Undeniably Serendipitous Grant by Maurice D’Aoust

 in Battles / Belmont / Chattanooga / Generalship / Grant / Henry & Donelson / Lew Wallace / Shiloh / Strategy / Vicksburg / Wilderness by

Serendipitous: Having an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident.

Synonym—Lucky

A weary Napoleon Bonaparte listened patiently as the speaker continued extolling a friend’s military prowess. Finally, unable to contain himself any longer, the Emperor abruptly cut in and asked: “Fine, he is brilliant, but is he lucky?” Taken from Napoleonic lore, the story may have some basis in truth for, though he would have been the first to acknowledge the importance of military prowess, Napoleon also recognised the fickle nature of warfare and the value of having “Lady Luck” by a commander’s side. Of those who led during the American Civil War, none was more graced with luck than Ulysses S. Grant.

As fortunate as he may have been during the war, Grant was otherwise not a very blessed man. Beginning with his controversial resignation from the Regular Army in 1854, to his lingering death in 1885, his civilian life could only be described as nothing less than one string of bad luck after another. If he was not sorry to leave the severe hardships of army-life behind him, he must have missed the security it had offered as he strove to eke out an existence during his subsequent “hardscrabble” period. The post-Civil War years were not much kinder. Following what many consider to be one of the worst presidencies in American history, he lost his entire fortune in a bad business partnership and died near destitute.

Even as the war opened, Grant’s luck showed no signs of turning. For a variety of reasons, not the least of which being his past reputation as a drunk, he spent the first two months out on the sidelines. Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, all shunned his offers to serve. Even a letter to Lorenzo Thomas, the U.S. Army’s Adjutant General, went unanswered. In desperation, he turned to the Department of the Ohio, then under the command of George B. McClellan. If Grant raised any hopes for an Ohio commission, they were soon dashed when he learned that McClellan was not available to see him. More dejected than ever, he returned to Illinois.

Finally, on June 16, 1861, Illinois Governor Richard Yates offered Grant an appointment as colonel of the 21st Illinois Volunteer regiment. Known as “Yates’s Hellions”, this totally undisciplined unit had mutinied against its previous commander and it can be imagined that there were some who would not have even considered the commission. Not in a position to be choosy, Grant took it, though there are some accounts that suggest he actually contemplated declining this less-than-attractive command.[1]

Good luck typically involves being in the right place at the right time. In retrospect, Grant had been in “the right place” since May, 1860 when he moved his family from St. Louis, Missouri to Galena, Illinois. There, he assumed his new role as a clerk in his father’s leather goods store and none, least of all Ulysses Grant, could have guessed that this was to become the most pivotal event of his life. Initially, Galena’s citizenry gave the newcomer little notice, but with the outbreak of the Civil War Grant suddenly took on a new and important distinction. Strictly speaking, it was neither his West Point background nor his Mexican War experience which had brought him to the forefront as much as the fact he was the only man in town with a professional military background.[2] Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that he would have come to the attention of fellow townsman and congressional representative, Elihu B. Washburne. With no other prospects to chose from, Washburne took the ex-army captain under his wing, going so far as to sponsor him for the 21st Illinois colonelcy.

Less than seven weeks after Grant took command of the unruly 21st, President Abraham Lincoln portioned out a handful of brigadier generalships to the state of Illinois. Included in the delegation responsible for the selection of these new brigadiers was none other than Congressman Washburne. It stood to reason that Washburne, who now had a vested interest in Grant, would push to have his protege’s name added to the list of candidates. On August 5, 1861 and very much to his surprise, the man who had nearly been left out of the war became a brigadier general.[3] Clearly, Grant had derived considerably more than he could have ever imagined from his so-called “limited acquaintance” with Congressman Washburne.

As it happened, Washburne was not the only resident from Grant’s newly adopted hometown to have major influence on the one-time leather merchant’s future. Others, such as William R. Rowley and more particularly, John A. Rawlins—the general’s alterego and part-time guardian angel—would become invaluable allies during the many difficult and personally challenging times that lay ahead. If the American Civil War propelled Grant into history then Galena had served as the launch site. Indeed, had Grant remained in St. Louis—as was nearly the case—he certainly would not have stood out as conspicuously as he did in the small town confines of Galena.[4] Lost in the shuffle and without the likes of Washburne and Rawlins, he likely would have lived out the rest of his days in near, if not total, obscurity.

