1863.]

GRANT FAVORING NEGRO REGIMENTS.

293

CHAPTER XXIV.

ALL OR NOTHING.

ADJUTANT-GENERAL LORENZO THOMAS now came from Washington to organize negro regiments. Grant had already paved the way for this, in obedience to the President's wish that commanders should help remove the prejudices of our white troops against them. He had issued an order* adding three hundred contrabands to the pioneer corps of each division. They were paid ten dollars a month, with the same rations and clothing as enlisted men, and were "used for the purpose of saving every soldier, as far as possible, for the ranks."

The plan had worked to a charm. The blacks proved unexpectedly faithful, zealous, and tractable; the whites, already quite willing to arm them with the spade, were losing their old antipathy against arming them with the musket.

Thomas enlisted all these pioneers in his negro regiments except those of the vehement Logan, who swore that he would not give his up-and did not. Grant did nothing in a half-hearted way, but entered zealously into the movement, and reported to Halleck :-+

"At least three of my corps commanders take hold of the new policy of arming the negroes, and using them against the enemy, with a will. They at least are so much of soldiers as to feel themselves under obligations to carry out a policy which they would not inaugurate, in the same good faith and with the same zeal as if it were of their own choosing. You may rely on my carrying out any policy ordered by proper authority to the best of my ability."

The General, conscious that he might be removed any day, was also thoroughly confident of ultimate success if "let alone." He wrote to his father:-"The Government asks a good deal of me, but not more than I feel fully able to perform."

*March seventh,

April nineteenth.

294

HIS ANXIETY ABOUT VICKSBURG.

[1863.

A friend calling one evening, found Grant alone in his office, the ladies' cabin of the Magnolia. He said :

"The problem is a difficult one, but I shall certainly solve it. Vicksburg can be taken. I shall give my days and nights to it, and shall surely take it."

He made the remark with peculiar earnestness, and in his half-abstracted way, as if answering impatient criticisms or his own misgivings, rather than those of his visitor. But his doubts were never traitors to make him lose the good he else might win by fearing to attempt.

At this period a letter-writer thus pictured him :—

"Grant is more approachable and liable to interruption than a merchant would allow himself to be in his store. Citizens come in, introduce themselves, and say, as I heard one man :-'I have no business with you, General, but just wanted to have a little talk with you, because folks at home will ask me if I did.' He is one of the most engaging men I ever saw-quiet, gentle, extremely, even uncomfortably modest; but confiding, and of an exceedingly kind disposition. He gives the impression of a man of strong will and capacity underlying these feminine traits."

Hurlbut commanding the district of Memphis, through which mails passed to the army, had forbidden the Chicago Times to be brought into it, and thus the paper was kept out of our camps. The Times was nearer being an out-andout rebel advocate than any other Northern journal published outside of New York. But Illinois democratic soldiers who had no sympathy with its extreme views, desired to read it.

Grant, though bitterly hostile to that class of journals, countermanded Hurlbut's order, on the grounds that any paper which the War Department tolerated in the North should also be allowed to circulate in the army; and that even if to be suppressed, it must be done by department, and not district commanders.

Notwithstanding the depression caused by the imminent danger of their chief's removal, there was merriment enough among the staff. Logan, Steele, and several other generals visited head-quarters one night, and remained until it grew late. Grant urged them to stay, but Steele only accepted.

1863.]

"YOU WILL SLEEP HERE, STEELE."

295

Colonel Riggin was absent, and when bedtime came, Grant conducted Steele to Riggin's state-room, expecting to offer him choicest quarters, for the aide was of fastidious and luxurious tastes. The host opened the door, saying:

"You will sleep here, Steele."

But there, ensconced between Riggin's fine white sheets, lay his huge, black, not over-clean, body-servant! This was too much for an equanimity which had proved equal to sorest trials. The angry General stirred up the darky, and peremptorily ordered him to leave the boat and never to return. Next morning the order was not enforced, but one aide, at least, enjoyed his chief's vexation quite as much as, a year earlier, the chief had enjoyed the clipping of the tail of Rawlins's war-horse.

A lady connected with the Sanitary Commission, who spent much time at the front during these months, writes :

"At a celebration on the twenty-second of February, while all around were drinking toasts in sparkling champagne, I saw Grant push aside a glass of wine, and, taking up a glass of Mississippi water, with the remark, 'This suits the matter in hand,' drink to the toast, 'God gave us Lincoln and Liberty; let us fight for both.'

