CHAPTER XXI

THE SITUATION BEFORE SHILOH

During the autumn of 1861 the troops of both sides were pushed into the "neutral" state of Kentucky at various points and in considerable numbers. Two battles of some moment resulted. At a place called Paintville, on the Big Sandy river in the eastern part of the state, Humphrey Marshall established himself with about 2,000 or 2,500 Confederates. Colonel Garfield (afterwards General and still later President), in command of a substantially equal force of Federals, assailed Marshall there, pushed his columns back and on January 10, 1862, so far crippled him in a small but hotly contested pitched battle that Marshall was glad to retreat during the night with a loss of morale which at that period of the war was as important as the loss of guns.

In the meanwhile the Confederate General Zollicoffer, one of those amateurs in the military art who managed by political or other interest to push themselves into military command on either side, invaded eastern Kentucky, was defeated on October 21st, and fell back to Mill Springs on the upper waters of the Cumberland, where he fortified himself.

General Don Carlos Buell on the Federal side was in command of the department, and General George H. Thomas was in command of the column that immediately confronted Zollicoffer.

General Thomas was a Virginian by birth and was passionately devoted to his native state and its historic memories. He had been at the outbreak of the war a major in that specially selected regiment of which Robert E. Lee was colonel and in which the roster of his fellow officers included besides Lee Albert Sydney Johnston, William J. Hardee, Earl Van Dorn, E. Kirby Smith, John B. Hood and Fitzhugh Lee. All of these, Thomas's fellow Southerners, resigned their commissions and accepted service in the Confederate army. Thomas, who had very remarkably distinguished himself in the service, might well have been strongly tempted, not only by the example of these his beloved comrades and by his sentimental affection for his native state, but additionally by the direct certainty of an exalted command in the Confederate army, to go with them into the Southern service. To him peculiarly came the perplexing problem of divided allegiance which presented itself to every old army officer of Southern birth, and it is said--whether truthfully or not the historian cannot determine--that for a time he seriously and painfully hesitated whether to cast in his lot with Virginia and the South, and thus join his most cherished comrades, or to retain his place in the service of the nation that had educated him as a soldier and that had so generously recognized and so richly rewarded his genius and his devotion in the past. In the end he decided to adhere to the Federal cause, and very early in the war he was offered that supreme command of the Federal armies which Robert E. Lee had refused. He too declined that honor and responsibility, remaining, however, in the Federal service and becoming one of the most brilliant commanders in the Northern armies.

At Mill Springs with seven regiments, two batteries, and a handful of cavalry, he assailed Zollicoffer--who was killed in action--overthrew him and his successor Crittenden, and in effect drove the Confederates across the river. This was the first considerable victory won by the Federal arms in any part of the country after the Manassas defeat and its moral effect was naturally very great. It antedated Grant's victories, but was of course insignificant in comparison with them.

In the meantime General Buell was busily organizing the Army of the Ohio, with headquarters at Louisville and very skilfully endeavoring to maneuver the Confederates out of Kentucky without a pitched battle, the results of which might have been for better or for worse in the then undisciplined condition of his troops. It was a period of the war in which orderly battles were imminently perilous to the Federal cause, because success in them would have accomplished little while failure in them--which might easily result from the rawness of the troops--would have made of every border state a Confederate possession and stronghold.

General Buell was afterwards bitterly censured for not having fought great battles. It seems a sounder judgment which awards him praise for having maneuvered the Confederates out of Kentucky and far into Tennessee, without risking all results upon the hazard of any single contest which, with his raw troops, he might or might not have won.

But when Grant and Foote succeeded in capturing Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, the situation was fundamentally changed. There was a large and rapidly increasing force at Louisville and near Bowling Green under General Buell. Grant had his victorious forces at the two strongholds of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson. It was obviously easy and obviously wise to move with the two armies upon Nashville and add the conquest of all the Tennessee strongholds to that already achieved of all positions that could by any possibility give to the Confederates a standing ground in Kentucky.

In brief Grant's idea was to employ all available forces in the quick reduction of important Confederate positions, the overthrow of all Confederate armed forces, and the breaking of Confederate resisting power before it could have time to strengthen itself with reinforcements or with fortifications, or still more important with the organization, disciplining and seasoning of its troops. Accordingly he notified General Halleck that he purposed to move at once upon Nashville and positions beyond, unless forbidden to do so.