The general’s first battle, fought November 7, 1861 at Belmont, Missouri, was inauspicious to say the least. In fact, Grant narrowly escaped capture during what can only be termed an inglorious retreat. The general was highly criticised by the northern press for his “bungling” of the affair and the grievous 20% casualty rate. Many, including Iowa Governor Samuel Kirkwood, had called for his removal but unlike the “luckless” Charles P. Stone, who had been in overall command of a similar Union debacle at Ball’s Bluff, Va. only three weeks earlier, Grant would walk away unscathed.[5] Stone, though never formally charged, would languish in prison for six months. Despite being subsequently reinstated, he was never able to shed the stigma associated with Ball’s Bluff and eventually resigned from the Regular Army in September 1864. How Grant escaped Stone’s fate may, in fact, be due to John C. Fremont’s and John A. McClernand’s somewhat fortunate connection with Belmont. Fremont, a Republican and a favourite of the Radical faction in Washington was the commander who had ordered the “demonstration” to begin with, while McClernand, a political general with close ties to Abraham Lincoln had played a leading role in the engagement. To have censured Grant would, in turn, have raised a cloud over Fremont and/or McClernand and it is quite conceivable that the powers-that-be simply chose to let a sleeping dog lie. What calamity would have befallen Grant had McClernand been killed at Belmont can only be imagined.

Grant’s next brush with serendipity took place in February 1862 along the banks of the Cumberland River. Following the naval victory at Fort Henry, the general marched his columns east toward Fort Donelson. The van of the Federal army reached the Confederate stronghold on February 12th and with the exception of two minor and unauthorised engagements, Grant’s troops remained largely inactive until the morning of the 15th. Even then, their sudden activity had been brought on not by Grant, who having overestimated the enemy’s strength was then awaiting additional reinforcements, but by an all out enemy offensive.[6]

In their attempt to break out, the Confederates came to within a hair’s breadth of smashing an entire Federal division. In the process, they had also succeeded in opening not just one, but two clear avenues of escape to Nashville. Then transpired one of those “might have beens” which have so marked the American Civil War. In what still remains a mystery, General Gideon Pillow, commanding the main Rebel attack force, ordered his troops back to their original pre-dawn positions. Grant, though still not present on the field, had been given a totally unexpected and fortuitous reprieve.

Meanwhile, seven miles away aboard Andrew H. Foote’s flagship, Grant learned of the surprise attack. Cutting short their conference, he bid his naval counterpart a hasty adieu and spurred his horse southward. Arriving on the scene, Grant was so shocked by what he saw that his initial reaction was to order his troops to entrench and await reinforcements.[7] Whether as a result of his own initiative or owing to some intuitive advice from General Lew Wallace, he soon had a change of heart and ordered a counter attack.[8] Wallace, it seems, had alerted Grant to the fact that an avenue of escape had been cleared by the Confederates and how inaction might allow the entire Rebel army to slip through his fingers. Grant’s notion or not, if a subsequent message to Foote is any indication, the impetus behind the counterattack appears to have been somewhat less than any “Grant-like” doggedness or stroke of tactical genius: “I must order a charge to save appearances.”[9]

In a “damned if he did and damned if he didn’t” situation, Grant ordered both his left and right wings forward. On the right, the Southerners had long since withdrawn and the Federal counter-punch swung through thin air. Included in the Confederate withdrawal were men from General Simon Bolivar Buckner’s command who were then hastening to re-occupy their own works opposite General Charles F. Smith’s division on the Federal left. Buckner would lose the race by a margin of minutes and Smith’s troops would take the relatively empty fortifications almost unopposed. By all tradition, the battle for Fort Donelson should have been far from over. What’s more, and as Nathan Bedford Forrest was to prove, at least one escape route still lay wide open. But there would be no further fighting and other than the five hundred or so who tagged along with Forrest that night, only a handful of the Gray defenders would evade capture.[10]

General John B. Floyd had been in overall command of the Confederate contingent that day. Floyd had served as Secretary of War in the Buchanan cabinet and though he was exonerated years later, many Northerners suspected him of having stocked Southern arsenals with arms prior to his resignation in January 1861. Not keen on facing charges of treason at the hands of a bitter Yankee throng, Floyd was emphatic that he “could not and would not” surrender himself.[11] So it was that, on the night of February 15th, he chose to make his escape rather than chancing capture in a bid to free his army from a difficult though not necessarily hopeless situation. Pillow, possibly in a show of bravado, was all for fighting it out but eventually, he too opted to save his own skin and an already reconciled Buckner was left with the ignominious task of surrendering the fort the next morning.

