Grant, before Shiloh

By late February, 1862 General Grant was a newly minted Major General without a command. In a foreshadowing of what would happen along the banks of the Tennessee river in April, Grant's tiny command of 27,000 investing Fort Donelson was surprised in an early morning breakout attempt by the bottled up Confederates. Through the incompetence of the Confederate command, the wildly successful smashing of McLernand's division of which the brunt of the attack fell upon, Confederate General Floyd who decided to turn and try to route the next division in line instead of moving his charges down the now open road to Nashville. The brunt of this attack fell upon General Lew Wallace's 3^rd Division.

W.E. Woodward's biography of Grant states that Grant was called by Flag Officer Foote's flagship for a conference owing to being then unable to get about easily due to a wound. This happenstance took Grant away from the scene of the sudden attack by the Confederates, an unfortunate coincidence that would have consequences later. The early morning parley with Foote brings a most uncomfortable consequence for Grant. His visit is hard to account for how much time he spent and why he did not hear the battle raging no more than three miles away on his right. That he did not hear it is attested by other witnesses on board Foote's flagship. What has been questioned is how much time he spent there. The other being why was he not informed of the attack right away. Grant's own staff should have known where he was, but Grant's detractors later said he spent half the day lounging in Foote's state room smoking cigars and drinking. Woodward states that this rumor was indefensible given Foote's high degree of prohibition against any intoxicant on any vessel of his command. Still, the time is unaccounted for and in his official report of the action Wallace states that he did not see Grant until well after 3pm once the Confederate attack upon his division had been stopped.

In the world of military politics and with a commanding officer, Major General Henry W. Halleck, establishing a severe dislike of the ramshackle Grant, it is not too hard to imagine that Wallace's report, which Grant would have eventually seen, did not paint his participation in the battle in too favorable of a light. That Grant did reverse the morning's misfortune notwithstanding, a cloud was hanging over his generalship. If he cast blame upon Wallace is not known, but it was entered into the official record of the battle and Grant himself makes mention of his whereabouts that morning in his own official account of the action but fails to clarify how long he was in conference with Foote. Aside from reports from Lt. Col McPherson, the army's chief engineer, Flag Officer Foote, and General McLernand, Wallace's report is the only one that makes mention of Grant's presence at all on the battlefield.

With the surrender of Fort Donelson on the 16^th, Grant falls afoul of Halleck when he takes a trip to Nashville to confer with Buell whose entrance into the Tennessee state capital crowned an extraordinarily bad month for the Confederacy. Halleck, fed up with his upstart general and feeling somewhat threatened by his sudden rise to national acclaim fires off several complaints to General McClellan, in command at this time of all the military forces for the Union, requesting permission to relieve Grant of command for his unauthorized absence. Short of arresting Grant, Halleck does the next best thing, leaving him dawdling about Donelson with nothing to do and no troops to command. For two weeks Halleck leaves him there to stew until giving him orders to rejoin his command on the banks of the Tennessee at Pittsburg Landing and Crump's Landing. Once there, Grant remains in a funk until the battle.

Woodward's biography draws comparisons from the Grant that we know and love who eventually rose to the highest rank in the US military, a post once held by Washington, and the Grant who commanded the Army of the Tennessee in April, 1862 and states that Grant is off of his game. Establishing his command post eight miles downriver at Savannah and shuttling back and forth every day, Grant does not stay on the field with his army and remains quasi out of touch with the dispositions that General Smith, given command of the army in place of Grant by Halleck, made of the army. A further fall from a horse a few days before the battle leaves him in constant pain and unable to ride a horse for very long. His own statements notwithstanding as to why he tarried in Savannah as long as he did, Grant's behavior during this episode is out of character and suspect. It is easy, then to speculate and imagine that the mystery of the unwritten order to Wallace at Crump's Landing was indeed to join the right flank of Sherman's division and not, as the second order later in the day was, to march by the river road to Pittsburg Landing. Speculation only, as no court of inquiry was convened that would have opened up much more evidence in either support or condemnation of Wallace officially.

He said, he said

General Lew Wallace

General Wallace was faced with a problem. 6 miles as the crow flies from the scene of the morning's surprise attack on Grant's army encamped at Pittsburg Landing and following orders that he states changed their tune mid way through his march.

