suddenly a man, perhaps
forty-five or fifty years old, who had a Confederate uniform on, lifted
himself up on his elbow, and said:
"For God's sake, gentlemen, is there a Mason among you?"
"Yes," said Rawlins, "I am a Mason." He got off his horse and kneeled by
the dying man, who gave him some letters out of his pocket. When he came
back Rawlins had tears on his cheeks. The man, he told us, wanted him
to convey some souvenir--a miniature or a ring, I do not remember
what--to his wife, who was in Alabama. Rawlins took the package, and
some time afterward he succeeded in sending it to the woman.
I remained out late that night conversing with the officers who had been
in the battle, and think it must have been about eleven o'clock when I
got to Grant's headquarters, where I was to sleep. Two or three officers
who had been out with me went with me into the little cottage which
Grant had taken possession of. We found a wounded man there, a tall and
fine-looking man, a Confederate. He stood up suddenly and said: "Kill
me! Will some one kill me? I am in such anguish that it will be mercy to
do it--I have got to die--kill me--don't let me suffer!" We sent for a
surgeon, who examined his case, but said it was hopeless. He had been
shot through the head, so that it had cut off the optic nerve of both
eyes. He never could possibly see again. Before morning he died.
I was up at daylight the next day, and off with Grant and his staff
after the enemy. We rode directly west, and overtook Pemberton at the
Big Black. He had made a stand on the bottom lands at the east head of
the Big Black bridge. Here he fought in rifle-pits, protected by abatis
and a difficult bayou. Lawler's brigade, of McClernand's corps, charged
the left of the Confederate rifle-pits magnificently, taking more
prisoners than their own numbers. The others fled. Pemberton burned his
bridge and retreated rapidly into Vicksburg, with only three cannon out
of sixty-three with which he had entered upon this short, sharp, and
decisive campaign.
There was nothing for Grant to do now but build bridges and follow.
Before morning four bridges had been thrown across the Big Black, and by
the evening of that day, the 18th, the army had arrived behind
Vicksburg, which was now its front. In twenty-four hours after Grant's
arrival the town was invested, the bluffs above the town had been seized
so that we could get water from the Mississippi, and Haynes's Bluff up
the Yazoo had been abandoned by the Confederates. With the Yazoo
highlands in our control there was no difficulty in establishing a line
of supplies with our original base on the Mississippi. On the 20th I was
able to get off to Mr. Stanton the first dispatch from the rear of
Vicksburg. In it I said, "Probably the town will be carried to-day."
The prediction was not verified. The assault we expected was not made
until the morning of the 22d. It failed, but without heavy loss. Early
in the afternoon, however, McClernand, who was on the left of our lines,
reported that he was in possession of two forts of the rebel line, was
hard pressed, and in great need of re-enforcements. Not doubting that he
had really succeeded in taking and holding the works he pretended to
hold, General Grant sent a division to his support, and at the same time
ordered Sherman and McPherson to make new attacks. McClernand's report
was false, for, although a few of his men had broken through in one
place, he had not taken a single fort, and the result of the second
assault was disastrous. We were repulsed, losing quite heavily, when
but for his error the total loss of the day would have been
inconsiderable.
The failure of the 22d convinced Grant of the necessity of a regular
siege, and immediately the army settled down to that. We were in an
incomparable position for a siege as regarded the health and comfort of
our men. The high wooded hills afforded pure air and shade, and the deep
ravines abounded in springs of excellent water, and if they failed it
was easy to bring it from the Mississippi. Our line of supplies was
beyond the reach of the enemy, and there was an abundance of fruit all
about us. I frequently met soldiers coming into camp with buckets full
of mulberries, blackberries, and red and yellow wild plums.
The army was deployed at this time in the following way: The right of
the besieging force was held by General Sherman, whose forces ran from
the river along the bluffs around the northeast of the town. Sherman's
front was at a greater distance from the enemy than that of any other
corps, and the approach less advantageous, but he began his siege works
with great energy and admirable skill. Everything I saw of Sherman at
the Vicksburg siege increased my admiration for him. He was a very
brilliant man and an excellent commander of a corps. Sherman's
information was great, and he was a clever talker. He always liked to
have people about who could keep up with his conversation; besides, he
was genial and unaffected. I particularly admired his loyalty to Grant.
He had criticised the plan of campaign frankly in the first place, but
had supported every movement with all his energy, and now that we were
in the rear of Vicksburg he gave loud praise to the commander in chief.
To the left of Sherman lay the Seventeenth Army Corps, under
Major-General J. B. McPherson. He was one of the best officers we had.
He was but thirty-two years old at the time, and a very handsome,
gallant-looking man, with rather a dark complexion, dark eyes, and a
most cordial manner. McPherson was an engineer officer of fine natural
ability and extraordinary acquirements, having graduated Number One in
his class at West Point, and was held in high estimation by Grant and
his professional brethren. Halleck gave him his start in the civil war,
and he had been with Grant at Donelson and ever since. He was a man
without any pretensions, and always had a pleasant hand-shake for you.
It is a little remarkable that the three chief figures in this great
Vicksburg campaign--Grant, Sherman, and McPherson--were all born in
Ohio. The utmost cordiality and confidence existed between these three
men, and it always seemed to me that much of the success achieved in
these marches and battles was owing to this very fact. There was no
jealousy or bickering, and in their unpretending simplicity they were as
alike as three peas. No country was ever more faithfully, unselfishly
served than was ours in the Vicksburg campaign by these three Ohio
officers.
To McPherson's left was the Thirteenth Army Corps, under Major-General
John A. McClernand. Next to Grant he was the ranking officer in the
army. The approaches on his front were most favorable to us, and the
enemy's line of works evidently much the weakest there, but he was very
inefficient and slow in pushing his siege operations. Grant had resolved
on the 23d to relieve McClernand for his false dispatch of the day
before stating that he held two of the enemy's forts, but he changed his
mind, concluding that it would be better on the whole to leave him in
his command till the siege was concluded. From the time that I had
joined Grant's army at Milliken's Bend and heard him criticising Porter,
Sherman, and other officers, I had been observing McClernand narrowly
myself. My own judgment of him by this time was that he had not the
qualities necessary for commander even of a regiment. In the first
place, he was not a military man; he was a politician and a member of
Congress. He was a man of a good deal of a certain kind of talent, not
of a high order, but not one of intellectual accomplishments. His
education was that which a man gets who is in Congress five or six
years. In short, McClernand was merely a smart man, quick, very
active-minded, but his judgment was not solid, and he looked after
himself a good deal. Mr. Lincoln also looked out carefully for
McClernand, because he was an Illinois Democrat, with a considerable
following among the people. It was a great thing to get McClernand into
the war in the first place, for his natural predisposition, one would
have supposed, would have been to sympathize with the South. As long as
he adhered to the war he carried his Illinois constituency with him; and
chiefly for this reason, doubtless, Lincoln made it a point to take
special care of him. In doing this the President really served the
greater good of the cause. But from the circumstances of Lincoln's
supposed friendship, McClernand had more consequence in the army than he
deserved.
CHAPTER V.
SOME CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.
Grant before his great fame--His friend and mentor, General
Rawlins--James Harrison Wilson--Two semi-official letters to
Stanton--Character sketches for the information of the President and
Secretary--Mr. Dana's early judgment of soldiers who afterward won
distinction.
Living at headquarters as I did throughout the siege of Vicksburg, I
soon became intimate with General Grant, not only knowing every
operation while it was still but an idea, but studying its execution on
the spot. Grant was an uncommon fellow--the most modest, the most
disinterested, and the most honest man I ever knew, with a temper that
nothing could disturb, and a judgment that was judicial in its
comprehensiveness and wisdom. Not a great man, except morally; not an
original or brilliant man, but sincere, thoughtful, deep, and gifted
with courage that never faltered; when the time came to risk all, he
went in like a simple-hearted, unaffected, unpretending hero, whom no
ill omens could deject and no triumph unduly exalt. A social, friendly
man, too, fond of a pleasant joke and also ready with one; but liking
above all a long chat of an evening, and ready to sit up with you all
night, talking in the cool breeze in front of his tent. Not a man of
sentimentality, not demonstrative in friendship, but always holding to
his friends, and just even to the enemies he hated.
After Grant, I spent more time at Vicksburg with his assistant adjutant
general, Colonel John A. Rawlins, and with Lieutenant-Colonel Wilson,
than with anybody else. Rawlins was one of the most valuable men in the
army, in my judgment. He had but a limited education, which he had
picked up at the neighbourhood school and in Galena, Ill., near which
place he was born and where he had worked himself into the law; but he
had a very able mind, clear, strong, and not subject to hysterics. He
bossed everything at Grant's headquarters. He had very little respect
for persons, and a rough style of conversation. I have heard him curse
at Grant when, according to his judgment, the general was doing
something that he thought he had better not do. But he was entirely
devoted to his duty, with the clearest judgment, and perfectly fearless.
Without him Grant would not have been the same man. Rawlins was
essentially a good man, though he was one of the most profane men I ever
knew; there was no guile in him--he was as upright and as genuine a
character as I ever came across.
James H. Wilson I had first met at Milliken's Bend, when he was serving
as chief topographical engineer and assistant inspector general of the
Army of the Tennessee. He was a brilliant man intellectually, highly
educated, and thoroughly companionable. We became warm friends at once,
and were together a great deal throughout the war. Rarely did Wilson go
out on a specially interesting tour of inspection that he did not
invite me to accompany him, and I never failed, if I were at liberty, to
accept his invitations. Much of the exact information about the
condition of the works which I was able to send to Mr. Stanton Wilson
put in my way.
I have already spoken of McClernand, Sherman, and McPherson, Grant's
three chief officers, but there were many subordinate officers of value
in his army, not a few of whom became afterward soldiers of distinction.
