This Hallowed Ground - Bruce Catton [46]
Paducah was another key spot. It is situated where the Tennessee River flows into the Ohio, not far upstream from Cairo, and the Tennessee was an obvious highway to the heart of the South. Broad and deep, it was easily navigable all the way to northern Alabama; and if Kentucky was no longer to be a no man’s land, the Tennessee River was of first importance. A Federal base at the mouth of the river would make possible a formal invasion of the Deep South a bit later on.
Grant reached Paducah, disembarked his troops, saw that the town was made secure, and hurried back to Cairo. There he found a message from Frémont, authorizing him to do what he had just done. Then he got another wire, rebuking him for communicating directly with the Kentucky House of Representatives — that was a job for the department commander, and in doing it himself he had been insubordinate and out of line. Then he was notified that Paducah would be put under the command of General Charles F. Smith, and although Paducah was in Grant’s district Smith was being ordered to by-pass Grant and report directly to St. Louis.
Smith was an old-timer, with a record of thirty-five years’ service. He was tall, slim, and straight, with great piratical white mustachios that came down below the line of his chin, a man with ruddy pink cheeks and clear blue eyes, a strict disciplinarian and a terror to volunteers; the very incarnation of the pre-Civil War regular army officer. Among the regulars, indeed, there were many who considered him the best all-around man in the army. He had been commandant of cadets when Grant was at West Point, and although Grant outranked him — and would soon have him in his command, for Frémont’s order was before long rescinded — Grant always felt a little humble and school-boyish in his presence. He remarked once that “it does not seem quite right for me to give General Smith orders,” and some of the regulars felt the same way about it; Grant, they said, owed his rise to political pull, and Smith had spent a lifetime in uniform and ought to be top dog. It never bothered Smith, however. He was frankly proud of his former pupil and had confidence in him.8
Something of Smith’s quality comes out in a story told by Lew Wallace.
Wallace as a boy had longed to go to West Point, and when that dream failed he tried earnestly to become a novelist. That failed too — the train of thought that would eventually become Ben Hur had not yet taken shape in his mind — and so he turned to the law and politics, and when the war began he was made colonel of the 11th Indiana. He was sent to Paducah soon after the place was occupied by Union troops, and — his political connections being first-rate — it was not long before he learned that he was being made a brigadier general. This unsettled him a bit, and he went to General Smith to ask advice.
Smith had taken over a big residence for headquarters, and Wallace found him sitting by the fire after dinner, taking his ease, his long legs stretched out, a decanter on the table. Smith was, said Wallace, “by all odds the handsomest, stateliest, most commanding figure I had ever seen.” Somewhat hesitantly Wallace showed him his notice of promotion and asked if he should accept.
Smith had worked thirty-five years to get his own commission as a brigadier, and the idea that any officer might hesitate to accept such a thing stumped him. Why on earth, he asked, should Wallace not take it?
“Because,” confessed Wallace, “I don’t know anything about the duties of a brigadier.”
Smith blinked at him.
“This,” he