I've puzzled over this for some time. If the orders that Grant was supposed to have sent to Wallace via Captain Baxter had been logged and, as dictated by Grant, entered into that log, would not the controversy over why Wallace took the Purdy road instead of the more direct road to Pittsburg Landing be over?

In his article, as alluded to in prior posts, General Henry Carrington surmises that due to Grant's swollen and injured ankle, he was more reliant upon his staff officers to send and note his orders given his lack of mobility. In this instance, a verbal order by Grant to Baxter that was written in Baxter's own hand and then delivered to Wallace later that morning. Carrington further surmises that Baxter, given Grant's orders to have Wallace close up with his right, knowing that at this time in the morning the full details of the fight being still foggy, wrote down the order so as to interpret what Grant wanted, i.e. Wallace on the right of the line next to Sherman instead of at Pittsburg Landing.

Wallace further relates in his letter to Grant years later (also alluded to in previous post) that Baxter first verbally then by written order communicated success of Union arms on the right necessitating the need for Wallace to close on Sherman's right flank via a march down the Purdy road. He states:

…Perhaps I should here state that this order was not signed by anyone, but coming as it did through one of the Staff Officers of the Commanding General, could not be questioned. I would also state in this connection, that when I met Captain Baxter first, I asked him how things were going. He replied that Grant was driving the enemy at all points.

We know this to not be the case, as the left of Grant's line, the division of Prentiss was in fact crumbling and only redeemed by a quick consolidation at the sunken road by remnants of Prentiss', WHL Wallace, and Hurlbut's commands. If Baxter really did relate these things, it shows how in the dark Grant and or Baxter really was at that hour, approximately 8 am when Grant dispatched the captain to Wallace. In his official report, Wallace stated thusly:

At 11.30 o'clock the anticipated order arrived, directing me to come up and take position on the right of the army and form my line of battle at a right angle with the river. As it also directed me to leave a force to prevent surprise at Crump's Landing, the Fifty-sixth Ohio and Sixty-eighth Ohio Regiments were detached for that purpose, with one gun from Lieutenant Thurber's battery. Selecting a road that led directly to the right of the lines as they were established around Pittsburg Landing on Sunday morning, my column started immediately, the distance being about 6 miles. The cannonading, distinctly audible, quickened the steps of the men. Snake Creek, difficult of passage at all times, on account of its steep banks and swampy bottoms, ran between me and the point of junction. Short way from it Captain Rowley, from General Grant, and attached to his staff, overtook me. From him I learned that our lines had been beaten back; that the right, to which I was proceeding, was then fighting close to the river, and that the road pursued would take me in the enemy's rear, where, in the unfortunate condition of the battle, my command was in danger of being entirely cut off. It seemed, on his representation, most prudent to carry the column across to what is called the "River road," which, following the windings of the Tennessee bottoms, crossed Snake Creek by a good bridge close to Pittsburg Landing. This movement occasioned a counter-march, which delayed my junction with the main army until a little after night-fall. The information brought me by Captain Rowley was confirmed by Colonel McPherson and Captain Rawlins, also of the general's staff, who came up while I was crossing to the River road. About 1 o'clock at night my brigades and batteries were disposed, forming the extreme right, and ready for battle.

Something must be said, at this point, about battle reports. Each commanding officer was required to give an account of himself to his superior upon any occasion. Indeed, much of the Official Records of the War of Rebellion are full of mundane reports of actions taken or events witnessed. Herein lies a problem. These reports, written after the fact, were occasion for an officer to trump up his own deeds and belittle the deeds of others. We see this in Captain Rowley's report in my last post. Rowley wastes little time in making him to be the hero and Wallace the goat. It is also clear from Wallace's own report that he had little intimation that he was going to be made a scapegoat for the failure of the first day's action.

What is the evidence?

General Lew Wallace, finding himself at the helm of Smith's division in the middle of the conflagration that would become Shiloh, was in the unenviable post of being separated from the rest of the army at Crump's Landing, six miles as the crow files from Pittsburg Landing. Swampy, forested, and cut by a poor circuit of dirt roads made communication overland time consuming. Early fears of the loss of either of the convenient places to land supplies within reach of any move upon Corinth, Mississippi lead to the dispatching of Smith's 6^th Division to three camps around Crump's Landing. In Grant's memoirs, he states he was initially fearful that the confederates might make a move to take Crump's Landing overland and therefore, especially as he wrestled with the object of the confederate attack. He states this as his reason for having Wallace hold his division in readiness to move until he had developed the enemy's intentions.

