1) Robert Anderson  2) William T. Sherman  3) Don Carlos Buell  4) William S. Rosecrans  5) George H. Thomas

Projected: 9 Schofield, 10 Hazen, 11 Sheridan, 12 Willich, 13 Osterhaus,  14 Wilder, 15 "Baldy" Smith, 16 Wilson, 17 Garfield

For biographies of the main Confederate generals associated with the Army of Tennessee go to  AoT  Facts:
1. Braxton Bragg; 2. J. Johnston; 3. John Bell Hood; 4. Richard Taylor; 5. Wheeler; 6. Forrest; 7. Cleburne;
8. Polk; 9. Cheatham; 10. Hardee; 11. Stewart; 12. Longstreet; 13. Breckinridge;14. Kirby-Smith

1. Robert Anderson - "hero of Ft. Sumter" - also did good work in Kentucky.
Robert Anderson, "hero of Ft. Sumter", was born on 14 June1805 near Louisville, Kentucky into a slave-holding family steeped in American military tradition. He graduated from from West Point in 1825 (5^th out of 37). His brother, Richard, was a lawyer, politician, and diplomat, and Anderson, after graduating from West Point, served briefly as his brother's private secretary when he was minister to Colombia. Robert Anderson served in the Indian fighting, taught artillery tactics at West Point, and fought in the Seminole War (1 brevet) before being severely wounded in the Mexican War (1 brevet). Anderson then served on a number of boards and commissions until assigned by Buchanan to command of the defenses of Charleston harbor in 1860. Considered pro-southern and a defender of slavery, married to a Georgian, he was given the assignement in the expectation that he would likely be cautious and tactful in his duties, thereby avoiding actions provocative to South Carolina. Southerners as well thought Anderson would be sympathetic to their demands that the forts be turned over to the Confederacy. Indeed, Anderson himself seemed to think that if war could be avoided, the seceding states might, ultimately, return peaceably to the Union. However, apprently nobody had counted on his rigid concept of duty. He liked to say that he lived by his father's religion and General Washington's politics, and that he needed only three documents to guide his path: the Ten Commandments, the Constitution, and the book of army regulations, and he apparently threw in his lot with the Union without hesitation. Through his resolution and patience he made an essential contribution to the Union war effort by getting Beauregard to fire first. After the unannounced relief ship Star Of the West was fired upon by Carolinian gunners on 9 January, 1861, Anderson, not wishing to start a war, withheld his fire. On 26 Dec. 60 Anderson surprised everyone by suddenly transferring the garrison from exposed Fort Moultrie to the more defensible Fort Sumter, a large and unfinished masonry structure on an artificial island overlooking the seaward approaches to Charleston, without specific instructions from his superiors, thus inflaming Southern public opinion. Ft. Sumter was regarded by people on both sides as a symbol. Many in Lincoln's cabinet were willing to relinquish it, but not Lincoln. The Charleston Mercury wrote: "let us be ready for war...Border Southern States will never join us until we have indicated our power to free ourselves - until we have proven that a garrison of seventy men cannot hold the portal of our commerce. The fate of the Southern Confederacy hangs by the ensign balliards of Fort Sumter." By April 5, General Beauregard had deprived the fort of any daily supply of food from Charleston and made repeated demands that Anderson surrender, which he refused. On 12 April 1861, just as a relief expedition of several ships was approaching, the Confederates opened fire. The opening bombardment of the Civil War lasted 3 days. On 14 April 1861 Anderson surrendered when his food and ammunition ran out.* He returned to the North with his garrison and, despite a hero's welcome, felt a sense of failure in not having prevented the war, as he had hoped that the crisis could be resolved peacefully. Anderson was promoted B.G. USA 15 May 61 and took command of the Dept. of Ky. (28 May - 15 Aug. 61) and Dept. of the Cumberland (15 Aug. - 8 Oct. 61). He started his command in Kentucky without a single soldier, but he had the foresight to insist upon having the services of George H. Thomas and to then assign him to Fort Dick Robinson, the nation's first modern basic training camp. He worked to get Thomas supplies and to get him promoted. After retiring for disabilities on 27 Oct. 63, perhaps weakened by the mental and physical demands of his Sumter service, he lobbied in Washington in order to keep Thomas from being replaced by a political general. Anderson was breveted Maj. Gen. USA 3 Feb. 65. Anderson had translated several French field manuals for the US Army. On 14 April Anderson was present at Sumter when the original flag was reraised. He went to Nice, France seeking a cure for his ailments and died there on 26 Oct.1871.

* From Robert Anderson's 18 April 1861 dispatch after boarding the steamship Baltic: "Having defended Fort Sumter for thirty-four hours, until the quarters were entirely burned, the main gates destroyed by fire, the gorge walls seriously injured, the magazine surrounded by flames, and its door closed from the effects of heat, four barrels and three cartridges of powder only being available, and no provisions remaining but pork, I accepted terms of evacuation offered by General Beauregard, being the same offered by him on the 11th instant, prior to the commencement of hostilities, and marched out of the fort Sunday afternoon, the 14th instant, with colors flying and drums beating, bringing away company and private property, and saluting my flag with fifty guns."

Born on 8 May 1820 in Lancaster, Ohio, his father died when he was young. Widowed and unable to care for the entire family, his mother sent brother Thomas to be raised by an aunt, and William became a foster child to Thomas Ewing, his father's friend. Cump, as he was known, later married Mr. Ewing's daughter, Ellen. Educated at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, he graduated in 1840. During the Mexican War, Sherman was posted in San Francisco. He resigned his commission in 1853 to become a partner in a bank there. Prior to the outbreak of hostilities between the North and the South, Sherman was Superintendent of the Louisiana State Seminary and Military Academy at Alexandria, Louisiana. After the war, the school moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana and became Louisiana State University (LSU). Talk of the secession from the Union was rampant, and on 18 January 1861, Sherman resigned his position stating that he preferred to maintain his allegiance to the Constitution as long as a fragment of it survived. On the 25th of February, Sherman left Louisiana and returned to Ohio. He remained in Lancaster for a month and then moved his family to St. Louis, Missouri where he was elected President of the Fifth Street Railroad.

