General Grant and the Rewriting of History: How the Destruction of General William S. Rosecrans Influenced Our Understanding of the Civil War

By Frank P. Varney

“[A] marvelously bold new book . . . Grant was The Man Who Saved the Union. Varney’s invaluable book helps us understand why we remember him that way” (Emerging Civil War).
 
In 1885, a former president of the United States published one of the most influential books ever written about the Civil War. The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant may be superbly written, Frank  P. Varney persuasively argues in General Grant and the Rewriting of History, but is so riddled with flaws as to be unreliable.
 
Juxtaposing primary source documents (some of them published here for the first time) against Grant’s own pen and other sources, Professor Varney sheds new light on what really happened on some of the Civil War’s most important battlefields. He does so by focusing much of his work on Grant’s treatment of Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans, a capable army commander whose reputation Grant (and others working with him) conspired to destroy. Grant’s memoirs contain not only misstatements but outright inventions to manipulate the historical record. But Grant’s injustices go much deeper. He submitted decidedly biased reports, falsified official documents, and even perjured himself before an army court of inquiry. There is also strong evidence that his often-discussed drinking problem affected the outcome of at least one battle.
 
The first of two volumes on this subject, General Grant and the Rewriting of History aptly demonstrates that blindly accepting historical “truths” without vigorous challenge is a perilous path to understanding real history.
 
“An invaluable addition to Civil War Studies and reference shelves . . . and a sharp caution against putting too much blind faith in any one person’s testimony, memoir, or historical accounting. Highly Recommended.” —Midwest Book Review

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9781611211191

Frank P. Varney

Frank Varney earned his undergraduate degree at William Paterson University and his M.A. and Ph.D. at Cornell University. He is a recently retired Distinguished Professor of U.S. and Classical History and has been the recipient of multiple teaching awards. Dr. Varney is available to take student groups to historic sites—especially Civil War battlefields—and is a frequent speaker at Civil War roundtables, historical societies, and other interested groups. He has been the keynote speaker at several veterans’ memorial dedications and has made numerous radio and TV appearances.

Book preview

Preface

Even the most disinterested historian has at least one preconception, which is the fixed idea that he has none. . . . Left to themselves, the facts do not speak; left to themselves they do not exist, not really. . . . The least the historian can do with any historical fact is to select and affirm it.¹

Several years ago, as I was casting about for a dissertation topic, two things happened at roughly the same time. The first was one of those periodic attempts by historians to rank the presidents; Ulysses S. Grant was ranked, as he usually is, near the bottom. The reasons given were the standard complaints about Grant: the rampant corruption of his administration combined with his total inability to judge the character of the people with whom he chose to surround himself. The second thing that happened was my need to re-read Grant’s Memoirs for a course I was developing. I noticed that Grant had not been shy about criticizing others, and that many of the things he said pretty much conformed to the standard line about those people. I began to wonder whether perhaps some of them were really as bad as he said they were; was he simply reflecting the negative wisdom about those individuals, or had he in fact helped to shape it? I also recalled that Grant’s Memoirs are a pretty standard source for historians, particularly military historians writing about the Civil War. But was that logical? After all, if President Grant’s judgment was so flawed, why should we uncritically accept what he said about people?

William McFeely explained it by saying that [f]undamentally, Grant was exceedingly disillusioned about people, including almost all of his generals. . . . Except for Sherman and Sheridan—and he had reservations even about them—Grant did not regard his generals as having the capacity for independent judgment. He expected little and got much. But Grant knew that ultimately soldiers had no choice: they had to obey orders, whether they liked them or not. He had no such assurance about how civilians would behave, according to McFeely, and so he continually misjudged them. I decided to see for myself whether some of those soldiers Grant criticized were, just possibly, the victims of his inability to judge the character of others.²

That seems to be pretty much a given, after all. If you look President Grant up in any high school history text, the odds are good that you will find some sort of notation describing him as personally honest, but a poor judge of character. Even professional historians may fall into this trap, as in an article on the corruption in the Grant administration which described him as incorruptible but politically naïve. . . . [A] man with uxorious-like devotion to his friends, Grant often failed to see the worst in his associates, even when it was laid before his eyes.³

I decided to test that concept: to examine Grant’s Memoirs, compare them to what other participants and witnesses had said about the people and events of which he wrote, and see how his story matched up to theirs. The most I expected to find was an indication that General Grant might have been in error about certain opinions he held of specific individuals. What I found astonished me. Once I began to take a fresh look at the primary source documents, I saw that Grant not only made use of his reports to the War Department, and of his Memoirs, to make himself look better and blame his errors on others—that is human nature, unfortunately—but he actually went further. In some cases the things he wrote were wholesale inventions. And, given the propensity of many historians to take Grant at his word about some things, some of those inventions have become entangled in the commonly accepted history of the Civil War.

