my opinion carry on their skirts the blood of thousands of their slaughtered countrymen." The riot of detraction stirred the War Department and the White House. It was then that Lincoln met the plea of powerful delegations that Grant should be relieved from duty, with the not-to-be-forgotten answer, "I can't spare this man he fights!" After two months Halleck restored Grant to a separate command, and Grant betook himself to Memphis, lately fallen into Union hands with the capitulation of Island No. 10 and Corinth. There, having fixed his headquarters, he remained, still rusticated, but no longer stung by daily slights in front of Halleck's armies, till there came one of the fantastic shifts which were so frequent in the first months of the war. Things were in sad odor in Virginia - McClellan forced back to the James by Lee had shattered Lincoln's faith, and Lincoln, casting around in his perplexity for military competence, called Halleck from the West to Washington, ordering on July 11 that he "be assigned to command the whole land forces of the United States as General-in-Chief," for Halleck was in nominal command of all the armies of the West, by whom the only Union victories had been won. "In leaving this department," he wired to Stanton, 787821A "shall I relinquish the command to next in rank, or will the President designate who is to be the commander?" Stanton wired to turn the army over to the next in rank and Halleck ordered Grant to come to Corinth. "Shall I bring my staff?" Grant asked. "You can do as you please," was the response. "Corinth will be your headquarters." There he set up his camp with fifty thousand men to hold the district between Corinth and Cairo, Halleck's big army having been broken up; and, through the summer, under orders, he lay still. He would have been forgotten, so fickle is fame gained in war, had it not been for the dispute concerning Shiloh which had spasmodic life with politicians and the press of the Middle Western States. He suffered keenly, but in silence, except with Sherman, who had won his confidence and who was in command at Memphis; with Washburne, to whom as his one friend in Washington he felt some explanation due; and with his father, sputtering with parental indignation, writing and talking in his defense among his old friends near his boyhood home. "I would scorn being my own defender against such attacks," he wrote to Washburne in early May, "except through the record which has been kept of my official acts. . . . To say that I have not been all distressed at these attacks would be false; for I have a father, mother, wife, and children who read them and are distressed by them, and I necessarily share with them in it. Then, too, all subject to my orders read these charges, and it is calculated to weaken their confidence in me, and weaken my ability to render efficient service in our present cause. . . . I cannot be driven from rendering the best service within my ability to suppress the present rebellion. ... Notoriety has no charms for me.... .. Looking back at the past I cannot see for the life of me any important point that could be corrected." To his father he writes in August: "I do not expect nor want the support of the Cincinnati press on my side. Their course has been so remarkable from the beginning that should I be endorsed by them I should fear that the public would mistrust my patriotism. I am sure that I have but one desire in this war and that is to put down the rebellion. I have no hobby of my own with regard to the negro either to effect his freedom or to continue his bondage. . . . I do not believe even in the discussion of the propriety of laws and official orders by the army. One enemy at a time is enough and when he is subdued, it will be time enough to settle personal differences." Just before Corinth, in September, he writes his father one of the few letters in which there is a sign of petulance. "I... have never had any other feeling either here or elsewhere but that of success. I would write you many particulars, but you are so imprudent that I dare not trust you with them; and while on this subject let me say a word. I have not an enemy in the world who has done me so much injury as you in your efforts in my defense. I require no defenders and for my sake let me alone. I have heard this from various sources, and persons who have returned to this army and did not know that I had parents living near Cincinnati have said that they found the best feeling existing toward me in every place except there. You are constantly denouncing other general officers, and the inference with people naturally is that you get your impressions from me. Do nothing to correct what you have already done, but for the future keep quiet on this subject." Almost brutal in the directness of the rebuke, such words could have been forced from Grant only by deep feeling long suppressed. And yet how tame compared with Sherman's fire, who wrote home with his wounded hand: "It is outrageous for the cowardly newspapers thus to defame men whose lives are exposed." For Sherman's anger burned and blazed against the "little whip-snappers who represent the press, but are in fact spies in our camps," warning |