The Times Great Military Lives: Leadership and Courage – from Waterloo to the Falklands in Obituaries. Ian Brunskill
in October he began a campaign against those on the western shore, where General Jeff Thompson had assembled a formidable force.
Grant sent out a detachment from Cairo to check their advance, which was done in a battle at Fredericktown, Missouri, and then, taking the field in person, he fought on November 7, with two brigades. the battle of Belmont, Missouri, his first contest of the war, having a horse shot under him. This movement effectually demoralized the Confederates in the southern counties of Missouri. Grant, who was in every sense a fighter, then began preparing for an active campaign further southward, and made Paducah his base.
Here he gathered a force of 15,000 men, and also assembled a fleet of western river steamboats, sheathed with iron as a bullet-proof protection, and known as ‘tin-clads.’ The enemy had strongly garrisoned posts near the boundary line between Kentucky and Tennessee, known as Forts Henry and Donelson, the former controlling the Tennessee river and the latter the Cumberland. With his troops and steamers on February 3 he left Paducah to attack them. Fort Henry was first invested, and on February 6 surrendered, its capture being mainly the work of the boats. Fort Donelson, commanded by General Buckner, made a stubborn resistance, and Grant gradually increased his force besieging it to 30,000 men, who fought a severe battle on February 15, losing 2,300 killed and wounded. The fort was shattered, and Buckner proposed that Commissioners be appointed to arrange terms of capitulation.
Grant promptly wrote in reply:– ‘No terms other than an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works.’ On the 16th the fort, with its defenders, surrendered, being the first great victory that had crowned tho Union arms, which had been generally unfortunate in the campaign east of the Alleghanies. The victor at once became a national celebrity, and the sobriquet of ‘Unconditional Surrender Grant’ was given him as the popular testimony of admiration of his terse demand for the surrender that had given so much gratification. He was commissioned Major-General, dating from February 16, 1862.
Grant’s subsequent career became practically the history of the war for the suppression of the rebellion. General Halleck had been placed in general command of all the troops west of the Alleghanies, and he had been collecting a force of about 40,000 men to make an expedition up the Tennessee river, under General Smith; but soon after it started General Smith died, and the command fell upon General Grant. An attack upon Corinth, in Northern Mississippi, had been contemplated, and part of the force in anticipation of this had been lying some time at Pittsburg Landing, when at daylight on April 6 General Albert Sydney Johnston, with an overwhelming Confederate army, surprised and routed them with great loss. Grant arrived on the field in the morning and re-formed the broken lines, after which heavy reinforcements, under General Buell, were ordered up, and, arriving in the night, the battle was renewed next day; and the enemy, being defeated, withdrew behind the intrenchment at Corinth.
These were the bloodiest conflicts that had taken place down to that time, the killed and wounded numbering 12,000 in each army, and Grant being slightly wounded. The Confederates were followed to Corinth, and General Halleck arriving assumed command, and began a siege of the place. This continued several weeks, the enemy subsequently evacuating their works. Halleck was called to Washington in July, after M’Clellan’s disastrous retreat from before Richmond, and Grant was given command of the Department of West Tennessee. The country looked to him as the hero of the western active campaign, the defeats and disasters in Virginia having caused general dismay. He made his headquarters at Corinth, which was a post of strategic importance in Northern Mississippi, and for two months devoted his attention to suppressing guerrillas and spies and strengthening his force preparatory to a new campaign.
He took possession of Memphis, and severely disciplined a newspaper there which published treasonable articles. In September he sent out an expedition which attacked and defeated the Confederates under General Price at Iuka, gaining a substantial victory. In the meantime General Bragg, with another Confederate force, began pushing northwards towards the Ohio river through the country to the eastward, and the better to check this advance Grant removed his headquarters to Jackson, Tennessee, with part of his guns. He left about 20,000 men, under General Rosecrans, at Corinth, and the enemy, under Price and van Dorn, hoping to beat him in detail, attacked Corinth with 40,000 men on October 3. After a desperate battle, continuing two days, Rosecrans successfully repulsed them, while General Buell, with an auxiliary force, moved out to intercept Bragg, and forced the latter to give up his advance towards the Ohio river and retreat towards East Tennessee.
