CHAPTER XII

HUMILIATION

WHILE his superior was crawling through his evolutions, Grant underwent a cruel test of loyalty and patience. After Shiloh a storm of hot denunciation broke upon him. He could have been in hardly worse repute had he betrayed his country. If he were really guilty of a lapse he paid a bitter price.

The first reports of Shiloh to reach the North were those of hostile critics, inspired in part by envious rivals. Buell's men were quick to say that only their arrival saved Grant's army and that the triumph of the second day belonged to them. McClernand, ready with his pen, wrote home, as after Donelson and Belmont, claiming the glory of the day. The Sunday skulkers on the river-bank thought everybody else had also run away, and told this tale whereever they could hold a listener among the gullible and sympathetic visitors to camp. The Northern press defiled itself with slander: Grant was drunk before the battle and while it was on, loafing behind and letting others fight; Prentiss and his men had been caught sleeping in their tents and bayoneted in their beds; thousands of Northern volunteers had been slaughtered wantonly.

Fed by such tales the Western States, whose troops had suffered most, were glad when Halleck came, remodeling the army, now reinforced to more than one hundred thousand men, into three great divisions, one under Buell, one under Thomas, one under Pope-Grant looking on as "second in command" with no one subject to his order except his personal staff. Thus it was while Halleck crept toward Corinth, and then, "Why not press on to Vicksburg before it can be strengthened?" he suggested, bringing from Halleck the rebuke, "When your advice is needed it will be asked." For Halleck thought the aim of war was to get places, and Corinth was a place; while Grant was taught at Shiloh that the South could not be conquered until its armies were destroyed and its resources gone, and to seize Vicksburg promptly would give the Union army the Mississippi, cut off the Southern sources of supply from the Southwest and Mexico, and hasten the contraction and compression of the rebel forces to receive the final crushing blow. Vicksburg once captured, Corinth would again become a railroad junction nothing more.

And so with each strategic point; to Grant its only value was as a resting-place from which to spring upon the next. To hold it longer wasted men who could be put to stouter service somewhere else. But

Halleck clung to Corinth, letting Vicksburg wait until the Southern armies gathered strength for its defense; so that what might have been accomplished in a month by swift advances called after Shiloh for a year's campaign with grueling encounters over a broad field, while Corinth itself, which fell to Halleck unresisted in early May, was held by Rosecrans the next October only after one of the historic battles of the war. "I think the enemy will continue his retreat, which is all I desire," was Halleck's message while Beauregard was trekking south. Hence no precautions against the prospect of the enemy's recovery and return.

So Grant lay rusting in his tent while Halleck dawdled and the critics bawled; not sulky or resentful, but chafing inwardly and sick at heart that a great opportunity should pass which he thought he knew how to seize. Orders were sent his troops without his knowledge. Reports of his subordinates at Shiloh were forwarded to Washington without passing through his hands. On the strength of his unselfish praise Halleck asked higher rank for Sherman, but did not mention Grant by name.

"The President desires to know," wired Stanton, "whether any neglect or misconduct of General Grant or any other officer contributed to the sad casualties that befell our forces on Sunday "; to which

Halleck significantly replied: "The casualties were due in part to the bad conduct of officers utterly unfit for their places. . . . I prefer to express no opinion in regard to the conduct of individuals till I receive reports of commanders of divisions" - evasive save

by insinuation.

Grant asked to be relieved from duty altogether and have his command defined. "You have precisely the position to which your rank entitles you . . . replied Halleck. "For the last three months I have done everything in my power to ward off the attacks which were made upon you." Sherman heard from Halleck that Grant had leave to go away- Sherman who had no fame till Shiloh, except the tale that he was crazy because at the beginning of the war the press had quoted him as saying that to occupy Kentucky would take two hundred thousand men, and who had just begun to love and prize the silent soldier whose traits were in such contrast to his own. He rode straightway to Grant's headquarters and asked why he was going. "Sherman, you know," said Grant, "You know that I am in the way here. I have stood it as long as I can." Where was he going? "To St. Louis." Had he any business there? "Not a bit." Then Sherman argued, his own case in mind, that if he went, the war would go right on and he would be left out; while if he stayed, some acci

dent might bring him back to favor and his true place.1

Grant stayed, but found it irksome. The flunkeys at headquarters still ignored him; the attacks at home persisted; Congress debated him. John Sherman in the Senate almost alone dared come to his defense, drawing upon himself the angry protest of Harlan, of Iowa, against this "attempt to bolster up Grant's reputation." "The Iowa troops," said Harlan, "have no confidence in his capacity and fitness for the high position he now holds. They regard him as the author of the useless slaughter of many hundreds of their brave comrades. . . . There is nothing in his antecedents to justify a further trial of his military skill. ... At Belmont he committed an egregious and unpardonable military blunder. ... At Fort Donelson the right wing... under his immediate command was defeated and driven back.... The battle was restored by General Smith.... On the battlefield of Shiloh his army was completely surprised . . . and nothing but the stubborn bravery of the men fighting by regiments and brigades saved the army from utter destruction. The battle was afterwards restored and conducted by General Buell and other generals. . . . With such a record, those who continue General Grant in an active command will in

1 Memoirs of W. T. Sherman, vol. 1, p. 283.