The Civil War: A Narrative: Fredericksburg to Meridian (30 page)

Not that the shifts were avoidable. It had in fact already become apparent that Holmes had been given a good deal more than he could handle. In mid-January, a week after his return to Richmond from his western journey, Davis sent for Kirby Smith, whom he admired, and assigned him to command the newly created Department of West Louisiana and Texas, intending in this way to relieve Holmes of the task of co-ordinating the efforts of Taylor and Magruder. “Am I thus to be sent into exile?” Smith asked wistfully. Not yet thirty-nine, he ranked second among the nation’s seven lieutenant generals, and Lee himself had lately said that he would be pleased to have him as a corps commander, alongside Longstreet and Jackson. Davis explained that the assignment, far from amounting to exile, was as important as any in the whole Confederacy, since his main duty “would be directed to aiding in the defense of the Lower Mississippi and keeping that great artery of the West effectually closed to Northern occupation or trade.” Acquiescing, Smith set out in early February, only to learn en route that his command had been enlarged to include the entire Transmississippi. In the light of this he arranged with Pemberton for the transfer of Major General Sterling Price, who was much admired in the Far West and had formerly been governor of Missouri, the scene of his early victories at Wilson’s Creek and Lexington. It was hoped that Price would repeat them presently, although a sadly large proportion of the men with whom he had won them were buried now in shallow graves around Corinth and Iuka, and the survivors, few as they were in number, were too badly needed around Vicksburg to be allowed to recross the river. How he would replace them Smith did not know, for the region had been stripped of troops, first by Van Dorn, who had brought them east after his defeat at Elkhorn Tavern, and then by Hindman, who, by stringent enforcement of the conscription laws, had raised the army which he had taken across the Boston Mountains and then returned with no more than a comparative handful. Smith soon found his worst fears confirmed. “The male population remaining are old men, or have furnished substitutes,”
he reported, “are lukewarm, or are wrapped up in speculation and money-making.”

Crossing at Port Hudson, he ascended Red River in a steamboat Richard Taylor had waiting for him by prearrangement, and on March 7 at Alexandria, Louisiana, he assumed command of all troops west of the Mississippi. What he encountered first-off gave his Regular Army nature quite a shock. “There was no general system, no common head,” he later reported; “each district was acting independently.” It was necessary, he said, to “begin
de novo
in any attempt at a general systematizing and development of the department resources.” Accordingly he set out at once on a preliminary tour of inspection, which only served to increase his first dismay. Conferring with Holmes at Little Rock—the North Carolinian now had charge of the subdepartment including Arkansas, Missouri, and Indian Territory—he found him anxiously awaiting the arrival of Price to command the army remnant left by Hindman, who had resigned in a huff at having been superseded by Holmes on the occasion of that officer’s step-down from command of the whole theater. Price arrived before the end of the month, yet there was little he could do until he got his men in condition to fight, which obviously would not be soon. Smith meantime established his headquarters at Shreveport. He considered it “a miserable place with a miserable population,” but it had the virtue of central location, at the head of navigation of Red River and on the direct route between Texas and Richmond. Here he set to work, laying the groundwork for organization of the enormous region which in time would be known as Kirby-Smithdom. He worked long hours and did not spare himself or his subordinates; but spring had come, and so had Banks and Grant, before his command—which included, in all, about 30,000 soldiers between the Mississippi and the Rio Grande, fewer even than Bragg had in the Duck River Valley or Pemberton had at Vicksburg and Port Hudson—was in any condition to offer them anything more than a token resistance.

After an all-night boat ride down the Mississippi, from Memphis past the mouth of the Arkansas, Grant reached Napoleon on January 18 to find McClernand, Porter, and Sherman awaiting his arrival with mixed emotions—mixed, that is, so far as McClernand’s were concerned; Porter and Sherman were united, if by nothing more than a mutual and intense dislike of the congressman-turned-commander. To them, Grant came as something of a savior, since he outranked the object of their scorn. To McClernand, on the other hand, he seemed nothing of the sort; McClernand plainly suspected another attempt to steal his thunder, if not his army. He had enlarged his Arkansas Post exploit by sending a pair of gunboats up White River to drive the rebels from St Charles and wreck their installations at De Valls Bluff, terminus of the
railroad running east from Little Rock toward Memphis. It was smartly done, accomplishing at the latter place the destruction of the depot and some rolling stock, as well as the capture of two 8-inch guns which the flustered garrison was trying to load aboard the cars for a getaway west. Still at Fort Hindman while this was in progress, McClernand received Grant’s curt and critical letter ordering him back to the Mississippi at once, and he bucked it along to Lincoln with a covering letter of his own.

“I believe my success here is gall and wormwood to the clique of West Pointers who have been persecuting me for months,” he wrote, imploring his friend and fellow-townsman not to “let me be clandestinely destroyed, or, what is worse, dishonored, without a hearing.” He asked, “How can General Grant at a distance of 400 miles intelligently command the army with me?” and answered his own question without a pause: “He cannot do it. It should be made an independent command, as both you and the Secretary of War, as I believe, originally intended.”

Grant was about to get in some licks of his own in this regard, if not through out-of-channels access to Lincoln—whom he had not only never met, but had never even seen, despite the fact that both had gone to war from Illinois—then at any rate through Halleck, which was the next-best thing. For the present he merely conferred with the three officers, collectively and singly, and ordered the return of the whole expedition to Milliken’s Bend for a renewal of the drive on Vicksburg by the direct route. By now, however, as a result of his talk with these men who had been there, he was beginning to see that the only successful approach, after all, might have to be roundabout. “What may be necessary to reduce the place I do not yet know,” he wired the general-in-chief, “but since the late rains [I] think our troops must get below the city to be used effectually.”

He spent the night ashore at Napoleon, whose partial destruction by incendiaries the day before caused Sherman to declare that he was “free to admit we all deserve to be killed unless we can produce a state of discipline when such disgraceful acts cannot be committed unpunished.” One solution, he decided, would be “to assess the damages upon the whole army, officers included,” but no such drastic remedy was adopted. The following morning Grant saw the transports and their escort vessels steam away south, in accordance with his orders, and returned that evening to Memphis. Next day, January 20, he sent Halleck a long dispatch explaining the tactical situation as he saw it and announcing that, by way of a start, he intended to try his hand at redigging the canal across the base of the hairpin bend in front of Vicksburg, abandoned the previous summer by Butler’s men when the two Union fleets were sundered and repulsed by the rebel warship
Arkansas
, now fortunately at the bottom of the river. Grant suggested that, in view of the importance of the campaign he was about to undertake, it would be wise
to combine the four western departments, now under Banks, Curtis, Rosecrans, and himself, under a single over-all commander in order to assure co-operation. “As I am the senior department commander in the West,” he wrote—apparently unaware that Banks was nine months his senior and in point of fact had been a major general before Grant himself was even a brigadier—“I will state that I have no desire whatever for such combined command, but would prefer the command I now have to any other than can be given.” From which disclaimer he passed at once to the subject of John McClernand: “I regard it as my duty to state that I found there was not sufficient confidence felt in General McClernand as a commander, either by the Army or Navy, to insure him success. Of course, all would co-operate to the best of their ability, but still with a distrust. This is a matter I made no inquiries about, but it was thrust upon me.” (As a later observer pointed out, there was “a touch of artfulness” in this; Grant “elevated Sherman and Porter to speak for entire branches of the service, then sought audiences with them so that the issue might be forced upon him!”) However, he continued, “as it is my intention to command in person, unless otherwise directed, there is no special necessity of mentioning this matter; but I want you to know that others besides myself agree in the necessity of the course I had already determined upon pursuing.”

His belief that Old Brains was on his side was strengthened the following day by a quick reply to his suggestion that “both banks of the Mississippi should be under one command, at least during the present operations.” “The President has directed that so much of Arkansas as you may desire to control be temporarily attached to your department,” Halleck wired. “This will give you control of both banks of the river.” Pleased to learn of Lincoln’s support, even at second hand, Grant kept busy with administrative and logistical matters preparatory to his departure from Memphis at the earliest possible date. McPherson was marching in from LaGrange with two divisions to accompany him downriver; these 14,979, added to the 32,015 already there, would give him an “aggregate present” of 46,994 in the vicinity of Vicksburg, with more to follow, not only from his own Department of the Tennessee, which included a grand total of 93,816 of all arms, but also from the Department of Missouri, now under Curtis and later under Schofield. On January 25 he received further evidence of Lincoln’s interest in the campaign for control of the Lower Mississippi, whose whimsical habit of carving itself new channels the Chief Executive knew from having made two flatboat voyages down it to New Orleans as a youth. “Direct your attention particularly to the canal proposed across the point,” Halleck urged. “The President attaches much importance to this.”

Grant himself was about ready to embark by now, wiring the general-in-chief this same day: “I leave for the fleet … tomorrow.” Last-minute details held him up an extra day, but on the 27 th he was
off. “The work of reducing Vicksburg will take time and men,” he had told Halleck the week before, “but can be accomplished.”

Sherman was already hard at work on the project which had drawn Lincoln’s particular attention, and with his present arduous endeavor—in effect a gigantic wrestling match with Mother Nature herself, or at any rate with her son the Father of Waters—added to his previous bloody experience up the Yazoo, he could testify as to the validity of Grant’s long-range observation that the conquest of Vicksburg would “take time and men.” In fact, he was inclined to think it might require so much of both commodities as to prove impossible. Both were expendable in the ordinary sense, but after all there were limits. He was discouraged, he wrote his senator brother John this week, by the lack of substantial progress by Union arms, East and West, and by the unexpected resilience of the Confederates, civilian as well as military: “Two years have passed and the rebel flag still haunts our nation’s capital. Our armies enter the best rebel territory and the wave closes in behind. The utmost we can claim is that our enemy respects our power to do them physical harm more than they did at first; but as to loving us any more, it were idle even to claim it.… I still see no end,” he added, “or even the beginning of the end.”

Perhaps the senseless burning of Napoleon the week before was on his mind or conscience, but the truth was he had enough on his hands to distress him here and now. The rain continued to come down hard—even harder, perhaps, than it was falling along the Rappahannock, where Burnside’s Mud March was coming to its sticky close and the soldiers were composing a parody of a bedtime prayer:

—with the result that Sherman’s men, in addition to having to widen and deepen the old canal, which was little more than a narrow ditch across the base of the low-lying tongue of land, had to work day and night at throwing up a levee along its right flank in order not to be washed away by water from the flooded bayous in their rear. Besides, even if the river could be persuaded to scour out a new channel along this line and thus “leave Vicksburg out in the cold,” as Sherman said, it would be no great gain so far as he could see. The Confederates would merely shift their guns southward along the bluff to command the river at and below the outlet, leaving the shovel-weary Federals no better off than before. So he told his brother. And Porter, watching his red-haired friend slosh around in the mud and lose his temper a dozen times a day—“half
sailor, half soldier, with a touch of the snapping turtle,” he called him—once more found it necessary to bolster Sherman’s spirits with hot rum and rollicking words. “If this rain lasts much longer we will not need a canal,” he ended a note to the unhappy general on January 27. “I think the whole point will disappear, troops and all, in which case the gunboats will have the field to themselves.”