August 19, 2025 • 23 mins
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)
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section six of Ulysses s. Grant by Owen Wister. This
LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter five, Part three.
Upon Halleck's promotion, Grant was put in command of the
armies of the Mississippi and the Tennessee. The battles of
(00:20):
Yucca and Corinth were fought. By November, Grant was once
again able to go on with his interrupted strategy of
flanking the Mississippi. It was not until the following spring
that he walked to his goal with a firm step.
In the months between, he was not only hampered by
many external embarrassments, but his own mind had not come
(00:44):
to a final clear determination. The jealousy of mc clernand,
the treachery that lost him his base at Holly Springs,
and his own not very sound plan of co operating
with Sherman on the east bank. These, among other causes,
helped his first failure. Then, in the winter months, his
(01:05):
canal cutting and various operations upon both sides of the
river were defeated by nature herself. Perhaps he should have
known that land and water were tangled in such a
chaos here that the first chapter of Genesis alone could
have straightened them. For an army. One sentence from Porter's
(01:26):
report of the Yazoo Pass attempt, and what the gunboats
had to do in the narrow channels that enmeshed them
with vegetation, draws the whole picture of this winter without
need of further comment. I never yet saw a vessel
so well adapted to knocking down trees, hauling them up
by the roots, or demolishing bridges. Yet perhaps Grant knew
(01:52):
all this very well. His troops were in a wretched,
watery camp opposite Vicksburg. Disease had heavily visited them. The
graves of their late comrades were forever in their sight
on the narrow levee. Moreover, the country clamored for results,
and enemies, both military and civil, were pressing Lincoln for
(02:15):
Grant's removal. It is recorded that General Thomas arrived at
Porter's headquarters with an order to relieve Grant if it
were necessary. Porter told Thomas that he would be tarred
and feathered if his mission became known. Perhaps Grant dug
his canals and cut his trees to give his soldiers
(02:37):
less time to think of their hardships, and to make
an appearance of activity until the High water should subside
and permit real activity. His mind was digging too deep
into the national situation. In silence and independence, it reached
its own convictions, and then, attentively listening to contrary opinions,
(03:01):
disregarded these and pursued its way. And in everything that
Grant did, the admirable Navy supported him brilliantly. On April sixteen,
it ran the Vicksburg batteries in an hour and forty minutes.
In six days, the transports followed, and Vicksburg beheld the
(03:22):
army that had been sitting in the mud for so
many weeks depart to return presently on its own side
the river with a vengeance. Grant's arm was at length
raised to strike. His first blow glanced at Grand Gulf,
the southernmost defense of Vicksburg. But the next day he
(03:42):
stood on the east shore, the tall defended baffling shore,
which Secession had called its Gibraltar. To do this, he
had had to come down the river to cross at Bruinsburg,
some thirty one miles below Vicksburg. When this was a effected,
I felt a degree of relief scarcely ever equalled, Since
(04:04):
he says, I was on dry ground on the same
side of the river with the enemy. He now maneuvered
to deceive Pemberton, and easily did so. On May one,
he won the Battle of Port Gibson. He next made
his great decision to cut loose from his base of
supplies and not inform Halleck until it was too late
(04:27):
to stop him. When Sherman with several others strongly protested
against this cutting loose from the base of supplies, the
triumphant flash of daring and right judgment, which is Grant's
highest claim to purely military greatness, the general listened, but
went on with his plan, and now indeed he raised
(04:50):
his arm and struck. On May seventeen, he had Pemberton
pinned in Vicksburg and a telegram from Halleck order him
to wait for General Banks. In six days, he had
won four battles, prevented Johnston's joining Pemberton, and was now
surrounding Vicksburg itself. After the bloody frontal attack of the
(05:14):
twenty second, something he owned in later life to have
been a mistake, he settled to a siege. We must
remember that Pemberton had made many things easy for him.
Pemberton was deceived by his preliminary maneuvers, Pemberton set about
cutting him from his base. A week after he had
(05:34):
no base, Pemberton divided his own strength instead of falling
on him with the whole of it. When he was scattered,
Pemberton ignored all of Johnston's better recommendations, ending by refusing
the advice to let Vicksburg go and escape with his army.