At the request of Secretary Stanton, I had begun at Vicksburg a series
of semi-official letters, in which I undertook to give my impressions of
the officers in Grant's army. These letters were designed to help Mr.
Lincoln and Mr. Stanton in forming their judgments of the men. In order
to set the _personnel_ of the commanding force distinctly before the
reader, I quote here one of these letters, written at Cairo after the
siege had ended. It has never been published before, and it gives my
judgment at that time of the subordinate officers in the Vicksburg
campaign:
CAIRO, ILL., _July 12, 1863_.
DEAR SIR: Your dispatch of June 29th, desiring me to "continue my
sketches," I have to-day seen for the first time. It was sent down
the river, but had not arrived when I left Vicksburg on the 5th
instant.
Let me describe the generals of division and brigade in Grant's
army in the order of the army corps to which they are attached,
beginning with the Thirteenth.
The most prominent officer of the Thirteenth Corps, next to the
commander of the corps, is Brigadier-General A. P. Hovey. He is a
lawyer of Indiana, and from forty to forty-five years old. He is
ambitious, active, nervous, irritable, energetic, clear-headed,
quick-witted, and prompt-handed. He works with all his might and
all his mind; and, unlike most volunteer officers, makes it his
business to learn the military profession just as if he expected to
spend his life in it. He distinguished himself most honorably at
Port Gibson and Champion's Hill, and is one of the best officers in
this army. He is a man whose character will always command respect,
though he is too anxious about his personal renown and his own
advancement to be considered a first-rate man morally, judged by
the high standard of men like Grant and Sherman.
Hovey's principal brigadiers are General McGinnis and Colonel
Slack. McGinnis is brave enough, but too excitable. He lost his
balance at Champion's Hill. He is not likely ever to be more than a
brigadier. Slack is a solid, steady man, brave, thorough, and
sensible, but will never set the river afire. His education is
poor, but he would make a respectable brigadier general, and, I
know, hopes to be promoted.
Next to Hovey is Osterhaus. This general is universally well spoken
of. He is a pleasant, genial fellow, brave and quick, and makes a
first-rate report of a reconnoissance. There is not another general
in this army who keeps the commander in chief so well informed
concerning whatever happens at his outposts. As a disciplinarian he
is not equal to Hovey, but is much better than some others. On the
battlefield he lacks energy and concentrativeness. His brigade
commanders are all colonels, and I don't know much of them.
The third division of the Thirteenth Corps is commanded by General
A. J. Smith, an old cavalry officer of the regular service. He is
intrepid to recklessness, his head is clear though rather thick,
his disposition honest and manly, though given to boasting and
self-exaggeration of a gentle and innocent kind. His division is
well cared for, but is rather famous for slow instead of rapid
marching. McClernand, however, disliked him, and kept him in the
rear throughout the late campaign. He is a good officer to command
a division in an army corps, but should not be intrusted with any
important independent command.
Smith's principal brigadier is General Burbridge, whom I judge to
be a mediocre officer, brave, rather pretentious, a good fellow,
not destined to greatness.
The fourth division in the Thirteenth Corps is General Carr's. He
has really been sick throughout the campaign, and had leave to go
home several weeks since, but stuck it out till the surrender. This
may account for a critical, hang-back disposition which he has
several times exhibited. He is a man of more cultivation,
intelligence, and thought than his colleagues generally. The
discipline in his camps I have thought to be poor and careless. He
is brave enough, but lacks energy and initiative.
Carr's brigadiers comprise General M. K. Lawler and General Lee, of
Kansas. Lawler weighs two hundred and fifty pounds, is a Roman
Catholic, and was a Douglas Democrat, belongs in Shawneetown, Ill.,
and served in the Mexican War. He is as brave as a lion, and has
about as much brains; but his purpose is always honest, and his
sense is always good. He is a good disciplinarian and a first-rate
soldier. He once hung a man of his regiment for murdering a
comrade, without reporting the case to his commanding general
either before or after the hanging, but there was no doubt the man
deserved his fate. Grant has two or three times gently reprimanded
him for indiscretions, but is pretty sure to go and thank him after
a battle. Carr's third brigadier I don't know.
In the Fifteenth Corps there are two major generals who command
divisions--namely, Steele and Blair--and one brigadier, Tuttle.
Steele has also been sick through the campaign, but has kept
constantly at his post. He is a gentlemanly, pleasant fellow....
Sherman has a high opinion of his capacity, and every one says that
he handles troops with great coolness and skill in battle. To me
his mind seems to work in a desultory way, like the mind of a
captain of infantry long habituated to garrison duty at a frontier
post. He takes things in bits, like a gossiping companion, and
never comprehensively and strongly, like a man of clear brain and a
ruling purpose. But on the whole I consider him one of the best
division generals in this army, yet you can not rely on him to make
a logical statement, or to exercise any independent command.
Of Steele's brigadiers, Colonel Woods eminently deserves promotion.
A Hercules in form, in energy, and in pertinacity, he is both safe
and sure. Colonel Manter, of Missouri, is a respectable officer.
General Thayer is a fair but not first-rate officer.
Frank Blair is about the same as an officer that he is as a
politician. He is intelligent, prompt, determined, rather inclining
to disorder, a poor disciplinarian, but a brave fighter. I judge
that he will soon leave the army, and that he prefers his seat in
Congress to his commission.
In Frank Blair's division there are two brigadier generals, Ewing
and Lightburne. Ewing seems to possess many of the qualities of his
father, whom you know better than I do, I suppose. Lightburne has
not served long with this army, and I have had no opportunity of
learning his measure. Placed in a command during the siege where
General Sherman himself directed what was to be done, he has had
little to do. He seems to belong to the heavy rather than the rapid
department of the forces.
Colonel Giles Smith is one of the very best brigadiers in Sherman's
corps, perhaps the best of all next to Colonel Woods. He only
requires the chance to develop into an officer of uncommon power
and usefulness. There are plenty of men with generals' commissions
who in all military respects are not fit to tie his shoes.
Of General Tuttle, who commands Sherman's third division, I have
already spoken, and need not here repeat it. Bravery and zeal
constitute his only qualifications for command. His principal
brigadier is General Mower, a brilliant officer, but not of large
mental calibre. Colonel Wood, who commands another of his brigades,
is greatly esteemed by General Grant, but I do not know him;
neither do I know the commander of his third brigade.
Three divisions of the Sixteenth Corps have been serving in Grant's
army for some time past. They are all commanded by brigadier
generals, and the brigades by colonels. The first of these
divisions to arrive before Vicksburg was Lauman's. This general got
his promotion by bravery on the field and Iowa political influence.
He is totally unfit to command--a very good man but a very poor
general. His brigade commanders are none of them above mediocrity.
The next division of the Sixteenth Corps to join the Vicksburg army
was General Kimball's. He is not so bad a commander as Lauman, but
he is bad enough; brave, of course, but lacking the military
instinct and the genius of generalship. I don't know any of his
brigade commanders. The third division of the Sixteenth Corps now
near Vicksburg is that of General W. S. Smith. He is one of the
best officers in that army. A rigid disciplinarian, his division is
always ready and always safe. A man of brains, a hard worker,
unpretending, quick, suggestive, he may also be a little crotchety,
for such is his reputation; but I judge that he only needs the
opportunity to render great services. What his brigade commanders
are worth I can't say, but I am sure they have a first-rate
schoolmaster in him.
I now come to the Seventeenth Corps and to its most prominent
division general, Logan. This is a man of remarkable qualities and
peculiar character. Heroic and brilliant, he is sometimes unsteady.
Inspiring his men with his own enthusiasm on the field of battle,
he is splendid in all its crash and commotion, but before it begins
he is doubtful of the result, and after it is over he is fearful we
may yet be beaten. A man of instinct and not of reflection, his
judgments are often absurd, but his extemporaneous opinions are
very apt to be right. Deficient in education, he is full of
generous attachments and sincere animosities. On the whole, few can
serve the cause of the country more effectively than he, and none
serve it more faithfully.
Logan's oldest brigade commander is General John D. Stevenson, of
Missouri. He is a person of much talent, but a grumbler. He was one
of the oldest colonels in the volunteer service, but because he had
always been an antislavery man all the others were promoted before
him. This is still one of his grounds for discontent, and in
addition younger brigadiers have been put before him since. Thus
the world will not go to suit him. He has his own notions, too, of
what should be done on the field of battle, and General McPherson
has twice during this campaign had to rebuke him very severely for
his failure to come to time on critical occasions.
Logan's second brigade is commanded by General Leggett, of Ohio.
This officer has distinguished himself during the siege, and will
be likely to distinguish himself hereafter. He possesses a clear
head, an equable temper, and great propulsive power over his men.
He is also a hard worker, and whatever he touches goes easily. The
third brigade of this division has for a short time been commanded
by Colonel Force. I only know that Logan, McPherson, and Grant all
think well of him.
Next in rank among McPherson's division generals is McArthur. He
has been in the reserve throughout the campaign, and has had little
opportunity of proving his mettle. He is a shrewd, steady
Scotchman, trustworthy rather than brilliant, good at hard knocks,
but not a great commander. Two of his brigadiers, however, have
gained very honorable distinction in this campaign, namely Crocker,
who commanded Quinby's division at Port Gibson, Raymond, Jackson,
and Champion's Hill, and Ransom. Crocker was sick throughout, and,
as soon as Quinby returned to his command, had to go away, and it
is feared may never be able to come back. He is an officer of great
promise and remarkable power. Ransom has commanded on McPherson's
right during the siege, and has exceeded every other brigadier in
the zeal, intelligence, and efficiency with which his siege works
were constructed and pushed forward. At the time of the surrender
his trenches were so well completed that the engineers agreed that
they offered the best opportunity in the whole of our lines for the
advance of storming columns. Captain Comstock told me that ten
thousand men could there be marched under cover up to the very
lines of the enemy. In the assault of May 22d, Ransom was equally
conspicuous for the bravery with which he exposed himself. No young
man in all this army has more future than he.