On 8 May 1861, Sherman wrote to the Secretary of War, offering his services for three years. On 20 June 1861 he was appointed Colonel in the Thirteenth Regular Infantry. He assumed command of a brigade in the First Division of McDowell's army. His brigade, stationed at a stone bridge during the battle of First Manassas (Bull Run), was routed by devastating Confederate cannon fire. In August 1861, Sherman and George H. Thomas were promoted to Brigadier General and were assigned to the Department of the Cumberland under the command of Brigadier-General Robert Anderson, the "hero of Ft. Sumter. Sherman had previously served under Anderson, and it was Anderson that requested that Sherman (along with Thomas and Buell) be transferred to his command. In October 1861, Sherman relieved Anderson and commanded the dept. of Kentucky for only one month. Filling quotas for Kentucky volunteers was extremely difficult, and the allegiance of the State was split. Later that month, Sherman told Secretary of War Cameron that if he had 60,000 men, he would drive the enemy out of Kentucky, and if he had 200,000 men, he would finish the war in that section. He also grossly exagerated the strength of the Confederate forces facing him and predicted an imminent invasion of Kentucky and even Ohio. When Cameron returned to Washington, he reported that Sherman required 200,000 men. The report was given to newspapers and a cry of indignation arose from the public. A writer of one of these newspapers even went as far as saying that Sherman must be "crazy" in demanding such a large force. Writers have since often declared that he was insane, which is not accurate. Certain is, that he was subject to wild swings between enthusiasm and depression. During his brief month of command in Kentucky, he ordered Thomas to occupy East Tennessse, and preparations were made by Unionists there to help this project. However, at the last moment Sherman, in a moment of panic, recalled Thomas, and many Unionist partisans in East Tennesse were rounded up and hung. On 8 Nov. 1861 Shermen, under public pressure, requested to be relieved from command in Kentucky. The request was granted, and he turned his department over to Buell, and he was sent to St. Louis to the Department of the West under Halleck who, in a letter to Sherman's foster father, stated, "I have seen newspaper squibs charging him with being 'crazy', etc. This is the grossest injustice. I do not however, consider such attacks worthy of notice." Strictly speaking, manic-depressiveness is not insanity. On February 13, 1862, Sherman assumed the command of the post at Paducah, Kentucky, relieving U.S. Grant of that position. On March 11, 1862, Halleck was assigned to command the Department of the Mississippi and Major-General U.S. Grant to command the army in the field. The organization and the name given to this army was the Army of the Tennessee. Sherman was placed in command of the Fifth Division of this army.

The Army of the Tennessee saw its first battle at Shiloh. Due to poor preparation on the part of Grant, Sherman, and others,  the North nearly lost the first day's battle, but with reenforcements from Buell and the Army of the Cumberland, the Confederate troops were driven from the field on the second day. In July 1862, Sherman was assigned to command the District of Memphis. Later that year Sherman, in a frontal assault at Chickasaw Bluffs, failed to seize the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, but was with Grant in the campaign that finally ended in the capture of that city in July 1863. Sherman was given command of the Army of the Tennessee in the fall of 1863 and, in a remarkable display of military incompetence, fought in the Battle of Chattanooga with his troops unsuccessfully assaulting a much smaller force under Patrick Cleburne on Missionary Ridge. On that occasion, thanks to Thomas and Hooker, the Federals did capture the Ridge, and Bragg's troops retreated eastward. Afterward, Sherman was made overall commander of the armies in the West and was accorded the Thanks of Congress, perhaps as the result of the efforts of his brother John Sherman, U.S. senator at the time.

On 4 May 1864, with more than 100,000 troops, Sherman began the Atlanta Campaign. The entire staff work of the force was conducted by the center, Thomas and his Army of the Cumberland. The Confederate commander J. Johnston held off the troops of McPherson at Resaca, but then had to withdraw after the battle when federal troops were endangering his position by outflanking him. For a description of this kick-off, see the article Sherman and Grant vs. Thomas at Resaca by Don Plezia. The strength of the Union army and the ability to supply themselves were too much for Johnston, and his army was gradually forced closer and closer to Atlanta. Johnston defeated Sherman's armies at the battle of Kennesaw Mountain on 27 June 1864, another of Shermans's frontal assaults, but once again had to move his troops back southward to Smyrna due to the threat of being turned. Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, lost faith in Johnston's ability to oppose Sherman and, on 17 July 1864, Davis relieved Johnston of his command and replaced him with the aggressive John B. Hood. Hood was just as unsuccessful in stopping the Union armies and fought four futile battles in the attempt. Finally on 2 September 1864, Sherman's troops entered the city of Atlanta. Sherman declared Atlanta to be a military encampment and ordered the civilians to leave the city. From September to November, Sherman pursued Hood, but to no avail. Hood then began marching northward, hoping to win back Tennessee and Kentucky. Sherman made the statement, "If he continues to march North, all the way to the Ohio, I will supply him with rations." Sherman began planning his March to the Sea. He kept most of the the seasoned veterans, 60,000 in all, and sent the sick and the about to be furloughed troops back to Nashville to be under the command of Major-General George Thomas who nevertheless crushed Hood in the battle of Nashville on 15-16 Dec. 1864.

In November 1864, Sherman began his infamous raid. Prior to leaving Atlanta, he set fire to munitions factories, railroad yards, clothing mills, and other targets. Predictably, the fire got out of hand and spread throughout the city. With his four Corps in two columns, Sherman cut a swath 60 miles wide marching towards Savannah, destroying anything that could be useful to the enemy, and meeting no military opposition. Much of the violence to civilians was carried out by criminal camp followers. They were called "bummers" and consisted of stragglers from both Union and Confederate armies. Sherman issues orders that they be kept under control, but as they were helping to make Georgia howl, he probably didn't really object to their activities.

On 23 December 1864, Sherman sent a telegram to Lincoln stating that he was presenting him the city of Savannah as a Christmas gift. Following the occupation of Savannah, Sherman's troops cut an even wider path of destruction through South Carolina and fought an inconclusive battle at Bentonville, North Carolina, against a much smaller force under Johnston. Lee surrendered to Grant on 9 April 1865, and Johnston surrendered to Sherman on 17 April 1865 at Raleigh, North Carolina. After the war, Sherman was promoted to Lieutenant General in the regular army commanded by Grant until his election to the presidency in 1868. Grant put Sherman in charge of the entire West, and they were thus both responsible for Sheridan's genocidal operations against the Cheyenne, Sioux, and other tribes. In the fall of 1868 Sheridan - future Full General and Commander of the Armies (1884-88) - wrote to Sherman:

"In taking the offensive I have to select that season when I can catch the fiends; and if a village is attacked and women and children killed, the responsibility is not with the soldiers, but with the people whose crimes necessitated the attack."

Sherman heartily approved and wrote back the following encouraging words:

"Go ahead in your own way and I will back you with my whole authority...I will say nothing and do nothing to restrain our troops from doing what they deem proper on the spot, and will allow no mere vague general charges of cruelty and inhumanity to tie their hands, but will use all the powers confided to me to the end that these Indians, the enemies of our race and of our civilization, shall not again be able to begin and carry out their barbarous warfare on any kind of pretext they may choose to allege."

Grant must not have objected very strenuously to this aspect of Sherman's character because he received Sherman's glowing reports of the "successes". Upon becoming president in 1869, Grant had him promoted to Full General on 4 March 1869. Four days later Sherman assumed command of the entire U. S Army. He retired in 1883 and died in New York City, 14 Feb. 1891.

Letter of 17 Sept. 1863 from Sherman to General-in-chief of the Armies Henry W. Halleck:
"The United States has the right, and ... the ... power, to penetrate to every part of the national domain…. We will remove and destroy every obstacle - if need be, take every life, every acre of land, every particle of property, everything that to us seems proper."

Letter of 21 June 1864 from Sherman to secretary of war Stanton:
"There is a class of people [in the South] … men, women, and children, who must be killed or banished before you can hope for peace and order."

Letter of 9 Oct. 1864 from Sherman to General-chief of the Armies Ulysses S. Grant:
"Until we can repopulate Georgia, it is useless to occupy it, but the utter destruction of its roads, houses, and people will cripple their military
resources…. I can make the march, and make Georgia howl."

Orders issued on 9 Nov. 1864 by Sherman before his march to the Sea:
The army will forage liberally on the country during the march. To this end, each brigade commander will organize a good and sufficient foraging party, under the command of one or more discreet officers, who will gather, near the route traveled, corn or forage of any kind, meat of any kind, vegetables, corn-meal, or whatever is needed by the command, aiming at all times to keep in the wagons at least ten days' provisions for his command, aiming at all times to keep in the wagons at least ten days' provisions for his command, and three days' forage. Soldiers must not enter the dwellings they may be permitted to gather turnips, potatoes, and other vegetables, and to drive in stock in sight of their camp.
To corps commanders alone is entrusted the power to destroy mills, houses, cotton-gins, etc.; and for them the general principle is laid down: In districts and neighborhoods where the army is unmolested, no destruction of such property should be permitted; but should guerrillas or bush-whackers molest our march, or should the inhabitants burn bridges, obstruct roads, or otherwise manifest local hostility, then army commanders should order and enforce a devastation more or less relentless, according to the measure of such hostility. As for horses, mules, wagons, etc., belonging to the inhabitants, the cavalry and artillery may appropriate freely and without limit; discriminating, however, between the rich, who are usually hostile, and the poor and industrious, usually neutral or friendly.

William Sherman wrote about the March to the Sea in his 1875 Memoirs:
The skill and success of the men in collecting forage was one of the features of this march. Each brigade commander had authority to detail a company of foragers, usually about fifty men, with one or two commissioned officers selected for their boldness and enterprise. This party would be dispatched before daylight with a knowledge of the intended day's march and camp; would proceed on foot five or six miles from the route traveled by their brigade, and then visit every plantation and farm within range. They would usually procure a wagon or family carriage, load it with bacon, corn-meal, turkeys, chickens, ducks, and every thing that could be used as food or forage, and would then regain the main road, usually in advance of their train. No doubt, many acts of pillage, robbery, and violence, were committed by these parties of foragers, for I have since heard of jewelry taken from women, and the plunder of articles that never reached the commissary; but these acts were exceptional and incidental. I never heard of any cases of murder or rape; and no army could have carried along sufficient food and forage for a march of three hundred miles; so that foraging in some shape was necessary.

"It is the wish of the Government that your army proceed to and occupy East Tennessee with all possible dispatch. It leaves to you the selection of the roads upon which to move to that object; but it urges that this selection be so made as to cover Nashville and at the same time prevent the enemy's return into Kentucky. To now withdraw your army to Nashville would have a most disastrous effect upon the country, already wearied with so many delays in our operations... Neither the Government nor the country can endure these repeated delays. Both require a prompt and immediate movement toward the accomplishment of the great object in view--the holding of East Tennessee."

The long period of maneuvering ended in the bloody but indecisive Battle of Perryville, precipitated by a minor engagement over sources of then scarce water. Only parts of both armies were engaged due to breakdowns in command and communications on both sides. The result nevertheless pushed Bragg back into Tennessee and definitively brought Kentucky under Union control. The alleged tardiness of Buell's pursuit and his objections to an unrealistic plan of campaign ordered by the Washington authorities brought about his replacement by Rosecrans. Note that  almost no post-battle pursuit on either side during the Civil War was successful. The complaints made against him were investigated by a military court of inquiry in 1862-63, but the jury could agree only on a mild censure for errors during the battle. This verdict did not satisfy Halleck and the government prosecutor, and the inconclusive result was not published. Nevertheless, Buell was thereafter sidelined and not again offered significant duty. General William Farrar "Baldy" Smith, one of the Union's most respected generals, described Buell in his unpublished memoirs as "a capital soldier and a student in his profession. He fought a battle with courage, coolness, and intelligence, saving us from utter rout at Shiloh, into which false position Halleck's ambition and Grant's density had begotten us." After waiting in Indianapolis a year for orders, Buell resigned his volunteer commission in May 1864 and his regular commission in June 1864. After the war he settled in Kentucky, where he engaged in coal mining and became president of the Green River Iron Company, and in the period 1885-89 he was a government pension agent. He died on 19 November 1898 at his home near Paradise, Kentucky, and was buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri.

*A careful reading of Grant's "Personal Memoirs" will produce many interesting quotes like this one concerning Buell: "General Buell was a brave, intelligent officer...When I came into command of the army in 1864, I requested the Secretary of War to restore Buell to duty." Grant didn't request very strenuously because nothing came of this. Elsewhere in the Memoirs Grant wrote: "I have no doubt that this sight [of the panic at the rear of the Union front at Shiloh] impressed General Buell with the idea that a line of retreat would be a good thing just then." Note the aspersion!

Rosecrans resigned from the Army after 12 years of service in 1854, and became an architect and a civil engineer. He took over direction of mining in western Virginia (West Virginia today) where his geological surveys pointed with remarkable accuracy to profitable new veins of coal. He became President of a navigation company formed to transport coal. In 1857 he organized the Preston Coal Oil Co. in Cincinnati, OH. He was also an inventor. Numbered among his inventions were odorless oil, a round lamp wick, a short practical lamp chimney, and a new and economical method of manufacturing soap. While in the laboratory a safety lamp exploded and burned him so badly that he was bedridden for 18 months. As soon as he recovered, he returned to his now profitable business activities, but when the Civil War broke out he immediately offered his services.

His first duties in the war were for the state of Ohio when he became the drillmaster for the "Marion Rifles", after which he became the engineering officer that laid the plan for Camp Dennison, Ohio and eventually became the Commanding Officer of the 23rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry, which which among its members Rutherford B. Hayes, William McKinley, and Stanley Matthews, a future Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Rosecrans was soon appointed a Brigadier General in the regular Army in which capacity he defeated Robert E. Lee at Rich Mountain, Virginia. Rosecrans developed and carried out the plans which gained the victory at Rich Mountain, but McClellan, who wasn't even there, did not give him any credit in the official reports. Then Fremont was placed over him, and Rosecrans suffered under the pathfinder's less than professional approach to command. Thus Rosecrans requested a transfer to the west where he was first under Halleck, and then placed in charge of 2 divisions of the left wing of Grant's Army of the Mississippi at the battles of Iuka and Corinth.

At both battles he did well, driving Price from Iuka and repulsing the attack of Price and Van Dorn on Corinth. Grant absented himself and part of his forces from both battles. After Corinth, animosities between Grant and Rosecrans arose. Grant blamed Rosecrans for not pursuing the Confederate army after Iuka and Corinth, and then for pursuing too long, and Rosecrans placed blame on Grant for not sending reinforcements during the battle of Corinth. Rosecrans also felt that he could have destroyed the army of Price and Van Dorn at Tupelo, Miss. and gone on to take Vicksburg, thus shortening the war, but Grant probably wanted the laurels of Vicksburg for himself. Like McClellan, perceiving in Rosecrans a potential rival, Grant gave no credit to Rosecrans for the victories* and did his best to keep Rosecrans's star from rising too high. To escape this bitter climate and probable censure Rosecrans gladly accepted the offer of 24 Oct. 1862 to take command of the Army of the Cumberland. Grant later wrote in his Personal Memoirs: "I was delighted at the promotion of General Rosecrans to a separate command because I still felt that when independent of an immediate superior the qualities which I, at that time, credited him with possessing, would show themselves. As a subordinate I found that I could not make him do as I wished, and had determined to relieve him from duty that very day." By some coincidence Grant found fault with every subordinate commanding officer who was successful or displayed initiative.

Once in Tennessee Rosecrans put the organization of the Army of the Cumberland on an even higher level. Upon receiving reports that Bragg was moving toward Nashville, Rosecrans confronted him and fought competently at the very costly but indecisive battle of Murfreesboro (Stones River) on 31 Dec. 1862 and 2 Jan. 1863, for which Congress later accorded him the Thanks of the Nation. About this time, perhaps as a reaction to the casualties at Murfreesboro, Rosecrans's earlier aggressive quality gave way to caution, and he thus came into conflict with the War Department which demanded action and quick victories of him. Finally, on 23 June 1863, after six months of preparation in the face of official pressure to take the offensive, he began the Tullahoma campaign, a military masterpiece which forced back Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg a hundred miles and into Chattanooga, Tenn. at the cost of only 500 casualties. However, he was as ambitious as many another Civil War general, and he suffered from the lack of recognition he received for this victory about which he wrote the following reproach to Stanton: "I beg in behalf of this army that the War Department my not overlook overlook so great an event because it is not written in letters of blood."

He then maneuvered Bragg out of Chattanooga without a battle. There Rosecrans's caution vanished, and he followed Bragg precipitously and against Thomas's repeated warnings to first consolidate in Chattanooga. Bragg then turned upon him and brought on the bloody battle of Chickamauga (19-20 September 1963). An ill-advised move the morning of the second day opened a gap in Rosecrans's lines and allowed Southern forces to pour through and put to rout part of his army, which was driven back into Chattanooga.