Grant, for reasons we can only speculate about, chose certain men and did his best to destroy them. This book will focus on the failed partnership between Grant and William S. Rosecrans, with a passing look at his relationships with Benjamin Prentiss and Lew Wallace. In the process, it will also examine the historiography of his interaction with Rosecrans. A second volume will examine Grant’s contentious relationships with Joseph Hooker, Gouverneur Kemble Warren, George H. Thomas, Henry Halleck, and others. Difficulties between generals were not uncommon during the Civil War era (and likely still are not), but the dysfunctional Grant-Rosecrans relationship, which predated the war and continued for decades after it, involved two men who at one time were both considered among the leading Union generals. It is an example of a command breakdown on a spectacular level. Largely forgotten today, at the time it excited a great deal of interest in the press, occasioned a high level of popular and professional debate, resulted in an outcry in Congress which led to testimony before a Congressional subcommittee, and forced an unpleasant and potentially dangerous decision upon the beleaguered Abraham Lincoln.

There is a perception that most Civil War generals have had many studies done of them. Given their prominence, that is a logical assumption—but an inaccurate one. Actually, William S. Rosecrans has been the subject of a single biography, published some 50 years ago. Grant himself has, of course, been extensively covered; but in fact, when you look at the footnotes of those who have written about him, many of them used Grant himself as their chief source.

We think we know what happened at the battles of Shiloh, Iuka, Corinth, Stones River, and Chickamauga, but in truth our knowledge is based on relatively few books on each; and those books make use of many of the same sources. One of the most consistently referenced of those sources is Grant. And as Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain has reminded us, Truth often suffers distortion by reason of the point of view of the narrator, some pre-occupation of his judgment or fancy . . . even as to facts. . . .⁴

Some historians have looked beyond the obvious and reached other conclusions than those so often cited, but some of the most widely-read popular histories of these battles contain fundamental errors, and so do many basic texts from which our students learn their own history. Some academics deride any work done by non-academics, and many also believe that encyclopedias of military history are not significant in academic research. Perhaps not; but they are one of the sources the public uses to gain information about the Civil War. If those sources are wrong, they should be corrected, not ignored as beneath the notice of professionals. Otherwise the distortion of facts will continue, and the huge number of enthusiastic readers of material about the Civil War will continue to learn the wrong information.

The Official Records of the War of the Rebellion (OR) is now easily accessible by anyone, and it is an amazing repository of raw data. But that is, essentially, all that it is: it draws no conclusions, in and of itself. Rather, it is the compilation of vast amounts of material submitted by men who were not always objective witnesses. And there is much in the OR that supports the contention that Grant misrepresented the facts, because often his accounts are not supported by the reports of other witnesses—or even by his own, since Grant contradicted himself on more than one occasion.

Not many historians have challenged Grant’s veracity. If what he says disagrees with what another witness says, Grant generally holds sway. He was an exceptional general and a major contributor to the cause of Union victory; but he had his own agenda, he told his story very well, and perhaps we have believed him too trustingly. There is a very human tendency to refuse to accept new evidence, to be convinced that what we think we know is what really happened, simply because that is what we have always been told. But sometimes what we think we know is wrong.

I would like to see truthful history written.

General Ulysses S. Grant, on his deathbed in July 1885

And so it has got into history, and never can be gotten out. . . . The story that could be written of these things will not be written. Even the proofs have disappeared.

Major General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

Or have they?

__________________________________

1 Carl L. Becker, Every Man His Own Historian, Annual Address of the President of the American Historical Association, delivered in Minneapolis, 1931.

2 William McFeely, Grant: A Biography (New York, NY, 1981), 102.

3 Timothy Reves, Grant, Babcock, and the Whiskey Ring, in Prologue: The Journal of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (Fall 2000), Vol. 32, No. 3, 1.

4 Major General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, The Passing of the Armies: An Account of the Final Campaign of the Army of the Potomac, Based Upon Personal Reminiscences of the Fifth Army Corps, Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, Headquarters Commander of the State of Maine, 1914 (reprint Dayton, OH, 1974), xi.