The third brigade of McArthur's division, that of General Reid, has
been detached during the campaign at Lake Providence and elsewhere,
and I have not been able to make General R.'s acquaintance.
The third division of the Seventeenth Corps was commanded during
the first of the siege by General Quinby. This officer was also
sick, and I dare say did not do justice to himself. A good
commander of a division he is not, though he is a most excellent
and estimable man, and seemed to be regarded by the soldiers with
much affection. But he lacks order, system, command, and is the
very opposite of his successor, General John E. Smith, who, with
much less intellect than Quinby, has a great deal better sense,
with a firmness of character, a steadiness of hand, and a freedom
from personal irritability and jealousy which must soon produce the
happiest effect upon the division. Smith combines with these
natural qualities of a soldier and commander a conscientious
devotion not merely to the doing but also to the learning of his
duty, which renders him a better and better general every day. He
is also fit to be intrusted with any independent command where
judgment and discretion are as necessary as courage and activity,
for in him all these qualities seem to be happily blended and
balanced.
Of General Matthias, who commands the brigade in this division so
long and so gallantly commanded by the late Colonel Boomer, I hear
the best accounts, but do not know him personally. The medical
inspector tells me that no camps in the lines are kept in so good
condition as his; and General Sherman, under whom he lately served,
speaks of him as a very valuable officer. The second brigade is
commanded by Colonel Sanborn, a steady, mediocre sort of man; the
third by Colonel Holmes, whom I don't know personally, but who made
a noble fight at Champion's Hill, and saved our center there from
being broken.
General Herron's division is the newest addition to the forces
under Grant, except the Ninth Corps, of which I know nothing except
that its discipline and organization exceed those of the Western
troops. Herron is a driving, energetic sort of young fellow, not
deficient either in self-esteem or in common sense, and, as I
judge, hardly destined to distinctions higher than those he has
already acquired. Of his two brigadiers, Vandever has not proved
himself of much account during the siege; Orme I have seen, but do
not know. Herron has shown a great deal more both of capacity and
force than either of them. But he has not the first great requisite
of a soldier, obedience to orders, and believes too much in doing
things his own way. Thus, for ten days after he had taken his
position he disregarded the order properly to picket the bottom
between the bluff and the river on his left. He had made up his own
mind that nobody could get out of the town by that way, and
accordingly neglected to have the place thoroughly examined in
order to render the matter clear and certain. Presently Grant
discovered that men from the town were making their escape through
that bottom, and then a more peremptory command to Herron set the
matter right by the establishment of the necessary pickets.
I must not omit a general who formerly commanded a brigade in
Logan's division, and has for some time been detached to a separate
command at Milliken's Bend. I mean General Dennis. He is a
hard-headed, hard-working, conscientious man, who never knows when
he is beaten, and consequently is very hard to beat. He is not
brilliant, but safe, sound, and trustworthy. His predecessor in
that command, General Sullivan, has for some time been at Grant's
headquarters, doing nothing with more energy and effect than he
would be likely to show in any other line of duty. He is a
gentlemanly fellow, intelligent, a charming companion, but heavy,
jovial, and lazy.
I might write another letter on the staff officers and staff
organization of Grant's army, should you desire it.
Yours faithfully, C. A. DANA.
Mr. STANTON.
The day after sending to Mr. Stanton this letter on the generals of
divisions and of brigades in the army which besieged Vicksburg, I wrote
him another on the staff officers of the various corps. Like its
predecessor, this letter has never appeared in the records of the war:
CAIRO, ILL., _July 13, 1863_.
DEAR SIR: In my letter of yesterday I accidentally omitted to
notice General C. C. Washburn among the generals of division in
Grant's army. He is now in command of two of the divisions detached
from the Sixteenth Army Corps--namely, that of Kimball and that of
W. S. Smith--and, as I happen to know, is anxious to be put in
command of an army corps, for which purpose it has been suggested
that a new corps might be created out of these two divisions, with
the addition of that of Lauman, also detached from the Sixteenth,
or that of Herron. But I understand from General Grant that he is
not favorable to any such arrangement. Washburn being one of the
very youngest in rank of his major generals, he intends to put him
in command of a single division as soon as possible, in order that
he may prove his fitness for higher commands by actual service, and
give no occasion for older soldiers to complain that he is promoted
without regard to his merits.
I know Washburn very well, both as a politician and a military man,
and I say frankly that he has better qualities for the latter than
for the former function. He is brave, steady, respectable; receives
suggestions and weighs them carefully; is not above being advised,
but acts with independence nevertheless. His judgment is good, and
his vigilance sufficient. I have not seen him in battle, however,
and can not say how far he holds his mind there. I don't find in
him, I am sorry to say, that effort to learn the military art which
every commander ought to exhibit, no matter whether he has received
a military education or not. Washburn's whole soul is not put into
the business of arms, and for me that is an unpardonable defect.
But he is a good man, and above the average of our generals, at
least of those in Grant's command.
I now come to the staff organization and staff officers of this
army, beginning, of course, with those connected with the head of
the department. Grant's staff is a curious mixture of good, bad,
and indifferent. As he is neither an organizer nor a disciplinarian
himself, his staff is naturally a mosaic of accidental elements and
family friends. It contains four working men, two who are able to
accomplish their duties without much work, and several who either
don't think of work, or who accomplish nothing no matter what they
undertake.
Lieutenant-Colonel Rawlins, Grant's assistant adjutant general, is
a very industrious, conscientious man, who never loses a moment,
and never gives himself any indulgence except swearing and
scolding. He is a lawyer by profession, a townsman of Grant's, and
has a great influence over him, especially because he watches him
day and night, and whenever he commits the folly of tasting liquor
hastens to remind him that at the beginning of the war he gave him
[Rawlins] his word of honor not to touch a drop as long as it
lasted. Grant thinks Rawlins a first-rate adjutant, but I think
this is a mistake. He is too slow, and can't write the English
language correctly without a great deal of careful consideration.
Indeed, illiterateness is a general characteristic of Grant's
staff, and in fact of Grant's generals and regimental officers of
all ranks.
Major Bowers, judge-advocate of Grant's staff, is an excellent man,
and always finds work to do. Lieutenant-Colonel Wilson, inspector
general, is a person of similar disposition. He is a captain of
engineers in the regular army, and has rendered valuable services
in that capacity. The fortifications of Haynes's Bluff were
designed by him and executed under his direction. His leading idea
is the idea of duty, and he applies it vigorously and often
impatiently to others. In consequence he is unpopular among all who
like to live with little work. But he has remarkable talents and
uncommon executive power, and will be heard from hereafter.
The quartermaster's department is under charge of
Lieutenant-Colonel Bingham, who is one of those I spoke of as
accomplishing much with little work. He is an invalid almost, and I
have never seen him when he appeared to be perfectly well; but he
is a man of first-rate abilities and solid character, and, barring
physical weakness, up to even greater responsibilities than those
he now bears.
The chief commissary, Lieutenant-Colonel Macfeely, is a jolly,
agreeable fellow, who never seems to be at work, but I have heard
no complaints of deficiencies in his department. On the contrary,
it seems to be one of the most efficacious parts of this great
machine.
Lieutenant-Colonel Kent, provost-marshal general, is a very
industrious and sensible man, a great improvement on his
predecessor, Colonel Hillyer, who was a family and personal friend
of Grant's.
There are two aides-de-camp with the rank of colonel, namely,
Colonel ---- and Colonel ----, both personal friends of Grant's.
---- is a worthless, whisky-drinking, useless fellow. ---- is
decent and gentlemanly, but neither of them is worth his salt so
far as service to the Government goes. Indeed, in all my
observation, I have never discovered the use of Grant's
aides-de-camp at all. On the battlefield he sometimes sends orders
by them, but everywhere else they are idle loafers. I suppose the
army would be better off if they were all suppressed, especially
the colonels.
Grant has three aides with the rank of captain. Captain ---- is a
relative of Mrs. Grant. He has been a stage driver, and violates
English grammar at every phrase. He is of some use, for he attends
to the mails. Captain ---- is an elegant young officer of the
regular cavalry. He rides after the general when he rides out; the
rest of the time he does nothing at all. Captain Badeau, wounded at
Port Hudson since he was attached to Grant's staff, has not yet
reported.
I must not omit the general medical staff of this army. It is in
bad order. Its head, Dr. Mills, is impracticable, earnest,
quarrelsome. He was relieved several weeks since, but Grant likes
him, and kept him on till the fall of Vicksburg. In this he was
right, no doubt, for a change during the siege would have been
troublesome. The change, I presume, will now be made. It must be
for the better.
The office of chief of artillery on the general staff I had
forgotten, as well as that of chief engineer. The former is
occupied by Lieutenant-Colonel Duff, of the Second Illinois
Artillery. He is unequal to the position, not only because he is
disqualified by sickness, but because he does not sufficiently
understand the management of artillery. The siege suffered greatly
from his incompetence. General Grant knows, of course, that he is
not the right person; but it is one of his weaknesses that he is
unwilling to hurt the feelings of a friend, and so he keeps him on.
The chief engineer, Captain Comstock, is an officer of great merit.
He has, too, what his predecessor, Captain Prime, lacked, a talent
for organization. His accession to the army will be the source of
much improvement.
If General Grant had about him a staff of thoroughly competent men,
disciplinarians and workers, the efficiency and fighting quality of
his army would soon be much increased. As it is, things go too much
by hazard and by spasms; or, when the pinch comes, Grant forces
through, by his own energy and main strength, what proper
organization and proper staff officers would have done already.
The staff of the Thirteenth Corps was formed by General McClernand.
The acting adjutant general, Lieutenant-Colonel Scates, is a man of
about fifty-five or sixty years old; he was a judge in Illinois,
and left an honored and influential social position to serve in the
army. General Ord speaks in high terms of him as an officer. The
chief of artillery, Colonel ----, is an ass. The chief
quartermaster, Lieutenant-Colonel ----, General McClernand's
father-in-law, lately resigned his commission. He was
incompetent.... His successor has not yet been appointed. The chief
commissary, Lieutenant-Colonel ----, is a fussy fellow, who with
much show accomplishes but little. General McClernand's aides went
away with him or are absent on leave. Not a man of them is worth
having. The engineer on his staff, Lieutenant Hains, is an
industrious and useful officer. The medical director, Dr. Hammond,
had just been appointed.
In the Fifteenth Corps staff all have to be working men, for
Sherman tolerates no idlers and finds something for everybody to
do. If an officer proves unfit for his position, he shifts him to
some other place. Thus his adjutant, Lieutenant-Colonel Hammond, a
restless Kentuckian, kept everything in a row as long as he
remained in that office. Sherman has accordingly made him inspector
general, and during the last two months has kept him constantly
employed on scouting parties. In his place as adjutant is Captain
Sawyer, a quiet, industrious, efficient person. The chief of
artillery, Major Taylor, directed by Sherman's omnipresent eye and
quick judgment, is an officer of great value, though under another
general he might not be worth so much. The chief engineer, Captain
Pitzman, wounded about July 15th, is a man of merit, and his
departure was a great loss to the regular ranks. General Sherman
has three aides-de-camp, Captain McCoy, Captain Dayton, and
Lieutenant Hill, and, as I have said, neither of them holds a
sinecure office. His medical director, Dr. McMillan, is a good
physician, I believe; he has been in a constant contention with Dr.
Mills. The quartermaster, Lieutenant-Colonel J. C. Smith, is a most
efficient officer; he has been doing duty as commissary also.
On the whole, General Sherman has a very small and very efficient
staff; but the efficiency comes mainly from him. What a splendid
soldier he is!
The staff of the Seventeenth Army Corps is the most complete, the
most numerous, and in some respects the most serviceable in this
army.
The adjutant general, Lieutenant-Colonel Clark, is a person of
uncommon quickness, is always at work, and keeps everything in his
department in first-rate order. The inspector general,
Lieutenant-Colonel Strong, does his duties with promptness and
thoroughness; his reports are models. The chief of artillery,
Lieutenant-Colonel Powell, thoroughly understands his business, and
attends to it diligently. The provost-marshal general,
Lieutenant-Colonel Wilson, is a judicious and industrious man. Both
the quartermaster and commissary are new men, captains, and I do
not know them, but McPherson speaks highly of them. The medical
director, Dr. Boucher, has the reputation of keeping his hospitals
in better order and making his reports more promptly and
satisfactorily than any other medical officer in this army. General
McPherson has four aides-de-camp: Captain Steele, Captain Gile,
Lieutenant Knox, and Lieutenant Vernay. The last of these is the
best, and Captain Steele is next to him. The engineer officer,
Captain Hickenlooper, is a laborious man, quick, watchful, but not
of great capacity. The picket officer, Major Willard, whom I
accidentally name last, is a person of unusual merit.
In the staffs of the division and brigadier generals I do not now
recall any officer of extraordinary capacity. There may be such,
but I have not made their acquaintance. On the other hand, I have
made the acquaintance of some who seemed quite unfit for their
places. I must not omit, however, to speak here of Captain
Tresilian, engineer on the staff of Major-General Logan. His
general services during the siege were not conspicuous, but he
deserves great credit for constructing the wooden mortars which
General McPherson used near its close with most remarkable effect.
Both the idea and the work were Tresilian's.
Very possibly you may not wish to go through this mass of details
respecting so many officers of inferior grades, upon whose claims
you may never be called to pass judgment. But if you care to read
them here they are. I remain, dear sir,
Yours very faithfully, C. A. DANA.
Mr. STANTON.
CHAPTER VI.
THE SIEGE OF VICKSBURG
Life behind Vicksburg--Grant's efforts to procure
reinforcements--The fruitless appeal to General Banks--Mr. Stanton
responds to Mr. Dana's representations--A steamboat trip with
Grant--Watching Joe Johnston--Visits to Sherman and Admiral
Porter--The negro troops win glory--Progress and incidents of the
siege--Vicksburg wakes up--McClernand's removal.
We had not been many days in the rear of Vicksburg before we settled
into regular habits. The men were detailed in reliefs for work in the
trenches, and being relieved at fixed hours everybody seemed to lead a
systematic life.
My chief duty throughout the siege was a daily round through the
trenches, generally with the corps commander or some one of his staff.
As the lines of investment were six or seven miles long, it occupied the
greater part of my day; sometimes I made a portion of my tour of
inspection in the night. One night in riding through the trenches I must
have passed twenty thousand men asleep on their guns. I still can see
the grotesque positions into which they had curled themselves. The
trenches were so protected that there was no danger in riding through
them. It was not so safe to venture on the hills overlooking Vicksburg.
I went on foot and alone one day to the top of a hill, and was looking
at the town, when I suddenly heard something go whizz, whizz, by my ear.
"What in the world is that?" I asked myself. The place was so desolate
that it was an instant before I could believe that these were bullets
intended for me. When I did realize it, I immediately started to lie
down. Then came the question, which was the best way to lie down. If I
lay at right angles to the enemy's line the bullets from the right and
left might strike me; if I lay parallel to it then those directly from
the front might hit me. So I concluded it made no difference which way I
lay. After remaining quiet for a time the bullets ceased, and I left the
hill-top. I was more cautious in the future in venturing beyond cover.
Through the entire siege I lived in General Grant's headquarters, which
were on a high bluff northeast of Sherman's extreme left. I had a tent
to myself, and on the whole was very comfortable. We never lacked an
abundance of provisions. There was good water, enough even for the bath,
and we suffered very little from excessive heat. The only serious
annoyance was the cannonade from our whole line, which from the first of
June went on steadily by night as well as by day. The following bit from
a letter I wrote on June 2d, to my little daughter, tells something of
my situation:
It is real summer weather here, and, after coming in at noon to-day
from my usual ride through the trenches, I was very glad to get a
cold bath in my tent before dinner. I like living in tents very
well, especially if you ride on horseback all day. Every night I
sleep with one side of the tent wide open and the walls put up all
around to get plenty of air. Sometimes I wake up in the night and
think it is raining, the wind roars so in the tops of the great oak
forest on the hillside where we are encamped, and I think it is
thundering till I look out and see the golden moonlight in all its
glory, and listen again and know that it is only the thunder of
General Sherman's great guns, that neither rest nor let others rest
by night or by day.
We were no sooner in position behind Vicksburg than Grant saw that he
must have reinforcements. Joe Johnston was hovering near, working with
energy to collect forces sufficient to warrant an attempt to relieve
Vicksburg. The Confederates were also known to be reorganizing at
Jackson. Johnston eventually gathered an army behind Grant of about
twenty-five thousand men.
Under these threatening circumstances it was necessary to keep a certain
number of troops in our rear, more than Grant could well spare from the
siege, and he therefore made every effort to secure reinforcements. He
ordered down from Tennessee, and elsewhere in his own department, all
available forces. He also sent to General Banks, who was then besieging
Port Hudson, a request to bring his forces up as promptly as
practicable, and assuring him that he (Grant) would gladly serve under
him as his senior in rank, or simply co-operate with him for the benefit
of the common cause, if Banks preferred that arrangement. To Halleck, on
May 29th, he telegraphed: "If Banks does not come to my assistance I
must be reinforced from elsewhere. I will avoid a surprise, and do the
best I can with the means at hand." This was about the extent of
Grant's personal appeals to his superiors for additional forces. No
doubt, however, he left a good deal to my representations.
As no reply came from Banks, I started myself on the 30th for Port
Hudson at Grant's desire, to urge that the reinforcements be furnished.
The route used for getting out from the rear of Vicksburg at that time
was through the Chickasaw Bayou into the Yazoo and thence into the
Mississippi. From the mouth of the Yazoo I crossed the Mississippi to
Young's Point, and from there went overland across the peninsula to get
a gunboat at a point south of Vicksburg. As we were going down the river
we met a steamer just above Grand Gulf bearing one of the previous
messengers whom Grant had sent to Banks. He was bringing word that Banks
could send no forces; on the other hand, he asked reinforcements from
Grant to aid in his siege of Port Hudson, which he had closely invested.
This news, of course, made my trip unnecessary, and I returned at once
to headquarters, having been gone not over twenty-four hours.
As soon as this news came from Banks, I sent an urgent appeal to Mr.
Stanton to hurry reinforcements sufficient to make success beyond all
peradventure. The Government was not slow to appreciate Grant's needs or
the great opportunity he had created. Early in June I received the
following dispatch from Mr. Stanton:
WAR DEPARTMENT, _June 5, 1863_.
Your telegrams up to the 30th have been received. Everything in the
power of this Government will be put forth to aid General Grant.
The emergency is not underrated here. Your telegrams are a great
obligation, and are looked for with deep interest. I can not thank
you as much as I feel for the service you are now rendering. You
have been appointed an assistant adjutant general, with rank of
major, with liberty to report to General Grant if he needs you. The
appointment may be a protection to you. I shall expect daily
reports if possible.
EDWIN M. STANTON,
_Secretary of War_.
C. A. DANA, Esq.,
Grant's Headquarters near Vicksburg.
My appointment as assistant adjutant general was Stanton's own idea. He
was by nature a very anxious man. When he perceived from my dispatches
that I was going every day on expeditions into dangerous territory, he
became alarmed lest I might be caught by the Confederates; for as I was
a private citizen it would have been difficult to exchange me. If I were
in the regular volunteer service as an assistant adjutant general,
however, there would be no trouble about an exchange, hence my
appointment.
