Our Standard-Bearer; Or, The Life of General Uysses S. Grant

by Oliver Optic

General Grant was therefore ordered to make a movement which should threaten Columbus, and thus compel Polk to retain his force. Accordingly, he sent Colonel Oglesby towards the point he was to menace, and also directed General Smith at Paducah to march towards Columbus, and demonstrate in the rear of that place. The point to be gained was simply to prevent reënforcements from being sent over the river, for Grant was prohibited from making an attack upon the threatened point.

Belmont was partially fortified. It was a camp for rebel troops, from which they could conveniently be sent to coöperate with Price or Jeff. Thompson, and a depot of supplies gathered up in Missouri and Arkansas, where they could be readily sent over to Columbus. On the evening of November 6, Grant started down the river with a fleet of steamers, under the convoy of two gunboats, to demonstrate on a larger scale against the enemy's stronghold. He had with him a force of thirty-one hundred men, comprising five regiments of infantry, two squadrons of cavalry, and a section of artillery. The movement was not intended as an attack, even upon Belmont, at the beginning. His troops were exceedingly raw, some of them having received their arms only two days before.

The fleet continued down the river about ten miles, and Grant made a feint of landing on the Kentucky side, remaining at the shore till the next morning, to give color to the idea that, with Smith, he intended to attack Columbus. But during the night he ascertained that Polk was crossing large bodies of troops to Belmont, with the evident intention of pursuing Oglesby. Then the intrepid general decided to "clean out" the camp at Belmont. This was literally what he intended to do, and as every man's success ought to be measured by his intentions, it is very important that this fact should be fully comprehended. It is absurd to suppose that a military man of Grant's experience proposed to take and hold the place. He had every reason to believe the enemy had double his force, and he knew that they were well provided with steamers and gunboats, and could send over reënforcements rapidly; and he was also aware that Belmont was covered by the guns of Columbus. Against this odds, and under these circumstances, he could not for a moment have entertained the idea of securing a permanent advantage. He contemplated only a bold dash, which was sufficient to accomplish the object of the expedition.

The little army was landed at Hunter's Point, three miles above the rebel works, and just out of the range of the Columbus batteries. The line was formed, and, with Grant in the advance with the skirmishers, moved forward. It soon encountered the enemy, and drove them before it. The action waxed warmer and warmer as the lines of national troops advanced, and the contest became very severe. Grant still kept in front, animating the soldiers by his heroic example, in utter contempt of anything like danger. His horse was killed under him, and he was in peril from first to last; but his gallant behavior stimulated the civilian colonels under him, and they stood up squarely to the work before them. Thus led, the raw soldiers from Illinois behaved like veterans, and fought with the utmost desperation. The contest continued for four hours, at the end of which time the Union troops had driven the rebels foot by foot to their works; and then, charging through the abatis which surrounded the fortifications, forced the beaten foe to the river. Several hundred prisoners and all the rebel guns were captured, and the camp broken up.

Grant had reached his objective point, and his success was thorough and complete. He had accomplished all he proposed, and it only remained for him to retire from the field, which was of course as much a part of his original intention as was the attack. As the hour of prosperity is often the most dangerous, so was the moment of victory the most perilous to these gallant troops. Their success seemed to intoxicate them, and instead of pursuing their advantage upon the rebel force, sheltering themselves beneath the bluff of the river, they went about plundering the deserted camp. Their colonels, no better disciplined, indulged their vanity in making Union speeches.

General Grant discovered that the enemy was sending steamer loads of troops across the river, to a point above the camp, to intercept his retreat; and he was anxious to get back to his transports before they arrived. He attempted to form his lines again, but the men were too much disorganized to heed orders. The general then directed his staff-officers to set fire to the camp, in order to check the plunder. The smoke attracted the attention of the rebels at Columbus, who opened fire upon the Unionists. Shot and shell brought them to a sense of their duty; the line was formed, and they marched towards the steamers, three miles distant.

The defeated rebels, under the bank of the river, having been reënforced by the arrival of three regiments from Columbus, marched to a point which enabled them to intercept the victorious army. An officer, on discovering the fact, dashed furiously up to the cool commander, and in a highly-excited tone cried, "We are surrounded!"

"Well, if that is so, we must cut our way out, as we cut our way in," replied Grant, apparently unmoved even by this tremendous circumstance.

His troops were brave men, but such a disaster as being surrounded suggested to their inexperience only the alternative of surrender, and, under many commanders, such a result must have been inevitable. What paralyzes the soldier often produces the same effect upon the leader; but Grant was not "demoralized." No apparent reverses could exhaust his unconquerable pluck; he never despaired, and worked up a situation out of which another could make nothing but defeat, until he brought forth victory.