Chapter 1

What We Think We Know

I have had bitter cause for complaint and reason for resentment. We shall all soon pass away, and history will do us justice . . . .¹

In 1885, the best-known man of his generation published one of the most influential books ever written about the Civil War. The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant had been eagerly awaited by an entire generation of Americans. When published they were widely read, and historians, who have expended enormous effort in an attempt to understand who was responsible for winning the war, have made extensive use of Grant’s book. The Memoirs have often been a key source in understanding and evaluating the Union Army’s triumphs and failures. Fine historians such as J. F. C. Fuller, Steven Woodworth, and James Marshall-Cornwall, have used Grant as the principal source—sometimes the only source—for their reconstruction of many of the war’s most important events.²

Grant wrote his Memoirs under extraordinarily trying circumstances. He was dying, but was deeply in debt and needed a way to provide for his family; authorship seemed the best way to accomplish this. The book he produced was, under the circumstances, very well written. It also provided Grant with a way to set before the world his views on a number of issues. As a former president of the United States as well as a soldier of towering reputation, his opinions were eagerly sought by the reading public. Since its original publication, Grant’s Memoirs have never been out of print. Because of Grant’s status and his undeniable writing skill, his version of history has been commonly accepted.

His version should not, however, be the last word. As important as Grant’s Memoirs are, there is much more to know and to understand—and, I would argue—errors to correct, prejudices to overcome, and distortions to be balanced. The reason for this lies in the deliberate efforts of Grant to manipulate the historical record. Like other memoir writers, Ulysses Simpson Grant set out to control how we would remember the Civil War, and in large measure he succeeded. As a result, our understanding of much of the war is flawed and should be rethought. Although there is much worth noting in his writings, we need to look again at our blind acceptance of certain historical truths. Ulysses S. Grant was a fine soldier and, we have long believed, a fine man in many ways. But he was not always a shrewd judge of character or competence; nor was he always as honest as we have assumed. For us to uncritically accept his evaluations of the men with whom he served, and then to use those evaluations as the foundation upon which we develop Civil War history, does them, and us, a disservice.

Many of the actors upon the stage of conflict tried to get their own versions of events before the public, but Grant had an advantage others did not have. During the latter half of the nineteenth century, he was the man—after Lincoln—whom most people regarded as the reason the North had won the war. He made use of his power—first as general in chief of the army, then as president of the United States, then as the friend and mentor of the men who succeeded him as general in chief—to suppress, alter, and destroy evidence. He refused to hold courts of inquiry that might have cleared the names of his victims, he advanced the careers of his allies, and he cut short the careers of his enemies. It all added up, I suggest, to deliberate manipulation and distortion.

Grant spoke well of many men in his Memoirs, and not so well of others. The name of William S. Rosecrans does not often come to mind when there is discussion of the major contributors to Union victory. Perhaps it should; but in large measure because of the efforts of Grant, his contributions have been minimized. The same thing happened to a number of other men.

We have accepted certain facts about the Civil War. One of them is that William S. Rosecrans was a sometimes brilliant but frequently erratic general who panicked on the field of Chickamauga and abandoned his men to their fate. Yet Rosecrans was for a time considered equal to Grant among Union commanders in the Western theater until Grant relieved him from command, not once, but twice. There ensued a feud which would follow the antagonists to their graves, and beyond. Grant pilloried Rosecrans in his Memoirs, and that has shaped in large measure the way we remember him today. There are certainly other men we could focus on, but space precludes too broad a study in one volume. A future book will look at some others.

Grant Cottage, Mount McGregor

New York State Parks and Recreational Service

Actually a former hotel, the Grant Cottage outside Saratoga Springs, New York, was where the former President completed his memoirs, often seated on the porch wrapped in a shawl.

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It is important to establish a few facts early on. Before we can judge whether Grant was unfair to Rosecrans, we must form some conclusion as to the latter’s competence. If he was not an effective commander, then obviously Grant—and historians who followed him—were quite correct in ranking him low on the ladder of Union leaders. In that case, although Grant’s manipulation of the historical record would still be a concern, it cannot be blamed for the negative view history holds of Rosecrans.

If he was competent, however, then we must ask why Grant, and others, did not give him the credit he deserves. As we shall see, when we look at Rosecrans shorn of the distortions of Grant, the record indicates that, although he was certainly far from perfect, he was in fact important to the Union victory. Why, then, does he get so little credit for his contributions?