The chief variations from my business of watching the siege behind
Vicksburg were these trips I made to inspect the operations against the
enemy, who was now trying to shut us in from the rear beyond the Big
Black. His heaviest force was to the northeast. On June 6th the reports
from Satartia, our advance up the Yazoo, were so unsatisfactory that
Grant decided to examine the situation there himself. That morning he
said to me at breakfast:
"Mr. Dana, I am going to Satartia to-day; would you like to go along?"
I said I would, and we were soon on horseback, riding with a cavalry
guard to Haynes's Bluff, where we took a small steamer reserved for
Grant's use and carrying his flag. Grant was ill and went to bed soon
after he started. We had gone up the river to within two miles of
Satartia, when we met two gunboats coming down. Seeing the general's
flag, the officers in charge of the gunboats came aboard our steamer and
asked where the general was going. I told them to Satartia.
"Why," said they, "it will not be safe. Kimball [our advance was under
the charge of Brigadier-General Nathan Kimball, Third Division,
Sixteenth Army Corps] has retreated from there, and is sending all his
supplies to Haynes's Bluff. The enemy is probably in the town now."
I told them Grant was sick and asleep, and that I did not want to waken
him. They insisted that it was unsafe to go on, and that I would better
call the general. Finally I did so, but he was too sick to decide.
"I will leave it with you," he said. I immediately said we would go back
to Haynes's Bluff, which we did.
The next morning Grant came out to breakfast fresh as a rose, clean
shirt and all, quite himself. "Well, Mr. Dana," he said, "I suppose we
are at Satartia now."
"No, general," I said, "we are at Haynes's Bluff." And I told him what
had happened.
He did not complain, but as he was short of officers at that point he
asked me to go with a party of cavalry toward Mechanicsburg to find if
it were true, as reported, that Joe Johnston was advancing from Canton
to the Big Black. We had a hard ride, not getting back to Vicksburg
until the morning of the eighth. The country was like all the rest
around Vicksburg, broken, wooded, unpopulous, with bad roads and few
streams. It still had many cattle, but the corn was pretty thoroughly
cleared out. We found that Johnston had not moved his main force as
rumored, and that he could not move it without bringing all his supplies
with him.
Throughout the siege an attack from Johnston continued to threaten Grant
and to keep a part of our army busy. Almost every one of my dispatches
to Mr. Stanton contained rumors of the movements of the Confederates,
and the information was so uncertain that often what I reported one day
had to be contradicted the next. About the 15th of June the movements of
the enemy were so threatening that Grant issued an order extending
Sherman's command so as to include Haynes's Bluff, and to send there the
two divisions of the Ninth Corps under General Parke. These troops had
just arrived from Kentucky, and Grant had intended to place them on the
extreme left of our besieging line.
Although our spies brought in daily reports of forces of the enemy at
different points between Yazoo City and Jackson, Johnston's plan did not
develop opportunity until the 22d, when he was said to be crossing the
Big Black north of Bridgeport. Sherman immediately started to meet him
with about thirty thousand troops, including cavalry. Five brigades more
were held in readiness to reinforce him if necessary. The country was
scoured by Sherman in efforts to beat Johnston, but no trace of an enemy
was found. It was, however, ascertained that he had not advanced, but
was still near Canton. As there was no design to attack Johnston until
Vicksburg was laid low, Sherman made his way to Bear Creek, northwest of
Canton, where he could watch the Confederates, and there went into camp.
I went up there several times to visit him, and always came away
enthusiastic over his qualities as a soldier. His amazing activity and
vigilance pervaded his entire force. The country where he had encamped
was exceedingly favorable for defense. He had occupied the commanding
points, opened rifle-pits wherever they would add to his advantage,
obstructed the cross-roads and most of the direct roads also, and
ascertained every point where the Big Black could be forded between the
line of Benton on the north and the line of railroads on the south. By
his rapid movements, also, and by widely deploying on all the ridges and
open headlands, Sherman produced the impression that his forces were ten
times as numerous as they really were. Sherman remained in his camp on
Bear Creek through the rest of the siege, in order to prevent any
possible attack by Joe Johnston, the reports about whose movements
continued to be contradictory and uncertain.
Another variation in my Vicksburg life was visiting Admiral Porter, who
commanded the fleet which hemmed in the city on the river-side. Porter
was a very active, courageous, fresh-minded man, and an experienced
naval officer, and I enjoyed the visits I made to his fleet. His boats
were pretty well scattered, for the Confederates west of the Mississippi
were pressing in, and unless watched might manage to cross somewhere.
Seven of the gunboats were south of Vicksburg, one at Haynes's Bluff,
one was at Chickasaw Bayou, one at Young's Point, one at Milliken's
Bend, one at Lake Providence, one at Greenell, one at Island Sixty-five,
two were at White River, and so on, and several were always in motion.
They guarded the river so completely that no hostile movement from the
west ever succeeded, or was likely to do so.
The most serious attack from the west during the siege was that on June
7th, when a force of some two thousand Confederates engaged about a
thousand negro troops defending Milliken's Bend. This engagement at
Milliken's Bend became famous from the conduct of the colored troops.
General E. S. Dennis, who saw the battle, told me that it was the
hardest fought engagement he had ever seen. It was fought mainly hand to
hand. After it was over many men were found dead with bayonet stabs, and
others with their skulls broken open by butts of muskets. "It is
impossible," said General Dennis, "for men to show greater gallantry
than the negro troops in that fight."
The bravery of the blacks in the battle at Milliken's Bend completely
revolutionized the sentiment of the army with regard to the employment
of negro troops. I heard prominent officers who formerly in private had
sneered at the idea of the negroes fighting express themselves after
that as heartily in favor of it. Among the Confederates, however, the
feeling was very different. All the reports which came to us showed that
both citizens and soldiers on the Confederate side manifested great
dismay at the idea of our arming negroes. They said that such a policy
was certain to be followed by insurrection with all its horrors.
Although the presence of Joe Johnston on the east, and the rumors of
invasion by Kirby Smith from the west, compelled constant attention, the
real work behind Vicksburg was always that of the siege. No amount of
outside alarm loosened Grant's hold on the rebel stronghold. The siege
went on steadily and effectively. By June 10th the expected
reinforcements began to report. Grant soon had eighty-five thousand men
around Vicksburg, and Pemberton's last hope was gone. The first troops
to arrive were eight regiments under General Herron. They came from
Missouri, down the Mississippi to Young's Point, where they were
debarked and marched across the peninsula, care being taken, of course,
that the Confederate garrison at Vicksburg should see the whole march.
The troops were then ferried across the Mississippi, and took a position
south of Vicksburg between Lauman's troops and the Mississippi River,
completely closing the lines, and thus finally rendering egress and
ingress absolutely impossible. Herron took this position on June 13th.
He went to work with so much energy that on the night of the 15th he was
able to throw forward his lines on his left, making an advance of five
hundred yards, and bringing his artillery and rifle-pits within two or
three hundred yards of the enemy's lines.
Herron was a first-rate officer, and the only consummate dandy I ever
saw in the army. He was always handsomely dressed; I believe he never
went out without patent-leather boots on, and you would see him in the
middle of a battle--well, I can not say exactly that he went into battle
with a lace pocket-handkerchief, but at all events he always displayed a
clean white one. But these little vanities appeared not to detract from
his usefulness. Herron had already proved his ability and fighting
qualities at the battle of Prairie Grove, December 7, 1862.
Just as our reinforcements arrived we began to receive encouraging
reports from within Vicksburg. Deserters said that the garrison was worn
out and hungry; besides, the defense had for several days been conducted
with extraordinary feebleness, which Grant thought was due to the
deficiency of ammunition or to exhaustion and depression in the
garrison, or to their retirement to an inner line of defense. The first
and third of these causes no doubt operated to some extent, but the
second we supposed to be the most influential. The deserters also said
that fully one third of the garrison were in hospital, and that
officers, as well as men, had begun to despair of relief from Johnston.
These reports from within the town, as well as the progress of the siege
and the arrival of reinforcements, pointed so strongly to the speedy
surrender of the place that I asked Mr. Stanton in my dispatch of June
14th to please inform me by telegram whether he wished me to go to
General Rosecrans after the fall of Vicksburg or whether he had other
orders for me.
The next day after this letter, however, the enemy laid aside his
long-standing inactivity and opened violently with both artillery and
musketry. Two mortars which the Confederates got into operation that day
in front of General A. J. Smith particularly interested our generals. I
remember going with a party of some twenty officers, including Sherman,
Ord, McPherson, and Wilson, to the brow of a hill on McPherson's front
to watch this battery with our field glasses. From where we were we
could study the whole operation. We saw the shell start from the mortar,
sail slowly through the air toward us, fall to the ground and explode,
digging out a hole which looked like a crater. I remember one of these
craters which must have been nine feet in diameter. As you watched a
shell coming you could not tell whether it would fall a thousand feet
away or by your side. Yet nobody budged. The men sat there on their
horses, their reins loose, studying and discussing the work of the
batteries, apparently indifferent to the danger. It was very interesting
as a study of human steadiness.
By the middle of June our lines were so near the enemy's on Sherman's
and McPherson's front that General Grant began to consider the project
of another general assault as soon as McClernand's, Lauman's, and
Herron's lines were brought up close. Accordingly, Sherman and McPherson
were directed to hold their work until the others were up to them.
Herron, of course, had not had time to advance, though since his arrival
he had worked with great energy. Lauman had done little in the way of
regular approaches. But the chief difficulty in the way was the
backwardness of McClernand. His trenches were mere rifle-pits, three or
four feet wide, and would allow neither the passage of artillery nor the
assemblage of any considerable number of troops. His batteries were,
with scarcely an exception, in the position they apparently had held
when the siege was opened.