* "On board the head-quarters boat at Milliken's Bend, a lively gathering of officers and ladies had assembled. Cards and music were the order of the evening. Grant sat in the ladies' cabin, leaning upon a table covered with innumerable maps and routes to Vicksburg, wholly absorbed in contemplation of the great work before him. He paid no attention to what was going on around, neither did any one dare to interrupt him. For hours he sat thus, until the loved and lamented McPherson stepped up to him with a glass of liquor in his hand, and said, 'General, this won't do; you are injuring yourself; join with us in a few toasts, and throw this burden off your mind.' Looking up and smiling, he replied: 'Mac, you know your whisky won't help me to think; give me a dozen of the best cigars you can find, and, if the ladies will excuse me for smoking, I think by the time I have finished them I shall have this job pretty nearly planned.' Thus he sat; and when the company retired we left him there, still smoking and thinking."

The repeated disappointments of the past only stimulated him to a new endeavor. No previous project had seemed so impracticable, none had been so daring. It was in the old heroic spirit :

296

A NEW AND DARING PLAN.

[1863.

"He either fears his fate too much

Or his deserts are small,

Who dares not put it to the touch,

To win or lose it all."

He staked every thing upon it; and relenting Fortune, tired of battling against one whom no disappointment could check, crowned it with her approving smiles.

It was no sudden inspiration. For months the General had thought of it as a last resort. When he and the staff, three months earlier, first visited the Williams Cut-off, Rawlins, after contemplating the tiny rill which trickled through it, exclaimed:

"What's the use of a canal unless it can be dug at least fifty feet deeper? This ditch will never wash out large enough in all the ages to admit our steamboats."

Two days later, at head-quarters, when several generals and engineers were considering plans, the staff officer again remarked:

"Wilson and I have a project of our own, for taking Vicksburg."

"What is it?" asked Sherman.

'Why, not to dig a ditch, but to use the great one already dug by Nature-the Mississippi River; protect our transports with cotton-bales, run them by the batteries at night, and march the men down the Louisiana shore, ready to be ferried across."

"What!" replied Sherman; "these boats? these transports? these mere shells? They wouldn't live a minute in the face of the enemy's guns."

Grant, though listening intently, said never a word. But, subsequently, while the expeditions already described were going on, the plan was often discussed. Some river-men insisted that running the batteries was feasible, even for the frail transports. The General asked many practical questions, but kept his thoughts to himself.

Porter, who commanded the co-operating naval force, gave to every movement his enthusiastic support. He is the son of Commodore David Porter, who died in 1843, after the most brilliant naval career in American history, and he

1863.] THE REBELS FRIGHTENED BY A BARGE.

297

inherits in full his father's professional skill and indomitable bravery. Our great conflict developed no other marked instance of hereditary military or naval capacity on either side, except in the case of Robert E. Lee. How rarely is any shining gift transmitted to the next generation! "Helen's daughter shall not be more fair, nor Solomon's son more wise." Leveling Nature makes the poet's heir a commissioner of statistics, the flat-boatman's boy a statesman, and the statesman's-a simpleton.

Before the tragedy of the campaign, Porter diverted the army with a little comedy. He rigged up an old coal barge into the semblance of a steam monitor, with smoke-stack made of pork barrels and furnaces of mud. One dark night she was towed within two miles of the Vicksburg batteries, and then left to float. The rebels opened on her with their heavy guns, and one of their rams fled in wild alarm at her approach. Our powerful iron-clad Indianola, after running their batteries successfully, had lately been captured by them, and was now tied up for repairs at Warrenton. To prevent her from being retaken by this direful monster, they blew her up. Next morning, discovering how effectually a worn-out scow had avenged their wooden guns at Manassas, their disgust and rage knew no bounds.

Already Ellet's little wooden ram, Queen of the West, had run the gantlet. One morning, just as the rising sun was driving the darkness before it down the river, the Queen, with no sign of life on board except the columns of black smoke that rolled from her chimneys, steamed silently toward Vicksburg. The moment she approached within range the upper batteries opened on her, but, though one hundred guns were almost instantly directed against her from every point of defense, only four shots struck her before she was opposite the town.

There she suddenly turned toward the rebel gun-boat City of Vicksburg, which was tied up at the bank. The enemy's artillerists and infantry, thinking her disabled and about to surrender, sent up a tremendous shout. But, to their consternation, she dashed right into their iron-clad, damaging it severely, and firing shots from all her guns.