Grant disliked and distrusted Rosecrans. Did he have good reason to? And whether or not he did, should we not evaluate Rosecrans on his own merits, rather than through the eyes of his personal enemy? Grant’s actions can tell us how he felt about Rosecrans, and his own words can tell us more. If Rosecrans was actually more capable than Grant makes him seem, then the determined effort to ruin him—undertaken by the general in chief of the army, in apparently coincidental collusion with the secretary of war and with a United States congressman and future president—needs to be explained.

These men took great pains to remove Rosecrans from command and, in an attempt to minimize his accomplishments, criticized him to the president and to the chief of staff of the army. Grant submitted reports that damaged Rosecrans’s reputation. He belittled Rosecrans’s efforts at Stones River and in Missouri; he downplayed Rosecrans’s successes, taking credit for some of them himself; and he besmirched Rosecrans’s name to the press, and again when he wrote his Memoirs, which he used to justify the actions he took during the war. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton routinely denied Rosecrans the resources he needed to succeed, sent a minion to spy on him and build a case for his removal, and continually badgered him to move even when moving was inappropriate and dangerous. James A. Garfield deliberately sacrificed Rosecrans’s good name and historical reputation in order to advance his own political career and there are indications that afterward the otherwise apparently honest Garfield long regretted what he had done to a man who had trusted him and counted him as a friend. Stanton and Garfield worked together, while Grant used and was used by them in his attempt to ruin Rosecrans. He then used his Memoirs to cover his tracks. It is time to look beyond the same old truths, to re-examine the primary source material of the Civil War, and to stop depending so heavily on the judgments of Ulysses S. Grant. Otherwise we will continue to be misled.

We must also ask why so many historians have accepted Grant at his word instead of looking at other accounts and examining other available data. The Official Records of the War of the Rebellion are readily available to any student of the Civil War; in many cases those records contradict Grant’s account. Why then, is Grant’s testimony accorded such weight? And how did he so successfully manipulate historians that most of us never even noticed he was doing so?

Immediately after the war, Grant himself was subject to criticism. The various advocates of the Lost Cause used him to illustrate the way in which the North supposedly triumphed: through sheer force of numbers. Grant was derided by most Southerners as a butcher, his victories demeaned as the mere application of brute strength. There were Northern critics as well, who claimed that he lacked true genius and that his primary military abilities were simple stubbornness and tenacity. There were exceptions to this trend, to be sure; they were primarily men who had served directly under and with him, and who remained loyal to him. Grenville Dodge, for example, said of him: As a soldier, General Grant stands first in all the history of warfare. Adam Badeau, Grant’s former staff officer and one of his earliest biographers—who sent Grant drafts of his chapters before submitting them to the publisher—said that his chief did not lack the energy of Stanton nor the sympathy of Lincoln with the people; his strategy was not inferior to that of Sherman, and he proved himself equal to Sheridan in that power of audacious and skillful combination in the presence of the enemy which, above and beyond every other trait, is what is highest and most essential in a general. In other words, he possessed all the best traits of the other leaders of the Union combined.³

The bedroom at Mount McGregor

New York State Parks and Recreational Service

Grant had been forced by his cancer to sleep sitting up, on two chairs pushed together.

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Other staff officers, subordinates, and colleagues, including Ely Parker, John Rawlins, William T. Sherman, Philip Sheridan, Oliver Otis Howard, and Horace Porter, also praised Grant in print and in public addresses—as he had done for them. But the overarching tendency among historians of the era seems to have been the recurrent theme that Grant was a capable soldier who had the good fortune to be in command of a larger army, with greater resources, than his adversaries. His willingness to expend those resources, both human and otherwise, was—according to this theory—the primary cause of his success.

Grant’s Memoirs helped to change that perspective. Edward Bonekemper has pointed out that the trend toward upgrading the evaluation of Grant’s abilities did not truly begin until the late nineteenth to early twentieth century. This coincides neatly with the publication of Grant’s Memoirs. In short, the rehabilitation of Grant’s military record was greatly aided by Grant himself. Unfortunately, he did this, in part, by attacking others. It is Mr. Bonekemper’s contention that Grant was almost universally derided by historians and the press until approximately 1930. However, this raises the intriguing question of how he had been twice elected to the highest office in the land long before that. In fact, the rehabilitation of his reputation—if such was needed—took place much earlier.⁴