At least all these follies had been committed by Pemberton,
(05:57):
but we must also remember that Grant new Pemyberton was
the man to commit them and fought his campaign accordingly.
And so on July fourth, eighteen sixty three, Vicksburg surrendered.
Pemberton remained seated with his staff as Grant came up
on their verandah, none of them seemed to have been
(06:18):
of the metal that loses gracefully. But in the words
of a gentleman, the Comte de Paris, as victory put
Grant in a position to be indifferent to this, he
affected not to notice it, and, addressing Pemberton, asked him
how many rations were needed for his army. Consideration for
(06:39):
people in distress was after the fact of surrender. His
first thought here, as it had been at Donelson, and
with the same humane watchfulness, when he presently discovered a
Mississippi steamboat captain overcharging his men and officers going home
on furlough, he compelled the excess to be refunded. I
(07:02):
will teach them, He said, that the men who have
periled their lives to open the Mississippi River for their
benefit cannot be imposed upon with impunity. So Pemberton surrendered
Vicksburg to Grant in a sulky temper, and proceeded to
write articles proving Johnston was to blame. On the day before,
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the noble and defeated Lee was saying to a Confederate brother,
never mind, General, all this has been my fault. It
is I that have lost this fight, and you must
help me out of it the best way you can.
For on the preceding day, July third, eighteen sixty three,
the Union had won Gettysburg. On this day of Vicksburg's surrender,
(07:49):
Lee began his retreat. Had two separate nations been at
war here, they would have stopped. But one piece of
a nation was trying to separate itself from the rest,
and the rest had to follow it and wholly crush it.
This necessity was clearly seen then by no one so
(08:09):
much as by General Grant, often the West, by himself.
His clear, strong mind had grasped it, and every blow
he struck was to this end. And every council that
he gave the North began to feel this huge force.
Resting for the moment on the banks of the now
open Mississippi, it looked away from Virginia, scraped raw with
(08:33):
the vain pendulum of advance and retreat, to Donelson, Shiloh, Corinth, Vicksburg.
Here it saw no pendulum, but an advance as sure,
if as slow as fate. Therefore, Grant's name began to
be spoken with a different sound, and a Southern newspaper
(08:53):
perceived in him the largest threat to Confederate armies. It
called him the bee which has really stung our flanks.
So long after Donaldson Grant had written, Sherman, I feel
under many obligations to you for the kind terms of
your letter, and hope that should an opportunity occur, you
(09:16):
will earn for yourself that promotion which you are kind
enough to say belongs to me. I care nothing for
promotion so long as our armies are successful, and no
political appointments are made. He did not now relish the
suggestion of his being ordered to the Potomac, which first
(09:37):
came to him at this time. He wrote, my going
could do no possible good. They have their able officers
who have been brought up with that army. Meanwhile, Vicksburg
had made him a major general in the regular Army.
Lincoln had written him his hearty personal thanks, and the
(09:57):
cause of the Union had brightened at home and abroad.
The London Times and Saturday Review had lately been quoting
the Bible as sanction for slavery for England. Dearly loves
the Bible. But now many voices in London became sure
that slavery was wicked for England. Dearly love's success. Grant
(10:21):
was more pestered than ever now with Jews and other traders,
as he wrote Chase on July twenty one, in a
trade whatsoever with the rebellious states is weakening to us.
It will be made the means of supplying the enemy
with what they want. His sound sense, however, could not
(10:42):
wholly prevail against the politicians. One would gladly dwell upon
the story of the Cotton, historically important and romantic in detail.
How for one example, a determined and beautiful lady with
her French maid, spent some six weeks on board a
certain flagship and came triumphant away, bringing all the cotton
(11:06):
she wanted, and leaving all the reputation she had. But
we must go on to Chattanooga again. As in the
preceding year, Grant felt that one aggressive blow struck should
be followed up by another, and Hallock again rejected the notion.
(11:27):
Once more, the gathered army was dispersed on various errands
of secondary importance, and once more the railroad of last
year was solemnly ordered to be repaired, this time by Sherman.