He was promptly forbidden to do anything of the kind, and peremptorily called back from a career of easy and obvious victory. For who was this $800 Galena clerk? What right had he to plan campaigns and carry them to a success that reflected no credit upon his regular army military superiors? It is true that he had captured Forts Henry and Donelson, with 14,623 men, 65 cannon, and 17,000 stands of small arms, with ammunition and accouterments in proportion. It is true that he had made Federal possessions of two important rivers reaching into the heart of the Confederacy and commanding its most important line of defense. It is true that he had won the first great inspiriting success of the war for the Federal arms. It is true that he had broken that carefully constructed line of defense which the Confederates had established from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. It is true that he had placed the National forces in such a position within the heart of the Confederacy that a further and decisive advance into Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi was obvious and easy. But on the other hand he was only a volunteer, possessing no rank or place in that regular army group which, at the North and at the South alike, stoutly asserted its claim to command by virtue of regularity and seniority of commission and wholly without regard to demonstrated genius or proved capacity.

Grant's achievements in the capture of Forts Henry and Donelson were so far recognized at Washington that he was presently raised from the rank of brigadier to that of major-general of _volunteers_. But he was still denied even a junior second lieutenant's place in the regular army, and in the meantime an officer in the regular army was authorized and entitled not only to order him to do things--a small matter to a man disposed and accustomed to do things but to forbid him to do things--a matter of much greater consequence to such a man.

General Halleck's official position was immeasurably superior to that of Grant--at best a mere major-general of volunteers--while his military capacity was in an equal degree inferior to Grant's. Grant habitually won battles. Halleck never did. Grant conducted campaigns to success. Did Halleck? It has already been shown for how long Halleck restrained Grant from undertaking his expedition against Fort Henry and Fort Donelson. When that campaign resulted in such a success as had not before been anywhere achieved by the Federal arms, Grant very naturally wanted to follow it up in ways calculated speedily to break the Confederate resistance, to occupy the commanding positions in the Confederacy and to push Federal columns southward through the seceding states, cutting them in twain and making an end of their unity. It seemed to him when Forts Henry and Donelson were in his possession quite a matter of course that he should move with his 27,000 men upon Nashville and other strategic points further south, and that all available forces, including Buell's strong and steadily increasing army, should be ordered to join him and assist him in the execution of this enterprise before the Confederates could organize effective resistance. In brief it seemed to Grant, simple soldier that he was, that the purpose of the organization of the Federal forces was to win the war as quickly as possible and with the smallest possible sacrifice of life and treasure. The shortest road to that end was to follow up his victory by the capture of other Confederate positions, the conquest of which was then easy and the possession of which seemed to promise that result.

But Grant had already offended his superior officer, not only by proposing operations which should have been suggested--as they were not--from "regular" headquarters, but still more by carrying such amateurish operations to a successful conclusion and by winning, without any sort of credit to headquarters, the first conspicuous and country-inspiriting victory that the Federal arms could claim. The land was resounding with Grant's praises even while Halleck was putting him under virtual arrest, and not a word was said in extolment of the genius of Halleck who had so reluctantly consented to this volunteer officer's enterprise. Manifestly this ex-Galena clerk who had a genius for doing things must be restrained. Otherwise he would presently run away with all the glory that belonged by prescriptive right to his superiors in the regular army, and particularly to General Halleck, in his cushioned quarters at St. Louis.

Accordingly General Grant was censured for his unauthorized advance upon Nashville, and instead of proceeding against Confederate strongholds further South which were easily within his vigorous and resolute grasp, was peremptorily ordered to return to the forts which he had captured with such splendor of success and there to sit still till released from what amounted to arrest.

It was the story of Manassas over again, except that it was reversed in its application. As after Manassas Washington lay an easy prey to the Confederates, which by reason of incapacity they did not grasp, so, and in like measure, the central strongholds of the Confederacy lay, after the capture of Forts Henry and Donelson, within the easy grasp of Grant's army. The only difference was that in the one case it was the inexperience of the general in the field that forbade, while in the other it was the paralyzing prohibition of the general in a secure headquarters that stood in the way of achievement.

In the one case it was the predestined men of action who faltered and failed of their opportunity. In the other the man of action was restrained by "orders" which he dared not disobey.

Thus by the paralysis of Halleck's official hand, Grant was restrained from pushing the war to results--possibly even to a conclusion--prompt, certain and immediate.

General Halleck, who never in all his life commanded an army in battle, was by the pure unreason of military law and etiquette officially authorized to restrain the military impulse of Grant toward manifestly right ends.

Grant had neglected, or was accused of having neglected, some technical formality as to details in making his report of the actions which had made him master of the forts. To ordinary common-sense it would seem that the only important facts which he was called upon to report on that occasion were that he had certain forces under his command; that after three days of hard fighting in rain and sleet and indescribable mud his enemy had surrendered the forts with 14,623 men, 65 pieces of artillery and 17,000 stands of small arms; that he had made himself master of the two strongholds and now completely commanded both rivers, having thus opened a double river route into the heart of the Southern Confederacy, which he proposed to make still further available by an immediate advance upon Nashville and other strategic points the possession of which would give him an open pathway to the Gulf itself.

This was all that common-sense required Grant to report for the information of his superiors, and he reported precisely that. But those office-housed superiors held him guilty of neglect in that he had not given in detail the position of every regiment and brigade and battery that had helped to win the victory. In punishment of this neglect of infinitely petty detail--and also in emphasis of the fact that Grant was after all only a general of volunteers who had presumed to win unauthorized victories in no way assigned to him to win--Grant was called back from his advance for the conquest of those strategic points that lay so easily within his grasp and ordered instead to remain where he was and to let slip from his hands the ripe fruits of his victory.

Was there ever anything so absurd as this, outside of comic opera--this and the extraordinary reign of incapacity in the Confederate army and Government? That was of like kind and quality.

The simple fact, of which the historian is obliged to take account, is that if ordinary common-sense and the commonest forms of military sagacity had been in control on either side at the beginning of the war--if the men able to do things had been permitted to do them--the struggle must almost certainly have ended within a few months after its beginning; tens, yes, scores and hundreds of thousands of lives must have been spared and multitudes of millions in expenditure and in the destruction of property would have been saved to the American people.

That however was not to be. It was written in the Book of Fate that for a time incapacity, self-seeking, narrow-minded, jealousy of rank, and other like forces of the coarse and the commonplace were to rule about equally on the one side and on the other, and that thus the war was to be prolonged at terrible cost of sorrow and suffering and slaughter.

This was the situation in the West at the time when McClellan was drilling his men around Washington, while Beauregard and Johnston were futilely fortifying at Centreville to meet an assault that only the writer of nonsense rhymes could at that time have regarded as possible, and the victorious Federal forces on the Carolina coasts were succumbing to the lassitude which that climate invites, making no vigorous efforts to conquer the exposed and indefensible Confederate lines of communication in that quarter.

Grant had a force of commanding numbers in the neighborhood of Forts Henry and Donelson. His army had been swelled to 27,000 men. Buell had as many more men--some of them battle-seasoned--at Louisville and south of that city. There were other forces in eastern Kentucky under capable commanders, which could easily have been brought to bear, forming an army of more than 100,000 men in support of any southward movement that might be undertaken. The movement which naturally suggested itself to an aggressive military mind was one against Nashville, with an eye to the penetration of the South from that point as a base of supplies. The "march to the sea" was as easy a possibility then as when Sherman made it years later.

This was Grant's idea, and it had behind it the eminent common-sense which usually inspired and informed that very practical general's plans. His purpose was to march with an overwhelming force, from Nashville to the Gulf. He could have done this easily and certainly, had he been permitted to undertake it with the forces then available. But, as we have seen, his purpose was brought to naught by the veto of General Halleck, whose notion of strategy seems to have been to let his enemy determine where and when the fighting should occur.

Nevertheless the Southerners, seeing the strategic situation far more clearly than Halleck did, abandoned Nashville and Federal troops of Buell's army promptly occupied that city. Thus Grant's success was saved to the country in some small and insignificant measure, though Grant was himself suspended from command and compelled to wait in inglorious ease until the Confederates by ceaseless and heroic efforts got together a great army in northern Mississippi, to meet which General Halleck found it necessary to call upon his most capable lieutenant, Ulysses S. Grant.