Later generations of historians were kinder to Grant, but they were perhaps too willing to use Grant himself as their greatest resource. Bruce Catton, for example, said that of all the men who wrote about U. S. Grant it was he himself who did the best job. Edmund Wilson called Grant’s Memoirs "the best work of its kind since Julius Caesar’s Commentaries." That may very well be true; but it is wise, when examining a man, to consider other opinions of him—and of his friends and enemies—than his own. Bonekemper, for example, not only took Grant’s word as the final arbiter in any point of debate on what Mr. Bonekemper argues is the unrecognized genius of Grant, but also used Grant’s Memoirs as his primary source for the majority of the controversies addressed in the book. In many cases, in fact, Grant’s Memoirs was his only source.⁵

Another example of how some historians have adopted Grant’s position without examining other perspectives is Grant as Military Commander by James Marshall-Cornwall. In his discussion of the battles of Iuka and Corinth, for instance, Marshall-Cornwall uses Grant’s Memoirs almost exclusively as his only source. In that chapter, there are ten footnotes; seven of them cite Grant’s Memoirs as their source, while another cites an article Grant wrote for Century magazine. Rosecrans is twice cited, but in both instances derisively, and in both cases Grant is then cited—as though to show that Rosecrans was lying. For Marshall-Cornwall’s Vicksburg chapters, Grant is cited in six of seven footnotes; for the Wilderness Campaign, Grant is the authority for more than one-third of the footnotes, and his highly sympathetic aide Horace Porter for all but one of the rest. For the remainder of Grant’s campaigns in Virginia, from Spotsylvania through Appomattox, Grant provides seventeen of twenty-two footnotes, while his aide Porter provides three more. In the chapters noted, there are fifty-eight footnotes; thirty-nine refer to Grant’s Memoirs, two to articles he wrote, and Grant’s aide is cited in twelve instances. Only five refer to sources other than Grant or his immediate staff. Grant, to Marshall-Cornwall, is plainly to be trusted. But while Grant is an obvious source for anyone writing a history of those campaigns, a book which purports to analyze his generalship should logically refer to other opinions than those of Grant himself.

Grant’s perspectives are certainly useful, but they should not be accorded undue weight. The outstanding Civil War historian James M. McPherson has said that in Memoirs, Grant is generous with praise of other officers (especially Sherman, Sheridan, and Meade) and sparing with criticism, carping, and backbiting. He is also willing to admit mistakes . . . . This is not entirely correct. While certainly willing to praise his favorites, Grant was not always honest in his reporting. He was careful to cover many of his own errors, and willing to exaggerate or even invent the supposed flaws of others to do so.⁶

Influenced in part by Grant’s Memoirs, modern historians have generally tended to praise him. Professor T. Harry Williams called him [t]he greatest general of the Civil War. He was head and shoulders above any general on either side as an over-all strategist, as a master of what in later wars would be called global strategy. He was a brilliant theater strategist . . . a better than average tactician.⁷

The room where Grant died. Mount McGregor, July 23, 1885.

Nancy Varney

Grant died in this room, but that was actually the only night he ever spent there. Only when the end was near did he lie in this bed.

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Of Rosecrans, on the other hand, Professor Williams was less complimentary. He described him as a general who fought little and shrieked loudly and said of him that like some other generals in the war, he tended to break down under the responsibility of command. Professor Williams did acknowledge that Rosecrans possessed a modest degree of military ability, but his overall opinion of the general was not high. Steven Woodworth, in his fine history of the Union Army of the Tennessee, acknowledged that Rosecrans was an excellent general as long as his enemy gave him plenty of time to prepare, which is likely true of many army commanders, but that he was rendered all but helpless by an aggressive enemy. At Corinth he had handled his troops poorly, and in the crisis he had given way to almost complete panic and consequent ineffectiveness.

In the following chapters, we shall examine those allegations more closely. Although Professor Woodworth has some basis for his statements, there is more to be said. The well has been so poisoned that Rosecrans can hardly get a fair evaluation today.⁸

__________________________________

1 William S. Rosecrans on his trouble with Grant; conversation reported by Maj. Gen. James D. Morgan at the 28th Reunion of the Society of the Army of the Cumberland, Detroit, MI, September 26-27, 1899 (Cincinnati, OH, 1900).

2 One historian commented to me that Marshall-Cornwall would be unfamiliar to American readers. This may be true, but his background is certainly interesting enough. His actual title was Lt. Gen. Sir James Marshall-Cornwall, and he not only saw active service in the British army during WWII but was also part of the diplomatic corps and MI6 (British Intelligence Service). In his nearly century-long life he authored several books on military history, including military biographies of Grant, Napoleon, and Massena.