In September, a fall from his horse in New Orleans
confined Grant to his bed for twenty one days. While
(11:48):
he was still in bed, General Rosecrans, after preliminary success
in Tennessee, got himself into the gravest difficulties at the
Battle of Chickamauga, where, but for the splendid fight that
Thomas made the second day, he would certainly have been
destroyed by General Bragg. As it was, the Union forces
(12:09):
escaped and retired into Chattanooga. The army could no longer
attack very soon it could no longer retreat. Order was nowhere,
and starvation was approaching. Jefferson Davis visited Bragg during this time, and,
looking down from a rock upon the beleaguered, helpless army,
(12:31):
felt much natural joy. Like Donaldson, like Vicksburg, like Corinth,
Chattanooga also was a vital strategic point, a mountain funnel,
the only one through which the Southwest could send supplies
to Lee. One coherent plan for relieving the starvation General
(12:52):
Rosecrans evidently had, and to carry it out he was
going to employ Hooker's command at this time, sent to
reinforce him. It involved bridging the Tennessee River, thereby to
acquire the use of an approach not commanded by the enemy.
To state what geographical precision this plan had reached in
(13:14):
the mind of General Rosecrans involves a question of accuracy
between his memory and the memory of General W. F. Smith, Both,
with some acrimony, have claimed the glory of thinking of it,
and upon this point the official records are not quite specific,
but the glory of doing it, and doing it to
(13:36):
perfection is certainly General Smith. Enough has been said to
remind the reader that we are walking here as everywhere
upon the treacherous embers of controversy twice in September. Grant,
still in bed, had sent Rosecran's assistance. On October tenth,
(13:57):
he received a summons to Caroe and hobbled off on
the same day from Cairo. On the seventeenth, he was
ordered to Louisville, and on the way met the Secretary
of War, who placed him in command of the newly
created Military Division of the Mississippi. Matters were desperate at Chattanooga.
(14:18):
Rains had melted the country to mere, and ten thousand
horses and mules were dead of hunger. October nineteenth, Rosecran
started with Smith down the river to view the best
place for the intended bridge to open a better avenue
of supplies. Rosecran stopped at the hospital when Smith reported
(14:40):
from his inspection of the shore down the river, he
found the general relieved by Grant and Thomas in his place.
Next day, Grant, still very lame, began his journey from
Louisville to Chattanooga by train on horseback, through the washed
out mountains and carried in dangerous places because of his injury.
(15:03):
He reached Chattanooga the night of the twenty third, wet,
dirty and well, as Dana's literary pen wrote, stanton and
forthwith order began to shape itself from formlessness. Grant's enemies
say he had nothing to do with it, that it
would have come without him. To this, there is a
(15:24):
sufficient answer, it did come with him. Guessing what might
have been helps history no better than the post mortem
cures the patient. And in truth these critics are preposterous.
Earth has not anything more childish than a military man
airing a grievance. That night, Grant listened and asked questions
(15:48):
of the officers. These felt that somebody had come among them.
He was delighted with the scheme for the new avenue
of supplies, which General Smith explained to him, and his
mind was all also filled with plans for aggression. After
all these days of passive defense, he must have seemed
to Thomas and the rest of that company like the
(16:10):
flood tide after the ebb. Next day he went to
see where Smith was going to open the road. That
night he wrote leaf after leaf of despatches, brief, forcible, unambiguous,
and with scarcely a change of a word or a
pause to choose one. For such was his great power
(16:30):
in this matter of writing what he had to say.
He ordered up Sherman from Corinth, where Halleck's railroad building
was Delaying that general, he sent reassuring messages to Halleck
about Burnside, who was threatened in East Tennessee. As we
think of him during these days, reeling off orders and
(16:51):
pulling the scattered shreds of mismanagement together, he seems like
a quietly spinning dynamo, which, silent and unnoticed in a
small house, supplies the current that drives a great system
of moving wheels. At midnight on the twenty seventh, General
Smith began, and at ten next morning brilliantly finished his
(17:17):
opening of the new road. It was the first stroke
of salvation for Chattanooga. That night, the enemy under Longstreet
fought Hooker on Lookout Mountain to retrieve this loss, but failed.
The dynamo continued steadily spinning destruction for Bragg, who now
did a foolish thing. He sent twenty thousand men away
(17:41):
under Longstreet to attack Burnside. At this Grant nearly did
a foolish thing himself. He ordered an assault, but Tomas
saved him from this error. All the while Sherman with
his army was coming nearer. Swollen waters and deep walking
clockogged their struggling march, and the battle was put off
(18:03):
for them. At length. Bragg, from his heights saw them
prowling in the heavy country across the river, thought they
were going to help Burnside, and forthwith despatched more help
to Long Street. And now the reader must see the
shape of the country. Let him think of a theater,
(18:24):
and stand on the stage, and look at the house.
On the stage. He is in Chattanooga, with the river
and mountains behind him, and Sherman creeping behind them. In
the house sits Bragg. All around the balcony. A valley
cuts the balcony in the middle, but Brag from both
(18:45):
sides commands it as if the horseshoe were not split.
At the right end of the balcony is lookout mountain
like a stage box. The box opposite is the north
end of Missionary Ridge, and the whole left side of
the balcony is part of the same ridge. Bragg holds
them all. His center is up on the left side
(19:09):
of the balcony. His two wings are the two stage
boxes that look at each other across the valley. He
also holds a position in the middle of the parquet
called Orchard Knob. The parquet is Chattanooga Valley. To attack Brag,
there is a choice, go at the center, cut him
(19:30):
in two and beat the stage boxes separately, or get
around behind the boxes and attack both, so that one
cannot go to help the other. But the center was
a straight climb up into the face of the enemy,
and Grant determined upon the boxes. The left hand box,
(19:51):
the north end of Missionary Ridge was to be the
main affair, and Sherman was to conduct it. He was
to creep round and there turned Bragg's flank, while Hooker
was to turn the other flank on Lookout Mountain. Thus
Sherman might cut Bragg from his base, which lay less
than a mile behind that part of Missionary Ridge. Bragg
(20:15):
never suspected this could happen. Sherman had crept out of
sight gone to Burnside, he supposed, and the Union troops
seemed to him from his balcony to be thinking of
his center and of Lookout Mountain opposite. So he did
not much fortify the precious north end of Missionary Ridge.
(20:36):
He was doing precisely what Grant maneuvered for, but Chattanooga
is one of the great battles that melt to a
new shape in the very hands of their sculptors. On Friday,
November twenty, a day of heavy falling rain, Bragg sent
word to Grant, as there may still be some noncombatants
(20:58):
in Chattanooga. I deemman it proper to notify you that
prudence would dictate their early withdrawal. I did not know
what the intended deception was, says Grant. Meanwhile, no battle
could begin until Sherman had wholly crept round behind that
left hand box, a direful work in the mud, with
(21:21):
a bridge thirteen hundred and fifty feet long to build,
and build noiselessly. On Sunday, a deserter reported that Bragg
was falling back. Perhaps he was going against Burnside himself.
If so, he should not get away without some trouble,
at least Therefore, on Monday, the little trouble occurred. Upon
(21:46):
his balcony, Bragg saw going on down in the parquet
what he supposed to be a dress parade of the
Union troops. Suddenly they rushed. The parade blossomed into a
sharp encounter, and before the Southern troops well knew what
it meant. They had lost Orchard Knob, so the Union
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was a mile nearer to the rising land at the
foot of Missionary Ridge. Bragg showed his strength on top,
and then Grant knew that he was not retreating. Orchard
Knob was now strengthened with artillery. Bragg was frightened and
took troops away from Lookout Mountain across to the other side,
(22:27):
where the unseen Sherman was approaching. Through that night, Sherman
came out from the concealing hills upon the river, dropped
silently down the river on the bridge. Boats caught all
the rebel river packets but one, and by dawn began
his noiseless bridge of thirteen hundred feet, which General Smith
(22:49):
finished by noon. By one he was marching to the
foot of the ridge in a drizzling rain, hidden by
clouds from the enemy's watch across the theater on Lookout Mountain.
By this Tuesday night he was upon his end of
Missionary Ridge and for the first time saw a gap
(23:10):
splitting him from the rest of the ridge. That retarding
gap greatly changed the battle's intended shape, so much for Sherman.
On Tuesday, on the left and of Chapter five, Part three,
Section six of Ulysses s. Grant by Owen Wister. This
LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter five, Part three.
Upon Halleck's promotion, Grant was put in command of the
armies of the Mississippi and the Tennessee. The battles of
(00:20):
Yucca and Corinth were fought. By November, Grant was once
again able to go on with his interrupted strategy of
flanking the Mississippi. It was not until the following spring
that he walked to his goal with a firm step.
In the months between, he was not only hampered by
many external embarrassments, but his own mind had not come
(00:44):
to a final clear determination. The jealousy of mc clernand,
the treachery that lost him his base at Holly Springs,
and his own not very sound plan of co operating
with Sherman on the east bank. These, among other causes,
helped his first failure. Then, in the winter months, his
(01:05):
canal cutting and various operations upon both sides of the
river were defeated by nature herself. Perhaps he should have
known that land and water were tangled in such a
chaos here that the first chapter of Genesis alone could
have straightened them. For an army. One sentence from Porter's
(01:26):
report of the Yazoo Pass attempt, and what the gunboats
had to do in the narrow channels that enmeshed them
with vegetation, draws the whole picture of this winter without
need of further comment. I never yet saw a vessel
so well adapted to knocking down trees, hauling them up
by the roots, or demolishing bridges. Yet perhaps Grant knew
(01:52):
all this very well. His troops were in a wretched,
watery camp opposite Vicksburg. Disease had heavily visited them. The
graves of their late comrades were forever in their sight
on the narrow levee. Moreover, the country clamored for results,
and enemies, both military and civil, were pressing Lincoln for
(02:15):
Grant's removal. It is recorded that General Thomas arrived at
Porter's headquarters with an order to relieve Grant if it
were necessary. Porter told Thomas that he would be tarred
and feathered if his mission became known. Perhaps Grant dug
his canals and cut his trees to give his soldiers
(02:37):
less time to think of their hardships, and to make
an appearance of activity until the High water should subside
and permit real activity. His mind was digging too deep
into the national situation. In silence and independence, it reached
its own convictions, and then, attentively listening to contrary opinions,
(03:01):
disregarded these and pursued its way. And in everything that
Grant did, the admirable Navy supported him brilliantly. On April sixteen,
it ran the Vicksburg batteries in an hour and forty minutes.
In six days, the transports followed, and Vicksburg beheld the
(03:22):
army that had been sitting in the mud for so
many weeks depart to return presently on its own side
the river with a vengeance. Grant's arm was at length
raised to strike. His first blow glanced at Grand Gulf,
the southernmost defense of Vicksburg. But the next day he
(03:42):
stood on the east shore, the tall defended baffling shore,
which Secession had called its Gibraltar. To do this, he
had had to come down the river to cross at Bruinsburg,
some thirty one miles below Vicksburg. When this was a effected,
I felt a degree of relief scarcely ever equalled, Since
(04:04):
he says, I was on dry ground on the same
side of the river with the enemy. He now maneuvered
to deceive Pemberton, and easily did so. On May one,
he won the Battle of Port Gibson. He next made
his great decision to cut loose from his base of
supplies and not inform Halleck until it was too late
(04:27):
to stop him. When Sherman with several others strongly protested
against this cutting loose from the base of supplies, the
triumphant flash of daring and right judgment, which is Grant's
highest claim to purely military greatness, the general listened, but
went on with his plan, and now indeed he raised
(04:50):
his arm and struck. On May seventeen, he had Pemberton
pinned in Vicksburg and a telegram from Halleck order him
to wait for General Banks. In six days, he had
won four battles, prevented Johnston's joining Pemberton, and was now
surrounding Vicksburg itself. After the bloody frontal attack of the
(05:14):
twenty second, something he owned in later life to have
been a mistake, he settled to a siege. We must
remember that Pemberton had made many things easy for him.
Pemberton was deceived by his preliminary maneuvers, Pemberton set about
cutting him from his base. A week after he had
(05:34):
no base, Pemberton divided his own strength instead of falling
on him with the whole of it. When he was scattered,
Pemberton ignored all of Johnston's better recommendations, ending by refusing
the advice to let Vicksburg go and escape with his army.