Only the strong stand of Gen. George H. Thomas with 25,000 men on the Union left on Snodgrass Hill against the entire Confederate army numbering about 60,000 averted complete destruction. At nightfall the evening of 20 Sept. 1863 Thomas retired in good order and was not pursued. The defeat was mitigated, however, by the fact that the Union army retained control of Chattanooga. Rosecrans, who had joined in the flight to Chattnooga, seemed to have been demoralized by the defeat and became irresolute, although he did lay the groundwork for lifting the state of siege in which his army found itself, and for the following Union victory in the battle of Chattanooga (23-25 Nov. 1863). A month later Thomas replaced Rosecrans, ending any important role for him in the war.

However, his reputation with the public remained intact. On June 1, 1864, James Garfield telegraphed from Baltimore asking if he would accept the Republican nomination for Vice President on the ticket with Abraham Lincoln.  He had always been a strong Democrat and while he was intensely loyal and prosecuted the war with all his power, he doubted whether be could accept all principles of Republican Party. He hesitated and finally sent Garfield his consent, but it was too late. Rosecrans served in minor capacities for the remainder of the war and resigned in 1867.

He then moved to Los Angeles, CA and became an advocate for railroad building  in the West and Mexican trade, and in 1868 he was appointed Minister to Mexico. During the next two years he served in this capacity and took an active interest in affairs of that country. During the 1870's he developed mines in Nevada, the Southwest, and Sonora, Mexico. From he represented California as  democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives where he became Chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs. In 1885 Grover Cleveland appointed him register of the U.S. Treasury,  and he held the office until 1893, in which function he applied his signature to many a currency note. In 1889 Congress restored him to the rank and pay of a brigadier general of the regular army on the retired list. He retired to a ranch near Los Angeles in 1893 and died on 11 March 1898 in Redondo, Calif. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

* Grant sent on 9 Oct. 1862 the following telegraph to Lincoln: "Your dispatch received. Cannot answer it so fully as I would wish. Paroled now 813 enlisted men and 43 commissioned officers in good health; 700 Confederate wounded already sent to Iuka paroled; 350 wounded paroled still at Corinth. Cannot tell the number of dead yet. About 800 rebels already buried. Their loss in killed about nine to one of ours. The ground is not yet cleared of their unburied dead. Prisoners yet arriving by every road and train. This does not include casualties where Ord attacked in the rear. He has 350 well prisoners, besides two batteries and small-arms in large numbers. Our loss there was between 400 and 500. Rebel loss about the same. General Oglesby is shot through the breast and the ball lodged in the spine. Hopes for his recovery. Our killed and wounded at Corinth will not exceed 900, many of them slightly." Not one word about Rosecrans who had just  won 2 battles.

5. George H. Thomas, a very astute non-politician, won every one of his engagements in the Civil War. For a book-length biography of him go to the "Life of Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas" by Van Horne.
George Henry Thomas was born on 31 July 1816 in Southampton County, VA and died on 28 March 1870 in San Francisco. A graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, NY in 1840, George H. Thomas served in the Mexican War (1846-48) and as an artillery and cavalry instructor at West Point. Despite his Southern birth he remained loyal to the Union when the Civil War broke out. In command of an independent force in eastern Kentucky, Thomas defeated the Confederates under Crittenden on 19 Jan. 1862 at Mill Springs and gained the first important Union victory in the war, thus undermining the entire western defense of the CSA general Albert Sydney Johnston. Thomas then served under General Don Carlos Buell and arrived too late at Shiloh in order to participate in the second day of the battle. After the battle Halleck put Thomas in command of Grant's Army of the Tennessee while Grant was apparently sidelined as second in command under Halleck with no responsibility. Later, when politically motivated complaints against Buell's lack of initiative against Bragg become more and more strident, Thomas was offered but refused the chief command. At the battle of Perryville his 14th corps was not engaged. Bragg was forced to withdraw into East Tennessee, but Buell was faulted for lack of pursuit, and he was replaced by William S. Rosecrans. Under Rosecrans Thomas was instrumental in holding the center with his artillery at Murfreesboro (Stones River), Tenn. on 31 Dec. 1862 and 2 Jan. 1863. Thomas was in charge of the most important part of the maneuvering during the Tullahoma Campaign on 22-29 June 1863 and the entry into Chattanooga, Tenn. (8 Sept. 1863). On 19-20 Sept. 1863, after two days of battle along Chickamauga Creek in Georgia 12 miles south of Chattanooga, General Thomas steadfastly organized Union defenses after the collapse of the Union right wing and withstood all afternoon long violent attacks on the left wing by the entire Confederate army until the arrival of reserve units under Granger allowed an orderly withdrawal of Union troops back to Chattanooga. For this action Thomas was called the "Rock of Chickamauga" and later promoted to brigadier general of the regular army (maintaining his rank of major general of the volunteers). Thomas succeeded Rosecrans in command of the Army of the Cumberland on 19 Oct. 1863. Thomas and his Army of the Cumberland played the determining role in the great victory at Chattanooga on 23-25 Nov. 1863. This battle opened the door to the deep South and made possible the subsequent capture of Atlanta on 2 Sept. 1864 which helped assure Lincoln's reelection. Before Sherman's march to the sea in the autumn of 1864, Thomas was ordered back to Nashville to deal with the threat to Union communications by the Confederate forces of General John B. Hood. Thomas had achieved his objective by Christmas, checking the enemy army at Franklin, Tenn. on 30 Nov. 1864, and finally at Nashville, Tenn. on 15-16 Dec. 1864. At that historic battle, Thomas inflicted on Hood the worst defeat sustained in the open field on either side during the war. It was also the only decisive Union victory of the war in which the USCT played a meaningful role. Thomas then directed the forces which captured Selma and pursued and captured Jefferson Davis on10 May 1865. Thomas was made a major general of the regular army and received the thanks of Congress. Toward the end of the war and afterward Thomas was the military governor in charge of Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. Thomas wholeheartedly supported the reconstruction policies of Lincoln and Johnson and is recognized as being the most effective of all of the military governors. In 1869 Thomas accepted the onerous command of the Division of the Pacific with headquarters at San Francisco although his health had begun to deteriorate. He complicated matters greatly for future biographers by destroying all of his personal papers, saying: "All that I did for my government are matters of hisotry, but my private life is my own and I will not have it hawked about for the amusement of the curious." He died at the age of 54 in his office in San Francisco.