This obstacle to success was soon removed. On the 18th of June
McClernand was relieved and General Ord was put into his place. The
immediate occasion of McClernand's removal was a congratulatory address
to the Thirteenth Corps which he had fulminated in May, and which first
reached the besieging army in a copy of the Missouri Democrat. In this
extraordinary address McClernand claimed for himself most of the glory
of the campaign, reaffirmed that on May 22d he had held two rebel forts
for several hours, and imputed to other officers and troops failure to
support him in their possession, which must have resulted in the capture
of the town, etc. Though this congratulatory address was the occasion of
McClernand's removal, the real causes of it dated farther back. These
causes, as I understood at the time, were his repeated disobedience of
important orders, his general unfortunate mental disposition, and his
palpable incompetence for the duties of his position. I learned in
private conversation that in General Grant's judgment it was necessary
that McClernand should be removed for the reason, above all, that his
bad relations with other corps commanders, especially Sherman and
McPherson, rendered it impossible that the chief command of the army
should devolve upon him, as it would have done were General Grant
disabled, without some pernicious consequence to the Union cause.
CHAPTER VII.
PEMBERTON'S SURRENDER.
The artillery assault of June 20--McPherson springs a mine--Grant
decides to storm the city--Pemberton asks for an interview and
terms--The "unconditional surrender" note--At the meeting of Grant
and Pemberton between the lines--The ride into Vicksburg and the
Fourth of July celebration there.
Two days after McClernand's removal General Grant attempted to settle
the question whether he should make a further attempt to storm Vicksburg
or leave its reduction to the regular progress of siege operations. To
test what an assault would do, he began, at four o'clock on the morning
of June 20th, an artillery attack, in which about two hundred cannon
were engaged. During the attack no Confederates were visible, nor was
any reply made to our artillery. Their musketry fire also amounted to
nothing. Of course, some damage was done to the buildings of the town by
our concentrated cannonade, but we could not tell whether their mills,
foundry, or storehouses were destroyed. Their rifle-pits and defenses
were little injured. At ten o'clock the cannonade ceased. It was evident
that the probabilities of immediate success by assault would not
compensate for the sacrifices.
After the artillery attack on the 20th, the next exciting incident of
the siege was the springing of a mine by McPherson. Directly in front
of his position the enemy had a great fort which was regarded as the key
of their line. As soon as McPherson had got into position behind
Vicksburg he had begun to run trenches toward this fort, under which he
subsequently tunneled, hoping that by an explosion he would open it to
our occupation. The mine was sprung about four o'clock on the afternoon
of June 25th. It was charged with twelve hundred pounds of powder. The
explosion was terrific, forming a crater fully thirty-five feet in
diameter, but it did not open the fort. There still remained between the
new ground which we had gained by the explosion and the main works of
the fort an ascent so steep that an assault was practically impossible.
The enemy very soon opened a galling fire from within the fort with
shells with short fuses, thrown over the ridge by hand, like grenades,
and these did some execution. The wounds inflicted by these missiles
were frightful. To this we replied as actively as possible, and this
conflict between parties invisible to each other, not only on account of
the darkness, but also on account of the barrier between them, was kept
up with fury during the night and the next forenoon. Immediately on the
springing of the mine a tremendous cannonade was opened along our whole
line, accompanied by active firing from the rifle-pits. This fire was
continued with little relaxation during the night and the next day.
After several days of this kind of warfare, we had made no progress
whatever, not being able either to plant a battery or to open a
rifle-pit upon the new ground.
Eventually McPherson completed another mine, which he exploded on the
first day of July. Many Confederates were killed, and six were thrown
over into our lines by the explosion. They were all dead but one, a
negro, who got well and joined our army. McPherson did not, however, get
possession of the place through this mine, as he had hoped.
Little advancement was made in the siege after McPherson sprang his
first mine on the 25th of June, except in the matter of time and in the
holding of the lines of investment. Several things conspired to produce
inactivity and a sort of listlessness among the various commands--the
heat of the weather, the unexpected length of the siege, the endurance
of the defense, the absence of any thorough organization of the engineer
department, and, above all, the well-grounded general belief of our
officers and men that the town must presently fall through starvation,
without any special effort or sacrifice. This belief was founded on the
reports from within Vicksburg. Every new party of deserters which
reached us agreed that the provisions of the place were near the point
of total exhaustion, that rations had been reduced lower than ever, that
extreme dissatisfaction existed among the garrison, and it was generally
expected--indeed, there was a sort of conviction--on all hands that the
city would be surrendered on Saturday, July 4th, if, indeed, it could
hold out so long as that.
While apathy grew in our ranks, the Confederates displayed more activity
than ever. On the morning of June 27th they sprang a countermine on
Sherman's front, which destroyed the mines Sherman's engineers had
nearly finished, and threw the head of his sap into general confusion.
McPherson was prevented from taking possession of the fort, which had
been partially destroyed. Ord's (lately McClernand's) working parties,
which were now well up to the Confederate lines, were checked by hand
grenades. Lauman was almost nightly assailed by little sorties of the
enemy, and always lost a few men in them, killed, wounded, or captured.
The operations west of the Mississippi became more threatening, too. Our
scouts brought in word that Price and Kirby Smith were about to attempt
to provision Vicksburg by way of Milliken's Bend. There were rumors also
that some two thousand or more skiffs had been prepared within the town,
by which it was thought the garrison might escape.
The general indisposition of our troops to prosecute the siege
zealously, and the evident determination on the part of the enemy to
hold out until the last, caused General Grant to hold a council of war
on the morning of June 30th, to take judgment on the question of trying
another general assault, or leaving the result to the exhaustion of the
garrison. The conclusion of the council was in favor of the latter
policy, but two days later, July 2d, Grant told me that if the enemy did
not give up Vicksburg by the 6th he should storm it.
Happily, there was no need to wait until the 6th. The general
expectation that something would happen by July 4th was about to be
confirmed. On the morning of Friday, July 3d, a soldier appeared on the
Confederate line, in McPherson's front, bearing a flag of truce.
General A. J. Smith was sent to meet this man, who proved to be an
officer, General J. S. Bowen. He bore a letter from Pemberton addressed
to Grant. The letter was taken to headquarters, where it was read by the
general and its contents were made known to the staff. It was a request
for an armistice to arrange terms for the capitulation of Vicksburg. To
this end Pemberton asked that three commissioners be appointed to meet a
like number to be named by himself. Grant immediately wrote this reply:
The useless effusion of blood you propose stopping by this course
can be ended at any time you may choose by an unconditional
surrender of the city and garrison. Men who have shown so much
endurance and courage as those now in Vicksburg will always
challenge the respect of an adversary, and I can assure you will be
treated with all the respect due to prisoners of war.
I do not favor the proposition of appointing commissioners to
arrange terms of capitulation, because I have no terms other than
those indicated above.
Bowen, the bearer of Pemberton's letter, who had been received by A. J.
Smith, expressed a strong desire to converse with General Grant. While
declining this, Grant requested Smith to say to Bowen that if General
Pemberton desired to see him an interview would be granted between the
lines in McPherson's front at any hour in the afternoon which Pemberton
might appoint. After Bowen's departure a message was soon sent back to
Smith, accepting the proposal for an interview, and appointing three
o'clock as the hour. Grant was there with his staff and with Generals
Ord, McPherson, Logan, and A. J. Smith. Sherman was not present, being
with his command watching Joe Johnston, and ready to spring upon the
latter as soon as Pemberton was captured. Pemberton came late, attended
by General Bowen and Colonel L. M. Montgomery.
It must have been a bitter moment for the Confederate chieftain.
Pemberton was a Northern man, a Pennsylvanian by birth, from which State
he was appointed to West Point, graduating in 1837. In the old army he
fell under the spell of the influence of Jefferson Davis, whose close
friend he was. Davis appears to have thought Pemberton was a military
genius, for he was jumped almost at a stroke, without much previous
service, to be a lieutenant general, and the defense of the Mississippi
River was given over to his charge. His dispositions throughout the
entire campaign, after Grant crossed at Bruinsburg, were weak, and he
was easily overcome, although his troops fought well. As Joe Johnston
truthfully remarks in his Narrative, Pemberton did not understand
Grant's warfare at all. Penned up and finally compelled to surrender a
vital post and a great army to his conqueror, an almost irremediable
disaster to his cause, Pemberton not only suffered the usual pangs of
defeat, but he was doubly humiliated by the knowledge that he would be
suspected and accused of treachery by his adopted brethren, and that the
result would be used by the enemies of Davis, whose favorite he was, to
undermine the Confederate administration. As the events proved, it was
indeed a great blow to Davis's hold upon the people of the South. These
things must have passed through Pemberton's mind as he faced Grant for
this final settlement of the fate of Vicksburg.
The conversation was held apart between Pemberton and his two officers
and Grant, McPherson, and A. J. Smith, the rest of us being seated on
the ground near by.
We could, however, see that Pemberton was much excited, and was
impatient in his answers to Grant. He insisted that his army be paroled
and allowed to march beyond our lines, officers and all, with eight
days' rations, drawn from their own stores, officers to retain their
private property and body servants. Grant heard what Pemberton had to
say, and left him at the end of an hour and a half, saying that he would
send in his ultimatum in writing before evening; to this Pemberton
promised to reply before night, hostilities to cease in the meantime.
Grant then conferred at his headquarters with his corps and division
commanders, all of whom, except Steele, who advised unconditional
surrender, favored a plan proposed by McPherson, and finally adopted by
Grant. The argument against the plan was one of feeling only. In its
favor it was urged that it would at once not only tend to the
demoralization of the enemy, but also release Grant's whole army for
offensive operations against Joe Johnston and Port Hudson, while to
guard and transport so many prisoners would require a great portion of
our army's strength. Keeping the prisoners would also absorb all our
steamboat transportation, while paroling them would leave it free to
move our troops. Paroling would also save us an enormous expenditure.