3 General Grenville Dodge, Personal Recollections of President Abraham Lincoln, General Ulysses S. Grant and General William T. Sherman (Denver, CO, 1965), (reprinted from an earlier edition published by Monarch Printing, Council Bluffs, IA, 1914), 33; Adam Badeau, Military History of U. S. Grant, Volume III (New York, NY, 1881), 650.

4 In an appendix to his book, A Victor, Not a Butcher: Ulysses S. Grant’s Overlooked Military Genius (Washington, D.C., 2004), it is curious that Mr. Bonekemper himself points out that the historical perspective of Grant changed nearly 100 years ago. This leads to the question of why Mr. Bonekemper felt the need for a book to challenge an assertion that he himself says is no longer made.

5 James M. McPherson, Grant’s Final Victory, in Drawn With the Sword: Reflections on the American Civil War (New York, NY, 1996), 159-160. Incidentally, McPherson discounts the persistent rumors that Mark Twain ghost-wrote Grant’s Memoirs. Bruce Catton does the same, simply saying, no part of his book was ghostwritten. Catton, U. S. Grant and the American Military Tradition (New York, NY, 1954), 188. Geoffrey Perret quotes Grant himself, who said, I am going to do it myself. If I do not do it myself it will not be mine. Geoffrey Perret, Ulysses S. Grant: Soldier and President (New York, NY, 1997), 471. Given that so many people saw Grant at work on his Memoirs and that the original in his handwriting is available, the persistence of the rumor is hard to understand. Most historians today do not credit it, although Grant very likely had a good editor—perhaps even Twain himself.

6 McPherson, Grant’s Final Victory, 170-171.

7 T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and His Generals (New York, NY, 1952), 312.

8 Williams, Lincoln and His Generals, 246.

Chapter 2

Shiloh:

A Pattern of Deceit Emerges

The Context

When the Civil War broke out, Ulysses S. Grant was quick to offer his services, but at first his offer was ignored. When finally given a command, he quickly whipped it into shape and attacked a rebel base at Belmont, on the Mississippi River. In doing so he exceeded his orders, which required him to demonstrate but not to attack. He was successful at first, but then rebel reinforcements cut off his command and he had to fight his way out. Grant exhibited personal courage and a cool head, and no real harm was done; but it was an unnecessary battle, and had it gone less well it might have done his reputation great harm. More alarmingly, there are strong indications that he made an attempt to cover his mistake after the fact through falsifying documents.¹

But since he had at least exhibited initiative, Grant was charged with opening the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. These two tributaries of the Ohio penetrated deep into the heart of the Confederacy and would make prime avenues for invasion. He successfully captured Forts Henry and Donelson, which guarded the rivers, but the operations were far from flawless. Henry was reduced by a powerful gunboat squadron before Grant’s arrival, and he was away from his army when a rebel attempt to break out of Donelson nearly succeeded. Even so, he opened the river and captured the powerful fort and the rebel army it contained. His demand for unconditional surrender earned him an immediate reputation as a fighting general.

Success breeds opportunity, and Grant was given field command of an operation to seize the key railhead of Corinth, Mississippi. General Henry Halleck, who was in overall command, was to have at his disposal not only Grant’s army and the cooperation of a naval flotilla, but also the Army of the Ohio under Don Carlos Buell.²

But Buell had not arrived by the time the rebels struck Grant’s encampment near Shiloh Church. The Confederates, under the command of Albert Sidney Johnston, attacked on the morning of April 6, 1862. The Union camps were overrun, but a delaying action by the division of Gen. Benjamin Prentiss, along with elements of other commands, helped hold the rebels back long enough for Grant to hurry to the battlefield and establish a second line. Buell’s army arrived that night, as did Lew Wallace’s division—of Grant’s army—which had been camped several miles away. The next morning Grant and Buell led a counterattack that, in heavy fighting, drove the rebels from the field.

Prior to this action, Grant had proven himself to be a competent, aggressive leader—if sometimes prone to mistakes, which he was able to rectify. But Shiloh was Grant’s first large-scale, set piece battle, on a scale and level of importance that dwarfed what had come before. It provides a good example of his courage and determination.

