The Man Who Saved the Union (23 page)

The incident became the narrative center of a story Clemens wrote about his Civil War service. The story, “The Private History of a Campaign That Failed,” related the misadventures of a Missouri guardsman much like Clemens who was driven from the military by the approach of a Union regiment headed by an officer apparently destined for greater things. “
In time I came to learn that the Union colonel whose coming frightened me out of the war, and crippled the southern cause to that extent, was General Grant. I came within a few hours of seeing him when he was as unknown as I was myself, at a time when anybody could have said, ‘Grant—Ulysses S. Grant? I do not remember hearing the name before.’ ”

20

G
RANT’S PROMOTION GAVE HIM GREATER AUTHORITY THAN HE HAD
ever expected to wield. “
My present command here numbers about 3000 and will be increased to 4000 tomorrow and probably much larger the next day,” he wrote Julia. The brigade included regiments unused to the Grant style. “
Many of the officers seem to have so little command over their men, and military duty seems to be done so loosely, that I feel at present our resistance”—to enemy attack—“would be in the inverse ratio of the number of troops to resist with,” he told
John Frémont. Yet things would change soon. “In two days I expect to have a very different state of affairs, and to improve them continuously.”

Again he laid out the new dispensation. “
Commanders will see that the men of their respective commands are always within the sound of the drum, and to this end there must be at least five roll calls per day,” he declared. “The commanding officer from each company must be present at each roll call and see that all absentees are reported and punished.… The strictest discipline is expected to be maintained in this camp, and the General Commanding will hold responsible for this all officers, and the degree of responsibility will be in direct ratio with the rank of the officer.” Again his efforts succeeded. “
Order was soon restored,” he recalled succinctly.

Yet certain developments were beyond his control. The rapid expansion of the army inevitably caused mix-ups as to who was senior to whom. Benjamin Prentiss had won appointment as brigadier general of Illinois volunteers during the spring, when Grant was still a civilian; Prentiss became a brigadier in the U.S. Army at the same time as Grant, early in August. He unsurprisingly thought he outranked Grant. But Grant knew
the rules of the army, which in fact gave
him
seniority on account of his prior army service. When Prentiss refused to obey Grant’s orders, a confrontation ensued. Grant had relocated to southern Missouri, where he established temporary headquarters at Cape Girardeau, and had ordered Prentiss to take a position at Jackson, a short distance away. Grant set out from his office at Cape Girardeau to meet Prentiss at Jackson. “
As I turned the first corner of a street after starting, I saw a column of cavalry passing the next street in front of me,” he remembered. “I turned and rode around the block the other way, so as to meet the head of the column. I found there General Prentiss himself, with a large escort. He had halted his troops at Jackson for the night, and had come on himself to Cape Girardeau, leaving orders for his command to follow him in the morning.” Grant confronted Prentiss and reminded him of the order to stay at Jackson. “He was very much aggrieved.” Words were exchanged, with each officer staking his claim to seniority. “I then ordered the General very peremptorily to countermarch his command and take it back to Jackson.” Prentiss did so but under protest.

Frémont found in Grant’s favor, prompting Prentiss to threaten to resign. Frémont told him to cool off, and he gradually did so. But the incident left him angry and Grant eventually sad. “
When I came to know him better, I regretted it much,” Grant reflected. “He was a brave and very earnest soldier. No man in the service was more sincere in his devotion to the cause for which we were battling.”

G
rant’s shift to southern Missouri reflected a change in the nature of the war. As long as both sides thought the conflict would be short, the fighting was chiefly tactical; each attempted to gain local advantage or show regional strength. But after Bull Run, as the prospect of a longer struggle set in, the two sides began to think strategically, in terms of total strength or weakness. And the West, which had seemed secondary to South Carolina and Virginia, suddenly became the central
theater of the war. The West comprised the valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi, the heartland of the continent. Who controlled the West bid fair to control the country and decide the war.

