The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville (64 page)

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Good news was doubly welcome in St. Louis, where Halleck had sat desk-bound all this time, scratching his elbows and addressing his goggle-eyed stare in the general direction of the back-area correspondents who came clamoring for information he could not give because he did not have it. The month between the mid-February capture of Fort Donelson and the mid-March fall of New Madrid had been for him a time of strain, one in which he saw his probable advancement placed in precarious balance opposite his probable stagnation. He had come out top man in the end, but the events leading up to that happy termination—as if, perversely, the fates had established a sort of inverse ratio between the success of Federal arms and the rise of Henry Halleck—had contained, for him, far more of anguish than of joy. There was
small consolation in realizing later that the fates had been with him all along, that the cause for all that anguish had existed only in his own mind, as a product of fear and suspicion.

His first reaction, the day after the fall of the Cumberland fortress, was to request promotions for Buell, Grant, and C. F. Smith—and advancement for himself. “Give me command of the West,” he wired McClellan. “I ask this in return for Forts Henry and Donelson.” His second reaction, following hard on the heels of the first, was fear that Grant’s victory might sting the Confederates into desperation. Even now perhaps they were massing for a sudden all-or-nothing lunge, northward around Grant’s flank. Beauregard’s plan for an attack on Paducah and Cairo had not gone beyond the dream stage, but Halleck feared it quite literally, and called urgently for Buell to come help him. Buell replied in effect that he had troubles of his own, and Halleck was even more firmly convinced of the necessity for authority to bend him to his will. “I must have command of the armies of the West,” he told McClellan in a second wire, sent three days after the first, which had gone unanswered. “Hesitation and delay are losing us the golden opportunity. Lay this before the President and the Secretary of War. May I assume command? Answer quickly.” This time McClellan did answer quickly, but not as his fretful subordinate had hoped. Replying that he believed Buell could handle his own army better from Bowling Green than Halleck could do from St Louis, he declined to lay Old Brains’ self-recommendation on the presidential desk.

Perhaps it was what Halleck had expected. At any rate he had already put a second string to his bow, forwarding for Stanton’s out-of-channels approval a plan for reorganizing the western department under his command. February 21, the day after McClellan’s refusal, Stanton replied that he liked the plan, “but on account of the domestic affliction of the President”—Willie Lincoln had died the day before and was lying in state in the White House—“I have not yet been able to submit it to him.” Halleck’s hopes took a bound at this. Determined to strike while the iron was hot, he wired back that same day, urging the won-over Secretary to break in on the President’s family trouble, whatever it was. “One whole week has been lost already by hesitation and delay,” he complained. “There was, and I think there still is, a golden opportunity to strike a fatal blow, but I can’t do it unless I can control Buell’s army.… There is not a moment to be lost. Give me the authority, and I will be responsible for results.” Stanton’s reply came the following day, and Halleck’s hopes hit bottom with a thud. The Secretary had gotten to Lincoln, but “after full consideration of the subject,” he telegraphed, “[the President] does not think any change in the organization of the army or the military departments at present advisable.”

Halleck’s bow was completely unstrung; there was no one left to appeal to, either in or out of channels. After two days spent absorbing
the shock, he replied with what grace he could muster: “If it is thought that the present arrangement is best for the public service, I have nothing to say. I have done my duty in making the suggestions, and I leave it to my superiors to adopt or reject them.” For others closer at hand, however, he either had less grace to spare or else it was exhausted. Encountering signs of paperwork confusion down at Cairo that same day, he testily informed his chief of staff: “There is a screw loose in that command. It had better be fixed pretty soon, or the command will hear from me.”

That was still his irascible, sore-pawed frame of mind the following week, when his worst fears in regard to Grant appeared to have been realized. At a time when Halleck was most concerned about a possible rebel counterattack, launched with all the fury of desperation, Grant and his 30,000 soldiers—the combat-hardened core of any defense the department commander might have to make—lost touch with headquarters, apparently neglecting to file reports because he was off on a double celebration of victory and promotion. The former alcoholic captain was now a major general, tenth-ranking man in the whole U.S. Army; Lincoln had signed the recommendation on the night of the day the Donelson news reached Washington, and the Senate had promptly confirmed it as of the Unconditional Surrender date. Halleck himself had urged the promotion, but not as warmly as he had urged several others, and he had yet to congratulate Grant personally for the capture of the forts. Other promotions were in the mill, soon to be acted on—Buell and Pope were to be major generals within a week, along with others, including Smith—but Grant would outrank them, which was not at all what Halleck had intended or expected. The fact was, absorbed as he had been in his rivalry with Buell, he was beginning to see that he had raised an even more formidable hero-opponent right there in his own front yard. Donelson having caught the public fancy, the public in its short-sighted way was giving all the credit to the general on the scene, rather than to the commander who had masterminded the campaign from St Louis. Irked by this, he then was confronted with what he considered the crowning instance of Grant’s instability. Having won his promotion, the new hero apparently thought himself above the necessity for filing reports as to his whereabouts or condition. Where he was now, Halleck did not know for sure; but there were rumors.