At least all these follies had been committed by Pemberton,
(05:57):
but we must also remember that Grant new Pemyberton was
the man to commit them and fought his campaign accordingly.
And so on July fourth, eighteen sixty three, Vicksburg surrendered.
Pemberton remained seated with his staff as Grant came up
on their verandah, none of them seemed to have been
(06:18):
of the metal that loses gracefully. But in the words
of a gentleman, the Comte de Paris, as victory put
Grant in a position to be indifferent to this, he
affected not to notice it, and, addressing Pemberton, asked him
how many rations were needed for his army. Consideration for
(06:39):
people in distress was after the fact of surrender. His
first thought here, as it had been at Donelson, and
with the same humane watchfulness, when he presently discovered a
Mississippi steamboat captain overcharging his men and officers going home
on furlough, he compelled the excess to be refunded. I
(07:02):
will teach them, He said, that the men who have
periled their lives to open the Mississippi River for their
benefit cannot be imposed upon with impunity. So Pemberton surrendered
Vicksburg to Grant in a sulky temper, and proceeded to
write articles proving Johnston was to blame. On the day before,
(07:24):
the noble and defeated Lee was saying to a Confederate brother,
never mind, General, all this has been my fault. It
is I that have lost this fight, and you must
help me out of it the best way you can.
For on the preceding day, July third, eighteen sixty three,
the Union had won Gettysburg. On this day of Vicksburg's surrender,
(07:49):
Lee began his retreat. Had two separate nations been at
war here, they would have stopped. But one piece of
a nation was trying to separate itself from the rest,
and the rest had to follow it and wholly crush it.
This necessity was clearly seen then by no one so
(08:09):
much as by General Grant, often the West, by himself.
His clear, strong mind had grasped it, and every blow
he struck was to this end. And every council that
he gave the North began to feel this huge force.
Resting for the moment on the banks of the now
open Mississippi, it looked away from Virginia, scraped raw with
(08:33):
the vain pendulum of advance and retreat, to Donelson, Shiloh, Corinth, Vicksburg.
Here it saw no pendulum, but an advance as sure,
if as slow as fate. Therefore, Grant's name began to
be spoken with a different sound, and a Southern newspaper
(08:53):
perceived in him the largest threat to Confederate armies. It
called him the bee which has really stung our flanks.
So long after Donaldson Grant had written, Sherman, I feel
under many obligations to you for the kind terms of
your letter, and hope that should an opportunity occur, you
(09:16):
will earn for yourself that promotion which you are kind
enough to say belongs to me. I care nothing for
promotion so long as our armies are successful, and no
political appointments are made. He did not now relish the
suggestion of his being ordered to the Potomac, which first
(09:37):
came to him at this time. He wrote, my going
could do no possible good. They have their able officers
who have been brought up with that army. Meanwhile, Vicksburg
had made him a major general in the regular Army.
Lincoln had written him his hearty personal thanks, and the
(09:57):
cause of the Union had brightened at home and abroad.
The London Times and Saturday Review had lately been quoting
the Bible as sanction for slavery for England. Dearly loves
the Bible. But now many voices in London became sure
that slavery was wicked for England. Dearly love's success. Grant
(10:21):
was more pestered than ever now with Jews and other traders,
as he wrote Chase on July twenty one, in a
trade whatsoever with the rebellious states is weakening to us.
It will be made the means of supplying the enemy
with what they want. His sound sense, however, could not
(10:42):
wholly prevail against the politicians. One would gladly dwell upon
the story of the Cotton, historically important and romantic in detail.
How for one example, a determined and beautiful lady with
her French maid, spent some six weeks on board a
certain flagship and came triumphant away, bringing all the cotton
(11:06):
she wanted, and leaving all the reputation she had. But
we must go on to Chattanooga again. As in the
preceding year, Grant felt that one aggressive blow struck should
be followed up by another, and Hallock again rejected the notion.
(11:27):
Once more, the gathered army was dispersed on various errands
of secondary importance, and once more the railroad of last
year was solemnly ordered to be repaired, this time by Sherman.
