The Man Who Saved the Union (49 page)

But the follow-up was even more disappointing than the comparable effort before Vicksburg had been. Burnside’s men were slow into the
crater, and by the time they arrived in force the Confederates had recovered from their shock and repaired the breach in their defenses. They proceeded to beat back the assault, inflicting heavy damage in the process. “
It was the saddest affair I have witnessed in this war,” Grant told Halleck. “Such opportunity for carrying fortifications I have never seen and do not expect again to have.”

T
he bungle of the Petersburg crater caused many in the North and some in the Lincoln administration to doubt that Grant was the man to
beat Lee. “
Admiral Porter has always said there was something wanting in Grant, which Sherman could always supply, and vice versa, as regards Sherman, but that the two together made a very perfect general officer and they ought never to be separated,”
Gideon Welles said. “Grant relies on others, but does not know men—can’t discriminate.” Welles feared that Grant might have been given more responsibility than he could shoulder. “God grant that I may be mistaken, for the slaughtered thousands of my countrymen who have poured out their rich blood for three months on the soil of Virginia from the Wilderness to Petersburg under his generalship can never be atoned in this world or the next if he without Sherman prove a failure. A blight and sadness comes over me like a dark shadow when I dwell on the subject, a melancholy feeling of the past, a foreboding of the future. A nation’s destiny almost has been committed to this man, and if it is an improper committal, where are we?”

As before when Grant stumbled, his critics asserted he was drinking. William Smith, whom Grant had relieved after his failure of nerve at Petersburg, wrote to Senator
Solomon Foot of his home state of Vermont to say that his firing had nothing to do with his performance. “
I write to put you in possession of such facts in the case as I am aware of and think will throw light upon the subject,” Smith said. “About the very last of June, or the first of July, Generals Grant and
Butler came to my headquarters, and shortly after their arrival General Grant turned to General Butler and said: ‘That drink of whiskey I took has done me good’; and then, directly afterward, asked me for a drink. My servant opened a bottle for him, and he drank of it, when the bottle was corked and put away. I was aware at this time that General Grant had within six months pledged himself to drink nothing intoxicating, but did not feel it would better matters to decline to give it upon his request in General Butler’s presence. After the lapse of an hour or less, the General asked for another drink, which he took. Shortly after, his voice showed plainly that the liquor had affected him, and after a little time he left. I went to see him upon his horse, and as soon as I returned to my tent, I said to a staff officer of mine, who had witnessed his departure: ‘General Grant has gone away drunk. General Butler has seen it, and will never fail to use the weapon which has been put into his hands.’ ” Smith proceeded to assert that Grant had wanted to relieve not him but Butler and would have done so if not for Butler’s secret knowledge. “I have heard from two different sources (one being from General Grant’s headquarters, and one a staff officer of a general on intimate official relations with General
Butler), that General Butler went to General Grant and threatened to expose his intoxication.” Smith closed his account by saying, “I have not referred to the state of things existing at headquarters when I left, and to the fact that General Grant was then in the habit of getting liquor in a surreptitious manner, because it was not relevant to my case; but if you think at any time the matter may be of importance to the country, I will give it to you.”

John Rawlins heard the part of the story about Grant’s taking a drink. “
The General was at the front today, and I learn from one of his staff he deviated from the only path he should ever travel by taking a glass of liquor,” Rawlins wrote his wife. “It is the first time I have failed to accompany him to Petersburg, and it was with misgivings I did so. Nothing but indisposition induced me to remain behind. I shall hereafter, under no circumstances, fail to accompany him.”

Ben Butler denied Smith’s whole tale, which didn’t become public until after Grant’s death. Smith was simply trying to explain away his own firing, Butler said. “
There never was any such happening as Smith relates,” Butler wrote in his memoir. “I never saw General Grant drink a glass of spirituous liquor in my life.” The story was ludicrous on its face, Butler asserted, especially the part about Grant getting liquor surreptitiously. “Surreptitiously? The lieutenant general could have commanded all the whiskey of the United States to his army if he thought proper, and it would have come. If he had let it be known that he would use it, his admiring friends all over the North and West would have sent him the choicest brands in the most boundless profusion.”

