Ulysses S. Grant - Michael Korda [26]
Grant’s soothing proclamation was followed by a more rousing one from Frémont, threatening among other things to seize the slaves and property of Confederate sympathizers and shoot any man not in uniform found bearing a gun. These were exactly the kind of sentiments most calculated to turn inhabitants of the “border states” away from the Union cause at just the moment when Lincoln was trying to woo them, and when Frémont highhandedly refused to withdraw his proclamation at the president’s request, he was removed from his command, his presidential aspirations as good as gone.
Grant was no longer in Frémont’s shadow, and his name was beginning to be known, at least in the White House. Lincoln may not have said, when told about Grant’s drinking, “Tell me the brand of whiskey that Grant drinks—I would like to send a barrel of it to every one of my other generals,” but he did say to one of Grant’s many critics, “I cannot spare this man—he fights.”
Grant would shortly prove that he could not only fight but move fast. In the meantime, with the collapse of Frémont’s balloon, Grant found himself under the command of Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, commander of the Department of Missouri. Up until then Halleck’s chief concern had not been the Confederates but the more important task of getting rid of Frémont and maintaining his superiority in numbers over his rival, Brig. Gen. Don Carlos Buell, commander of the Department of Ohio, but Grant now moved into Halleck’s field of vision as a new threat. Halleck was known to his fellow army officers as “Old Brains,” and he didn’t like or trust a single thing he had heard about Grant. Cautious, pop-eyed, bald, quick to criticize, and slow to make up his mind, a deskbound general who was something of an intriguer and a gossip (many of the stories about Grant’s drinking can be traced back to him), Halleck was to become, for a time, Grant’s bête noire, though once Grant finally succeeded he would find Halleck a useful man to look after things in Washington while Grant took to the field. Halleck’s strengths—attention to detail, administrative ability, a love of paperwork, and an intimate knowledge of the army way of doing things—in many ways complemented Grant’s.
The second person who entered Grant’s life at this point, and made an immediate difference, was John A. Rawlins, who joined Grant’s staff as an aide. Grant did not know Rawlins well—for some time he wrote his name as “Rollins”—but Rawlins was a fellow Galena man and had in fact been the attorney for Jesse Grant’s leather and harness shop.
Rawlins took charge of Grant’s chaotic paperwork, for which Grant had no gift at all. He also acted, from the beginning, as Grant’s éminence bleue—adviser, protector, sounding board. Rawlins was abrasive, exacting, even abusive, had no difficulty (unlike Grant) in saying no to people, and was above all a fervent and outspoken “teetotaler,” who abstained from all forms of spirits. Rawlins was a born follower, who had been looking all his life for a man to follow and found him in Grant. It became his role to prevent Grant from reaching for the bottle, and on those occasions when he failed, to keep Grant out of sight. Rawlins was like a faithful guard dog, ferocious, absolutely loyal to his master, and devoted to protecting him, even from himself.
With Rawlins to guard his flank, Grant took to the field immediately. Ordered by Halleck to make “a demonstration” at Belmont, a Confederate camp on the Mississippi, twenty miles below