ON THIS DAY: Saturday, Dec. 28, 1861

“General Order No. 26”

Since Thursday, Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant (pictured here) has been in the field, inspecting his troops wherever they are in the Military District of Cairo. In his absence, Capt. John A. Rawlins, Grant’s assistant adjutant general (and most important staff officer), issues “General Order No. 26,” which the general had previously signed.

Grant’s order declares that all displaced citizens loyal to the United States, who have been driven into Grant’s territory from their homes in southwest Missouri, shall be “comfortably supported” by Union authorities.

Although the Federals occupy the northern two-thirds of Missouri, Confederate regulars under Sterling Price and irregulars under such desperadoes as William Quantrill are making life hard for Union loyalists in the southern third of the state.

The order does not say exactly how loyalists are to be accommodated, so local commanders are on their own in figuring out how to provide shelter and support for the unfortunate loyalists.

However, higher authority than Grant—namely, Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, Grant’s superior—has figured out how to pay for whatever local commanders need.

Grant’s soldiers will canvass the District of Cairo, collecting forced “contributions” from Southerners deemed sympathetic to the Confederate cause. Things will go worse for “persons of Northern birth and education,” Grant’s order declares. Those deliberately unloyal Northerners will be assessed at a rate 50 percent “more than Southern men of their class of guilt and means.”

Again, just how this will be done is left unsaid. So goes the administration of justice and the solving of social problems in this early stage of the Civil War in Missouri.

PLEASE REMEMBER: Observance of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War begins in 2011...fewer than four years away!

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ON THIS DAY: Saturday, Nov. 23, 1861

“Life with ‘Old Brains’”

Badly rattled by the pressures of command in Kentucky, Brig. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman reports to the headquarters of the Department of the Missouri in St. Louis. The department commander, Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck (shown above), gives Sherman a position on his headquarters staff.

Now Halleck has under his orders two relatively unknown officers with unknown futures: Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, commander of the District of Southeast Missouri, and Sherman. How will he use these men?

Halleck is a smart man. He graduated third in his class at West Point and is the author of Military Art and Science. For his erudition, he is known throughout the Army as “Old Brains.” He is a skillful organizer and administrator, a man of paperwork and bureaucracy.

Like many other West Point graduates, Halleck retired from the calcified Army in the 1850s, discouraged by the limited opportunities for advancement. Originally from New York, he moved to California where he became a highly successful lawyer. With the outbreak of the Civil War, his reputed abilities won him a place on the Union military’s fast track, starting with a major generalship. Now he has a chance to put that book learning to work.

An old friend of Sherman’s, Halleck sympathizes with the frazzled Ohioan and promptly puts him in a “safe” staff position. Sherman’s first assignment: tour the state, count noses, and tell Halleck just how many soldiers he has, where they are, and how well equipped they seem to be. The job should not faze Sherman .

But it will, as Halleck will quickly learn.

>>> NOTE: Thanksgiving in 1861 will be observed next Thursday.

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ON THIS DAY: Thursday, Nov. 21, 1861

“I Am Not Myself”

Still in Louisville and still in turmoil over the Union cause there, Brig. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman (shown on right) pours out his feelings.

“I have never seen daylight” while in command in Kentucky, Sherman writes to Robert Anderson, who had relinquished the same position because of nervous strain. Sherman adds, “I am therefore disqualified to lead….I am not myself.”

To politician-brother John Sherman, Cump writes that he wishes he could “now hide myself in some obscure corner.” In a few days, he will do almost exactly that. He will be transferred out of the Department of the Ohio to the Department of the Missouri, where he will take a mundane staff position under Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck.

Fellow Ohioan Don Carlos Buell has taken over Sherman’s Kentucky command and seems headed for glory while Sherman seems destined for oblivion. But stunning reversals of fortune await both Buell and Sherman.

>>> Elsewhere, in an age of open n anti-Semitism, something unusual happens in the Confederacy. CSA Attorney General Judah P. Benjamin, a Jew, becomes the new secretary of war. Benjamin will do as well as anyone could have in an extraordinarily difficult position, but after a few months he will change to the secretary of state’s position and serve there until the end of the war.

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ON THIS DAY: Wednesday, Nov. 20, 1861

“Paper Trails”

Eager for combat, Grant wastes no time contacting Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, who took command of the Department of the Missouri only yesterday. Grant had been talking with Halleck’s predecessor, General Frémont, about sending an expedition down the Mississippi River. Grant carefully does not mention this in his telegram to Halleck, Instead, he only asks to be allowed to see Halleck personally in St. Louis “with the view of making known in person the wants & conditions of this command.” We can guess what Grant’s biggest “want” is.

Halleck, who is endowed with an abundance of caution but a shortage of patience, either sees through Grant’s little subterfuge or is just too busy settling into his new office. He snaps back by wire, “You will send reports, in writing….[You] cannot just now be ordered to St. Louis.” So there.

Grant, who knows how to attack on more than one front, also writes a letter to his Congressman, Elihu B. Washburn, who lives in Galena, Illinois, where, for about a year, Grant lived as well. Washburn helped Grant win his appointment to the volunteer army and now is the general’s patron and advocate in Washington. He has helped secure improved weaponry for Grant’s forces.

Grant thanks Washburn for “the very flattering interest you have taken in my personal welfare and advancement” and promises to pay the Congressman back by “exerting my utmost.”

But Grant obliquely works into the Washburn letter some of the thought behind the doomed telegram to Halleck. Because of its strategic location on the Mississippi, he writes, Cairo should be the launching pad for a thrust southward to wrest control of the river from the Confederacy.

Grant disavows asking for anything for himself, but he is asking to be turned loose against the enemy. He wants to raise the curtain on some action in the Western Theater. In the Eastern Theater, on the other hand, the problem is quite the opposite: Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan seems rooted to the soil near Washington, always citing reasons why the time is not right to strike the enemy. The contrast between the two generals could not be greater.

And, with time, the contrasts between the eastern and western theaters will only grow.

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ON THIS DAY: Tuesday, Nov. 19, 1861

“The Will to be Free”

Lt. Col. Rutherford B. Hayes and his 23^rd Ohio have moved to new quarters in Fayetteville, western Virginia, “a fine village deserted by its people, leaving us capital winter quarters.” Hayes is loving the military life but knows he must constantly reassure his worried wife, Lucy, back in Cincinnati, of how safe he is and how unthreatening warfare is turning out to be. “Not a man [is] sick of those who were well,” he writes. Fayetteville “is much the best place we have been in,” and under a flag of truce he even had a “good friendly chat” with some Rebel soldiers. The deeply affectionate Hayes closes his letter to “Dearest” with these words: “Love to the dear boys and Grandma and so much for your own dear self.” (Pictured above: Lucy and "Rud" Hayes at their wedding in 1852.)

In the Union West, Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck—“Old Brains” in military circles-- takes command of the new Department of the Missouri, which encompasses Missouri, Arkansas, Illinois, and Kentucky west of the Cumberland River. He takes the place of John Charles Fremont, a famous explorer (“The Pathfinder”) who turned out be a dud as the military commander of the old Western Department. Halleck will turn out to be only half a dud

President Jefferson Davis of the Confederate States of America gives an upbeat “state of the Confederacy” address to the Confederate Congress, not failing to include some of the secessionist rant that is so jarringly self-contradictory. “Liberty is always won where there exists the conquerable will to be free,” he tells the representatives of people dedicated to enslaving other people. No doubt he delivers this astonishing thought with a straight face.

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