Grant knew the road network leading to Crump's overland was indirect and communications over it lengthy. Grant's visit to Wallace at Crump's occurred at 8 am, his order to Wallace to move didn't arrive until 11 am over this lousy road network. Three hours was in the balance for Grant, it would take that long for any communication to get to Wallace and take longer for Wallace to get his division to where it was being ordered. In a battle, a moment is too late even when communications are instantaneous. Communications at Shiloh and in any battle of the Civil War was by horse and any communication of orders would have to take into account that whatever goal Grant had in mind for Wallace, it would have to be with the foreknowledge that the battle situation would be different by the time Wallace's division made the field. Was Grant's intention to tuck the 6^th division away at the landing because the course of the battle was unpredictable or, like any field commander, made a judgment based upon the information he had at the time?

In Grant's official report, he states that due to the circuitous route Wallace needed to take, it took him until evening to arrive on the field. It isn't clear if Grant held any ill will towards Wallace regarding his divisions tardiness, but he at least did not communicate any ill feelings in his official report.

Captain John A. Rawlins, an aid de camp of Grant, states that Grant dispatched Captain Baxter to order Wallace from Crump's Landing to move to the right of the line. However, he further states that Wallace refused to comply without a written order and that Grant then dispatched Rawlins with orders for Wallace to march by the river road, crossing snake creek and the bridge over it and end up at the Landing on the right of the line. Rawlins encounters Wallace along the Purdy road and not the River road as he expected and communicated Grant's orders to Wallace who "indignantly" refuted refusing an order written or not. Rawlins further states that Wallace expressed ignorance of the river road and lamely stated that he was on the road his cavalry headed down. He further communicated to Rawlins that as neither he nor anyone on his staff knew of the river road, he would need Rawlins to act as guide.

I find it incredible that Wallace would not have known about this road, having been encamped at Crump's for weeks and in communication with the rest of the army this whole time. Rawlins' statement regarding this seems overly to the point of feeding the idea that Wallace was in a state of poor command. But, the source must be considered here, coming from a close confidant and ardent supporter of Grant throughout the war and his aid de camp, a position given to ones close friends and supporters. More on this in further posts.

General Lew Wallace at Shiloh

On Feburary 29^th, 1868 Lew Wallace penned a letter to Ulysses S. Grant, Wallace's former commander and about to be elected President of the United States. Wallace opens his letter stating that he became aware of Grant's disquiet and disapproval of Wallace's performance at the battle of Shiloh but was counseled to withdraw his request for a court of inquiry, seeking instead to redress in person the smudge to his and his division's honor.

What happened? As the large encampment at Pittsburg Landing was surprised on the morning of April 6^th, 1862 and was in the process of being overrun by Albert Sidney Johnston's Army of Tennessee. Wallace, in temporary command of Grant's 6^th Division in place of an ailing General Smith, was encamped at Crump's Landing five miles as the crow flies from Pittsburg Landing was ordered by Grant personally to prepare to move at 8 am as he (Grant) made his way by paddlewheel up river from his HQ at Savannah. Grant, upon learning of the situation at Pittsuburg Landing sent a Captain Baxter with orders for Wallace's division to begin moving. Here is where the controversy starts. What was the order? By what route to take and by what result to achieve by moving?

Grant, in his memoirs, written after his two terms in office and while dying of throat cancer, had this to say about what his orders where:

Up to that time I had felt by no means certain that Crump's landing might not be the point of attack. On reaching the front, however, about eight A.M., I found that the attack on Pittsburg was unmistakable, and that nothing more than a small guard, to protect our transports and stores, was needed at Crump's. Captain Baxter, a quartermaster on my staff, was accordingly directed to go back and order General Wallace to march immediately to Pittsburg by the road nearest the river. Captain Baxter made a memorandum of this order. (chapter 14, paragraph 10)

Wallace, by virtue of letters in his possession of statements by his former subordinates and by his own statements tells a different tale in his letter to Grant:

…On the contrary, the order I received from your messenger was in writing, unsigned, and contained substantially the following instructions: "You will leave a force at Crump's Landing sufficient to guard the public property there; then march the rest of your division, and effect a junction with the right of the army; after which you will form your line of battle at right angles with the river, and act as circumstances dictate." (Major General Lew Wallace at Shiloh, Bay State Monthly magazine, vol 2 issue 6 1885)

The question becomes, whose memory is correct? Was it the second order, the order Grant dispatched after 1 pm to Wallace - the one that was recorded and signed by him, ordering Wallace to the Landing and not the right of the line? The first order, dispatched in a hurry and not signed and therefore not logged and delivered by Captain Baxter, could it have stated Grant's wish to re-enforce Sherman's pressed division on the right and thus either save it from further retreat or to fall upon the enemy's extended left flank in a coup de main? Wallace collected statements from several of his brigade commanders and those who met personally Captain Baxter as he made his way through the tangle of poor roads leading to Wallace's camps at Crump's.

Of all of the controversies surrounding the battle, this is probably the most well known and the one that is the most reported as Wallace becoming confused or lost on his way to joining the battle. I'll have more on this in further entries.

Working on screenplay

I finished working through my screenplay where I left off at the end of the first act. It took me awhile to figure out what I had been doing those four years ago and where to pick up. I had forgotten that the main plan for the story line came from the book Ten Days to Destiny by Kiriakopoulos, a very in-depth look at the campaign from all sides. The history reads much like a story, and that is more the job of a historian today, telling stories. There are elements to a story that have to be in place before it can succeed and I like the story woven in the history of this battle.

My dilemma is how to treat the Cretan partisans. When we think of resistance movements in WWII we think of the French Underground, or the Dutch, or the Russian, or the Yugoslavs under Tito. But, are they the innocent doves we have been treated to in television and movie? They are innocents compared with the occupying Germans who are the villains in any story. That is not history, at least not complete history. It is public consumption history, trite and lacking in the complexity that is reality.

Our own history vaunts the Minuteman militia companies that met the British at Concord Green. A long tradition of militia service formed our frontiers and acted as a protection from marauding Indians and enemy colonial empires. But, if it were not for the Continental Army would we have won our independence? Our own Civil War had but few examples of disorganized volunteer formations beating formations of regulars, like the battle for Val Verde ford on the Rio Grande in New Mexico. If not for the few regular regiments left in New Mexico and the largely un-reliable New Mexican volunteer formations the Confederate invasion might have been beaten. Yet, there is still a world of difference between a volunteer formation and a militia one.

What is my dilemma? Should the act of sabotage or murder be condoned by merely the target of such activity? Is not terrorism an act perpetrated by irregular formations without legal sanction? Are the Sadrist militia formations in Iraq freedom fighters or terrorists? How about Al Queda? Is there a popular uprising in Iraq or a conflict fueled by adherents to Islam from foreign lands who want to kill American soldiers? Are the resistance movements from WWII on the same par as the Viet Cong? Unfortunately these are not apples to apples comparisons. The French Underground became useful tools to the Allied command, but were they really trusted?

The problem with popular uprisings is they are not affiliated with any ideology save for resistance to the dominating force thrust upon them. They can and did just as easily oppose and become problematic for those they allied themselves with, for the absence of a common enemy can lead to the weapons once supplied being turned upon you. Ho Chi Mhin was once an ally only because we were at war against the Japanese.

The Cretan civilians who fought against the German Fallschirmjaeger and Gebirgsjaeger who took Crete did so out of a long tradition for being independent and ungovernable. Some practiced wonton acts of murder in cold blood against troops who refused to see them as anything other than civilians. This is the problem when factoring in the irregulars who roamed the Cretan hillsides "poaching" at isolated Fallschirmjaeger. Soldiers kill other soldiers, but what is it when a civilian, a non-combatant does it? For our own part, we have called them heroes because they fought the Hun who took their land. But, is it heroism? Sadam's Fedayeen were irregulars, not soldiers paid by their government.

This is going to be the challenge in this script, to depict the Cretan irregulars in a proper but truthful light. I do not want to portray them as angels forced to do it, but as men and women who acted upon their cultural heritage of intransigence. I also have the telling of history to adhere to, for terrorist or freedom fighter history has classified all resistance movements against German or Japanese occupation as such. But, the things happening in Iraq beg the question of activity alone. Are irregulars, no matter who they are fighting, to be treated as combatants or as terrorists?