On March 3 McClellan received a dispatch indicating that Halleck’s sorely tried patience at last had snapped: “I have had no communication with General Grant for more than a week. He left his command without my authority and went to Nashville. His army seems to be as much demoralized by the victory of Fort Donelson as was that of the Potomac by the defeat of Bull Run. It is hard to censure a successful general immediately after a victory, but I think he richly deserves
it. I can get no returns, no reports, no information of any kind from him. Satisfied with his victory, he sits down and enjoys it without any regard to the future. I’m worn-out and tired with this neglect and inefficiency.” McClellan, whose eye for a possible rival was quite as sharp as Halleck’s own, was sudden in reply: “Generals must observe discipline as well as private soldiers. Do not hesitate to arrest him at once if the good of the service requires it.… You are at liberty to regard this as a positive order if it will smooth your way.”

Halleck did not hesitate. The order went by wire to Grant at once: “You will place [Brig.] Gen. C. F. Smith in command of expedition, and remain yourself at Fort Henry. Why do you not obey my orders to report strength and positions of your command?” The question was largely rhetorical; Halleck believed he already knew the answer, and he gave it in a telegram informing McClellan of his action in the matter: “A rumor has just reached me that since the taking of Fort Donelson, General Grant has resumed his former bad habits. If so, it will account for his neglect of my often-repeated orders.” To anyone with an ear for army gossip, and McClellan’s was highly tuned in that respect, this meant that Grant was off on a bender. “I do not deem it advisable to arrest him at present,” Halleck continued, “but have placed General Smith in command of the expedition up the Tennessee. I think Smith will restore order and discipline.”

Grant had been guilty of none of these things, and he said so in a telegram to Halleck as soon as he had complied with the instructions to turn over his command: “I am not aware of ever having disobeyed any order from headquarters—certainly never intended such a thing.” The communications hiatus was explained by the defection of a telegraph operator who took Grant’s dispatches with him, unsent, when he deserted. It was true, Grant said, that he had been to Nashville, but that was because Halleck had told him nothing; he had gone there to meet Buell and work out a plan for coöperation. When Halleck still showed resentment at having been left in the dark, Grant observed that there must be enemies between them, and asked to be relieved from further duty in the department. Halleck refused to agree to this, but continued to bolster his case by forwarding an anonymous letter charging that the property captured at Fort Henry had been questionably handled. His dander really up now, Grant replied: “There is such a disposition to find fault with me that I again ask to be relieved from further duty until I can be placed right in the estimation of those higher in authority.”

Suddenly, incredibly, all was sweetness and light at Halleck’s end of the wire. “You cannot be relieved from your command,” he answered. “There is no good reason for it.… Instead of relieving you, I wish you as soon as your new army is in the field to assume command and lead it on to new victories.”

There were a number of reasons behind this sudden change in attitude and disposition, all of which had occurred between the leveling and the withdrawing of the charges against Grant. First, the evacuation of Columbus had relieved Halleck’s fears that the Confederates were about to unleash an attack on Cairo or Paducah, and while Curtis was stopping Van Dorn at Elkhorn Tavern, Pope was applying a bear hug on New Madrid. Then, just as he was congratulating himself on these improvements in the tactical situation, a stiff letter came from the Adjutant General, demanding specifications for the vague charges he had been making against his new major general. Trial-by-rumor would not do, the army’s head lawyer informed him. “By direction of the President, the Secretary of War desires you to ascertain and report whether General Grant left his command at any time without proper authority, and, if so, for how long; whether he has made to you proper reports and returns of his force; whether he has committed any acts which are unauthorized or not in accordance with military subordination or propriety, and, if so, what.” To reply as directed would be to give Grant what he had been seeking, a chance to “be placed right in the estimation of those higher in authority.” Besides, Halleck had no specifications to report, only rumors. Instead, he replied that he was “satisfied” Grant had “acted from a praiseworthy although mistaken zeal.… I respectfully recommend that no further notice be taken of it.… All these irregularities have now been remedied.”

However, there was something more behind this sudden volte-face, this willingness to bury the hatchet he had been flourishing lately. March 11—the day after the Adjutant General’s call for specifics, and two days before he blandly informed Grant that there was “no good reason” for relieving him—the fond hope for which he had labored in and out of channels all these months was realized. He got the West. His command, which was called the Department of the Mississippi and extended for better than 500 miles eastward, from Kansas to a north-south line through Knoxville, was awarded him by Lincoln in the same War Order that deposed McClellan as general-in-chief and recalled Frémont to active duty. Receiving it that way, out of the blue, after two solid weeks of despair, Halleck was in no mood to quarrel with anyone, not even Grant: in fact, especially not Grant. Beauregard was reported to be intrenching around Corinth, reinforced to a strength of 20,000 men. “If so, he will make a Manassas of it,” Halleck said. That meant hard fighting: in which case he wanted his hardest-fighting general in command: and that meant Grant, whatever his instability in other respects. “The power is in your hands,” Halleck told him. “Use it, and you will be sustained by all above you.”

So Grant got aboard a steamboat at Fort Henry and went up the Tennessee to rejoin his army.