Sherman: A Soldier's Passion for Order

Chapter 19: Commanding General Versus the Politicians

CHAPTER 19 COMMANDING GENERAL VERSUS THE POLITICIANS BEING COMMANDING GENERAL was not easy. As soon as Sherman had gained the office in March 1869, he had found himself battling politicians in Washington and Indian agents in the West. Even his Civil War comrade, U. S. Grant, the new president, proved to be undependable, supporting his new friends, the politicians, instead of his old friends, the army and its new leader. Within the military itself, the independent staff bureaus fought against being placed under his command, preferring the wide latitude they enjoyed under civilian direction. In the West, the Indians proved more disorderly than he imagined, and he did not have the power to deal with them as he wanted. These were frustrating times for one of the great heroes of the Civil War who had come to expect much better from a nation he had helped save and a president who had been his comrade in arms. As the 1876 presidential campaign began, he found himself looking forward to a new occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, something he could not have imagined when Grant took office in 1869. Sherman thought Grant would always be the soldier he remembered from the Civil War. When Sherman had been depressed after the insanity controversy in Kentucky and Missouri , it was Grant's successes that had given him inspiration and hope. At Shiloh, Grant had shown Sherman how far dogged tenacity could carry an individual and an army even in the face of the most discouraging odds. Sherman was awestruck. When Grant himself almost succumbed to the attacks of newsmen and the pettiness of Halleck after Shiloh, Sherman provided important support. He helped convince Grant not to quit and built up his 422 COMMANDING GENERAL VERSUS THE POLITICIANS --------------------------*-------------------------own self-confidence in the process. These reciprocal events were the defining moments in the two men's relationship. Sherman explained their friendship by saying: "He stood by me when I was crazy and I stood by him when he was drunk; and now, sir, we stand by each other always."l As Grant's star rose during the war, Sherman's followed in its light until the two men were the major military leaders in the Union war effort. They could always depend on each other, confident that neither would hurt the other for personal gain. They were a team, working together for the good of the Union and to become the successes they had never been before. They were totally different personalities, and their approaches were different . The taciturn Grant and the voluble Sherman complemented each other and in the process carried war to a new level of victorious violence. Neither Grant's war of attrition in Virginia nor Sherman's destructive war in the interior would have achieved such success without the other. At war's end, their names were indelibly written together in the history books as the co-fathers of modern war. And their friendship was secure. Sherman believed it would always be so. He and Grant would maintain the same relationship in peacetime they had formed in war. They would work together to ensure the nation's future by securing a stable place for the army in the postwar world. In that way they would ensure their own continued security too. And so it was while Grant remained in the army. Then Grant became president, and to Sherman's disbelief, he did not remain the soldier he had been in the war; he joined the enemy--he became a politician. Sherman watched in sadness as his friend acted as the nation's chief politician rather than, as he had hoped, an honorable independent, the same straightforward person he had been during the war. Sherman grew increasingly disillusioned when Grant gave into Rawlins and, Sherman thought, hurt the army in the process. He was cut even more deeply when Belknap progressively shunted him aside, and Grant meekly promised fairness but never delivered. By the end of Grant's second term, Sherman considered his presidency "a failure." He thought Grant had made a grievous error by not supporting the army more strongly, but he was particularly upset at his policy toward the South. The "great mistake" had been made, Sherman said, "in putting all the 423 SHERMAN --------------------------*-------------------------political power of the Southern states in the hands of the ignorant, and substantially disfranchising the intelligent classes." This, of course, had not...