6. "Fighting Joe" Hooker, liked by his men, was disliked by his superiors because he spoke his mind.
Joseph Hooker was born 13 Nov. 1814 in Hadley, Mass. He graduated from West Point in 1837 and served in the Mexican war, rising to the rank of captain of artillery, and the brevet of lieutenant-colonel in the staff. From 1859 to 1861 he was a colonel in the California militia. When the Civil war broke out in 1861, he was made brigadier-general of volunteers and put in command of the defenses of Washington on 12 Aug. 1861. When McClellan moved to the Peninsula Gen. Hooker's brigade was added to the command, and for gallant service at Williamsburg he was promoted to major-general of volunteers on 5 May 1862. At Second Manassas under Pope, Hooker was very active, and was woundedat Antietam on 17 Sept. 1862. Soon after
he was promoted to brigadier-general of the regular army. In this period he was dubbed "Fighting Joe" because of his vigorous leadership in the field and also to the misinterpretation of a terse battle report which he sent by telegram with the words "Fighting - Joe Hooker".

When General A.E. Burnside resigned command of the Army of the Potomac after the Union disaster at Fredericksburg  (13 Dec. 1863), Hooker was appointed to succeed him.* With typical bravado, Hooker announced, "May God have mercy on General Lee, for I will have none." Immediately he carried out much-needed organizational reforms and prepared to challenge the South at the Battle of Chancellorsville (1-4 May 1863). His campaign started out well, as his flanking movement around Lee in Fredericksburg surprised the Confederates. However, his defects as a commanding officer became apparent when Confederate general Robert E. Lee, with fewer than half the number of troops, outmaneuvered him and caused him to stop his advance in the middle of the thickets of the Wilderness (scene of the later battle between Grant and Lee).

Having gained the initiative, Lee then sent Jackson around Hooker's right flank under Howard which collapsed and forced Hooker's retreat back across the Rappahannock.. According to Boatner (Civil War Dictionary), although "Howard's troops had detected this maneuver, they were unable to convince Howard or Hooker of the real danger." This defeat resulted in the loss of 17,000 Union soldiers. However, that same evening Jackson was fired upon by his troops in the dark while conducting reconaissance, and he died of pneumonia 2 weeks later. Considering that Jackson and Lee had spent months in winter quarters only a few miles away, it is strange that neither Lee nor Jackson were well-informed about the terrain of this battlefield, and that Jackson even needed to conduct reconnaissance, let alone in the dark.
 

When Lee advanced into Pennsylvania in June, Hooker followed him closely until Washington refused his request for additional troops. Sensing his superiors' distrust, he resigned his command on 28 June 1864 on the eve of battle of Gettysburg. Three months later Hooker was sent by rail in command of the 20th corps of the Army of  the Potomac to help relieve General George H. Thomas, besieged at Chattanooga, Tenn.  On 24 Nov. 1863, he won the "Battle Above the Clouds" on Lookout Mountain. On Nov. 25 he was instrumental in undermining Braggs left flank on Missionary Ridge, thus clearing the way for Thomas's triumphant charge up the middle of Missionary Ridge. On 24 Jan. 1864 he was voted the Thanks of Congress for his "defense of Baltimore and Washington", one of only 15 general officers to receive this honor during the Civil War.

During the campaign from Dalton to Atlanta, and at the battle of Peachtree Creek (20 July 1864), Hooker performed very well. However, when McPherson was killed at the battle of Atlanta on 22 July 1864, Hooker's subordinate, Otis Howard, was named instead of Hooker to replace McPherson. Hooker still considered Howard to have been instrumental in bringing about his defeat at Chancellorsville and refused to served under Howard, and he resigned. He thereafter ceased to play any active part in the war, holding command of the Northern, Eastern, and Lake departments. He was brevetted major-general of the United States army in March 1865, and in consequence of disability put upon the retired list, with the full rank of major-general, in 1868. He died at Garden City, Long Island on 31 Oct. 31.

Whatever his shortcomings as a commander, he took good care of his men. As Francis McKinney (Education in Violence, p. 357) writes: "Hooker never left a command without the troops showing signs of disapproval."

* Major-General Hooker,
I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac. Of course I have done this upon what appears to me to be sufficient reasons, and yet I think it best for you to know that are some things in regard to which I am not quite satisfied with you. I believe you to be a brave and skillful soldier, which, of course, I like. I also believe you do not mix politics with your profession, in which you are right. You have confidence in yourself, which is a valuable, if not indispensable, quality.
You are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm; but I think that during General Burnside's command of the army, you have taken counsel of your ambition, and thwarted him as much as you could, in which you did a great wrong to the country and to a most meritorious and honorable brother officer. I have heard, in such a way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the Army and the Government needed a dictator. Of course it was not for this, but in spite
of it, that I have given you the command. Only those generals who gain successes, can set up dictators. What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship....And now, beware of rashness. Beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories.
Abraham Lincoln