General Grant was thus left free for a march further southward, and in the middle of October his department was expanded to include Vicksburg, his troops being constituted the Thirteenth Army Corps. Vicksburg was the great Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi river, and the active and energetic commander soon conceived the idea of trying to capture it. This occupied his attention for several months. He first approached it from the north, but the enemy outmanoeuvred him, and inflicted serious losses in December by capturing and destroying much of his stores at Holly Springs, in Mississippi. He then determined to make his attack from the southward. When the severity of the winter had passed he crossed over with his army to the western bank of the Mississippi river, moved down, and re-crossed at a point below Vicksburg on April 30, 1863. Vicksburg was commanded by Pemberton, and, as soon as he divined Grant’s movement, he sent for reinforcements, which General J. Johnston tried to give him. In a series of brilliant minor engagements, Grant during the early part of May prevented this, and on May 18 he began the siege of Vicksburg. For fully a year this ‘Gibraltar’ had obstructed the navigation of the Mississippi by the Union forces, whose gun-boats had control of the river both above and below, although at Port Hudson, 120 miles further down, the Confederates were building extensive fortifications. General Pemberton had about 25,000 effective men, but was deficient in small ammunition, and had only 60 days’ rations. He contracted his lines, concentrating all his forces in the immediate defences of the town, and abandoned Haines’s Bluff. Johnston advised Pemberton to evacuate Vicksberg if the bluff was untenable, and march to the north-east, he himself moving so as to expedite a junction of their forces. Pemberton replied that it was impossible to withdraw, and that he had decided to hold Vicksburg as long as possible, conceiving it to be the most important point in the Confederacy.
Grant no sooner began the siege than he tried on May 19 to carry the place by a coup de main, but he was repulsed, and then made a regular investiture. His force was soon increased to 70,000 men, and he maintained the siege until July 3, when Pemberton sent him a note stating that he was fully able to hold his defensive position for an indefinite period, but proposing that Commissioners should be named to arrange a capitulation. Grant met Pemberton personally in the afternoon to arrange the terms, and the actual surrender followed next morning, July 4, 1863. There were 27,000 prisoners paroled altogether, of whom about 15,000 were fit for duty, the others being sick or wounded. From the time he crossed the Mississippi, Grant had lost 8,567 killed and wounded, half of them in the immediate siege. The Confederate loss during the same period was about 10,000. This victory caused a great sensation throughout the country, which had been depressed by repeated defeats in Virginia and by Lee’s march northward into Pennsylvania until checked by General Meade at Gettysburg; and Grant from that time became the great hero of the war. He had been a Major-General of Volunteers and was promoted to Major-General in the Regular Army, the highest rank he could attain as the law then existed.
General Grant was in October given the supreme command west of the mountains, his territory being called the ‘Military Division of the Mississippi,’ with departments under him, commanded respectively by Generals Sherman, Thomas, Burnside, and Hooker. After Vicksburg fell, his troops had driven Johnston’s forces eastward, and they with Bragg’s troops, which had gone into East Tennessee, began threatening Chattanooga. This picturesque town nestles among the Alleghany Mountains near the southern border of Tennessee, and Bragg occupied formidable positions nearby on Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain. Grant, in November, concentrated troops for the defence of Chattanooga, and on the 24th and 25th Bragg’s strongholds were carried by assault, and he abandoned that portion of the mountain district, retreating into Georgia. The Union troops pursued him some distance and then turned to relieve Burnside at Knoxville in East Tennessee, whom the Confederates had besieged, General Longstreet commanding them. These were the last active movements in the west which General Grant personally directed.