After long consideration, General Grant reluctantly gave way to these
reasons, and at six o'clock in the afternoon he sent a letter by the
hands of General Logan and Lieutenant-Colonel Wilson, in which he stated
as terms that, as soon as rolls could be made out and paroles signed by
officers and men, Pemberton would be allowed to march out of our lines,
the officers taking with them their side-arms and clothing, and the
field, staff, and cavalry officers one horse each. The rank and file
were to retain all their clothing, but no other property. If these
conditions were accepted, any amount of rations deemed necessary was to
be taken from the stores they had, besides the necessary cooking
utensils. Thirty wagons also, counting two two-horse or mule teams as
one, were to be allowed to transport such articles as could not be
carried along. The same conditions were allowed to all sick and wounded
officers and soldiers as fast as they became able to travel.
The officer who received this letter stated that it would be impossible
to answer it by night, and it was not till a little before peep of day
that the reply was furnished. In the main the terms were accepted, but
Pemberton proposed as amendments:
At 10 A.M. to-morrow I propose to evacuate the works in and around
Vicksburg, and to surrender the city and garrison under my command
by marching out with my colors and arms, stacking them in front of
my present lines, after which you will take possession. Officers to
retain their side-arms and personal property, and the rights and
property of citizens to be respected.
General Grant immediately replied:
I can make no stipulations with regard to the treatment of citizens
and their private property.... The property which officers will be
allowed to take with them will be as stated in my proposition of
last evening.... If you mean by your proposition for each brigade to
march to the front of the line now occupied by it, and stack arms at
10 A.M., and then return to the inside and there remain as prisoners
until properly paroled, I will make no objection to it.
Should no notification be received of your acceptance of my terms
by 9 A.M., I shall regard them as having been rejected, and shall
act accordingly.
The answer came back promptly, "The terms proposed by you are accepted."
We had a glorious celebration that day. Pemberton's note had been
received just after daylight, and at the appointed hour of ten o'clock
the surrender was consummated, the Confederate troops marching out and
stacking arms in front of their works, while Pemberton appeared for a
moment with his staff upon the parapet of the central fort. At eleven
o'clock Grant entered the city. He was received by Pemberton with more
marked impertinence than at their former interview. Grant bore it like a
philosopher, and in reply treated Pemberton with even gentler courtesy
and dignity than before.
I rode into Vicksburg at the side of the conqueror, and afterward
perambulated among the conquered. The Confederate soldiers were
generally more contented even than we were. Now they were going home,
they said. They had had enough of the war. The cause of the Confederacy
was lost. They wanted to take the oath of allegiance many of them. I
was not surprised to learn a month later that of the twenty-odd thousand
well men who were paroled at Vicksburg the greater part had since
dispersed, and I felt sure they could never be got to serve again. The
officers, on the other hand, all declared their determination never to
give in. They had mostly on that day the look of men who have been
crying all night. One major, who commanded a regiment from Missouri,
burst into tears as he followed his disarmed men back into their lines
after they had surrendered their colors and the guns in front of them.
I found the buildings of Vicksburg much less damaged than I had
expected. Still, there were a good many people living in caves dug in
the banks. Naturally the shells did less damage to these vaults than to
dwellings. There was a considerable supply of railroad cars in the town,
with one or two railroad locomotives in working condition. There was
also an unexpected quantity of military supplies. At the end of the
first week after our entrance sixty-six thousand stand of small arms had
been collected, mainly in good condition, and more were constantly being
discovered. They were concealed in caves, as well as in all sorts of
buildings. The siege and seacoast guns found exceeded sixty, and the
whole captured artillery was above two hundred pieces. The stores of
rebel ammunition also proved to be surprisingly heavy. As Grant
expressed it, there was enough to have kept up the defense for six years
at the rate they were using it. The stock of army clothing was
officially invoiced at five million dollars--Confederate prices. Of
sugar, molasses, and salt there was a large quantity, and sixty thousand
pounds of bacon were found in one place.
The way in which Grant handled his army at the capitulation of Vicksburg
was a splendid example of his energy. As soon as negotiations for
surrender began on the 3d, he sent word to Sherman, at his camp on Bear
Creek, to get ready to move against Johnston. Sherman always acted on
the instant, and that very afternoon he threw bridges across the Big
Black. He started his forces over the river on the 4th as soon as he
received word that Pemberton had accepted Grant's ultimatum.
In the meantime Grant had ordered part of Ord's corps, all of Steele's
division, and the two divisions of the Ninth Corps, which was at
Haynes's Bluff, to be ready to join Sherman as soon as the capitulation
was effected. Their movement was so prompt that by Sunday night, July
5th, part of Ord's force was across the Big Black and Steele was well up
to the river.
As Grant supposed that Banks needed help at Port Hudson, he had sent a
messenger to him on the 1st of the month telling him the surrender was
imminent, and offering aid if he needed it. A division--that of
Herron--was now made ready to march as soon as word came back. In the
city itself there was the greatest activity. The occupation of the place
by our forces was directed by General McPherson, who was appointed to
the command. Three divisions were detailed to garrison the line of
fortifications and to furnish the guards for the interior of the city.
By the night of the 5th no troops remained outside of Vicksburg.
The paroling of the Confederate troops began as soon as the occupation
was complete, and was pushed with all possible rapidity. At the same
time those parts of the fortifications which we were now to defend were
selected, and the men began to obliterate the siege approaches at which
they had worked so hard and so long. So busy was Grant with the
mobilization of his army for offensive field operations and the
garrisoning of Vicksburg that he did not take time even to write to
Washington. My telegram of July 5th to Mr. Stanton describing the
surrender and the condition of things in Vicksburg conveyed this request
from Grant for instructions from Washington:
General Grant, being himself intensely occupied, desires me to say
that he would like to receive from General Halleck as soon as
practicable either general or specific instructions as to the future
conduct of the war in his department. He has no idea of going into
summer quarters, nor does he doubt his ability to employ his army so
as to make its blows tell toward the great result; but he would like
to be informed whether the Government wishes him to follow his own
judgment or to co-operate in some particular scheme of operations.
With the fall of Vicksburg my mission was at an end. On the 6th of July
I left Grant for the North, stopping at Helena, Ark., on my way up the
river long enough to get news of Gen. Prentiss's recent operations.
Thence I went on to Cairo and Washington.
CHAPTER VIII.
WITH THE ARMY OF THE CUMBERLAND.
Appointment as Assistant Secretary of War--Again to the far
front--An interesting meeting with Andrew Johnson--Rosecrans's
complaints--His view of the situation at Chattanooga--At General
Thomas's headquarters--The first day of Chickamauga--The battlefield
telegraph service--A night council of war at Widow Glenn's--Personal
experiences of the disastrous second day's battle--The "Rock of
Chickamauga."
I happened to be the first man to reach the capital from Vicksburg, and
everybody wanted to hear the story and to ask questions. I was anxious
to get home and see my family, however, and left for New York as soon as
I could get away. A few days after I arrived in New York I received an
invitation to go into business there with Mr. Ketchum, a banker, and
with George Opdyke, the merchant. I wrote Mr. Stanton of the opening,
but he urged me to remain in the War Department as one of his
assistants, which I consented to do.[C]
The first commission with which Mr. Stanton charged me after my
appointment as his assistant was one similar to that which I had just
finished--to go to Tennessee to observe and report the movements of
Rosecrans against Bragg. General Rosecrans, who, after the battle of
Stone's River, or Murfreesboro, on December 31st to January 2, 1863, had
lain for nearly six months at Murfreesboro, obstructing on various
excuses all the efforts Lincoln and Stanton and Halleck put forth to
make him move against Bragg, who occupied what was known as the
Tullahoma line, had toward the end of June moved on Bragg and driven him
across the Tennessee River. He had then settled down to rest again,
while Bragg had taken possession of his new line in and about
Chattanooga.
Burnside, who was in Kentucky, had been ordered to unite with Rosecrans
by way of East Tennessee, in order that the combined force should attack
Bragg, but, despite the urgency of the administration, no movement was
made by Rosecrans until the middle of August. As soon as it was evident
that he was really going out against the Confederates, Mr. Stanton asked
me to join the Army of the Cumberland. My orders were to report directly
to Rosecrans's headquarters. I carried the following letter of
introduction to that general:
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY, _August 30, 1863_.
MAJ.-GEN. ROSECRANS, Commanding, etc.
GENERAL: This will introduce to you Charles A. Dana, Esq., one of
my assistants, who visits your command for the purpose of
conferring with you upon any subject which you may desire to have
brought to the notice of the department. Mr. Dana is a gentleman of
distinguished character, patriotism, and ability, and possesses the
entire confidence of the department. You will please afford to him
the courtesy and consideration which he merits, and explain to him
fully any matters which you may desire through him to bring to the
notice of the department.
Yours truly, EDWIN M. STANTON.
As soon as my papers arrived I left for my post. I was much delayed on
railroads and steamboats, and when I reached Cincinnati found it was
impossible to join Burnside by his line of march to Knoxville and from
him go to Rosecrans, as I had intended. Accordingly I went on to
Louisville, where I arrived on September 5th. I found there that
Burnside had just occupied Knoxville; that the Ninth Corps, which two
months before I had left near Vicksburg, was now about to go to him from
near Louisville; and that Rosecrans had queerly enough telegraphed to
the clergy all over the country that he expected a great battle that day
and desired their prayers.
I went directly from Louisville to Nashville, where I found General
Gordon Granger in command. As he and Governor Johnson were going to the
front in a day or two, I waited to go with them. The morning after my
arrival at Nashville I went to call on Johnson. I had never met him
before.
Andrew Johnson was short and stocky, of dark complexion, smooth face,
dark hair, dark eyes, and of great determination of appearance. When I
went to see him in his office, the first thing he said was:
"Will you have a drink?"
