The History of the Confederate War, Its Causes and Its Conduct, Volume 1 (of 2) / A Narrative and Critical History

by George Cary Eggleston

This plan was in some degree acted upon. That is to say enough men were concentrated at the forts to swell the record of Grant's subsequent capture to about 15,000 men, but not enough to defend the position. The plan might have failed had an attempt been made to execute it in its full scope. Attempted by half measures as it was its failure was clearly foreordained. Grant captured the forts and their defending garrisons and made himself master of the two rivers which, next to the Mississippi, were of most vital importance to both sides. After the forts had fallen the occupation of Nashville was quite a matter of course, and equally so was the necessity of the Confederate evacuation of Kentucky and of practically all of Tennessee.

Presently after being "kept in" by Halleck Grant was restored to command—though still as a mere volunteer officer under censure and still subject to General Halleck's often paralyzing domination. Grant instantly began, after his habit, to plan a further campaign of damage to the enemies of the Union. One opportunity had been denied to him. He sought another.

In the meanwhile his capture of Forts Henry and Donelson had split the Confederate line of defense in two and rendered its further maintenance an utter impossibility. With the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers in Federal possession it was manifestly absurd to think of maintaining a line of defense which those rivers traversed. The success of Grant had completely ended all possibility of coöperation between the eastern and western wings of that defensive line. The forces west of the Tennessee and those east of that river must henceforth act independently and rather hopelessly, or else they must retire to a new line farther south upon which coöperation might be possible.

It was decided to retire. Bowling Green was evacuated and the Federal General Buell instantly occupied it. A little later Nashville was evacuated by the Confederates in behalf of a less exposed position. It was at the same time determined to withdraw from Columbus all the forces assembled there except a garrison sufficient to work the guns, and to defend the point for a time with the aid of Commodore Hollins's gunboats in the Mississippi.

The new line of defense adopted by the Confederates was the Memphis and Charleston railroad, running through southern Tennessee and northern Mississippi, Alabama, etc. This line presented no natural advantages of defense, but it covered the most vitally important railroad communications of the Confederacy. Furthermore it will be observed that this line of defense lies almost exactly midway between the Ohio River and the Gulf of Mexico. In other words, under Grant's energetic aggressiveness, the Federal control had been pushed from the Ohio river nearly half way to the gulf. The process of "splitting the Confederacy in two," was already well advanced at the beginning of the spring of 1862.

It was always the keynote of Grant's policy to "press things," and after his period of suspension from command he began again to carry out that obviously wise policy.

As the dominant thought in General Grant's strategy from beginning to end of the war, he was strongly impressed with the fact that the North was vastly superior to the South in all military resources, and as a man of practical common sense it was his idea that this superiority in men, arms, ammunition, food supplies, and all else that tends to help military endeavor should be insistently and persistently utilized in the breaking of Confederate resistance within the briefest possible time. The ancient thought of divine arbitrament in arms had no place in his mind. The notion was incredible to him that two armies should stand still and do nothing while a David on the one side and a Goliath on the other should make a personal trial of conclusions. He was not lacking in chivalry or sentiment, as abundantly appeared on several conspicuous occasions, but he had besides an all-dominating common sense, and he used it. He fully agreed with the Confederate General Forrest in his definition of strategy as the art of "getting there first with the most men." He did not understand modern warfare to be in any wise akin to a medieval tournament in which equality of opportunity must be sought at all costs. Quite on the contrary he regarded war as a perfectly practical matter of business, to be carried on as such. He clearly saw it to be what it is and always must be, a cruel survival from barbaric times, a measuring of brute strength in that last appeal of humanity, to the arbitrament of arms.

His common sense taught him that whatever of science there might be involved in the conduct of war, its results depended after all upon brute force. It was therefore his plan always to bring to bear all that he possessed of brute force for the solution of the problems at issue, and, wherever he could, to press his adversary with heavier battalions than that adversary could muster.

Having been set free again with permission to resume active warfare, Grant intuitively desired to push forward, pressing his adversary at every point, seizing upon every assailable position and making himself master of every place from which further war could be waged with hope of success.

As we have seen, he had been called back from this program of common sense after his capture of Forts Henry and Donelson, and until March 13 he was not again allowed to do anything whatever or to use his abilities in any manner in the public service.