utmost importance, was a matter of very serious complaint at Washington, so much so that I was advised to arrest you on your return.”

"I did all I could to get you returns of the strength of my command," Grant, mystified, wired back. "Every move I made was reported daily to your chief of staff, who must have failed to keep you properly posted. I have done my very best to obey orders and to carry out the interests of the service. If my course is not satisfactory remove me at once. I do not wish in any way to impede the success of our arms. My going to Nashville was strictly intended for the good of the service, and not to gratify any desire of my own. Believing sincerely that I must have enemies between you and myself who are trying to impair my usefulness, I respectfully ask to be relieved from further duty in the department."

...

Then followed daily messages between the two; Grant urging that he be relieved, Halleck retreating slowly from his stand; and finally, when ordered by the President summarily to send a full report to Washington, retracting grudgingly, restoring Grant to his command. "As he acted from a praiseworthy although mistaken zeal for the public service in going to Nashville and leaving his command," he wired the Adjutant-General on March 13, "I respectfully recommend that no further notice be taken of it."

In his dispatches to Grant, Halleck had let the responsibility for the misadventure rest with McClellan, and Grant accordingly was duly grateful to Halleck for having set him right. After the war the truth came out through McClellan's revelation of Halleck's original complaint.1

"I have had no communication with General Grant for more than a week," he had wired McClellan on March 2. "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 regard to the future. I am worn out and tired with this neglect and inefficiency. C. F. Smith is almost the only officer equal to the emergency."

To this McClellan replied: "The success of our cause demands that proceedings such as Grant's should be at once checked. 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, and place C. F. Smith in command. You 1 McClellan's Own Story, p. 216.

are at liberty to regard this as a positive order if it will smooth your way." In replying to which Halleck intimated, perhaps, the real secret of his dislike: “A rumor has just reached me that since the taking of Fort Donelson Grant has resumed his former bad habits. If so it will account for his repeated neglect of my oft-repeated orders. I do not deem it advisable to arrest him at present, but have placed General Smith in command of the expedition up the Tennessee. I think Smith will restore order and discipline."

Grant subsequently learned that some of his reports to Halleck had been held up at Cairo, but this mishap would not excuse his summary execution without a chance to enter a defense.

There is a nice adjustment of justice with delicacy of feeling in this comment in his "Memoirs": "General Halleck unquestionably deemed General C. F. Smith a much fitter officer for the command of all the forces in the military district than I was, and, to render him available for such command, desired his promotion to antedate mine and those of the other division commanders. It is probable that the general opinion was that Smith's long services in the army and distinguished deeds rendered him the most proper person for such command. Indeed, I was rather inclined to this opinion myself at that time, and would have served as faithfully under Smith as

he had done under me. But this did not justify the dispatches which General Halleck sent to Washington or his subsequent concealment of them from me when pretending to explain the action of my superiors."

In disgrace at Fort Henry, Grant had congratulated Smith on turning over the command and wrote him, "Anything you may require, send back transports for and if within my power you shall have it.” There could be no jealousy between Grant and Smith. Grant's feeling for his old commander was almost one of awe, and when Smith first had come under his command he found it hard to give him orders. It was for the elder in service, now lower in rank, to relieve Grant's embarrassment. "I am now a subordinate," he delicately said; "I know a soldier's duty. I hope you will feel no awkwardness about our new relations." Smith died in a few weeks from hardships at Fort Donelson. He was too ill to serve at Shiloh. Sherman said once that if "Smith had been spared us Grant would never have been heard of"; he subsequently took it back, but with this early estimate Grant would then have agreed.

CHAPTER XI

SHILOH

"My opinion was and still is that immediately after the fall of Fort Donelson the way was opened to the National forces all over the Southwest without much resistance. If one general who would have taken the responsibility had been in command of all the troops west of the Alleghanies, he could have marched to Chattanooga, Corinth, Memphis, and Vicksburg with the troops we then had; and as volunteering was going on rapidly over the North there would soon have been force enough at all those centers to operate offensively against any body of the enemy that might be found near them.... Providence ruled differently. Time was given the enemy to collect armies and fortify his new positions." Thus Grant has placed himself on record, and thus it might have happened with Grant himself or Charles F. Smith in sole command, but not with Halleck.

Having smashed the South's defensive line at Donelson, the armies of the West turned next to Corinth, a little town in northern Mississippi of strategical importance because two railroads came together there which, thus connecting, brought Memphis on