Ulysses Simpson Grant was born Hiram Ulysses Grant on 22 April 1822 of Jesse Root Grant and Hannah Simpson in Point Pleasant, Ohio. He grew up in Georgetown, Ohio. Detesting the work in the family tannery, Ulysses instead did chores on his father's farm and developed much skill in handling horses. In 1839 Jesse secured for Ulysses through Congressman Thomas Hamer an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point and pressured him to attend. Although he had no interest in military life, Ulysses accepted the appointment, realizing that the alternative was no further education. However, his congressional appointment was erroneously made in the name Ulysses S. Grant, the name he eventually accepted, maintaining that the middle initial stood for nothing. He came to be known as U.S. Grant, and his classmates called him Sam. Only a little over five feet tall when he entered the academy, he grew more than six inches in the next four years. Bored by the military curriculum, he took great interest in the required drawing courses and read classic novels in his spare time. Grant ranked 21st in a class of 39 when he graduated from West Point in 1843, but he had distinguished himself in horsemanship and showed such considerable ability in mathematics that he imagined himself as a teacher of the subject at the academy. Upon graduation Grant was assigned as a brevet second lieutenant to the 4th U.S. Infantry, stationed near St. Louis, Missouri, where he met his future wife Julia Boggs Dent, the sister of his roommate at West Point. During the Mexican War (1846-48) he was quartermaster for his regiment. However, he did see some action, although how much is debated.  At the battles of Molino del Rey under Zachary Taylor and Chapultepec under Winfield Scott, he earned brevet commissions as first lieutenant and captain, although his permanent rank was first lieutenant. Grant wrote years later: "I do not think there was ever a more wicked war....I thought so at the time...only I had not moral courage enough to resign."  Strictly speaking, showing moral courage never was Grant's strong suit. On 5 July 1852, when the 4th Infantry sailed from New York for the Pacific coast, Grant left his growing family (two sons had been born) behind. Assigned to Fort Vancouver, Oregon Territory (later Washington state), he attempted unsuccesfully to supplement his army pay with business ventures and was unable to reunite his family. A promotion to captain in August 1853 brought an assignment to a dreary post in Fort Humboldt, California. On 11 April 1854 Grant resigned from the army under threat of expulsion. Whether this situation had anything to do with Grant's fondness for alcohol, which he reportedly drank often during his lonely years on the Pacific coast, or with irregularities in the accounting of his office, remains open to conjecture.  He returned home to his wife, settling at White Haven, the Dents' estate in Missouri, and began to farm the 80 acres given to Julia by her father. This farming venture was a failure, as was an attempt to sell firewood, and as was a real estate partnership in St. Louis in 1859. In 1860 Grant joined the leather goods business owned by his father and operated by his brothers in Galena, Illinois.

When Civil War broke out, Grant offered his services as a colonel to the state of Illinois but was first rebuffed. However, he helped recruit and drill troops in Galena, then accompanied them to the state capital, Springfield, where Governor Richard Yates made him an aide and assigned him to the state adjutant general's office. Yates appointed him colonel of an unruly regiment (later named the 21st Illinois Volunteers) in June 1861. Through the influence of Elihu B. Washburne, a U.S. congressman from Galena, Ill. who would promote Grant's fortunes throughout the war, Grant was appointed brigadier general before he had even engaged the enemy. On hearing the news and, in view of his son's previous failures, his father said, "Be careful, Ulyss, you are a general now--it's a good job, don't lose it!" Grant was soon appointed to command of the District of Southeast Missouri, headquartered at Cairo, Illinois. On 7 Nov. 1861 he led an improvised raid on the Confederate positions at Belmont, Missouri, opposite the strong Confederate force under Polk in Columbus, Ky. just across the river. The Union troops surprised the Confederates, but then began looting during Grant's absence from the field. After being reeinforced the Confederates rallied and drove Grant’s men back up the river, inflicting heavy casualties (25%). In January 1862  Grant received permission from General Henry Halleck to begin an offensive campaign, and he occupied Paducah at the juction of the Ohio and Tennessee rivers. This made possible another improvised raid (the men had no winter clothing and no food) against the Forts Henry and Donelson in Feb. 1862 which had been rendered untenable anyway by the earlier victory of Thomas at Mill Springs on 19 Jan. 1862. It was at Fort Donelson where Grant received the nickname “Unconditional Surrender” Grant. When Buckner asked Grant what his terms were, he first consulted one of his division commanders, the older Charles F. Smith who told him to offer no terms, whereupon Grant send the message since become famous.

After Forts Henry and Donelson Grant was put in charge of the movement against A. S. Johnston's forces in Corinth, Miss.  Grant repelled an unexpected Confederate attack on 6-7 April 1862 at Shiloh Church, near Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee. Grant was absent from the field the first morning, and his army was not prepared to defend itself. When Buell arrived with reincorcements that evening he encountered a disintegrating army with thousands of Union troops trying to flee the scene of the battle and get to the east side of the Tennessee river. The next day Buell's fresh troops drove the Confederates from the field, and Grant never forgave Buell for having been a witness of his embarassment. Coincidentally, Buell's difficulties with the War Department later increased to the point of his being hauled before a military court of  inquiry for mistakes which weren't nearly as grave as those of many another commander, including Grant. Shiloh was the first really costly battle of the Civil War, and the public outcry over heavy Union losses in the battle and poor pre-battle planning damaged Grant's reputation. Halleck therefore arrived toward the end of April in order to take personal command of the army.

About his state of preparedness at Shiloh, Grant wrote in his Memoirs that "the troops with me, officers and men, needed discipline and drill than they did experience with the pick, shovel and axe." He perhaps also wanted to spare his men the dibilitating horrors of advanced picket duty, because he did not establish at Shiloh the standard system of two lines of vedettes and pickets. He simply could not immagine that the Confederates, safe in their fortifications in Corinth, would not simply await his attack, so he and Sherman discounted the reports of increasing enemy activity in front of them. During Halleck's subsequent slow campaign to take Corinth (6 weeks to cover 25 miles), Grant was second in command but had no actual authority. Grant complained bitterly about this, even to the point of having to be dissuaded from resigning by Sherman. However, Halleck was certainly doing Grant a favor by keeping him out of the limelight in the wake of the controversy about the butchery at Shiloh. In any case, when Halleck was called to Washington as general-in-chief in July, Grant regained command. In fact, Thomas, who had temporarily assumed command of Grant's units, requested that they be returned to Grant, a magnanimous gesture which Grant apparently did not appreciate. See the article Slow Trot' and other Thomas nicknames by Don Plezia to see how Grant, together with Sherman, repayed Thomas by attempting to destroy his reputation.

