The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume 3: Red River to Appomattox (135 page)

All this required time, however, and time was the one thing his superiors did not consider he, or they, could afford at the present critical juncture; especially Grant. Halleck kept warning Thomas that their chief was losing patience, but the Virginian’s files contained by then a sheaf of dispatches that made only too clear the City Point general’s feelings in that regard. “You will now suffer incalculable injury upon your railroads if Hood is not speedily disposed of. Put forth, therefore, every possible exertion.” “Hood should be attacked where he is. Time strengthens him, in all probability, as much as it does you.” “Attack Hood at once, and wait no longer for a remount of your cavalry. There is great danger of delay resulting in a campaign back to the Ohio River.” “Why not attack at once? By all means avoid the contingency of a foot race to see which, you or Hood, can beat to the Ohio.” Thus Grant fumed through the first week of the Tennessee stalemate. Thomas’s replies, over that same span — in which he spoke of his “crippled condition” and promised to move out, first, “in a few days,” then within “less than a week,” and finally by December 7, “if I can perfect my arrangements” — only goaded his chief into greater exasperation. Moreover, Halleck by now was warning that continued inaction might lead to his removal. Thomas replied that he regretted Grant’s “dissatisfaction at my delay in attacking the enemy. I feel conscious that I have done everything in my power.… If he should order me to be relieved I will submit without a murmur.” That was on December 9, and he closed with a weather report that seemed to him to rule out, at least for the present, any further talk of an advance. “A terrible storm of freezing
rain has come on since daylight, which will render an attack impossible until it breaks.”

He also passed news of this to Grant. “I had nearly completed my preparations to attack the enemy tomorrow morning, but a terrible storm of freezing rain has come on today, which will make it impossible for our men to fight to any advantage. I am, therefore, compelled to wait for the storm to break and make the attempt immediately after.” And he added: “Major General Halleck informs me that you are very much dissatisfied with my delay in attacking. I can only say I have done all in my power to prepare, and if you should deem it necessary to relieve me I shall submit without a murmur.” Alas, the reply he received that night was, if anything, even more chill and grudging than the others. “I have as much confidence in your conducting a battle rightly as I have in any other officer,” Grant informed the Rock of Chickamauga, “but it has seemed to me that you have been slow, and I have had no explanation of affairs to convince me otherwise.… I telegraphed to suspend the order relieving you until we should hear further. I hope most sincerely that there will be no necessity for repeating the order, and that the facts will show that you have been right all the time.”

Thomas was hard put to comprehend how Grant, five hundred miles away in front of Richmond — stalemated himself, not for a week but for the past six months — could presume to say what was practicable for a conglomerate army, so hastily and recently assembled under a man who was a stranger to more than half its members. However, his chief of staff, Brigadier General William Whipple, an old-line West Pointer, had a theory that someone hereabouts was “using the wires to undermine his commander” in Washington or City Point or both. At first he suspected Andrew Johnson, but on being informed that the governor was too brusque and aboveboard for such tactics, he shifted to Schofield as a likelier candidate for the Judas role. Sure enough, a prowling staffer picked up at the telegraph office the original of a recent message from the New Yorker to Grant: “Many officers here are of the opinion that General Thomas is certainly slow in his movements.” Thomas read it with considerable surprise, then turned to James Steedman, who was with him at the time. “Steedman, can it be possible that Schofield would send such a telegram?” Steedman, whose share in the glory of Chickamauga had been second only to his chief’s, replied that he must surely be familiar with his own general’s writing. Thomas put on his glasses and examined the message carefully. “Yes, it is General Schofield’s handwriting,” he admitted, and asked, puzzled: “Why does he send such telegrams?” Steedman smiled at the Virginian’s guileless nature, uncorrupted by twenty-four years of exposure to army politics. “General Thomas,” he presently asked, “who is next in command to you in case of removal?” Thomas hung fire for a moment. “Oh, I see,” he said at last, and shook his head at what he saw.