On February 14th, Grant had predicted that the battle for Fort Donelson would be a long and difficult one and in all respects, it should have been.[12] Certainly, a Lee or a Forrest would have given him a better run for his money and still many more would never have been so quick to surrender. But Grant was not facing a Lee nor a Forrest and in their ardour to secure their own freedom, Floyd and Pillow handed over what amounted to one third of Albert Sidney Johnston’s force, east of the Mississippi, on a silver platter. The two lacklustre Confederate generals would later suffer the consequences of their actions but this would do little to appease the more than 11,000 Confederate soldiers who, in disbelief, were forced to lay their weapons down that cold February morning.[13] On February 15th “Fortuity” had redeemed Grant’s reputation and now, on the 16th, she presented him with a great though considerably less than hard-earned victory.

SIDEBAR

It is said that a man makes his own luck. For Grant however, it was the independent actions of others that often paved his road to success. Prior to setting out for his meeting with Foote on the morning of February 15, 1862, Grant had left strict instructions with his commanders “to do nothing to bring on an engagement [with the Fort Donelson defenders] until they received further orders, but to hold their positions.”[14] This, in itself, would not have been a problem except for the fact that no one had been left in command during his absence. By 9:00 a.m. John McClernand—his division now bent back to a near ninety degree angle from its original position—was desperately calling on Lew Wallace for help. Try as he might, Wallace could find no one at Grant’s headquarters who was willing to authorise any movement on his part. Finally, another and even more frantic plea from McClernand prompted Wallace to act on his own authority by sending one, then a second, brigade forward. It was the second of these brigades—Thayer’s—which finally managed to blunt the Confederate advance along the Wynn’s Ferry Road. Grant later admitted that Wallace’s opportunely timed advance had “contributed to hold the enemy within his lines.”[15] He could have added that the appearance of this “large force of fresh troops,” as Pillow himself had put it, may have also contributed toward the Confederate general’s decision to withdraw.[16]

All considered, it is more than conceivable that Wallace’s unauthorised actions helped save both the Union right from total collapse and Grant from potential disgrace. It would not be the last time Grant benefited from someone else’s initiative.

“The Main force of the enemy is at Corinth … I have scarcely the faintest idea of an attack, (general one,) being made upon us but will be prepared should such a thing take place.”[17] Within hours of Grant’s having given these assurances to Henry Halleck, the Rebels did attack and events tend to indicate that the Federals at Shiloh, Tennessee were not as prepared as “Old Brains” was led to believe. For the second time in less than two months, Grant had been blindsided. In this instance, he would be confronted with what is now considered to be the largest and most daring surprise attack of the entire war.

During the two days leading up to the Rebel assault, both Grant and William T. Sherman had discounted numerous reports of a large enemy force massing on their front. “Oh! Tut; tut. You militia officers get scared too easily”, said Sherman in response to one such report.[18] Colonel Everett Peabody, himself a volunteer officer, did not share in his superiors’ cavalier attitude. Even Benjamin Prentiss—Peabody’s divisional commander—had, on the night of April 5th, derided his subordinate for thinking there was anything more than an enemy patrol on his brigade’s front. Undeterred, Peabody sent forward an unauthorised reconnaissance early the next morning and it is this force which uncovered the Confederate battle line in the preliminary stage of its advance. As it was, the Federals had been caught “with their pants down” but, if not for Peabody’s initiative, many more might still have been leisurely preparing their breakfasts when the Rebels came crashing through their encampments. Peabody would lose his life attempting to hold off those “phantom” troops, but at least he would die in the knowledge that he had, perhaps, saved the Union army from certain destruction.

If one word aptly defines the Battle of Shiloh, it is “happenstance.” From rain-soaked roads which had delayed the Confederate attack by two days to Albert Sidney Johnston’s mortal wounding, the contest was riddled with twists of fate. But there is one incident which, more than any other, was to have the most profound impact on events. Early on the morning of April 6th, a member of Braxton Bragg’s staff spotted what he took to be a Yankee division positioned well beyond the Confederate right. In fact, the “division” was nothing more than an isolated and frightened brigade which would have been happy simply to hold its ground. Fearing that these troops were preparing for a flank attack, the aide sent a message to Johnston urging “the importance of having our right flank protected.”[19] Johnston responded by ordering a total of four brigades to the “threatened” area. Two of these, Chalmers’s and Jackson’s, were in the midst of engaging Stephen Hurlbut’s division—then deployed in an open cotton field on the Federal centre—when the order to march to the right arrived. As Chalmers’s brigade was withdrawing, it paused briefly to return Hurlbut’s fire. Mistaking Chalmers’s movement for a flank attack, Colonel Isaac Pugh, commanding Hurlbut’s leftmost brigade, withdrew a portion of his command to the vicinity of a small peach orchard. Seeing his left flank pulling back, Hurlbut panicked and this time, the entire division was ordered to fall back on a line fronting three hundred yards of open ground along the edge of some woods. With Jackson and Chalmers gone, the fighting on the Federal centre subsided thereby giving Hurlbut enough time to calm and reform his shaken troops. Eventually, W.H.L. Wallace’s division and what was left of Benjamin Prentiss’s formed on Hurlbut’s right. What had begun innocently enough with a simple error in judgement on the part of Bragg’s aide, had set off a chain reaction culminating in the chance formation of what would come to be known as “The Hornets’ Nest.” As for Chalmers and Jackson, they and the better part of John C. Breckinridge’s Reserve Corps wasted precious hours in a “wild goose chase.” Had they been present in the critical centre, Hurlbut would invariably have been forced to withdraw from his vulnerable position in the cotton field. From there, it is doubtful that the Federals would have been given much of an opportunity to reform along the Sunken Road and the Confederate tide might easily have surged forward and reached the landing before Grant had been given enough time to prepare his last line of defence.

In the days following the surprise attack at Shiloh, many, including the Republican Radicals, accused Grant of gross negligence and of being drunk during the battle. No longer protected by the veil of partisanship accorded him by Fremont and McClernand in November 1861, he now faced the very real and daunting prospect of an investigation by the dreaded Committee on the Conduct of the War. As it turned out, the Committee’s members were unable or unwilling to make the long trip west and the investigation never materialized.[20] At Shiloh, the “iron dice of war” had surely come up in Grant’s favour.

SIDEBAR

Aside from Peabody, there were many others at Shiloh for whose initiative Grant had much to be thankful. Among them, was William “Bull” Nelson, commander of Don Carlos Buell’s lead division. As he “counted his lucky stars” after the battle, Grant must, undoubtedly, have recalled a message he had sent to Nelson only two days before the surprise attack. In it, he advised the ex-naval officer—then making his way to Shiloh from Columbia—“not to hurry since his troops could not be put across the river until April 8th.”[21] Nelson, still thirty-five miles distant, was one to do things his own way and disregarding Grant’s advice, he forged on at the same pace. If not for Nelson’s obstinacy, Buell’s reinforcements may very well have been too late to bolster Grant’s mauled and demoralised forces on the 6th. So too might they not have been present the next morning to take part in a counter attack that ultimately forced Beauregard to withdraw.

To Grant’s credit, he and he alone made his own luck at Vicksburg, Mississippi. Many, including Sherman, saw nothing but disaster in Grant’s plan to assail the river bastion from the rear. In truth, it was a bold if not reckless campaign which, by all military logic, should have ended in total disaster and it is doubtful that there were many, besides Grant, who would have attempted it. If the General had anything to be thankful for it was not so much the actions, but rather, the reactions of none other than Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Obstinate by nature, Davis steadfastly refused to allow John Pemberton’s Vicksburg garrison to unite with Joseph E. Johnston’s field army in a joint offensive against Grant’s isolated invasion force. With a combined Confederate strength initially exceeding that of the Federals’, there is no telling how things might have ended. The fact that the campaign did succeed speaks for itself and if only for this one feat, Grant deserves the laurels bestowed upon him by history.