"Yes, I will," I answered. So he brought out a jug of whisky and poured
out as much as he wanted in a tumbler, and then made it about half and
half water. The theoretical, philosophical drinker pours out a little
whisky and puts in almost no water at all--drinks it pretty nearly
pure--but when a man gets to taking a good deal of water in his whisky,
it shows he is in the habit of drinking a good deal. I noticed that the
Governor took more whisky than most gentlemen would have done, and I
concluded that he took it pretty often.
I had a prolonged conversation that morning with Governor Johnson, who
expressed himself in cheering terms in regard to the general condition
of Tennessee. He regarded the occupation of Knoxville by Burnside as
completing the permanent expulsion of Confederate power, and said he
should order a general election for the first week in October. He
declared that slavery was destroyed in fact, but must be abolished
legally. Johnson was thoroughly in favor of immediate emancipation both
as a matter of moral right and as an indispensable condition of the
large immigration of industrious freemen which he thought necessary to
repeople and regenerate the State.
On the 10th of September we started for the front, going by rail to
Bridgeport, on the Tennessee River. This town at that date was the
terminus of the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad. The bridge across
the river and part of the railroad beyond had been destroyed by Bragg
when he retreated in the preceding summer from Tullahoma. It was by way
of Bridgeport that troops were joining Rosecrans at the far front, and
all supplies went to him that way. On reaching the town, we heard that
Chattanooga had been occupied by Crittenden's corps of Rosecrans's army
the day before, September 9th; so the next day, September 11th, I pushed
on there by horseback past Shellmound and Wauhatchie. The country
through which I passed is a magnificent region of rocks and valleys, and
I don't believe there is anywhere a finer view than that I had from
Lookout Mountain as I approached Chattanooga.
When I reached Chattanooga I went at once to General Rosecrans's
headquarters and presented my letter. He read it, and then burst out in
angry abuse of the Government at Washington. He had not been sustained,
he said. His requests had been ignored, his plans thwarted. Both Stanton
and Halleck had done all they could, he declared, to prevent his
success.
"General Rosecrans," I said, "I have no authority to listen to
complaints against the Government. I was sent here for the purpose of
finding out what the Government could do to aid you, and have no right
to confer with you on other matters."
He quieted down at once, and explained his situation to me. He had
reached Chattanooga, he said, on the 10th, with Crittenden's troops, the
Twenty-first Corps, the town having been evacuated the day before by the
Confederates. As all the reports brought in seemed to indicate that
Bragg was in full retreat toward Rome, Ga., Crittenden had immediately
started in pursuit, and had gone as far as Ringgold. On the night before
(September 11th) it had seemed evident that Bragg had abandoned his
retreat on Rome, and behind the curtain of the woods and hills had
returned with the purpose of suddenly falling with his whole army upon
the different corps and divisions of our army, now widely separated by
the necessity of crossing the mountains at gaps far apart.
This was a serious matter for Rosecrans, if true, for at that moment his
army was scattered over a line more than fifty miles long, extending
from Chattanooga on the north to Alpine on the south. Rosecrans pointed
out to me the positions on the map. Crittenden, he explained, had been
ordered immediately to leave Ringgold and move westward to the valley of
the West Chickamauga. He was near a place known as Lee and Gordon's
Mills. General Thomas, who commanded the Fourteenth Corps, had marched
across Lookout Mountain and now held Stevens's Gap, perhaps twenty-five
miles south of Chattanooga. McCook, with the Twentieth Corps, had been
ordered, after crossing the Tennessee, to march southeast, and now was
at Alpine, fully thirty-five miles south of Crittenden. Orders had been
sent McCook, when it was found that Bragg had made a stand, to rest his
left flank on the southern base of Mission Ridge, and, extending his
line toward Summerville, fall on the flank of the enemy should he follow
the valley that way. The reserve, under Gordon Granger, was still north
of the Tennessee, although one division had reached Bridgeport and the
rest were rapidly approaching. Notwithstanding the signs that Bragg
might not be retreating so fast as he at first appeared to have been,
Rosecrans was confident as late as the 12th that the Confederate
commander was merely making a show of the offensive to check pursuit,
and that he would make his escape to Rome as soon as he found our army
concentrated for battle east of Lookout Mountain.
The next day (the 13th) I left Chattanooga with Rosecrans and his staff
for Thomas's headquarters at Stevens's Gap. We found everything
progressing favorably there. The movements for the concentration of the
three corps were going forward with energy. Scouts were coming in
constantly, who reported that the enemy had withdrawn from the basin
where our army was assembling; that he was evacuating Lafayette and
moving toward Rome. It seemed as if at last the Army of the Cumberland
had practically gained a position from which it could effectually
advance upon Rome and Atlanta, and deliver there the finishing blow of
the war. The difficulties of gaining this position, of crossing the
Cumberland Mountains, passing the Tennessee, turning and occupying
Chattanooga, traversing the mountain ridges of northern Georgia, and
seizing the passes which led southward had been enormous. It was only
when I came personally to examine the region that I appreciated what had
been done. These difficulties were all substantially overcome. The army
was in the best possible condition, and was advancing with all the
rapidity which the nature of the country allowed. Our left flank toward
East Tennessee was secured by Burnside, and the only disadvantage which
I could see was that a sudden movement of the enemy to our right might
endanger our long and precarious line of communications and compel us to
retreat again beyond the Tennessee. I felt this so keenly that I urged
Mr. Stanton, in a dispatch sent to him on the 14th from Thomas's
headquarters, to push as strong a column as possible eastward from
Corinth, in northeastern Mississippi. It seemed to me that it would be
better to recall the troops from the West rather than to risk a check
here, where the heart of rebellion was within reach and the final blow
all prepared.
But, after all, there was something of a mystery about the real location
of Bragg's army, its strength, and the designs of its chief. At any rate
it was soon manifest that Bragg was not withdrawing to the southward, as
at first supposed. Some queer developments down the Chickamauga on the
16th and 17th caused Rosecrans considerable anxiety for Chattanooga. The
impression began to grow, too, that Bragg had been playing 'possum, and
had not retreated at all. Rosecrans at once abandoned all idea of
operations against the Confederate line of retreat and supply, drew his
army in rapidly, and began to look sharply after his own communications
with Chattanooga, which had now become his base.
By noon of September 18th the concentration was practically complete.
Our army then lay up and down the valley, with West Chickamauga Creek in
front of the greater part of the line. The left was held by Crittenden,
the center by Thomas, and the right by McCook, whose troops were now all
in the valley except one brigade. The army had not concentrated any too
soon, for that very afternoon the enemy appeared on our left, and a
considerable engagement occurred. It was said at headquarters that a
battle was certain the next day. The only point Rosecrans had not
determined at five o'clock on the afternoon of the 18th was whether to
make a night march and fall on Bragg at daylight or to await his onset.
But that night it became pretty clear to all that Bragg's plan was to
push by our left into Chattanooga. This compelled another rapid movement
by the left down the Chickamauga. By a tiresome night march Thomas moved
down behind Crittenden and below Lee and Gordon's Mills, taking position
on our extreme left. Crittenden followed, connecting with Thomas's
right, and thus taking position in the center. McCook's corps also
extended down stream to the left, but still covered the creek as high up
as Crawfish Spring, while part of his troops acted as a reserve. These
movements were hurriedly made, and the troops, especially those of
Thomas, were very much exhausted by their efforts to get into position.
Rosecrans had not been mistaken in Bragg's intention. About nine o'clock
the next morning at Crawfish Spring, where the general headquarters
were, we heard firing on our left, and reports at once came in that the
battle had begun there, Bragg being in command of the enemy. Thomas had
barely headed the Confederates off from Chattanooga. We remained at
Crawfish Springs on this day until after one o'clock, waiting for the
full proportions of the conflict to develop. When it became evident that
the battle was being fought entirely on our left, Rosecrans removed his
headquarters nearer to the scene, taking a little house near Lee and
Gordon's Mills, known as the Widow Glenn's. Although closer to the
battle, we could see no more of it here than at Crawfish Springs, the
conflict being fought altogether in a thick forest, and being invisible
to outsiders. The nature of the firing and the reports from the
commanders alone enabled us to follow its progress.
That we were able to keep as well informed as we were was due to our
excellent telegraphic communications. By this time the military
telegraph had been so thoroughly developed that it was one of the most
useful accessories of our army, even on a battlefield. For instance,
after Rosecrans had taken Crawfish Springs as his headquarters, he had
given orders, on September 17th, to connect the place with Chattanooga,
thirteen miles to the northwest. The line was completed after the battle
began on the 19th, and we were in communication not only with
Chattanooga, but with Granger at Rossville and with Thomas at his
headquarters. When Rosecrans removed to the Widow Glenn's, the
telegraphers went along, and in an hour had connections made and an
instrument clicking away in Mrs. Glenn's house. We thus had constant
information of the way the battle was going, not only from the
orderlies, but also from the wires.
This excellent arrangement enabled me also to keep the Government at
Washington informed of the progress of the battle. I sent eleven
dispatches that day to Mr. Stanton. They were very brief, but they
reported all that I, near as I was to the scene, knew of the battle of
September 19th at Chickamauga.
It was not till after dark that firing ceased and final reports began
to come in. From these we found that the enemy had been defeated in his
attempt to turn and crush our left flank and secure possession of the
Chattanooga roads, but that he was not wholly defeated, for he still
held his ground in several places, and was preparing, it was believed,
to renew the battle the next day.
That evening Rosecrans decided that if Bragg did not retreat he would
renew the fight at daylight, and a council of war was held at our
headquarters at the Widow Glenn's, to which all the corps and division
commanders were summoned. There must have been ten or twelve general
officers there. Rosecrans began by asking each of the corps commanders
for a report of the condition of his troops and of the position they
occupied; also for his opinion of what was to be done. Each proposition
was discussed by the entire council as it was made. General Thomas was
so tired--he had not slept at all the night before, and he had been
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