1862.] "YOU FOUGHT THE BATTLE OF CORINTH." 259

On the twenty-ninth of May, a tremendous explosion was heard from the town. The rebels were blowing up their works. Halleck, either to hide his blunder, or through sheer stupidity, issued an order alleging that there was every indication that the enemy would attack in force the next morning. The army was drawn up in line of battle to receive an assault. At that very moment the rebel rearguard was marching out, after an evacuation so clean that hardly a canteen or a knapsack was left behind! Beauregard's preparations had been going on for weeks, during which he had befooled Halleck.

Early on the morning of the thirtieth, Logan was ordered to advance and intrench, though he reported that no rebels confronted his division. So his Illinois soldiers being a little off the main road, and no notice being sent them, spaded for hours after the rest of our army had entered Corinth. When Logan learned how he had been served he grew furious. That night a number of young officers grew hilarious over the discomfiture of Halleck; and Logan was with difficulty restrained from telling that stolid chief, that his division should never dig another ditch, unless it were one to bury him in!

Halleck, at last forced into giving his ill-used subordinate some credit, said to Grant:

"After all, you fought the battle of Corinth at Pittsburg Landing."

The journalists were revenged. Word was sent to Cairo that they might come to the front. Some, not waiting for permission, had gone into the deserted town with the advance, and they reported its condition, without covering up tenderly the great blunder.

Halleck sent Buell and Pope in feeble pursuit, still leaving Grant in camp. In a cavalry raid to the enemy's rear, an unknown young quartermaster from the regular army, appointed colonel of the Second Michigan Cavalry only five days before, made a magnificent dash upon five thousand rebel horse, whom he followed twenty miles with only two thousand of his own troopers, capturing many prisoners. The exploit brought him to Grant's notice, and made him a

260

THE GUERRILLAS AFTER GRANT.

[1862.

brigadier-general of volunteers. His name was Phil. Sher

idan.

The evacuation of Corinth uncovered Memphis, and, six days later, it was captured by our gun-boats after the most stirring river battle of the war, fought just after sunrise in front of the city, and witnessed by ten thousand spectators from the shore. On the rebel side, every boat, save one, was sunk, blown up, or captured, and many lives were lost, but on our fleet only one man was injured.

So Grant's victory at Shiloh had thrown the second city of the South into our hands, and, thanks to him, the Union was still "going along."

A letter from Corinth, written by one of the staff to a comrade at home, depicts the general feeling of the army :

"Immediately after the evacuation of Corinth, General Grant made application for leave of absence for twenty days, for himself and staff. It was granted, but he was requested to wait a few days to see what would turn

up.

We were all packed, and waiting to be off every day for a week, when the General was informed that he could not be spared.

"Since you left, the great battle of Corinth has been fought. How terribly 'Old Brains' was sold, you can not tell until you return. When we entered in the morning, Corinth was completely deserted. The last soldier was gone. Twenty houses were on fire, and the long platform of the railway was burning. Beans and rice were in the street and beef barrels cut open and exposed to the sun and flies.

"The buildings on fire were consumed, but the flames spread no farther. The railway track was not destroyed, and McPherson, with a party of men, went hunting and repairing locomotives. Six or seven are now running, and trains pass our camp, going down the Memphis branch forty-five miles. We are domiciled in this pleasant town, which has houses enough for eighteen hundred inhabitants. The weather is delightful, the nights being so cool that we sleep under blankets."

Buell was sent to Chattanooga. Halleck remained in command of the department, and Grant was placed in charge of the District of West Tennessee. On the morning of the twenty-third of June, after spending two days with Sherman, he left Moscow, on horseback, for Memphis, thirtynine miles distant, accompanied by only three officers and ten cavalry-men. The country swarmed with guerrillas. One rebel party of fifteen, learning who the travelers were,

1862.] THE FOURTH OF JULY DINNER IN MEMPHIS. 261

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 punish

ment.

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

262

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

1862.]

AN ORDER ABOUT CONTRABANDS.

263

CHAPTER XX.

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.