If Wallace and Peabody salvaged Grant’s reputation, George Thomas’s Army of the Cumberland secured it. At Chattanooga, on November 25, 1863, Grant watched in disbelief as Thomas’s infantrymen advanced past their prescribed objective at the base of Missionary Ridge. Furious, he demanded to know who had ordered the men up the ridge and promised that someone would suffer if the affair did not turn out alright. In fact, no one had ordered them forward. Caught in a pelting rain of musketry from the Confederate works above them, Thomas’s men could neither remain where they were nor withdraw without severe loss. With nowhere else to go, the entire Federal line spontaneously “fled forward” up the slope. Soon, the Confederate defences were being overrun by a swarm of blue infantry and before Braxton Bragg—or Grant—knew it, the Rebel army had literally picked up and left. In the blink of an eye, the siege of Chattanooga had been lifted. Perhaps Frederick the Great put it best when he wrote, “Indeed, the fate of states and the reputation of generals rest on the most trifling incidents. A few seconds are enough to determine their fortune ….”[22]

In May 1864 Grant stepped off into Virginia’s “Wilderness” intent on bagging Robert E. Lee. If he expected nothing less than swift and total success he had good reason. Unlike its severely weakened and desperate Confederate counterpart, the Union war machine had reached the pinnacle of its organisational and offensive capability. Never before had Lincoln’s armies been better supplied or equipped. Where costs had previously been curbed, no expense was now being spared prompting Grant to write, “… I have been astonished at the readiness with which every thin[g] asked for has been yielded without even an explanation being asked.”[23] Whereas Lee would be hard pressed to replenish his own losses, Grant would almost literally be able to replace his before the names of the dead and wounded had been posted back in their hometowns. Having recognised the folly of his actions, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton was not about to close the recruiting stations as he had done two years before, just as McClellan was stepping off on his Peninsular Campaign.

In 1862, the people could never have anticipated, nor would they have then accepted, the magnitude of losses Grant was about to suffer at such places as the Wilderness, Spottsylvania and Cold Harbour. By 1864, however, the war had changed and so too had the country’s perceptions. Although they would grieve for the more than 66,000 casualties, Grant would lose in his failed attempt to take Richmond that year, the people would trudge on, almost accepting. With the approach of the 1864 presidential elections, it was no longer simply a matter of preserving the Union. For Lincoln and the Republican Administration, it was also a matter of preserving the administration itself. For over two years Lincoln had presumed to dictate military strategy to his army commanders. Now, desperate for military successes, he was finally forced to give up control of the army to a military man whose plans he neither knew nor sought to know. Just when the Confederacy was on its last legs, the Union had finally stopped fighting “with one arm tied behind its back” and once again, Ulysses S. Grant found himself in the right place, at the right time.

There are two common denominators that consistently crop up throughout Grant’s Civil War career and to which he owed much of his success. The first and least significant of these is the calibre of his adversaries. Until 1864, when he was finally pitted against the indomitable Robert E. Lee, the list of contenders had been far from impressive. At Belmont, an inept Pillow had allowed Grant to get away with nothing more than a bloodied nose. At Fort Donelson, the doubly inept team of Pillow and Floyd had thrown in the towel after only a couple of rounds. At Shiloh, following Albert Sidney Johnston’s death, a vacillating P.G.T. Beauregard held back his knock out punch and then as much as helped Grant pick himself up off the mat. During the Vicksburg campaign, Grant dazzled an outclassed John Pemberton with his unorthodox footwork while a hamstrung Joseph E. Johnston was forced to stand by and watch. Last but not least, a blundering Bragg virtually fell out of the ring at Chattanooga. Hopefully, the boxing analogy has, aside from imparting a bit of humour, succeeded in demonstrating the point.

If his opponents were lacking, the men they led certainly were not although, here too, Grant had a considerable edge. In this, the second common denominator, Grant’s advantage was not necessarily derived from the quality but rather the quantity of men at his disposal. Throughout the war, the ratio of his forces versus that of his opponents’ averaged out at an unsurpassed 1.9 to one. Joseph Hooker would come in a close second with 1.7 at Chancellorsville, George Meade would cope with a slim 1.4 while George McClellan and William Rosecrans would bring in the rear with averages scarcely exceeding 1 to 1. As he set out on his 1864 campaign against Lee, Grant outnumbered his opponent by more than 40,000 men or 1.7 to 1. If he expected much, he was soon disappointed. Even with an unprecedented and almost limitless source of men and supplies, it still required another year of fierce fighting and a superiority in excess of 2.3 to 1 before Lee was finally overwhelmed.[24] Apparently, “marching on to Richmond” had not been so simple a task after all!