In point of fact, there was more behind Grant’s exasperation, and a good deal more had come of it, than Thomas or anyone else in Tennessee had any way of knowing. Prodded by Stanton, who translated Lincoln’s trepidation into sneers at “the McClellan and Rosecrans strategy of do nothing and let the rebels raid the country,” Grant said later, in confirmation of earlier testimony by his aide: “I was never so anxious during the war as at that time.” Indeed, under pressure of this anxiety, he lost his accustomed military balance. His fret, of course, was not only for Slow Trot Thomas, out in Nashville; it was also for Sherman, who had not yet emerged from his trans-Georgia tunnel, and for Butler, who continued to resist being hurried down the coast to Wilmington. Worst of all, he saw the possibility of the war being turned around just at the moment when he believed it was practically won. “If I had been in Hood’s place,” he afterwards declared, “I would have gone to Louisville and on north until I came to Chicago.” Taking counsel of his fears, he had told Halleck on December 8: “If Thomas has not struck yet, he ought to be ordered to hand over the command to Schofield.” Old Brains replied that if this was what Grant wanted he would have to issue orders to that effect. “The responsibility, however, will be yours, as no one here, so far as I am informed, wishes General Thomas’s removal.” Grant drew back: “I would not say relieve him until I hear further from him.” But there was no let-up in the telegraphic goading. “If you delay attack longer,” he wired the Virginian on December 11, three days into the ice storm, “the mortifying spectacle will be witnessed of a rebel army moving for the Ohio River, and you will be forced to act, accepting such weather as you find.… Delay no longer for weather or reinforcements.”

Thomas’s reply, delivered the following morning — “I will obey the order as promptly as possible, however much I may regret it, as the attack will have to be made under every disadvantage. The whole country is covered with a perfect sheet of ice and sleet, and it is with difficulty the troops are able to move about on level ground” — exhausted what little patience Grant had left. “As promptly as possible” was far from a commitment, and the rest of the message seemed to imply that the blame for any failure, when and if the attack was launched, could not properly be placed on a commander who had done his best to resist untimely orders. Grant reacted by concluding that the hour was at hand for a change in Middle Tennessee commanders.

As it happened, John A. Logan was visiting City Point headquarters at the time, on leave from his corps, which had reached the outskirts of Savannah two days ago; he was still celebrating the national election, which he had helped the Administration win, and he still was trying to digest the disappointment he felt at not having been appointed to succeed McPherson as permanent head of the Army of the Tennessee. George Thomas had been instrumental in keeping him from receiving
that reward, so there was a certain poetic justice in what Grant now had in mind; which was to make Logan the Virginian’s own successor. He told him so next day, December 13, when he gave him a written order to that effect, along with verbal instructions to proceed at once by rail to Nashville, going by way of Washington and Louisville. If by the time he reached the latter place Thomas had attacked, Logan was to remain there and get in touch with Grant by telegraph. Otherwise he would proceed to Nashville and take over, as directed in the order.

Logan had no sooner left than Grant began to fret anew. Black Jack was unquestionably a fighter; indeed, that was why he had been chosen; plus, of course, the fact that he was handy at the time. But perhaps, as Sherman had indicated by passing him over for Howard after the Battle of Atlanta, he lacked other qualities indispensable in the commander of an army and a department; in which case personal supervision was required. That day, that night, and most of the day that followed — December 14; Ben Butler had finally departed for Wilmington and the powder-boat explosion he believed would abolish Fort Fisher — Grant pondered his way to a decision he reached by sundown. “I am unexpectedly called away,” he told Meade in a last-minute note, and got aboard a fast packet for Washington, where he expected to catch the first train west. Arriving next morning he read a telegram Thomas had sent Halleck the night before: “The ice having melted away today, the enemy will be attacked tomorrow morning.” Grant decided the best thing to do was suspend his journey and await the outcome, which he would learn from Logan at Louisville or Nashville, or from Thomas himself, before the day was over.

Accordingly, he checked into Willard’s to wait in comfort; but not for long. Presently there was word from Halleck that Old Slow Trot had advanced as promised, with conspicuous success, although the battle was still in progress. “Well, I guess we won’t go to Nashville,” Grant remarked, passing the message to an aide, and then composed for Thomas an order so characteristic that it scarcely needed a signature: “Push the enemy and give him no rest until he is entirely destroyed.… Do not stop for trains or supplies, but take them from the country as the enemy has done. Much is now expected.”

