George Eggleston - The History of the Confederate War, Its Causes and Its Conduct. Volume 2 of 2

In the meanwhile Halleck had done all that was possible to him to humiliate General Grant and to deny him everything in the shape of opportunity. General Grant, in his "Memoirs," (page 219), pathetically says:

Although next to him [Halleck] in rank, and nominally in command of my old district and army, I was ignored as much as if I had been at the most distant point of territory within my jurisdiction; and although I was in command of all the troops engaged at Shiloh, I was not permitted to see one of the reports of General Buell or his subordinates in that battle until they were published by the War Department long after the event.

Again on page 225, General Grant tells of an occasion when he suggested a military movement to General Halleck – a thing that the second in command might very well have been expected to do. After explaining to his readers what his suggestion was, General Grant adds: "I was silenced so quickly that I felt that possibly I had suggested an unmilitary movement."

Yet when Halleck was ordered to Washington to assume chief command he saw clearly that it would not be prudent in the existing state of the public mind to make any other than Grant the commander at Corinth. He therefore sent word to Grant in Memphis to report at Corinth. But he said nothing whatever to him about his own appointment to the command of all the armies, or about his intended departure for Washington, or even about his intention that Grant should assume command at Corinth. He merely directed him to report there, leaving it entirely to uninformed conjecture whether he was merely to report in person for some instruction or was to remove his headquarters from Memphis to that point. In this uncertainty Grant telegraphed asking whether or not he was to take his staff with him. To this Halleck curtly and discourteously replied: "This place will be your headquarters. You can judge for yourself."

When Grant took command at Corinth he found matters in an exceedingly confused and embarrassing condition. In the first place his authority was so ill defined that he could do nothing of importance without risk of subjecting himself to censure and perhaps even to a trial by court martial for having exceeded his authority, while if he left anything undone by reason of his uncertainty as to the scope of his command, he must do so at equal risk of censure or court martial for neglect.

Halleck had been in command of the entire department and of all the forces within its borders. In leaving General Grant as his successor he did not invest him with a similarly comprehensive authority. Neither did he make it clear that such authority was denied to him. So far as his orders indicated Grant was still only a district commander, having authority only over troops within the district of West Tennessee, whose eastern boundary was the Cumberland river, beyond which Halleck had sent a large part of the forces that had been under his command at Corinth. And yet Grant was practically a department commander. His own exposition of the situation is so clear, succinct and complete, that no paraphrase can better it or equal it. On page 233 et seq. of his "Memoirs," General Grant wrote:

I left Memphis for my new field without delay and reached Corinth on the fifteenth of the month. General Halleck remained until the seventeenth of July; but he was very uncommunicative, and gave me no information as to what I had been called to Corinth for. When General Halleck left to assume the duties of general-in-chief I remained in command of the District of West Tennessee. Practically I became a department commander because no one was assigned to that position over me, and I made my reports direct to the General-in-chief; but I was not assigned to the position of department commander until the twenty-fifth of October. General Halleck, while commanding the Department of the Mississippi, had had control as far east as a line drawn from Chattanooga north. My district only embraced West Tennessee and Kentucky west of the Cumberland river. Buell, with the Army of the Ohio, had as previously stated, been ordered east towards Chattanooga, with instructions to repair the Memphis and Charleston railroad as he advanced. Troops had been sent North by Halleck along the line of the Mobile and Ohio railroad to put it in repair as far as Columbus. Other troops were stationed on the [Mississippi Central] railroad from Jackson, Tennessee, to Grand Junction, and still others on the road west to Memphis. The remainder of the magnificent army of 120,000 men which entered Corinth on the thirtieth of May, had now become so scattered that I was put entirely on the defensive in a territory whose population was hostile to the Union.

One of the first things I had to do was to construct fortifications at Corinth better suited to the garrison that could be spared to man them. The structures that had been built during the months of May and June were left as monuments to the skill of the engineer, and others were constructed in a few days, plainer in design, but suited to the command available to defend them.

In brief Halleck had completely thrown away one of the most brilliant opportunities of the war. He had found an army of 120,000 men, flushed with victory and full of spirit, concentrated at a point in the center of the Confederacy, from which it was not only possible but easy to advance in overwhelming force in any direction, while the inflow of recruits at that time was great enough to make good and even to double the losses that battle might involve. On the other hand the Confederates had lost so heavily at Shiloh that they did not venture to make a stand in their intrenchments at Corinth, even though Halleck's extraordinary dilatoriness gave them seven weeks of precious time in which to recruit their army, strengthen their defenses and receive reinforcements of 17,000 seasoned and veteran troops that were presently sent to them.

General Grant has pronounced the positive and unhesitating opinion that an energetic advance immediately after the Shiloh battle, with the enormously superior forces then concentrated at that point would have resulted beyond a peradventure in the conquest of Corinth within two days, with the capture of all the stores and ammunition there as a necessary incident and the capture of Beauregard's army as at least a promising possibility. By consuming three weeks in preparation for an advance which ought to have been made at once and by wasting a whole month more in an advance by parallels, where an advance at the quickstep with fixed bayonets, was all that was needed, Halleck had completely thrown away this opportunity.

But even then, even after wasting seven weeks in reaching Corinth, it was not too late to achieve results of the most momentous consequence. On page 227 of his "Memoirs," General Grant gives this expert opinion of the situation and the opportunity:

The Confederates were now driven out of West Tennessee, and on the sixth of June, after a well contested naval battle, the National forces took possession of Memphis, and held the Mississippi river from its source to that point. The railroad from Columbus to Corinth was at once put in good condition and held by us. We had garrisons at Donelson, Clarksville and Nashville on the Cumberland river, and held the Tennessee river from its mouth to Eastport. New Orleans and Baton Rouge had fallen into the possession of the National forces, so that now the Confederates at the West were narrowed down for all communication with Richmond to the single line of road running east from Vicksburg. To dispossess them of this, therefore, became a matter of the first importance. The possession of the Mississippi by us, from Memphis to Baton Rouge, was also a most important object. It would be equal to the amputation of a limb in its weakening effect upon the enemy. After the capture of Corinth a movable force of 80,000 men, besides enough to hold all the territory acquired, could have been set in motion for the accomplishment of any great campaign for the suppression of the rebellion . 1 1 The italics are not General Grant's, but are placed by the author of the present work, upon words that seem to him to be pregnant of criticism and explanation. In addition to this, fresh troops were being raised to swell the effective force.