General Grant takes command

This week (March 9) in 1864, in Washington, D.C., Ulysses S. Grant was officially named commander of all Union armies. Six days earlier, President Abraham Lincoln had made him the first Lieutenant General of the Army since George Washington, prompting him to travel to Washington to meet Lincoln, receive his command and discuss strategy.

Grant arrived in Washington with his son Fred on March 8, checking into the Willard Hotel, where the desk clerk, appraising this scruffy looking soldier, assigned him a small room on the hotel’s top floor, while informing Grant that he would have to carry his luggage himself as no porters were available. Grant agreed and signed the register “U.S. Grant and son, Galena, Illinois.” Whereupon the stunned clerk, realizing who his guest was, switched Grant to a suite on the second floor and personally carried Grant’s luggage to his room.

Grant had come a long way from his early days as a failed soldier, which was just one of his many failed careers. At West Point in 1843, he graduated 21st out of 39 and later wrote, “A military life had no charms for me, and I had not the faintest idea of staying in the army even if I should be graduated, which I did not expect.” Because of his low class rank he was denied his preferred posting, the cavalry, and assigned to the infantry, where he languished for years before resigning and moving to St. Louis, where one of his careers was selling firewood.

But with the outbreak of the Civil War, Grant was commissioned a colonel in an Illinois volunteer regiment, and later a brigadier general, BRUCE G. KAUFFMANN

Emailauthor BruceG. Kauffmann atbruce@ history lessons.net where his victories in the western theatre – Missouri and Tennessee – earned him promotion to major general and command of the Army of Tennessee. More victories followed, and on July 4, 1863, he captured Ft. Vicksburg on the Mississippi River, giving the North control of the lower half of that river and dividing the Confederacy in two. At this point, Grant had President Lincoln’s undivided attention.

In giving Grant supreme command, Lincoln knew he was staking his presidency and the nation’s fate on a man who many others thought a drunk – Grant liked his whiskey – and a repeated failure.

But Lincoln sensed greatness, as did, ironically, Confederate General James Longstreet, who was Robert E. Lee’s righthand man.

“I was with him for three years at West Point. I served in the same army with him in Mexico. I have observed his methods and warfare in the West, and I believe I know him through and through,” Longstreet said, adding prophetically, “And I tell you we cannot afford to underrate him and the army he now commands.”