Much was expected. In downtown Nashville, five days ago, the Virginian had said more or less the same thing to his chief subordinates when they assembled in his quarters at the St Cloud Hotel on December 10, midway through the ice storm, to receive preliminary instructions for the attack they would launch as soon as the rebel-occupied hills to the south unfroze enough for climbing. Close to twenty miles of intricate Federal intrenchments stretched from bend to bend of the Cumberland, including seven that ran in a secondary line a mile behind the first-line right and center, manned by the 8000 garrison and service
troops under Chief Quartermaster J. L. Donaldson, a fifty-year-old West Pointer who had been awarded the brevet rank of brigadier. When the jump-off came, these would move forward and take over the works in their front, simultaneously guarding against a counterstroke and freeing well over half the 54,000 combat soldiers now arrayed in a long arc, east to west, under Steedman, Schofield, Wood, A. J. Smith, and Wilson, for the assault and the pursuit that was to follow the dip-lodgment. First off, Steedman would feint against the enemy right, drawing Hood’s attention away from the main effort, which would then be made against his left by Smith and Wood in a grand left wheel, with Wilson’s troopers shielding the outer flank and Schofield’s two divisions waiting in reserve to be committed in either direction. Thus, with Donaldson’s and Steedman’s men employed on the defensive and the remaining 48,000 available for offensive use against barely half their number, Thomas had been able to plan something more than the usual massing of troops for a breakthrough at a single point. Instead, his line of battle would be of practically equal strength throughout its length as it swung forward gatelike, south and southeast, inexorably crunching whatever it encountered. In this way, once a thaw set in, the ponderous Virginian intended not only to defeat Hood, there on the ground where he stood, but also to destroy him in the process.

West Pointers all, except the battle-tested Steedman, the six lieutenants gave full approval to the plan, although Schofield expressed some disappointment at the comparatively minor role assigned his corps in the attack. He had nothing to say, however, regarding another matter that came up when Thomas told of the pressure being exerted on him to advance before he judged his cavalry was ready or the ground was fit for maneuver. Speaking first, as was customary for the junior at such councils, Wilson quickly protested any suggestion of a commitment until the ice had melted from the pikes and hillsides. “If I were occupying such an intrenched line as Hood’s with my dismounted cavalrymen, each armed with nothing more formidable than a basket of brickbats,” he declared, “I would agree to defeat the whole Confederate army if it should advance to the attack under such circumstances.” Four of the other five generals (Donaldson and Smith, fifty and forty-nine respectively, were older than their chief, while Steedman and Wood, at forty-seven and forty-one, were younger) were similarly outspoken on the subject of untimely haste, and Schofield, who was thirty-three, concurred at least to the extent of keeping silent. With that, the conference adjourned; whereupon Thomas, after asking Wilson to remain behind — ostensibly for further instructions, but actually to thank him for his exuberant support — confided sadly: “Wilson, the Washington authorities treat me as if I was a boy.” Thus, for the first and only time, the stolid Virginian, reported to be as ponderous of mind as he was of body, demonstrated some measure of the resentment he felt at being
prodded and lectured by Grant and Halleck, neither of whom was within five hundred miles of the scene of the action they kept insisting was overdue. Having said as much, even if only in confidence to a subordinate barely three months past his twenty-seventh birthday, he seemed to experience a certain lift of spirits. “If they will just let me alone, I will show them what we can do. I am sure my plan of operations is correct, and that we shall lick the enemy if only he stays to receive our attack.”

There was little to fear on the last count, however, since the condition of the roads precluded a Confederate withdrawal quite as much as it did a Federal advance. Thomas received confirmation of this when, two days later — in partial compliance with Grant’s telegraphic order the day before: “Delay no longer for weather or reinforcements” — he had Wilson begin the movement of his troopers across the river from Edgefield. Rough-shod though they were for surer footing, a considerable number of horses slipped and fell on the icy bridge and cobbled streets, injuring their riders as well as themselves in the course of the crossing by the four divisions to take position in rear of A. J. Smith on the far right. “The Yankees brought their weather as well as their army with them,” Nashvillians were saying, watching men and mounts topple and thrash about on the sleety pavement, with much attendant damage to knees and dispositions. Thomas was watching, too, as the freeze continued into its fourth day. An aide told how the thick-set army commander, glumly stroking his gray-shot whiskers and brooding under his massive overhang of brow, “would sometimes sit by the window for an hour or more, not speaking a word, gazing steadily out upon the forbidding prospect, as if he were trying to will the storm away.”