It is a little remarkable that the three chief figures in this great Vicksburg campaign—Grant, Sherman, and McPherson—were all born in Ohio. The utmost cordiality and confidence existed between these three men, and it always seemed to me that much of the success achieved in these marches and battles was owing to this very fact. There was no jealousy or bickering, and in their unpretending simplicity they were as alike as three peas. No country was ever more faithfully, unselfishly served than was ours in the Vicksburg campaign by these three Ohio officers.
To McPherson's left was the Thirteenth Army Corps, under Major-General John A. McClernand. Next to Grant he was the ranking officer in the army. The approaches on his front were most favorable to us, and the enemy's line of works evidently much the weakest there, but he was very inefficient and slow in pushing his siege operations. Grant had resolved on the 23d to relieve McClernand for his false dispatch of the day before stating that he held two of the enemy's forts, but he changed his mind, concluding that it would be better on the whole to leave him in his command till the siege was concluded. From the time that I had joined Grant's army at Milliken's Bend and heard him criticising Porter, Sherman, and other officers, I had been observing McClernand narrowly myself. My own judgment of him by this time was that he had not the qualities necessary for commander even of a regiment. In the first place, he was not a military man; he was a politician and a member of Congress. He was a man of a good deal of a certain kind of talent, not of a high order, but not one of intellectual accomplishments. His education was that which a man gets who is in Congress five or six years. In short, McClernand was merely a smart man, quick, very active-minded, but his judgment was not solid, and he looked after himself a good deal. Mr. Lincoln also looked out carefully for McClernand, because he was an Illinois Democrat, with a considerable following among the people. It was a great thing to get McClernand into the war in the first place, for his natural predisposition, one would have supposed, would have been to sympathize with the South. As long as he adhered to the war he carried his Illinois constituency with him; and chiefly for this reason, doubtless, Lincoln made it a point to take special care of him. In doing this the President really served the greater good of the cause. But from the circumstances of Lincoln's supposed friendship, McClernand had more consequence in the army than he deserved.
[CHAPTER V.]
SOME CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.
Grant before his great fame—His friend and mentor, General Rawlins—James Harrison Wilson—Two semi-official letters to Stanton—Character sketches for the information of the President and Secretary—Mr. Dana's early judgment of soldiers who afterward won distinction.
Living at headquarters as I did throughout the siege of Vicksburg, I soon became intimate with General Grant, not only knowing every operation while it was still but an idea, but studying its execution on the spot. Grant was an uncommon fellow—the most modest, the most disinterested, and the most honest man I ever knew, with a temper that nothing could disturb, and a judgment that was judicial in its comprehensiveness and wisdom. Not a great man, except morally; not an original or brilliant man, but sincere, thoughtful, deep, and gifted with courage that never faltered; when the time came to risk all, he went in like a simple-hearted, unaffected, unpretending hero, whom no ill omens could deject and no triumph unduly exalt. A social, friendly man, too, fond of a pleasant joke and also ready with one; but liking above all a long chat of an evening, and ready to sit up with you all night, talking in the cool breeze in front of his tent. Not a man of sentimentality, not demonstrative in friendship, but always holding to his friends, and just even to the enemies he hated.
After Grant, I spent more time at Vicksburg with his assistant adjutant general, Colonel John A. Rawlins, and with Lieutenant-Colonel Wilson, than with anybody else. Rawlins was one of the most valuable men in the army, in my judgment. He had but a limited education, which he had picked up at the neighbourhood school and in Galena, Ill., near which place he was born and where he had worked himself into the law; but he had a very able mind, clear, strong, and not subject to hysterics. He bossed everything at Grant's headquarters. He had very little respect for persons, and a rough style of conversation. I have heard him curse at Grant when, according to his judgment, the general was doing something that he thought he had better not do. But he was entirely devoted to his duty, with the clearest judgment, and perfectly fearless. Without him Grant would not have been the same man. Rawlins was essentially a good man, though he was one of the most profane men I ever knew; there was no guile in him—he was as upright and as genuine a character as I ever came across.
James H. Wilson I had first met at Milliken's Bend, when he was serving as chief topographical engineer and assistant inspector general of the Army of the Tennessee. He was a brilliant man intellectually, highly educated, and thoroughly companionable. We became warm friends at once, and were together a great deal throughout the war. Rarely did Wilson go out on a specially interesting tour of inspection that he did not invite me to accompany him, and I never failed, if I were at liberty, to accept his invitations. Much of the exact information about the condition of the works which I was able to send to Mr. Stanton Wilson put in my way.
I have already spoken of McClernand, Sherman, and McPherson, Grant's three chief officers, but there were many subordinate officers of value in his army, not a few of whom became afterward soldiers of distinction. At the request of Secretary Stanton, I had begun at Vicksburg a series of semi-official letters, in which I undertook to give my impressions of the officers in Grant's army. These letters were designed to help Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Stanton in forming their judgments of the men. In order to set the personnel of the commanding force distinctly before the reader, I quote here one of these letters, written at Cairo after the siege had ended. It has never been published before, and it gives my judgment at that time of the subordinate officers in the Vicksburg campaign: