05 - Ulysses S. Grant by Owen Wister

Discover the remarkable life of Ulysses S. Grant, the celebrated Union hero of the Civil War and the 18th President of the United States. This engaging biography, presented in a concise 145-page pamphlet, offers a fascinating glimpse into the life of a man who shaped American history. Though the author is renowned for his captivating tales of the Old West, he also crafted a significant body of nonfiction that reveals much about Grants legacy. (Summary by David Wales)

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section five of Ulysses s grant by Owen Wister. This
LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter five, Part two.
Secessions Frontier at this time was a slight curve from
Columbus eastward and up to Bowling Green, then down to

(00:22):
Cumberland Gap. It thus lapped over a little from Tennessee
into Kentucky. Its weak point was the hole made in
it by two rivers, the Tennessee and Cumberland, crossing it
twelve miles apart. Two forts barred these precious highways, Henry
and Donelson. If these two gates were knocked down, the

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Union had a clear road to the heart of the South,
for by the Tennessee troops could travel into Alabama and
be fed. Also. Thus, Secessions Frontier could be pushed back,
and as it receded down along the bank of the Mississippi,
that highway almost inevitably must open. This was clear to

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many eyes, but to mc clellan's it was not visible.
This General in chief could see nothing beyond his own movements.
At Saint Louis, Fremont had been succeeded by a person
equally incapable. General Halleck was the sort of learned soldier
who brings learning into contempt. He was full of geomany

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and empty of all power to master a situation on him. Grant,
like others, urged the value of striking Forts Henry and Donaldson.
But Halleck, whether under mc clellan's influence or for other reasons,
snubbed him, and so for a while the matter rested

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at length. However, after General Thomas, near Cumberland Gap, had
knocked the east end of Secessions frontier southward and consequently
threatened its middle at Bowling Green, Halleck, relinquishing his notion
that sixty thousand men were necessary, let Grant go with
seventeen thousand and seven gunboats under commodore foot. This was

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February second. In four days, Grant had Fort Henry in
ten More, Fort Donelson, and the gates to the rivers
were open. Secession's frontier was crashed through from Columbus to
Cumberland Gap and shrank many miles southward. It was quick
and final, and Grant had thought of it and done it.

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He was indebted to nobody. His own letter about it,
written to Washburne a month later, is like him, I
see the credit of attacking the enemy by way of
the Tennessee and Cumberland is variously attributed. It is little
to talk about it being the great wisdom of any general.

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General Halleck no doubt thought of this route long ago,
and I am sure I did. Let it be said
that Grant's adversaries helped him greatly in dividing his thirty
thousand men and sending but sixteen thousand to Donelson. Sidney
Johnston made a perilous error in giving the command to

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Floyd and Pillow. He made the error worse Grant knew them,
He struck and won. They deserted, leaving Buckner to conduct
the surrender. The news to the Union was a breath
of health after jaded months of sickness. Grant's words, I
proposed to move immediately upon your works and unconditional surrender

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were like a backbone appearing in something that had begun
to look like a jellyfish. He was now made major
General of Volunteers. This battle, like all his others, has
been proved a mere bungle by hostile critics. The spirit
of these gentlemen can be given to the reader in

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a word. One of them, after exposing Grant's tactics exposes
his English. I propose to move immediately upon your works
would be grammar, he says, if immediately had come at
the end. But now Grant was suddenly relieved of command

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and put in arrest. Halleck had not heard from him,
and Halleck had heard of his leaving his post and
going to Nashville. Grant's enemies, the contractors, had not enjoyed
his recent suggestion to Halleck that all fraudulent contractors be
impressed into the ranks, or still better, into the gunboat service,

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where they could have no chance of deserting. They therefore
had surrounded Halleck with rumors entirely faults of Grant's drinking.
Halleck had had a spy watching Grant's habits in a
little house that was his headquarters before the surrender. He
now never waiting to learn the cause of Grant's silence,

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which was due to interrupted communications, or Grant's reason for
going to Nashville, which was to confer with Buell, who
had occupied that town. Petulantly complained to Washington it was
set right in nine days, but Halleck was afraid to
let Grant know the hand he had had in it.

