ON THIS DAY: Tuesday, Feb. 11, 1862

A “convocation,” not a council

In a “council of war” aboard the steamboat New Uncle Sam, docked at Fort Henry in northwestern Tennessee, Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant sits and smokes silently, “but never said a word,” one of the generals—Lew Wallace (right)—later recalled of the meeting, called to plan the attack on Fort Donelson. “In all probability he was framing the orders of march which were issued that night,” sniffed Wallace, who considered the meeting “a convocation” and not a traditional council, wherein give-and-take was expected.

If General Wallace—better known today for writing Ben Hur than for his generalship—was put out by what he seemed to think was a sham council of war (to be followed in a few weeks by a serious issue between Wallace and Grant), he nonetheless sketched an accurate word picture of Grant the man. “From the first his silence was remarkable,” Wallace wrote of Grant. “He knew how to keep his temper. In battle, as in camp, he went about quietly, speaking in a conversational tone; yet he appeared to see everything that went on , and was always intent on business.”

The quiet solemnity of this man who seemed impossible to ruffle and yet was a great noticer of everything around him would be remarked upon again and again by others. To Wallace, Grant seemed supremely inner-directed, issuing orders with calm confidence and so little discussion thatt “his aides were little more than messengers.” There would be occasions as the war progressed when Grant would be more consultative, but Wallace’s description of Grant’s appearance would remain unchanged: “In dress he was plain, even negligent; in partial amendment of that his horse was always a good one and well kept.”

ELSEWHERE IN THE CIVIL WAR:

At home on furlough in Ohio since February 4, Lt. Col. Rutherford B. Hayes finally emerges to pay a visit in Columbus to visit his brother-in-law. In Washington, President Lincoln listens to a stenographic report of testimony given in the case of Gen. Charles S. Stone of Massachusetts, suspected of treason in connection with the debacle at Balls Bluff last October. Sen. Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio, chairman of the Committee on the Conduct of the War, is one of the bloodhounds dogging General Stone; War Secretary Edwin M. Stanton, also of Ohio, is another. However, most of Lincoln’s day is devoted to his deathly ill son, Willie, and son Tad, now ill as well. The White House reception usually held on Tuesdays is cancelled for this reason.

IT’S COMING SOONER THAN YOU THINK: April 12, 2011—less than 3½ years from now!—will be the 150^th anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War. In 1861, April 12 was the day Confederates opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.

Your suggestions, comments, and questions about this blog are always welcome. Address the author: Ohioan@bloodtearsandglory.com

For more information about the author and his newest book, please go to http://www.orangefrazer.com/btg

ON THIS DAY: Sunday, Feb. 9, 1862

“Your plain brother”

The most important people in the life of Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant are his wife, Julia Dent Grant, and their four children. They form his snug harbor of safety, support, and love. Throughout the war, he will bring them to live at his headquarters whenever it is safe to do so.

Grant’s family has been living with him at Cairo, Illinois, headquarters of his District of Cairo, but now that the general is on the warpath, Julia and the children are about to leave the war zone and join Grant’s mother, father, and sister in Covington, Kentucky.

Grant’s mother and father are two pieces of work with whom the general has an uneasy relationship. His mother is a strangely silent monolith, a brooding presence who seems to live in her own world, neither reachable nor reaching out. Father Jesse (above, right) is one of those hard-headed, hard-shell strivers with whom nineteenth-century frontier America abounded, a man who expects to use his son’s position for his own benefit and who does not hesitate to complain to Ulysses about the conduct of the war. It can be safely assumed that words of praise from either parent are rare.

So, these days, when Ulysses writes home, he likes to write his sister, Mary. Still unable to advance from Fort Henry to Fort Donelson, he sits down with pen and ink “to let you know that I am alive and well.”

He goes to explain that he writes her “a very hasty and random letter simply to let you know that I believe you still remember me and [that we are] carrying on a conversation while [I am] writing with my staff and others.” He adds, “Julia will be with you in a few days….”

The unpretentious, plain-spoken Ulysses S. Grant, something of a stoic in his quiet manner, is not often self-revelatory, but to his sister he unbends a bit:

You have no conception of the amount of labor I have to perform. An army of men all helpless looking to the commanding officer for every supply. Your plain brother however, as yet, had no reason to feel himself unequal to the task and fully believes that he will carry on a successful campaign against our rebel enemy. I do not speak boastfully but utter a presentiment.