It is also provides a good example of what would be a pattern of behavior for Grant: a willingness to distort the truth; subtly criticize officers he did not like; commend his favorites; refuse to admit mistakes; and search for a scapegoat. The pattern would reappear at Iuka, Corinth, Chattanooga, Cold Harbor, the Crater, Five Forks, as well as in his Memoirs. It is worth taking a look at what Grant had to say about this first instance, in order to see how he manipulated the record.³

General Ulysses S. Grant

Library of Congress

Grant was a highly-effective commander, but his personal insecurities led him to sometimes take credit rightfully due to others, to refuse to admit mistakes, and to savagely attack men for any perceived slight. Loyal to a fault when it came to his friends, he could be relentless toward those whom he considered enemies.

The Controversies

Several controversies must be addressed to understand Grant’s attempt to control how Shiloh would be remembered:

He steadfastly denied that he was surprised by the rebel attack.

He blamed subordinates for causing near-disaster: Benjamin Prentiss for allowing the line to break and Lew Wallace for taking an unconscionably long time to reach the battlefield.

He intimated that General Buell’s army was late arriving at the rendezvous.

He was adamant in his denial that he and his men were rescued by Buell’s arrival.

He did not actively pursue the retreating rebels, in spite of the fact that he would be highly critical of William S. Rosecrans for not conducting a more active pursuit after the battles of Iuka and Corinth.

Was Grant surprised?

The Federal forces were camped on the west bank of the Tennessee River by order of Gen. C. F. Smith. William Tecumseh Sherman landed his division on the west bank, and Smith had acquiesced in his choice of campsites and approved placing the rest of the army there.

Smith had been picked by Grant’s superior, Gen. Henry Halleck, to replace Grant in command of the army, at least in part because Halleck believed that Grant was drinking. He reported to General in Chief of the Union Army George McClellan that Grant may have resumed his previous bad habits, a clear allegation that Grant—whose problems with alcohol had led to the end of his first military career—had begun drinking again. Halleck has frequently been castigated by historians for his treatment of Grant, charged with everything from petty jealousy to poor judgment. Historians tend to believe that Grant, although he may have had a drinking problem, kept it under control for the most part. Bruce Catton, for example, called Halleck’s charges a monstrous untruth.

Yet it appears that Halleck covered for Grant in this instance, despite the fact that he may have had some basis for ongoing concern. Grant had seemingly ignored Halleck’s repeated requests for reports due to a disloyal telegrapher (although Halleck had no way of knowing that at the time). A junior officer had previously filed formal charges that Grant had been drunk on duty and guilty of conduct unbecoming an officer; Halleck buried the case by submitting it to Grant himself for disposal. A ledger of charges preferred sits in the National Archives, and the report is there, with a notation that, by Halleck’s order, it had been submitted to the officer’s commander (Grant) for disposition. In the accompanying ledger of disposition of cases, the charge has disappeared. Is it really so difficult to believe that an alcoholic—for that is what Grant appears to have been—might succumb to temptation now and again? Given the enormous stress Grant had to deal with, an occasional lapse might be expected. And if Halleck actually believed that the commander of one of his field forces had a drinking problem, does he deserve censure for expressing his concerns to his superiors?⁴

Major General Henry Wager Halleck

Library of Congress

Halleck was Grant’s superior during the campaigns for Forts Henry and Donelson, and for the Shiloh campaign. He successfully parlayed Grant’s successes into overall command of the Union war effort. When superseded by Grant, Halleck was moved into the new position of Chief of Staff of the Army, in which position he performed competently.

There is an abiding temptation to judge the people of the past by what we know now, rather than what they knew then. Grant was a brilliant general—today we know that—but in the early spring of 1862, Henry Halleck could only judge by what he had seen so far: a dangerous scrape at Belmont; the taking of Fort Henry by the fleet before Grant could get his army within range; and a near-breakout at Fort Donelson before Grant was able to restore order and win a decisive victory. Signs looked promising for Halleck’s subordinate—but he was by no means a sure thing.

William Tecumseh Sherman, with the approval of Smith, was responsible for choosing the campsite at Pittsburg Landing; but according to General Buell, Grant—against orders—transformed it from a bridgehead into the main encampment of his army. Grant then established his headquarters at Savannah, Tennessee, eight miles away and on the other side of the river, with no telegraphic connection between his army and his headquarters. Two days before the battle, his most trusted subordinate, Sherman, told him that the enemy is in some considerable force [within ten miles of the Federal lines]. A day later, however, he reported to Grant, I do not apprehend anything like an attack upon our position. This undoubtedly contributed to Grant reporting to Halleck on that same day, I have scarcely the faintest idea of an attack (general one) being made upon us, but will be prepared should such a thing take place. But there had in fact been numerous indications of the enemy host’s presence.⁵

Halleck had directed Grant to fortify his position. In his Memoirs, Grant stated, "The fact is, I regarded the campaign we were engaged in as an offensive one and had no idea that the enemy would leave strong [e]intrenchments

Reviews for General Grant and the Rewriting of History

[josepharose · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A book that exposes Ulysses S. Grant's reliance on personal feelings instead of military concerns and his unreliability as a chronicler of the American Civil War.