“Luck is like a sum of gold, to be spent.”[25] If that is the case, then Ulysses S. Grant was a very rich man during the American Civil War. From the opportune political appointment which elevated him to the rank of Brigadier General to a supply of men and materiel his predecessors in Virginia could only have dreamt of, his Civil War career was fraught with good fortune.

To have survived one, let alone two, surprise attacks speaks for itself but having snatched a pair of major victories in the process is beyond the realm of many an odds-maker. On the same token, few could have twice managed to escape the Radicals’ wrath following a pair of near disasters such as had taken place at Belmont and Shiloh. Amazingly, Grant would do just that notwithstanding his Democratic and slave-holding ties.

If, by their actions, men such as Lew Wallace, Everett Peabody and William Nelson did not save Grant from humiliation and defeat they had, at the very least, played a key role in his rise to prominence. In a sense, he was very much a reflection of those around him. The General turned politician would not be so fortunate during the post-war years when other men’s actions finally brought on his decline. Like a siren of the sea, “Lady Luck” had lured Ulysses onto the rocky shoals of politics and there, abandoned him.

The question remains, to which did Ulysses S. Grant owe the bulk of his success during the American Civil War; good generalship or good luck?   For many, the notion that Grant was anything other than a great general is impossible for them to consider.  It is Civil War historian Brian Pohanka who probably put it best when he wrote, “A lot of folks like their Civil War history cut and dried, with a predictable cast of characters – they like to cheer the hero and hiss the villain. The curtain falls, and they say, ‘Very good, just as I remember the play.”  Or, as Napoleon once wrote, “history is but a fable agreed upon.”

SIDEBAR

RATIO OF UNION VS. CONFEDERATE FORCES

All ratios have been derived from Livermore’s “Numbers and Losses” (p. 140–141) and have been rounded up to the first decimal.

 

ULYSSES S. GRANT
  1. Fort Donelson 1.3:1
  2. Shiloh 1.6:1
  3. Champion’s Hill 1.5:1
  4. Vicksburg 2.0:1
  5. Chattanooga 1.2:1
  6. Wilderness 1.7:1
  7. Petersburg (June 15—18, 1864) 1.5:1
  8. The Mine 1.8:1
  9. Deep Bottom 1.4:1
  10. Weldon R.R. (Aug. 18—21, 1864) 1.4:1
  11. Chaffin’s Farm, Frts. Harrison/Gilmer) 1.8:1
  12. Boydton Plank Road 2.1:1
  13. Hatcher’s Run 2.5:1
  14. Dinwiddie Court House 2.3:1
  15. Petersburg (April 2, 1865) 3.4:1
  16. Appomatox Court House 2.3:1

_____

AVERAGE                                                                       1.9:1

 

Livermore does not list the Confederate strength at either Cold Harbour or Spottsylvania.  For the purpose of this study, these battles have been excluded.

NOTE:  From the Wilderness to Appomatox Court House, Grant’s average ratio equates to 2:1

 

GEORGE B. MCCLELLAN
  1. Williamsburg 1.3:1
  2. Fair Oaks 1.0:1
  3. Seven Days 1.0:1
  4. South Mountain 1.6:1
  5. Antietam 1.5:1

_____

AVERAGE                                                                       1.3:1

 

AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE
  1. Fredericksburg 1.5:1

 

JOSEPH E. HOOKER
  1. Chancellorsville 1.7:1

 

GEORGE MEADE
  1. Gettysburg 1.1:1
  2. Mine Run 1.6:1

_____

AVERAGE                                                                       1.4:1

 

WILLIAM T. SHERMAN
  1. Atlanta Campaign 1.7:1
  2. Bentonville 1.0:1

_____

AVERAGE                                                                       1.4:1

 

WILLIAM S. ROSECRANS
  1. Stones River 1.2:1
  2. Chickamauga 0.9:1

_____

AVERAGE                                                                       1.1:1

 

NOTE:  The average ratio for all of the major battles of the Civil war (as listed by Livermore on pages 140–141) equates to 1.5:1.