In September, a fall from his horse in New Orleans
confined Grant to his bed for twenty one days. While
(11:48):
he was still in bed, General Rosecrans, after preliminary success
in Tennessee, got himself into the gravest difficulties at the
Battle of Chickamauga, where, but for the splendid fight that
Thomas made the second day, he would certainly have been
destroyed by General Bragg. As it was, the Union forces
(12:09):
escaped and retired into Chattanooga. The army could no longer
attack very soon it could no longer retreat. Order was nowhere,
and starvation was approaching. Jefferson Davis visited Bragg during this time, and,
looking down from a rock upon the beleaguered, helpless army,
(12:31):
felt much natural joy. Like Donaldson, like Vicksburg, like Corinth,
Chattanooga also was a vital strategic point, a mountain funnel,
the only one through which the Southwest could send supplies
to Lee. One coherent plan for relieving the starvation General
(12:52):
Rosecrans evidently had, and to carry it out he was
going to employ Hooker's command at this time, sent to
reinforce him. It involved bridging the Tennessee River, thereby to
acquire the use of an approach not commanded by the enemy.
To state what geographical precision this plan had reached in
(13:14):
the mind of General Rosecrans involves a question of accuracy
between his memory and the memory of General W. F. Smith, Both,
with some acrimony, have claimed the glory of thinking of it,
and upon this point the official records are not quite specific,
but the glory of doing it, and doing it to
(13:36):
perfection is certainly General Smith. Enough has been said to
remind the reader that we are walking here as everywhere
upon the treacherous embers of controversy twice in September. Grant,
still in bed, had sent Rosecran's assistance. On October tenth,
(13:57):
he received a summons to Caroe and hobbled off on
the same day from Cairo. On the seventeenth, he was
ordered to Louisville, and on the way met the Secretary
of War, who placed him in command of the newly
created Military Division of the Mississippi. Matters were desperate at Chattanooga.
(14:18):
Rains had melted the country to mere, and ten thousand
horses and mules were dead of hunger. October nineteenth, Rosecran
started with Smith down the river to view the best
place for the intended bridge to open a better avenue
of supplies. Rosecran stopped at the hospital when Smith reported
(14:40):
from his inspection of the shore down the river, he
found the general relieved by Grant and Thomas in his place.
Next day, Grant, still very lame, began his journey from
Louisville to Chattanooga by train on horseback, through the washed
out mountains and carried in dangerous places because of his injury.
(15:03):
He reached Chattanooga the night of the twenty third, wet,
dirty and well, as Dana's literary pen wrote, stanton and
forthwith order began to shape itself from formlessness. Grant's enemies
say he had nothing to do with it, that it
would have come without him. To this, there is a
(15:24):
sufficient answer, it did come with him. Guessing what might
have been helps history no better than the post mortem
cures the patient. And in truth these critics are preposterous.
Earth has not anything more childish than a military man
airing a grievance. That night, Grant listened and asked questions
(15:48):
of the officers. These felt that somebody had come among them.
He was delighted with the scheme for the new avenue
of supplies, which General Smith explained to him, and his
mind was all also filled with plans for aggression. After
all these days of passive defense, he must have seemed
to Thomas and the rest of that company like the
(16:10):
flood tide after the ebb. Next day he went to
see where Smith was going to open the road. That
night he wrote leaf after leaf of despatches, brief, forcible, unambiguous,
and with scarcely a change of a word or a
pause to choose one. For such was his great power
(16:30):
in this matter of writing what he had to say.
He ordered up Sherman from Corinth, where Halleck's railroad building
was Delaying that general, he sent reassuring messages to Halleck
about Burnside, who was threatened in East Tennessee. As we
think of him during these days, reeling off orders and
(16:51):
pulling the scattered shreds of mismanagement together, he seems like
a quietly spinning dynamo, which, silent and unnoticed in a
small house, supplies the current that drives a great system
of moving wheels. At midnight on the twenty seventh, General
Smith began, and at ten next morning brilliantly finished his
(17:17):
opening of the new road. It was the first stroke
of salvation for Chattanooga. That night, the enemy under Longstreet
fought Hooker on Lookout Mountain to retrieve this loss, but failed.