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Grant never voutsafed a syllable to the world's injurious assaults
upon him at this hour or at any other of
his life. But in a letter to Washburn he gives
us a glimpse into his silent soul. There are some
things which I wish to say to you in my
own vindication, not that I care a straw for what

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is said individually, but because you have taken so much
interest in my welfare. And one evening during the nine
days Humiliation, a sword was presented to him by some officers.
After their speech and departure. He stood looking at the
gift in silence, where it lay before him on the

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table of the gunboat cabin. Suddenly pushing it from him,
he exclaimed, I shall never wear a sword again, and
turned away. Only one or two witnessed this breaking of
the real man from the depths of his grief, and
generally he managed to keep a face like stone. But

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upon the occasion when he learned of his friend mac
Pherson's death, he went into his tent and wept like
a child. At this time he walked in intimate silence
with C. F. Smith, his West Point commandant, and his
temporary superior now, and those who saw them say that

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Grant's manner to Smith was something of an old pupil's
respect and something of a plain man's admiration for his
more polished and splendid friend, while Smith, on his side,
treated Grant as a creature whose larger dimensions he felt
and bowed to. Some further pictures of Grant at Donelson

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show several sides of the man. On the eve of
the surrender, Pillow had made a desperate sortie while Grant
was conferring with Foot on his gunboat. For a while.
It was a bad business, and when Grant returned he
flushed at the havoc made in his absence. His reputation
was at stake. He gathered the fragments, and before evening

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knew he was master by a shrewd inference which has
become historic. The enemy's haversacks held three days rations. Others
saw in this a preparation for a three days fight,
but Grant knew it meant not fight but flight. He
saw that morning would give him Donaldson. He wrote to Halleck,

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they will surrender tomorrow, and when asked if this was
not a premature message, referred to the Haversacks as the
basis of his conviction. When the surrender was arranged, one
of the young men, the one who had spoken of geomeny,
hoped that they would have the picturesque formalities of such occasions,

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the lowered flags and so forth. But Grant said emphatically, no,
why humiliate a brave enemy. He inquired, We've got them,
that's all we want. When the crestfallen, Buckner capitulated, and
Grant found him penniless in the forlorn place. He remembered

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Buckner's friendly help when he had been penniless in New York.
He left the officers of his own army, says Buckner
in a speech long afterward, and followed me, with that
modest manner, peculiar to himself, into the shadow, and there
tendered me his purse. It seems to me, mister Chairman,

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that in the modesty of his nature, he was afraid
the light would witness that act of generosity, and sought
to hide it from the world. We can appreciate that, sir,
Indeed we can, and we can appreciate Buckner's own warm
heart whenever history gives us a glimpse of it. When

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Grant was bidding this world goodbye in patience and suffering.
Buckner was one of the last to visit him and
take his hand. The pen would linger over Donaldson, over
Smith's gallantry that saved the day on the fifteenth, and
his delightful address to the Iowa volunteers, over mclarnan's good fighting,

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and over Foot and his gunboats. About the navy, Indeed,
a word must be said from Fort Henry, which it
took unaided to the day when Vicksburg fell and the
Great River rolled unvexed to the sea. The navy was
not only illustrious and invaluable, but also it made fewer

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mistakes than the army. The names of Foot, Porter Davis,
and Farragut let Ellots be added, too, must be spoken
together with those of the land soldiers. As some one
has happily said, the army and the Navy were the
two shears of the scissors. From Donelson, Grant stepped into

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a broadening labyrinth of action. He wished at once to
strike Polk at Columbus. Halleck prescribed caution, and Polk, unhindered,
escaped south to Corinth, where, under Sidney Johnston, the south
was massing all the strength it could bring. Columbus fell
to the Union, and New Madrid and Island number ten.

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The next two barriers down the river were broken by
Pope and Foot in March and April. On land, it
grew plain that somewhere about Corinth the armies must try
a big conclusion. This happened not as Grant expected. Restored
to command, he had rejoined the army up the Tennessee River,

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and had approved wisely, according to many good opinions, the
position at Pittsburgh, landing in the enemy's country, selected by C. F. Smith,
But he looked for no battle, just here and here
Sidney Johnston surprised him. On Sunday and Monday, April sixth

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and seven was fought the Battle of Shiloh, Buell arriving
in time to reinforce Grant for Monday's fight. The words
of Buell are the words of an embittered rival, but
they tell the unanswerable truth. An army comprising seventy regiments
of infantry, twenty battalions of artillery, and a sufficiency of

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cavalry lay for two weeks and more in isolated camps
with a river in its rear, and a hostile army
claimed to be superior in numbers twenty miles distant in
its front, while the commander made his headquarters and passed
his nights nine miles away on the opposite side of
the river. It had no line or order of battle,

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no defensive works of any sort, no outposts properly speaking
to give warning or check the advance of an enemy,
and no recognized head During the absence of the regular commander.
On a Sunday, the hostile force arrived and formed in
order of battle without detection or hindrance. Within a mile

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and a half of the unguarded army advanced upon it
the next morning, penetrated its disconnected lines. Of Grant himself
is nothing to be said. If he could have done
anything in the beginning. He was not on the ground
in time, But he was one of the many there
who would have resisted while resistance could avail. That is

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all that can be said. But it is an honorable record,
a severe judgment, which controversy sustains and history will affirm
inexperience is the honest explanation. Grant's fame is not helped
by covering Shiloh and Grant's fame can stand the truth.