 

[1]. The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, ed. John Y. Simon, 20 vols. to date (Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, Illinois, 1967–), 2:45 note 6, 2:54 note 2.

[2]. William S. McFeely, Grant: A Biography (W.W. Norton & Company, New York, N.Y., 1982), p. 73.

[3]. “I was very much surprised because…. my acquaintance with the Congressmen was very limited and I did not know of anything I had done to inspire such confidence.” Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, 2 vols. (Rose Publishing Company, Toronto, Canada, 1886), 1:254.

[4]. In August 1859, Grant was a candidate for the much prized St. Louis County Engineer’s post. Either as a result of his Democratic affiliations, or due to simple favouritism, he lost to his opponent by a vote of three to two. It was only after considerable coaxing from his wife that a reluctant Grant finally swallowed his pride and travelled to Covington, Kentucky to seek his father’s help. Ibid, 1:211–212; McFeely, Grant: A Biography, p. 64.

[5] See Hughes, Battle of Belmont: Grant Strikes South, p. 195 regarding the press accounts and Kirkwood’s reaction.

[6].On February 14th, Grant estimated the enemy’s strength at “not less than 30,000.” U.S. Grant to G.W. Cullum, Papers, 4:209. In fact, the actual numbers range from as low as 17,530 to a maximum of 21,000 versus Grant’s 27,000. Thomas L. Livermore, Numbers & Losses in the Civil War in America: 1861–65 (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana, 1957), p. 79. (Based on various sources, 17,530 is probably closer to the mark.)

[7].Benjamin Franklin Cooling, Forts Henry and Donelson: The Key to the Confederate Heartland (The University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, Tennessee, 1987), p. 184.

[8].Ibid., p. 184; McFeely, Grant: A Biography, p. 99.

[9].U.S. Grant to Andrew H. Foote, February 15, 1862, Grant Papers, 4:284.

[10].”Over 500 cavalry had passed … and a number of men from different regiments, passing over hard-frozen ground … I am clearly of the opinion that two thirds of our army could have marched out without loss….” Report of Col. Nathan B. Forrest, Tennessee Cavalry, February __, 1862, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (OR), Ser. I, vol. 7, p 386.

[11].Ibid., p. 295.

[12].”The taking of Fort Donelson bids fair to be a long [job]. The Rebels are strongly fortified and are in very heavy force.” U.S. Grant to his wife, February 14, 1862, Papers, 4:211; “Appearances now indicate that we will have a protracted siege here…. I fear the result of attempting to carry the place by storm with raw troops.” U.S. Grant to Gen. George W. Cullum, February 14, 1862, OR, Ser. I, vol. 7, p. 613–614.

[13].”The troops in the fort had rested through the night and awoke expecting a renewal of the fight. When they heard they were to be surrendered they expressed such immediate and unanimous dissatisfaction that the bugler with the flag of truce had a hard time getting to the front line where he could signal the enemy.” Stanley F. Horn, The Army of Tennessee (University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, 1993), p. 96.

[14].U.S. Grant, Memoirs, 1:304.

[15].Ibid., 1:306.

[16].Ibid., 1:306; OR, ser. I, vol 7, p. 283.

[17].U.S. Grant to Henry Halleck, April 5, 1862, Grant Papers, 5:14.

[18].Wiley Sword, Shiloh: Bloody April (Press of Morningside Bookshop, Dayton, Ohio, 1983), p. 134.

[19].R.U. Johnson and C.C. Buell (Editors), Battles & Leaders of the Civil War, I:604.

[20].T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and the Radicals, p. 334.

[21].Larry J. Daniels, Shiloh: The Battle That Changed the Civil War (Simon & Schuster, New York, N.Y. 1997), p. 139–140.

[22].Frederick the Great, Peter G. Tsouras, Warriors Words (Arms and Armour Press, New York, N.Y. 1994), p. 61.

[23].U.S. Grant to Abraham Lincoln, May 1, 1864, Grant Papers, 10:380.

[24].All ratios have been derived from Thomas L. Livermore’s, Numbers & Losses, p. 140–141.

[25].Field Marshal Viscount Allenby of Meggido, Peter G. Tsouras, Warriors Words, p. 243.

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