Lincoln asked the politicians if they knew which brand of whiskey Grant had imbibed. One famous story holds that a group of congressmen complained to Lincoln, after the Confederate army of Mississippi had surrendered at Vicksburg, that Grant had been drunk for much of the siege. Grant’s critics encountered a president who was unwavering in his support. Grant would not only fight, he would destroy his opponents utterly. Taking the rebel stronghold meant reopening the Mississippi River to the embattled Republic while simultaneously cutting the Confederacy in half.Ībraham Lincoln wanted generals who would fight. It was Grant’s success in the western theatre of the Civil War, from Fort Donelson (Tennessee), where he earned the nickname ‘‘Unconditional Surrender’’ for his refusal to discuss terms with the Confederates, to Vicksburg (Mississippi), where the war was decided by a combination of Grant’s armies and the Union navy. This led to Sherman’s armies pursuing a scorched-earth policy between Atlanta and Savannah, burning a 60km swathe across Georgia and then north into the Carolinas. Sherman agreed it was necessary to destroy the Confederacy’s capacity to support its armies in the field. The relationship with Sherman was pivotal in Grant’s ultimate success as commander of all Union armies, from August 1864. While horrified by the carnage he witnessed, and more than once under direct Confederate fire, including at Shiloh, Grant never wavered in his determination to crush the rebellion by destroying the Confederate armies and their industrial base. This encounter says much about Grant’s leadership during the terrible violence of the American Civil War. He had already told Sherman that when both sides seem defeated in battle, the first to assume the offensive would surely win. “Lick ’em tomorrow though.” The statement expressed Grant’s intestinal fortitude which communicated itself to his officers. “Yes,” replied Grant with a drag on his cigar. “Well, Grant, we’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we?” Sherman remarked. Sherman found him standing there, streaming with rain, hat pulled low over his face, collar upturned, holding a lantern and chewing a cigar. Wrapped in his greatcoat, Grant returned to the haven of the nearby oak tree with its spreading canopy of branches. Grant, as Ron Chernow details in his outstanding biography, Grant: None of this fazed Union commander General Ulysses S. As reinforcements were ferried across the Tennessee River, they confronted thousands of Union deserters and shirkers cowering on the riverbank.
On the evening of the first day of the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862, the Union forces at Pittsburgh Landing reflected the partial rout that had been suffered.
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