The cockpit of the West, for the moment at least, was the hundred-mile circle centered on Cairo,
Illinois, where four states—Illinois, Missouri,
Kentucky and
Tennessee—and three rivers—the Ohio, Mississippi and Tennessee—came together. Grant got to Cairo in early September,
on the same day that Confederate forces occupied Columbus, Kentucky, on the east bank of the Mississippi twenty miles downstream. Those forces could cause trouble if augmented, but more alarming at present was word that the Confederates were planning to seize Paducah, Kentucky, where the Tennessee entered the Ohio. “
There was no time for delay,” Grant recalled. “I reported by telegraph to the department commander”—Frémont—“the information I had received, and added that I was taking steps to get off that night to be in advance of the enemy in securing that important point.” The war had stalled traffic on the Mississippi and Ohio, and dozens of steamers and their crews lay idle at Cairo. Grant offered work to the boats and men, and the latter quickly loaded fuel and fired up boilers. He ordered two regiments and an artillery battery aboard. He telegraphed Frémont again, not having received a reply to his earlier message, and said he would set off unless ordered otherwise.

In fact Frémont
had
replied, but to avoid tipping off Confederates or sympathizers who might be eavesdropping on the telegraph lines, his message had been translated into Hungarian before being transmitted. Until now Grant hadn’t received any such coded communications, and his aides didn’t know what to do with the strange message. Conveniently it told him to go ahead.

The boats left Cairo a bit before midnight and reached Paducah at dawn. The sudden appearance of the Union troops took the locals by surprise. “
Found numerous secession flags flying over the city, and the citizens in anticipation of the approach of the rebel army, who was reliably reported thirty eight hundred strong sixteen miles distant,” Grant informed Frémont. “I landed the troops and took possession of the city without firing a gun.” The secession flags were hauled down and replaced by Union flags. Grant ordered the seizure of the town’s rail depot and he confiscated rations and leather intended for the Confederate army. He took control of the telegraph office and other key points. “I distributed the troops so as best to command the city and least annoy peaceable citizens.”

He published a proclamation explaining his purposes. “
I have come among you not as an enemy but as your friend and fellow citizen,” he declared. As their friend he would be their protector. “An enemy, in rebellion against our common Government, has taken possession of and planted its guns upon the soil of Kentucky and fired upon our flag.… He is moving upon your city. I am here to defend you against this enemy and to assert and maintain the authority and sovereignty of your Government
and mine.” Peaceful citizens of whatever political views would be unmolested. “I have nothing to do with opinions. I shall deal only with armed rebellion and its aiders and abettors.” And he would stay in Paducah no longer than necessary. “Whenever it is manifest that you are able to defend yourselves, to maintain the authority of your Government and protect the rights of all its loyal citizens, I shall withdraw the forces under my command.”

I
t was his first decisive command action, and he liked the feeling it gave him. “
You have seen my move upon Paducah!” he wrote Julia. “It was of much greater importance than is probably generally known.” The rebels had been on the verge of seizing the town. “Our arrival therefore put quite a damper upon their hopes.” The citizens seemed willing to accept his presence and authority; at least they weren’t resisting. And the capture of Paducah promised to be the start of something big. “We are likely to have lively times.… An attack somewhere cannot be postponed many days.”

The attack failed to materialize. Grant’s scouts skirmished with rebel patrols, and gunboats under his Cairo command exchanged fire with Confederate batteries near Columbus. But the rebels declined to challenge him directly, and he lacked the troops to engage them in force. “
All is quiet here now,” he wrote Julia disappointedly from Cairo in late September. “How long it will remain so is impossible to tell. If I had troops enough not long.” A month later he was still complaining. “
I am very sorry that I have not got a force to go south with, at least to Columbus,” he told Julia. “But the fates seem to be against any such thing. My forces are scattered and occupy posts that must be held.” A defensive posture didn’t suit his personality. “What I want is to advance.”

H
e got what he wanted not much later.
John Frémont set out from St. Louis in October in search of the main body of Missouri’s secessionist army, led by
Sterling Price. He directed Grant to detain or divert any Confederates on the Mississippi or in southeastern Missouri. Grant gathered all the troops he could and headed from Cairo toward Columbus, Kentucky, intending merely a demonstration of force, in keeping with Frémont’s order. He was not planning a serious attack. “
But after we started,” he recalled later, “I saw that the officers and men were elated
at the prospect of at last having the opportunity of doing what they had volunteered to do: fight the enemies of their country. I did not see how I could maintain discipline or retain the confidence of my command if we should return to Cairo without an effort to do something.”