[stevesmits · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Professor Varney's premise is that the standard (negative)history of the war record of Civil War general William Rosecrans, who was fired by U.S. Grant and, later, highly criticized by Grant in his famous memoir, was adopted by historians' uncritical acceptance of Grant's views. Varney says that Grant's version was self-serving, motivated by animus against Rosecrans and factually wrong, even deceitful. Using the various battles in which Grant was Rosecran's superior Professor Varney provides highly detailed analysis of the lack of veracity in Grant's accounts. He relies strongly on sources like the Official Record of the War of the Rebellion containing Grant's written reports and personal letters of the participants. (Note: the book is densely detailed and a basic familiarity with the campaigns is helpful to the reader.)This book is more than just an effort to present a different view of Rosecrans. It poses important questions about how history is written. Varney holds that historians have relied greatly too much on Grant's account, many completely on Grant's memoirs. By implication Grant was not, and should not be seen to be, an objective reporter not because he wasn't present at the events, but because he was. There were personal interactions between Grant and Rosecrans that came to bear and Grant's interpretation of events were naturally influenced by these. In other words, his recollections, whether influenced by benign subjectivity or overtly distorted to protect his reputation, are bound to be slanted. The over reliance of historians on Grant for the true story is also influenced by other factors: 1)Grant is regarded as the hero (among many incompetents) whose leadership traits won the war and 2) his memoirs are considered a masterpiece of expository writing.While I might argue that characterizing Grant as deliberately deceitful is a bit too strong, there is merit to Varney's assertion that historians must look deeply critically beyond the conclusions of history as told by participants. Accepting Grant's views, without more analysis and synthesis from other sources, would seem to shortcut the responsibility that historians bear. This book is especially interesting to me because of some work I did on Henry Halleck. Halleck was a native of the upstate New York village where I live and I wrote a paper on him for the local historical society. As I did my research I found an amazingly consistent view of Halleck -- to paraphrase Varney a "standard" repeated by most historians. These views were overwhelmingly critical and, often like those about Rosecrans, told in negative judgements of a few sentences. I wondered that there must be much more to this man. He served throughout the war in positions of increasing responsibility; he was valued enough by Lincoln to use him as a chief of staff and Grant retained him to good effect when he took over as general in chief. What I found was Halleck had many traits that made him valuable. He was highly effective as an administrator as opposed to as a field general or strategist, but he was in an exceedingly difficult position viz. the Washington political atmosphere, and he had personality aspects that did not endear. When you take the perspective that he was good, but flawed, demonstrably helpful but not utterly essential you have, I think, a fuller, fairer view of him. It seemed to me that historians have adopted a perspective on Civil War generals (the federal ones at least) that if you weren't a hero you were a failure. Moreover, in the popular histories Halleck is a minor character; he doesn't generate more than a superficial and reductive view of his contributions. Perhaps my bias was toward the "hometown" boy, but I do think I made a fairer, more balanced interpretation of Halleck's record. I look forward to Professor Varney's next book when he'll take on Grant's relationships with others including Halleck.

[dhughes_741486 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book supports my suspicion and that is U. S. Grant was predatory towards those generals under him that made him look bad. The author has shed new light on the truthfulness of Grant especially when writing his memoirs. This book address the relationship between Grant and Rosecrans. The author's research covers new materials that past historians have not used. Past historians have typically used Grant's Memoirs as the source of their research without checking other sources. The author proves that Grant was not the honorable man that we have been lead to believe. The author writes each chapter by explaining the event (battle) then provides Grant's version then proves that Grant was not honest about the situation by providing evidence from other sources. In doing so he provides very convincing cases that differ from the established history and beliefs. The author is in the process of writing a second volume addressing Grant's treatment of George H. Thomas, Grovernor Warren and W. J. (Baldy) Smith that will follow this same format.

[Valerie Roberts · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Author himself attempts to manipulate history - seems to have an issue with Grant ——-including bringing up the tired, old drama of “drinking” - which was not a problem. As A Lincoln said - send whatever Grant’s drinking to all the generals if it makes them fight like Grant.