The dynamo continued steadily spinning destruction for Bragg, who now
did a foolish thing. He sent twenty thousand men away
(17:41):
under Longstreet to attack Burnside. At this Grant nearly did
a foolish thing himself. He ordered an assault, but Tomas
saved him from this error. All the while Sherman with
his army was coming nearer. Swollen waters and deep walking
clockogged their struggling march, and the battle was put off
(18:03):
for them. At length. Bragg, from his heights saw them
prowling in the heavy country across the river, thought they
were going to help Burnside, and forthwith despatched more help
to Long Street. And now the reader must see the
shape of the country. Let him think of a theater,
(18:24):
and stand on the stage, and look at the house.
On the stage. He is in Chattanooga, with the river
and mountains behind him, and Sherman creeping behind them. In
the house sits Bragg. All around the balcony. A valley
cuts the balcony in the middle, but Brag from both
(18:45):
sides commands it as if the horseshoe were not split.
At the right end of the balcony is lookout mountain
like a stage box. The box opposite is the north
end of Missionary Ridge, and the whole left side of
the balcony is part of the same ridge. Bragg holds
them all. His center is up on the left side
(19:09):
of the balcony. His two wings are the two stage
boxes that look at each other across the valley. He
also holds a position in the middle of the parquet
called Orchard Knob. The parquet is Chattanooga Valley. To attack Brag,
there is a choice, go at the center, cut him
(19:30):
in two and beat the stage boxes separately, or get
around behind the boxes and attack both, so that one
cannot go to help the other. But the center was
a straight climb up into the face of the enemy,
and Grant determined upon the boxes. The left hand box,
(19:51):
the north end of Missionary Ridge was to be the
main affair, and Sherman was to conduct it. He was
to creep round and there turned Bragg's flank, while Hooker
was to turn the other flank on Lookout Mountain. Thus
Sherman might cut Bragg from his base, which lay less
than a mile behind that part of Missionary Ridge. Bragg
(20:15):
never suspected this could happen. Sherman had crept out of
sight gone to Burnside, he supposed, and the Union troops
seemed to him from his balcony to be thinking of
his center and of Lookout Mountain opposite. So he did
not much fortify the precious north end of Missionary Ridge.
(20:36):
He was doing precisely what Grant maneuvered for, but Chattanooga
is one of the great battles that melt to a
new shape in the very hands of their sculptors. On Friday,
November twenty, a day of heavy falling rain, Bragg sent
word to Grant, as there may still be some noncombatants
(20:58):
in Chattanooga. I deemman it proper to notify you that
prudence would dictate their early withdrawal. I did not know
what the intended deception was, says Grant. Meanwhile, no battle
could begin until Sherman had wholly crept round behind that
left hand box, a direful work in the mud, with
(21:21):
a bridge thirteen hundred and fifty feet long to build,
and build noiselessly. On Sunday, a deserter reported that Bragg
was falling back. Perhaps he was going against Burnside himself.
If so, he should not get away without some trouble,
at least Therefore, on Monday, the little trouble occurred. Upon
(21:46):
his balcony, Bragg saw going on down in the parquet
what he supposed to be a dress parade of the
Union troops. Suddenly they rushed. The parade blossomed into a
sharp encounter, and before the Southern troops well knew what
it meant. They had lost Orchard Knob, so the Union
(22:07):
was a mile nearer to the rising land at the
foot of Missionary Ridge. Bragg showed his strength on top,
and then Grant knew that he was not retreating. Orchard
Knob was now strengthened with artillery. Bragg was frightened and
took troops away from Lookout Mountain across to the other side,
(22:27):
where the unseen Sherman was approaching. Through that night, Sherman
came out from the concealing hills upon the river, dropped
silently down the river on the bridge. Boats caught all
the rebel river packets but one, and by dawn began
his noiseless bridge of thirteen hundred feet, which General Smith
(22:49):
finished by noon. By one he was marching to the
foot of the ridge in a drizzling rain, hidden by
clouds from the enemy's watch across the theater on Lookout Mountain.
By this Tuesday night he was upon his end of
Missionary Ridge and for the first time saw a gap
(23:10):
splitting him from the rest of the ridge. That retarding
gap greatly changed the battle's intended shape, so much for Sherman.
On Tuesday, on the left and of Chapter five, Part three,
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