The father is so unwilling to credit his son that perhaps the son feels the need to make a statement to home base on his own behalf.

ELSEWHERE IN THE CIVIL WAR: The Joint Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War, headed by Ohio Sen. Benjamin F. Wade, interprets its oversight role broadly and has a tendency to interfere or raise suspicions more out of war-time anxiety than real evidence. Eager to fix blame for the Union debacle at Balls Bluff, Virginia, last October, it recommends the arrest of Brig. Gen. Charles F. Stone on suspicion of treason. On War Department orders, Stone will be imprisoned for 189 days without charges or trial, then released without explanation. To this day, Stone’s imprisonment stands as an example of the injustices and violations of civil rights that can occur because of war-time paranoia.

IT’S COMING SOONER THAN YOU THINK: April 12, 2011—less than 3½ years from now!—will be the 150^th anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War. In 1861, April 12 was the day Confederates opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.

Your suggestions, comments, and questions about this blog are always welcome. Address the author: Ohioan@bloodtearsandglory.com

For more information about the author and his newest book, please go to http://www.orangefrazer.com/btg

ON THIS DAY: Monday, Jan. 6, 1862

“No prospect of…danger”

From Camp Wickliffe in Kentucky, where the 41^st Ohio and several thousand other Midwestern volunteer soldiers sit, yearning for action, 1^st. Lt. Emerson Opdycke (pictured here) writes “My dear wife,” Lucy, in Warren, Ohio.

Bad news: he will not be granted a hoped-for furlough because of the “exigencies of the service.” Pish-tosh, according to Opdycke, a self-confident man who never minces words: “I see no prospect of immediate danger and I am exceedingly disappointed…I do not believe there will be [a forward movement within 10 days], so I am bound to nurse my ‘disappoint.’” (In fact, there will be no forward movement by stolid Brig. Gen. Don Carlos Buell’s Army of the Ohio for five weeks.)

Opdycke tells Lucy that sickness, “principally measles,” is sweeping the camp, especially Opdycke’s 41^st Ohio. One of his men had died from measles on Christmas eve. The death deeply saddened Opdycke because the captain of a company is “something of a father to his men.”

It is not yet dawn and Opdycke is writing the letter by candlelight. He tells Lucy he is well supplied, with eggs, plentiful at 15 cents a dozen, and “plenty of good fresh beef. ” For a New Year’s celebration, he was able to purchase a can of peaches and some cheese.

“Eggs are frying" for Opdycke’s breakfast and "as soon as this [letter] is folded and directed, they will be ready for a splendid appetite.”

ELSEWHERE IN THE CIVIL WAR: President Abraham Lincoln is becoming frustrated with Brig. Gen. Don Carlos Buell’s stalling. Lincoln wants him to advance on East Tennessee in support of the Union loyalists there. Buell, however, prefers to advance on Nashville, which neither Lincoln nor General-in-Chief George B. McClellan think is a good idea. Buell’s attempt to justify himself to Lincoln draws the President’s rebuke by wire today: “Your dispatch of yesterday…disappoints and distresses me.” But Lincoln, who at this early stage of the war, is trying to make do with the generals he has, does not order Buell forward, only expresses “the grounds of my anxiety.”

Buell is not Lincoln’s only problem general. Frustration over McClellan’s failure to act is rising as well. Ohio Sen. Benjamin F. Wade, a Radical Republican who is chairman of the (Joint Congressional) Committee on the Conduct of the War, demands Lincoln remove McClellan from command. Preferring to give McClellan more time, Lincoln rejects Wade’s demand.

But the clock is ticking for the careers of both reluctant generals.

IT’S COMING SOONER THAN YOU THINK: April 12, 2011—less than 3½ years from now!—will be the 150^th anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War. In 1861, April 12 was the day Confederates opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.

Your suggestions, comments, and questions about this blog are always welcome. Address the author: Ohioan@bloodtearsandglory.com

For more information about the author and his newest book, please go to http://www.orangefrazer.com/btg