Grant was as eager as any of the men at the prospect of action, and when he heard that the Confederates at Columbus were sending troops across the river, he lost no time in striking against them. With three thousand men in steam transports he dropped down the Mississippi in the dark, pausing several miles
above Belmont, a Missouri village opposite Columbus, where the Confederates had established a camp. “
At daylight we proceeded down the river to a point just out of range of rebel guns and debarked on the Missouri shore,” he related in his after-action report. “From here the troops were marched by a flank for about one mile towards Belmont, and then drawn up in a line, one battalion having been left as a reserve near the transports.” Grant ordered skirmishers to locate the enemy; within a few minutes they made contact.

Jacob Lauman, a colonel heading an Iowa regiment, was in the thick of the battle that ensued. “
We fought the rebels slowly but steadily, driving them before us at every volley,” he recounted later. “Our advance at this point was slow in consequence of the obstructions in our way, caused by felling timber and underbrush, but we crept under and over it, at times lying down to let the fire of the artillery and musketry pass over us, and then up and onward again until we arrived at the field to the left of the rebel camp.” Here they linked up with other Union troops. “We poured volley after volley on the retiring foe across the field in front of and on the battery, which was stationed at the head of the encampment, on our right. Our fire was so hot the guns were soon abandoned, the enemy, about 800, fleeing across the field in the greatest consternation.” Lauman’s men seized the battery, which gave them a clear view of the rest of the camp. “The rebels kept up a sharp and galling fire upon us, but a few well directed volleys induced them to abscond from their camp immediately.”

To this point in the battle, Grant was delighted with the performance of his troops. “
The officers and men engaged at Belmont were then under fire for the first time,” he observed. “Veterans could not have behaved better than they did.” But they didn’t know how to follow up. “They became demoralized from their victory and failed to reap its full reward.… The moment the camp was reached our men laid down their
arms and commenced rummaging the tents to pick up trophies. Some of the higher officers were little better than the privates. They galloped about from one cluster of men to another, and at every halt delivered a short eulogy upon the Union cause and the achievements of the command.”

The Federals’ distraction became the Confederates’ salvation. Upon fleeing their camp the rebels took refuge beneath the bank of the river, out of sight and shot from Grant’s men. Once they discovered that they weren’t about to be captured or killed, they crept north along the river until they reached a spot between the Federals and the Union transports. From the Federal rear they readied a counterattack.

“
I saw at the same time two steamers coming from the Columbus side towards the western shore above us, black—or gray—with soldiers from boiler-deck to roof,” Grant recalled. He shouted to those of his troops who had captured the rebel battery to turn the guns against the approaching boats. But in the noise and confusion they failed to hear or heed the message. He suddenly realized that his rapid advance had led him into what had become a trap; he must withdraw as quickly as possible. Yet he hated to fall back without accomplishing something material, and so he ordered the torching of the Confederate camp—an action that increased the danger to his men, as the Confederate guns at Columbus, heretofore quiet from belief that the rebels still held the camp, opened fire.

By this time Grant’s men realized they were surrounded. Some assumed they had to surrender. “But when I announced that we had cut our way in and could cut our way out just as well, it seemed a new revelation,” Grant explained. The Federals charged the Confederates again, in the reverse direction from before, and fought their way back to their boats.

Grant was the last aboard. Galloping about the battlefield, he had his horse shot from beneath him. Taking another from a subordinate, he continued to race around in front of and behind his men, urging them forward—that is, to the rear. After they reached the boats and began boarding he rode along the river’s edge to determine where the Confederate troops had landed. He entered a cornfield so thick with leaves and unharvested ears as to make reconnaissance nearly impossible. “I had not gone more than a few hundred yards when I saw a body of troops marching past me, not fifty yards away,” he wrote. “I looked at them for
a moment and then turned my horse towards the river and started back, first in a walk and, when I thought myself concealed from the view of the enemy, as fast as my horse could carry me.”