"I say, Granger, I wish you would give me and my staff something to eat—only a mouthful—only a mouthful, and a cup of coffee. Haven't had any thing to eat since daylight."
"See you starved first," muttered Granger sotto voce, but still loud enough to be heard. "Why don't you 'live off the country?'"
He did, however, give Sherman his rations—of the plainest materials he could gather—"Lincoln platform" (hard bread) and rye coffee, but could not avoid the temptation to repeatedly apologize for the plain fare by the remark,
"You see, general, we have to 'live off the country.'"
Although a great admirer of Rosecrans, Granger was not more particular in his language to him than to Sherman. After Thomas had fallen back to Rossville, after the battle of Chickamauga, he sent General Granger to Chattanooga to represent the situation to Rosecrans, and obtain his order to retire upon Chattanooga. Granger found Rosecrans, and had very little difficulty in arguing him into adopting Thomas's ideas. He sat down at a table, and, with Granger looking over his shoulder, began to write the order to Thomas to fall back. Instead of making it a brief command, Rosecrans went on to detail how the retreat must be conducted, how the troops should be marshaled, this division here and another there, who should be in the van and who in the rear, and was adding that great fires must be built all along the line before the retreat began, in order to deceive the enemy into the belief that they were going to stay there (a favorite trick of the wily Rosecrans), when Granger interrupted him—
"Oh, that's all nonsense, general! Send Thomas an order to retire. He knows what he's about as well as you do."
Rosecrans silently obeyed, tore up the order, and wrote another, which proved a model of brevity, and fully as satisfactory to Thomas.
This independence in speech rather interfered with Granger's character for gallantry—sadly so on one occasion, in the estimation of a charming Miss Saunders, of Nashville, step-daughter of Governor Aaron V. Brown, and a niece of the rebel General Gideon Pillow. Miss Saunders was particularly proud of her uncle Gideon, and never lost an opportunity of sounding his praise. On one occasion she was indulging in this praise of Pillow to Granger, and among other things remarked that her uncle "would have held a very high rank in the Confederate army had it not been for the personal enmity existing between him and Jeff Davis. Very unexpectedly, the ungallant and over-candid Granger replied,
"General Pillow never amounted to much."