W
hatever the basis of Smith’s story, it did nothing to boost confidence in Grant at a time when the political classes in Washington required reassuring. The impatience at the slow pace of the war transmuted into fear when the fighting accelerated dramatically and came shockingly close to home. Since the spring Grant and Lee had fought for control of the Shenandoah Valley. Grant got the upper hand first, as
David Hunter rolled south seizing everything he could put to use and destroying much of the remainder. Hunter’s success, which Grant valued for the damage it did to Lee’s supply base, served the additional purpose of compelling the Confederate general to dispatch forces from his own army to stop Hunter.
Jubal Early met Hunter at Lynchburg and drove
him back north. Early reclaimed the valley for the Confederacy before crossing the Potomac into Maryland and heading for Washington.

Grant was slow to respond. He knew Early lacked the troops to do serious damage to the Union capital, and he remained as convinced as ever that Lee’s army was the objective that truly mattered. Yet political Washington didn’t uniformly share his priorities and his equanimity, and as Early approached the city many there took fright. “
I have sometimes thought that Lee might make a sudden dash in the direction of Washington or above, and inflict great injury before our troops could interfere or Grant move a column to protect the city,”
Gideon Welles recorded in his diary on July 6. Two days later Welles asserted, “Profound ignorance reigns at the War Department concerning the Rebel raid in the Shenandoah Valley.… They know absolutely nothing of it—its numbers, where it is, its destination.… I think we are in no way prepared for it, and a fierce onset could not well be resisted.” In another three days the enemy was at the capital’s edge. “The Rebels are upon us,” Welles cried.

Lincoln alarmed less easily than Welles, and he did his best to appear calm. “
Let us be vigilant but keep cool,” he told a resident of Baltimore who feared for his own city. “I hope neither Baltimore or Washington will be sacked.” Yet the president’s nervousness showed in a telegram to Grant. “
General Halleck says we have absolutely no force here fit to go to the field,” he said. He wanted Grant to march his army to Washington at once. “What I think is that you should provide to retain your hold where you are, certainly, and bring the rest with you personally and make a vigorous effort to destroy the enemy’s force in this vicinity.”

Grant believed the situation was under control or soon would be. He had already dispatched reinforcements, which should be arriving shortly. “
I have sent from here a whole corps commanded by an excellent officer, besides over 3000 troops,” he assured the president. And he respectfully declined the suggestion that he should head the capital’s defenses himself. “It would have a bad effect for me to leave here.”

Grant’s measures saved the situation, although not without additional shudders in Washington.
Lew Wallace, the Union commander first on the scene, suffered significant casualties but bought time for the forces behind him to dig in. Early approached to within sight of the Capitol, where he exchanged fire with Union troops holding
Fort Stevens. Lincoln rode out to watch; his tall figure on the parapets became a target for Confederate sharpshooters. Gideon Welles went to the front
too. “
Could see the line of pickets of both armies,” the navy secretary recorded. “There was continual firing.… Two houses in the vicinity were in flames, set on fire by our own people because they obstructed the range of our guns and gave shelter to Rebel sharpshooters.” Welles still wasn’t sure the defenses would hold, and he blamed Grant for leaving the city vulnerable. “The forts around Washington have been vacated and the troops sent to General Grant, who was promised reinforcements to take Richmond. But he has been in its vicinity more than a month, resting, apparently, after his bloody march, but has effected nothing since arrival on the James, nor displayed any strategy.” Welles expressed the nakedness many residents of Washington felt. “We are without force for its defense.”

In fact the defense was already in place. Early realized he lacked the troops to occupy the capital and, after frightening the residents a bit more, backed off. “
We haven’t taken Washington, but we’ve scared Abe Lincoln like hell,” Early remarked. Gideon Welles finally exhaled as the danger passed, but he gave no credit to the men who were supposed to safeguard the government. “
The Rebels have lost a remarkable opportunity,” he said. “They might easily have captured Washington. Stanton, Halleck, and Grant are asleep or dumb.”

T
he fright of July segued into the angst of August. Lincoln felt and exhibited it. For weeks the cost of the war and the lack of progress had burdened his soul.
Isaac Arnold, an Illinois Republican, saw the president conclude an encounter with a line of ambulances carrying the wounded to hospitals. “
The sun was just sinking behind the desolate and deserted hills of Virginia,” Arnold recalled. “The flags from the forts, hospitals, and camps drooped sadly.… The haze of evening was gathering over the landscape, and when I met the President his attitude and expression spoke the deepest sadness. He paused as we met, and pointing his hand towards the line of wounded men, he said, ‘Look yonder at those poor fellows. I cannot bear it. This suffering, this loss of life is dreadful.’ ” Arnold responded that victory would eventually come. “Yes, victory will come,” Lincoln replied. “But it comes slowly.”

Its slowness drove increasing numbers of Americans to look away from Lincoln for leadership. “
The people are wild for peace,”
Thurlow Weed observed in August. Weed, a charter member of New York’s Republican party and a figure essential to Lincoln’s
1860 election, had
visited Lincoln to convey the opinion that the president’s reelection was “an impossibility.” Weed told
William Seward that defeat for the president and for the party was unavoidable. “Nobody here doubts it, nor do I see anybody from other states who authorizes the slightest hope of success.”

Lincoln understood the odds against him. He asked New York’s
Schuyler Hamilton to stump for the administration, but Hamilton replied, “
No, sir. As things stand at present I don’t know what in the name of God I could say, as an honest man, that would help you. Unless you clean these men away who surround you and do something with your army, you will be beaten overwhelmingly.”

Lincoln responded that Hamilton’s words were harsh but not unwarranted. “You think I don’t know I am going to be beaten,” he said. “
But I do
, and unless some great change takes place,
badly beaten
.”

Unable to foresee the requisite change, Lincoln prepared for defeat. In late August he drafted a memorandum unlike anything composed by a president before him or after. “
This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be reelected,” he wrote. “Then it will be my duty to so cooperate with the President elect as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration, as he will have secured his election on such ground that he cannot possibly save it afterwards.”

Lincoln folded and sealed this memo and took it to a meeting of his cabinet. He had the secretaries sign the back, without telling them what it said. He later explained that he intended, in the event of McClellan’s election, to approach the general personally. “
I would say, ‘General, the election has demonstrated that you are stronger, have more influence with the American people than I. Now let us together, you with your influence and I with all the executive power of the Government, try to save the country. You raise as many troops as you possibly can for this final trial, and I will devote all my energies to assisting and finishing the war.’ ”

William Seward answered, on hearing the later explanation, that McClellan would have responded as he always did: by saying yes but doing nothing.

“At least I should have done my duty and have stood clear before my own conscience,” Lincoln replied.

43

“
I
T IS ENOUGH TO MAKE THE WHOLE WORLD START
AT THE AWFUL
amount of death and destruction that now stalks abroad,” William Sherman had written his wife, Ellen, in June 1864. “Daily for the last two months has the work progressed and I see no signs of a remission till one or both or all the armies are destroyed.… I begin to regard the death and mangling of a couple thousand men as a small affair, a kind of morning dash—and it may be well that we become so hardened.”

Sherman was speaking of Grant’s grim work in Virginia but also of his own in Georgia. At the same time that Grant crossed the Rapidan toward Richmond, Sherman moved south from Chattanooga toward
Atlanta. He traveled light, leaving behind inessentials and hoping to live off the land to the extent he could. His staff had acquired the 1860 federal census tables and data derived by Georgia’s prewar tax office, which showed where the best farms and most prosperous villages were located. He didn’t abandon the railroad, relying on the line from Chattanooga for ammunition and other vitals that didn’t spring from the ground, but his men ranged far out from the road in their search for food and forage.