"The Bulldog Grip"

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the armies. Halleck had written books on strategy; he was generally supposed to have the most profound mind in the army. When such a highly esteemed man makes a mess of his job the only thing to do, according to human custom, is to promote him—so Halleck was promoted.

Halleck departed, and his departure left Grant in command.

§ 6

Grant now moved in an ever-widening circle of experiences. New events and strange men stood before him every day. His individual importance had become an accepted fact. People no longer asked who General Grant was, for even the most ill-informed had heard of him.

But these fresh contacts with men, these triumphs and discouragements, sharp and vivid as they were, had little or no influence on his personality or his methods. His character was formed before the war began, and it was not sufficiently plastic to change, or develop, after he appeared on the skyline of history. He was never a part of his experiences; they merely flowed by him without leaving any substantial deposit, except in memory. The only discernible effect of his rise in the world was to give him more confidence in himself.

Whenever he met the enemy his plan, described in Lincoln's salty speech, was to "hold on with a bulldog grip and chew and choke as much as possible." His strategy was a synthesis of concentration, swift moves and attacks that paralyzed and smashed the enemy through their energy and relentlessness.

There is no eagerness in such men as Grant, but only quiet resolves and a kind of stolid desperation. He said that he never sat up at nights wondering what the enemy was going to do. "I try to make the enemy wonder what I am going to do," he declared.

Beneath this leaden opacity there was another Grant that few men ever knew a shy and sensitive soul that clung to

friendships with an attachment that was almost childish in its ingenuousness. Grant's confidence in the people he liked had a primitive, tribal quality about it. His friends could never do any wrong, nor make a mistake; while those outside his tribe never could do anything that was wholly right.

The first member of the Grant clan was Rawlins, and the next was Sherman. The Grant and Sherman mutual admiration society began at the time of Fort Donelson. These two men did not resemble one another in the least, except that both were stubborn fighters.

Sherman was a restless person. He was the reverse of reticent, and would express himself on any conceivable subject, whether he knew anything about it or not. He had the hot imagination of a high-school boy. "To secure the safety of the navigation of the Mississippi River," he declared, "I would slay millions,"-and he advised the bombardment of helpless towns on the Mississippi and its tributaries on the supposition that they might conceal a few men capable of bearing arms.

One of his fixed notions was a dislike of newspapers and newspaper men. "I never see my name in print," he declared, "without a feeling of contamination, and I will undertake to forego half of my salary if the newspapers will ignore my name." When the army was before Vicksburg somebody told him that three newspaper correspondents had been killed by a bursting shell. "Good!" Sherman exclaimed. "Now we'll have news from hell before breakfast."

Sherman was the only one of the leading generals on either side who could write interestingly. His Memoirs are simply his volubility poured into print, and they are fascinating, vivid and sometimes amusing, though they are very inaccurate. After the publication of the two volumes one of Sherman's friends pointed out some of the more glaring errors. "Oh, never mind," Sherman answered without discomposure. "I may be wrong, but that's the way I remembered it. They are my memoirs, not the memoirs of anybody else."

Schoolboy Sheridan

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Besides Rawlins and Sherman, the Grant-Sherman circle eventually included Sheridan, McPherson, Badeau, Bowers, Horace Porter, etc. . . . and many more etceteras and lesser lights.

Grant's admiration for Sheridan ran beyond all bounds. The phraseology of his praise is so extravagant that it defeats itself. Ten years after the war he told Senator George F. Hoar that he believed Sheridan to have "no superior as a general, either living or dead, and perhaps not an equal," and he continued in this eulogistic strain for some time, making it clear that, compared with Sheridan, such distinguished military gentlemen as Julius Cæsar, Frederick the Great, Robert E. Lee and Napoleon were only second-raters.

As a matter of fact, Sheridan was nothing more than an intrepid cavalry leader, dashing and very theatrical. His experience was limited, for he had an independent command in only three or four engagements, and in every case his force greatly outnumbered that of the Confederates.

On the battlefield Sheridan's maner was that of a hysterical youth at a dog fight. He would ride up and down, shouting, screaming, waving his hat, begging, threatening and applauding.

Grant's unstinted praise of this cavalryman caused him to be promoted over the heads of really great soldiers, such as Meade and Thomas.

With Grant's rise to fame rumors and anecdotes of his drinking habits were in everybody's mouth. Most of them were highly exaggerated yarns. Late in 1863 a wondrous story about Lincoln, Grant and liquor began to appear in the newspapers. The tale, as it runs to-day in the current version, is that a party of clergymen called on the President to protest against Grant being put in high command. Their objection to

him was that he drank whisky, wine and beer, and was consequently an unsafe person. Lincoln is said to have replied, with the twinkle in his eye that distinguished folks are always supposed to have when they make a point of humor: "Well, I wish some of you would tell me the brand of whisky that Grant drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to every one of my other generals."

It is a good story; its only defect is that it contains no vestige of truth. Lincoln himself denied its authenticity, not only once but many times. This piece of fiction was made up by Charles G. Halpine, a newspaper man and correspondent of the New York Herald, and it appeared first in that newspaper on November 26, 1863.

In disclaiming the story, Lincoln remarked that it was over a hundred years old, anyway. He said that it had originated with George I. Somebody had complained to George about General Wolfe . . . asserted that he was mad. Thereupon that red-faced, outspoken monarch fell into a royal mood and said, "If General Wolfe is mad I hope he bites some of my other generals."

T

CHAPTER XIX

THE NORTH AT WAR

$1

HERE was consternation in New Orleans on the morn

ing of April 28, 1862. That noble and leisurely city,

the largest and wealthiest in the Confederate States, stood facing an impromptu Judgment Day. A swarm of Federal war vessels, under command of Admiral Farragut, had passed the forts and were coming up the river.

The fleet advanced slowly, feeling the water for torpedoes. From the city levees the masts of the ships could be seen, over the tops of the trees, across the snaky curves of the river, moving majestically. For a time an indomitable Confederate gunboat, the last survivor of the defeated Southern flotilla, limped after them at a distance, swimming far behind and firing a shot now and then, like a fierce and wounded terrier following a pack of hostile bulldogs.

The silent city lay under a cloud of smoke. Farragut and his officers thought the whole of New Orleans was burning, but it was only some thousands of cotton bales on the wharves, which the Confederate authorities had set afire to keep them from falling into the enemy's hands.

The sun hung like a blood-red disk in the darkened sky. The streets were filled with the litter of hurriedly emptied warehouses, with wagons and drays taking the goods of merchants to safety in the country, with pale-faced and bareheaded men moving ledgers and bags of money to secret hiding places.

The capture of New Orleans was not the only Confederate catastrophe that reverberated from the Mississippi basin in the spring and summer of 1862.