1862.] THE FOURTH OF JULY DINNER IN MEMPHIS.

265

rode hard, and five miles from the city came in by a side road, expecting to intercept them. Fortunately, the General had passed a few minutes before. They pursued no farther, as there was nothing to gain by attacking in the rear; and Grant's habitual exposure of himself received no punishment.

Reaching Memphis, he superseded Lew. Wallace, who was commanding the town. Wallace had placed Knox and myself in charge of the Argus, a most offensive rebel paper. We had been running it for two weeks, making sure that its patrons should read sound Union doctrine for once. The former editors waited upon Grant, and begged that they might be allowed to resume control. He promptly acquiesced. They asked:

"Will any censorship be established over us?"

"Oh, no; manage your paper as you please; but the very first morning that any thing disloyal appears I shall stop it and place you under arrest."

They were careful for the future. Another fire-eating journal, the Avalanche, was apparently seeking to provoke a riot, and Grant suppressed it, but finally permitted it to resume, on the withdrawal of the obnoxious editor. It immediately changed its tune to a zealous advocacy of the Union cause.

The Fourth of July was celebrated with due pomp and circumstance, Brigadier-General John M. Thayer* giving a bountiful entertainment in the garden of his head-quarters, a deserted rebel residence. Charles A. Dana spoke fervently in praise of "Honest Abraham Lincoln." Thayer complimented Grant as the hero of Donelson, who had broken the back of the rebellion, and the band struck up, "See, the Conquering Hero Comes." The General only bowed his acknowledgments, and remarked that in speech-making his early education had been neglected. To the toast "The Press," I responded in earnest praise of Grant, more deserved than appropriate to my theme, as many newspapers still persisted in abusing him. So we made the most

*Now United States Senator from Nebraska.

266

HALLECK LEAVES GRANT IN COMMAND.

[1862.

of the occasion, and crowned our hero with his well-earned laurels.

On the eleventh of June, Grant returned to Corinth, where his chief, with unusual kindness, said to him :

"I suppose I shall have to give the job of capturing Vicksburg to you."

A few days later, Halleck, ordered East, offered the command of his troops to a quartermaster, Colonel Robert Allen, who declined it. Then he telegraphed to the Secretary of War:-"Will you designate a commander to this army, or shall I turn it over to the next in rank?"

Ordered in reply, to turn it over to the next in rank, he left Grant in charge, and started for Washington, where he was made general-in-chief of all the land forces of the United States.

Grant still fancying that his captious superior might assign some one to duty over him, said :

"There are two men in this army whom I would just as soon serve under as to have them serve under me. One is Sherman, the other is 'Rosy.'"

He always spoke of Rosecrans by this familiar name, and continued to esteem him highly for months afterward. Rosecrans, he said admiringly, could sit down and write a lecture, or even a book, upon any desired topic.

The practical world shouts always for the man of deeds; yet how often does the actor slow of speech envy the fluent writer or orator! Wolfe, reconnoitering in a skiff, with muffled oars, the night before he won immortality on the Heights of Abraham, recited a stanza from Gray's Elegy, to his companions, and added: "I would rather have written that poem than beat the French to-morrow." But grudging Nature, who denies brilliant plumage to her sweetest song-birds, decrees that the great of deed shall not be great in word. Whom did she ever endow as soldier, orator, and writer, all in one and foremost in all, save Julius Cæsar, her petted darling? And then to what end, beyond

a name at which the world grew pale,

To point a moral or adorn a tale?"

1862.]

AN ORDER ABOUT CONTRABANDS.

267

CHAPTER XXII.

IUKA AND CORINTH.

CORINTH was the strategic point in Grant's department. The Tennessee River being too low for steamers in summer, he drew his supplies from Columbus, Kentucky, which compelled him to keep open one hundred and fifty miles of railway through a guerrilla-infested region.

Garrisoning Corinth, Bolivar, and Jackson, all important points, his force was too small to defend easily his great department, much less to take the offensive. Bragg, with a large army, was now moving toward Kentucky, so every man that could be spared was taken from Grant, while Van Dorn and Price constantly threatened him. He was sadly hampered and harassed, but watched the enemy vigilantly, and remodeled and strengthened the Corinth fortifications a fact soon to prove of vital importance.

Slaves still flocked to our camps. Congress had prohibited officers or soldiers from returning them to their masters, under pain of dismissal from the service. Per contra, Halleck's Order Number Three was still in force. Of course, it was impossible to harmonize instructions which conflicted so positively; but Grant, with characteristic subordination, attempted it, and issued the following:-*

"Recent acts of Congress prohibit the army from returning fugitives from labor to their claimants, and authorize the employment of such persons in the service of the Government. The following orders are therefore published for the guidance of the army in this military district in this matter:

"I.-All fugitives thus employed must be registered, the names of the fugitive and claimants given, and must be borne upon the morning reports of the command in which they are kept, showing how they are employed.

"II.-Fugitive slaves may be employed as laborers in the quartermaster's, subsistence, and engineer departments, and whenever by such employment. a soldier may be saved to the ranks. They may be employed as teamsters,

* August eleventh.

268

THE BATTLE OF IUKA.

[1862

as company cooks (not exceeding four to a company), or as hospital attendants and nurses. Officers may employ them as private servants, in which latter case the fugitive will not be paid or rationed by the Government. Negroes not thus employed will be deemed "unauthorized persons," and must be excluded from the camps.

"III. Officers and soldiers are positively prohibited from enticing slaves to leave their masters. When it becomes necessary to employ this kind of labor, commanding officers of posts or troops must send details (always under the charge of a suitable commissioned officer), to press into service the slaves of disloyal persons to the number required."

Headquarters were at Corinth, the depot of national supplies and munitions. One day Grant and staff, riding down to drink from a sulphur spring a mile south, heard a musket shot from a log house near by. A mother and her daughter came rushing out, pursued by a Union soldier who had fired his gun to terrify them, and then attempted violence. Quick as thought the General sprang from his horse, wrenched away the musket, and with the butt of it felled the brute to the earth, where he lay with no sign of life except a little quivering of the foot.

RAWLINS." I guess you have killed him General." GRANT." If I have, it has only served him right.” But the miscreant recovered and was taken back to his quarters.

September opened gloomily. In Virginia, Pope had been badly defeated. In Kentucky, Bragg had penetrated northward till he boldly threatened the free State of Ohio. Sterling Price, seized Iuka. [Map, page 198.] determining to destroy him before Van Dorn-approaching from the southwest with another force-could join him, sent Rosecrans and Ord, to attack Price.

Grant

On the nineteenth of September, Rosecrans encountered him two miles south of Iuka. Fighting continued from four o'clock until ten, Rosecrans losing seven hundred in killed and wounded. The next morning, Ord, approaching from the north, pushed into Iuka, but the rebels had fled.

The indecisive battle only crippled the enemy. Price joined Van Dorn, which rendered Grant's position very precarious. On the twenty-third, leaving Rosecrans in command at Corinth, and Ord at Bolivar, he removed his own