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So also did Napoleon lose touch of his enemy at
Marengo through failure to use his cavalry for reconnoitering. He
went to sleep expecting no battle in the morning, and
in the morning he was surprised and defeated by Milus,
as Johnston surprised and defeated Grant, reinforced by Dessay's return

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in the afternoon, he recovered himself, as Grant, reinforced by Buell,
recovered himself. On the second day. The Union lost some
thirteen thousand men, the South eleven thousand, and understood thereafter
that all American blood was equally gallant, whether northern or southern.

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Grant made another mistake here, and his reasons for not
pursuing the enemy, who had lost Sidney Johnston the first
day are not convincing. Mister John Fiske, quoting Sherman's remark
about it to himself, gives the human clue to this
bad military error. I assure you, my dear fellow, we

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had had quite enough of their society for two whole days,
and were only too glad to get rid of them
on any terms. The writer has heard this same explanation
from another soldier. So the enemy, now under Beauregard, fell
back to Corinth, and with needless and pompous caution, was

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driven from there by the learned Halleck. After some weeks
for the learned Halleck came down now and took command personally,
and Grant was again under a cloud, a mere onlooker,
with the sterile position of second in command. Again, as always,
he answered no word to the furious storm of abuse

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which the country let loose upon him. To Washburn, he wrote,
I would scorn being my own defender, except through the
record of all my official acts. To say that I
have not been distressed would be false. One thing I
will assure you of. However, I cannot be driven from

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rendering the best service within my ability to suppress the
present rebellion. And to his father, he wrote, you must
not expel efect me to write in my own defense,
nor to permit it from any one about me. I
know that the feeling of the troops under my command
is favorable to me, and so long as I continue

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to do my duty faithfully, it will remain so. I
require no defenders. Nevertheless, his spirit was near being broken,
He had nothing given him to do. He was in
a sort of disgrace. There seemed no outlook. Halleck had
removed his willing hand from the plow at Corinth. He

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had applied for a thirty day's leave when Sherman, his
good friend, suspected that all was not well with him.
I inquired for the general, says Sherman, and was shown
to his tent, where I found him seated on a
camp stool with papers on a rude camp table. I

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inquired if it were true that he was going away?
He said yes. I then inquired the reason, and he said, Sherman,
you know, you know that I am in the way here.
I have stood it as long as I can, and
can endure it no longer. I then begged him to stay,
illustrating his case by my own before the Battle of Shiloh,

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I had been cast down by a mere newspaper assertion.
He promised to wait. Very soon after this, I received
a note from him saying that he would remain. Thus
did Sherman, at the right time stretch his hand to
Grant and help him rise from Shiloh and go on

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to Vicksburg, Chattanooga and apromatics, as Donelson so now Corinth
opened more gates down the Mississippi Fort, Pillow, and Memphis.
Before the first of May, Farragut and por Order had
taken New Orleans. Vicksburg should have followed as naturally as

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the last brick in a tumbling row, But the learned
Halleck was there to save it with his finnical and
disastrous meddling. He had a hundred thousand men reporting for duty,
Beauregard had half that number. He had also the moral
impetus of victory. While the South was shaken and disconcerted

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by Shiloh and Sidney Johnston's death, the very brilliant exploits
of Mitchell had opened the way to Chattanooga for him.
Mobile and Vicksburg were but feebly protected. Other men had
gathered these opportunities, which now slid away like sand through
his inanely opened fingers. He sat cautiously down. Sent Buell

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to repair a railroad which was promptly torn up, sent
away troops to hold unprofitable points, refused troops to fect Varrogate,
who wished to strike Port Hudson and Vicksburg. For bad
Pope to risk a battle on any consideration, and crowned
his whole crass performance with the words, I think the

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enemy will continue his retreat, which is all I desire.
The enemy immediately strengthened Port Hudson, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga, and
Halleck was made General in chief at Washington. To the
blunders of this time may be added the vast farce
of the Legal Tender Act, when the government, against the

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soundest advice and warning, declined to borrow money at market
prices because this would be undignified, and issued instead pieces
of paper which it told the world were worth a dollar,
and presently enjoyed the dignity of having the world value
at thirty five cents. There are blunders in eighteen sixty

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two so stultifying as to seem incredible. Had we not
seen much the same sort of thing since, But we
were fighting Americans, not Spaniards. Then happily Jefferson Davis made
some blunders too, and thus Grant had only Pemberton and

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not Van Dorn to fight at Vicksburg when the time came.
End of Chapter five, Part two