These details are recited here, not by way of apology or defense of General Grant. His fame needs no defense, and very certainly his conduct in war needs no apology. Moreover all these circumstances, and others that reflect still more unfavorably upon Halleck's extraordinary treatment of the only Federal general who at that period of the war seemed able to achieve victories, are calmly and fully set forth in General Grant's own memoirs. But such details are necessary here, in explanation of that fair and full, and impartial history of the Confederate war, which is intended in these volumes.
There were repeated occasions in the course of the struggle when vigor of generalship on the one side or upon the other, would very certainly have brought the war to an early conclusion, sparing both sides the tremendous sacrifices which a lack of capable generalship in the end entailed upon both.
This post-Shiloh imbecility was one of those conspicuous, and conspicuously neglected occasions. There is not room for doubt that if Halleck had remained in his St. Louis headquarters, and had permitted Grant with the now combined armies of himself, Buell and Pope, to prosecute an instant and vigorous campaign, the whole Mississippi Valley would have been speedily brought under Federal control, with all the consequences that such a conquest must have involved.
After the battle of Shiloh Grant had by his own estimate 120,000 men at and near Pittsburg Landing, or within easy call. For in addition to Buell's army Pope had reinforced him with 30,000 men. Beauregard had about 30,000 effectives at Corinth – or after Van Dorn reinforced him, perhaps 47,000. Grant's own expert opinion expressed in print, is that within two days he could and would – if let alone – have captured Corinth, driving the Confederate forces there into disorderly retreat if not compelling their surrender, and capturing all their stores. He would then have been in position to move in overwhelming force upon Vicksburg and Port Hudson, points not yet strongly fortified or heavily garrisoned. Capturing them, as he easily could have done, he would have made the Federals masters of the Mississippi above Baton Rouge, while Farragut was making himself master of all the lower reaches of the river. In the meanwhile Grant would have prevented that concentration and recruitment of Beauregard's army for which Halleck gave generous leisure to his enemy by delaying his own advance from Pittsburg Landing for three weeks of preparation and then consuming an entire month in pushing a force of three men to his adversary's one over an unobstructed and undefended space of less than twenty miles only to find when he got to his destination that his enemy, greatly strengthened, had in leisurely fashion retired to another position, taking with him every pound of provisions and every round of ammunition he possessed.
Here were seven of the most precious weeks of the war lost, and the loss is very inadequately measured by that statement. It is not too much to say that Halleck's extraordinary deliberation and delay alone made possible and certain all the terrible fighting and all the losses of human life incident to the Vicksburg campaign, just as the paralyzing incapacity of his orders after the capture of Fort Donelson, made needlessly possible and destructively certain the tremendous battling of the Confederates at a later period at Nashville, Chattanooga, Franklin, Lookout Mountain, Chickamauga and in the Atlanta campaign.
If military etiquette upon either of these occasions had permitted General Grant, with the support his words would undoubtedly have had from Sherman, Buell and Thomas, to set forth clearly the conditions, needs, and opportunities in the Western Department, the authorities at Washington would pretty certainly have set Halleck's embarrassing authority aside, thus giving demonstrated capacity the license it desired to achieve results of incalculable benefit to the National arms. But Halleck alone of all the generals in that quarter enjoyed the privilege of direct communication with the War Department, and Halleck so adroitly represented – perhaps he did not consciously or intentionally misrepresent – the facts of the situation, that presently, on the eleventh of July, he was appointed to succeed McClellan as Commander in Chief of all the Union armies.
This was perhaps the most astonishing, not to say the most unwise, appointment made on either side during the entire course of the war, unless we except Mr. Jefferson Davis's appointment of Pemberton after he had lost Vicksburg, to the position of military adviser of himself, with apparent authority to control and command even Robert E. Lee.
In the meanwhile Halleck had done all that was possible to him to humiliate General Grant and to deny him everything in the shape of opportunity. General Grant, in his "Memoirs," (page 219), pathetically says:
Although next to him [Halleck] in rank, and nominally in command of my old district and army, I was ignored as much as if I had been at the most distant point of territory within my jurisdiction; and although I was in command of all the troops engaged at Shiloh, I was not permitted to see one of the reports of General Buell or his subordinates in that battle until they were published by the War Department long after the event.
Again on page 225, General Grant tells of an occasion when he suggested a military movement to General Halleck – a thing that the second in command might very well have been expected to do. After explaining to his readers what his suggestion was, General Grant adds: "I was silenced so quickly that I felt that possibly I had suggested an unmilitary movement."
Yet when Halleck was ordered to Washington to assume chief command he saw clearly that it would not be prudent in the existing state of the public mind to make any other than Grant the commander at Corinth. He therefore sent word to Grant in Memphis to report at Corinth. But he said nothing whatever to him about his own appointment to the command of all the armies, or about his intended departure for Washington, or even about his intention that Grant should assume command at Corinth. He merely directed him to report there, leaving it entirely to uninformed conjecture whether he was merely to report in person for some instruction or was to remove his headquarters from Memphis to that point. In this uncertainty Grant telegraphed asking whether or not he was to take his staff with him. To this Halleck curtly and discourteously replied: "This place will be your headquarters. You can judge for yourself."
CHAPTER XXXIV
Grant at Corinth
When Grant took command at Corinth he found matters in an exceedingly confused and embarrassing condition. In the first place his authority was so ill defined that he could do nothing of importance without risk of subjecting himself to censure and perhaps even to a trial by court martial for having exceeded his authority, while if he left anything undone by reason of his uncertainty as to the scope of his command, he must do so at equal risk of censure or court martial for neglect.
Halleck had been in command of the entire department and of all the forces within its borders. In leaving General Grant as his successor he did not invest him with a similarly comprehensive authority. Neither did he make it clear that such authority was denied to him. So far as his orders indicated Grant was still only a district commander, having authority only over troops within the district of West Tennessee, whose eastern boundary was the Cumberland river, beyond which Halleck had sent a large part of the forces that had been under his command at Corinth. And yet Grant was practically a department commander. His own exposition of the situation is so clear, succinct and complete, that no paraphrase can better it or equal it. On page 233 et seq. of his "Memoirs," General Grant wrote:
I left Memphis for my new field without delay and reached Corinth on the fifteenth of the month. General Halleck remained until the seventeenth of July; but he was very uncommunicative, and gave me no information as to what I had been called to Corinth for. When General Halleck left to assume the duties of general-in-chief I remained in command of the District of West Tennessee. Practically I became a department commander because no one was assigned to that position over me, and I made my reports direct to the General-in-chief; but I was not assigned to the position of department commander until the twenty-fifth of October. General Halleck, while commanding the Department of the Mississippi, had had control as far east as a line drawn from Chattanooga north. My district only embraced West Tennessee and Kentucky west of the Cumberland river. Buell, with the Army of the Ohio, had as previously stated, been ordered east towards Chattanooga, with instructions to repair the Memphis and Charleston railroad as he advanced. Troops had been sent North by Halleck along the line of the Mobile and Ohio railroad to put it in repair as far as Columbus. Other troops were stationed on the [Mississippi Central] railroad from Jackson, Tennessee, to Grand Junction,