Ulysses S. Grant by Geoffrey Perret

Author:Geoffrey Perret [Perret, Geoffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-56088-9
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-06-06T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 21

“GET ALL THE SUNSHINE I CAN”

There had been only one lieutenant general in the history of the Republic, and that was George Washington. True, Winfield Scott had held three-star rank, but that was by brevet, meaning it was temporary and without any increase in pay. Following Grant’s stunning success at Chattanooga his congressional mentor, Elihu B. Washburne, introduced a bill to revive the grade of lieutenant general so that Grant could be raised to three stars.

Grant himself was of two minds about this move. He wrote to Washburne, urging him to “recollect that I have been highly honored already by the government and do not ask, or feel that I deserve, any thing more in the shape of honors or promotion.”1 Grant had no objection to a promotion and the extra pay it was likely to bring. What had him worried was the possibility that three stars meant being chained to Halleck’s desk in the War Department. As Halleck himself had found, his job was as much a political appointment as a military one. Besides running the Army, his energies went into fending off politicians seeking favors from the War Department, dealing with the irascible and self-righteous Stanton, and implementing the President’s policy of rewarding political allies with major commands.2

Washburne nevertheless pushed his bill with an enthusiasm that indicated he hadn’t grasped the point, so Grant got Rawlins to follow up with a letter that left the congressman in no doubt: “I can only say that if the confering [sic] of the distinguished honor on him would mean taking him out of the field, or with a view to the superceding of General Halleck, he would not desire it, for he feels that if he can be of service to the Government in any place it is in Command of the Army in the field, and that is where he would remain if made a Lieut. General.” All of which amounted to saying that Grant would gladly take the three stars, provided he retained the drama and Halleck held on to the desk.3

While Washburne’s bill was making its way through Congress, Grant was trying, and failing, to cash in on victory at Chattanooga. There had been virtually no pursuit of Bragg’s defeated army. The only divisions in position to mount a pursuit were the four that stormed Missionary Ridge, and only one division commander—Phil Sheridan—showed the alertness and aggressiveness to pursue the enemy. The other three had sat down on Missionary Ridge and neither their corps commander nor George Thomas, their army commander, was inclined to make them move out. The aftermath of Chattanooga was that Grant’s admiration for Sheridan went through the roof, while his already shaky faith in Thomas took another knock.4

The biggest obstacle to Grant’s efforts to maintain the pressure on the enemy, however, was not Thomas but the aid he was forced to give to Ambrose Burnside and the IX Corps troops defending Knoxville against “Pete” Longstreet, a groomsman at Grant’s wedding. During the climactic

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