Ulysses S. Grant - Michael Korda [37]
They must have looked like Mutt and Jeff, Grant a stocky, robust five feet seven, Lincoln an awkward, angular six feet four, but they made conversation—easy for Lincoln, the lawyer and professional politician, but hard work for Grant—until the president, having heard the buzz of excitement in the room at the presence of the victor of Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Missionary Ridge, persuaded Grant to stand on a couch so people could see him.
The next day Grant received his formal promotion and sat down for his first serious talk with the president. Lincoln made it clear that he did not intend to look over Grant’s shoulder, as he had with so many of his previous generals. He would later write to Grant, “The particulars of your plans I neither know or seek to know,” a very different approach from the fretful micromanagement by telegraph that Lincoln had inflicted on McClellan, Burnside (who had burst into tears at the thought of his own inadequacy on being told he was to command the Army of the Potomac), and Hooker, and no doubt Lincoln emphasized his belief that Grant should “hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew & choke, as much as possible.”
That was Grant’s own view of the matter. He had opened up the South, and would shortly send Sherman on his famous march to the sea; in the meantime he intended to hold on to Lee “with a bulldog grip” until Lee’s army was defeated in the field. He had no complicated strategy in mind; he did not much care whether he took Richmond or not—he simply calculated that the North had a larger population than the South, that he could therefore afford casualties better than Lee could in the long run, and that the only way to win was to move forward and push Lee back, day by day, inflicting casualties on the Army of Northern Virginia until the South ran out of men to replace them. It was simple, brutal, and would prove to be effective, but it required a general with Grant’s grim view of war to make that deadly calculation and see it through to the bitter end. Lee had remarked to Jackson at Fredericksburg, as he watched Burnside’s troops make charge after futile charge into a storm of Confederate fire, “It is well that this is terrible, or else we might grow fond of it,” but it is hard to imagine Grant agreeing with him. He had no romantic notions about war and would surely have agreed with Sherman’s famous remark, “War is hell.” The waving flags, the glint of bayonets through the smoke, the bugle calls and thunder of artillery drowning out the screams of dying men and horses—none of this held anything in the way of an attraction for Grant. The sooner it was over, the better for all concerned, including the Confederates, and the way to end it fast was to kill them in larger quantities than anybody had heretofore contemplated. It was not a prospect that gave him pleasure—indeed it merely deepened his tendency to melancholy—but he did not shrink before it, or at what it would cost in Union lives.
He moved at once to define and consolidate his position. He intended to command the armies of the East and the West from the field, with the Army of the Potomac, rather than remain in Washington, so he made a grateful Halleck a kind of chief of staff. Grant did not intend to coop himself up in an office or expose himself to visits from importunate members of Congress or officers of the cabinet—Halleck could do all that for him, and do it better, anyway. He quickly made it clear to Meade that despite Grant’s own presence in the field, Meade would remain in command of the Army of the Potomac and did his best to convey his confidence in Meade’s ability—no easy task, considering Meade’s prickly character. In fact, Grant went out of his way not to interfere with Meade, though inevitably the victor of Gettysburg soon became merely a kind of second in command. Meade’s prickliness reached a peak when he had a newspaperman he didn’t like drummed out of camp wearing a large sign around his neck with the word “Liar!” in bold letters, about par for the course when it came to