In the summer of 1862 Grant was occupied in trying to mop up Confederate resistance in northern Mississippi. Smaller forces under Price and Van Dorn were causing him a lot of annoyance. However, when his subordinate, William S. Rosecrans, brought them to bay and defeated them in Sept. and Oct. at the battles of Iuka and Corinth, Grant contributed very little to and perhaps even interfered with these victories. Again, Grant was absent, and again he subsequently attacked the reputation of a subordinate who was too successful or could possibly ever become a rival for promotion.

In the late fall of 1862 and winter of 1863, Grant conducted various fruitless operations against Vicksburg, including having his men try to build a by-pass canal through a malarial Louisiana swamp, just to keep them busy. I quote from his Memoirs (p. 233):

"Then commenced a series of experiments to consume time, and to divert the attention of the enemy, of my troops, and of the public generally. I, myself, never felt great confidance that any of the experiments resorted to would prove successful. Nevertheless I was always prepared to take advantage of them in case they did."

Many of the men thus kept busy got sick and died, but they had been diverted while they lived. In May 1863 he crossed the Mississippi and marched south, recrossing back to the east side of the river and, in a series of battles at Jackson, Champion Hill, and Big Black River Bridge, defeated piecemeal the divided forces under the indecisive J. Johnston in Jackson, Miss. and the unimaginative Pemberton in Vicksburg itself. After three unsuccessful frontal attacks against the city, Grant laid siege. On the 4th of  July 1863, just one day after the defeat of the Lee at Gettysburg, Pemberton surrendered Vicksburg and his army to Grant. The surrender of Vicksburg, along with the Confederate surrender at Port Hudson, brought the entire Mississippi River under Union control and cut the Trans-Mississippi off from the rest of the Confederacy. After the surrender, Grant was promoted to Major General.

While in Vicksburg Grant, with the help of Col. John Eaton, administered camps for escaped slaves who were put back to work harvesting cotton on the very plantations from which they had escaped. As Grant writes in his Memoirs (p. 221):

"At once the freedmen became self-sustaining. The money was not paid to them directly, but was expended judiciously and for their benefit. They gave me no trouble afterwards."

As a matter of fact, the sale of cotton to the North never stopped during the war, and the competition from other people trying to cash in on this lucrative trade may have had something to do with Grant's famous attempt to exclude "Jewish" cotton traders from his command area.

After Vicksburg, Grant was present more or less as an observer at the battle of Chattanooga (23-25 Nov. 1863) where he unsuccessfully tried to hand the victory to Sherman who failed utterly in the task assigned to him. Fortunately for the Union, George H. Thomas was there to keep things on an even keel. Afterward, Grant, Sherman, Halleck, and Dana rewrote the history of the battle so that it conformed to Grant's plan, and Grant was promoted in March 1864 to the newly reinstated rank of Lieutenant General and brought east in order to command the Army of the Potomac and direct the operations of all of the Union forces.

Before Lincoln allowed this to happen, he first inquired about any political ambitions Grant may have been harboring, because opposition to Lincoln's renomination was rising, and Grant was being touted as the next president in major newspapers. Lincoln consulted Elihu Washburn, the Illinois congressman who had been one of Grant's earliest promoters, and a J. Russell Jones, at the time Grant's "investment advisor".¹ Jones produced an artfully crafted letter from Grant (see below), categorically stating he had no intention of running for president. After Lincoln was renominated, there was even an attempt by some Republicans to organize a second nominating convention. When the rumors reached Lincoln that the conspirators were considering Grant, Lincoln put the question to the above mentioned Col. John Eaton of the freedmen labor camps. Eaton visited Grant and then reported to Lincoln who, reassured, exclaimed: "I told you, they could not get him to run until he had closed out the rebellion."²

As commander of the Army of the Potomac, Grant pursued a policy of constant attacks against Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia, but not without costs. Due to poor planning and occasionally indecisive management, he suffered severe casualties at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and espcecially Cold Harbor (3 June 1864) where he launched an attack against state-of-the art fortifications without having conducted any reconnaissance.  The result of this were 7000 Union casualties in less than a half hour, as opposed to 1,500 Confederate casualties. Grant waited 4 whole days before requesting a truce in order to bury the dead and pick up any wounded who happened to survive that long after the battle. In his Memoirs Grant wrote: "I have always regretted that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever made." Surely the families of the killed and maimed soldiers were greatly comforted by this admission, partial as it was. You see, Grant did not mention in this context that he had been egregiously negligent (again), which somewhat reduces the effect of the admission.

Grant then laid siege to Lee in Petersburg from June 1864 to April 1865, more than 9 months, while Sherman laid waste to large areas in Georgia and South Carolina, and Thomas repelled Hood's invasion of Tennessee. In fact, Grant did not willingly grant Thomas 2 weeks to prepare for the battle of Nashville (15-16 Dec. 1864), but tried with every means possible, including the subversive activities of the political general Schofield who had been inserted into Thomas's command, to force Thomas into action, any old action, regardless of consequences and extreme winter conditions. Only the news of Thomas's stunning victory kept him from being replaced by Logan whom Grant had already sent to Nashville for this purpose. When Lee left the Petersburg trenches in April 1865 in an attempt to unite with Confederate forces in North Carolina (which Thomas blocked by sending Stoneman into the area), Grant followed, eventually surrounding Lee and the remnants of his army at Appomattox Court House, forcing Lee to surrender. Grant had finally eliminated an army on the open field. True, his army outnumbered the Confederate army by 20 to one.

In 1866 he was appointed to the newly established rank of 4-star general. In 1867 Johnson removed Secretary of War Stanton and thereby tested the constitutionality of the Tenure of Office Act, which dictated that removals from office be at the assent of Congress, and in August appointed Grant interim secretary of war. When Congress insisted upon Stanton's reinstatement, Grant resigned (January 1868), thus infuriating Johnson, who believed that Grant had agreed to remain in office to provoke a court decision. Johnson's angry charges strengthened Grant's long-standing and covert ties to the Republican Party, which nominated him for president in 1868. The last line of his letter of acceptance, "Let us have peace," became the Republican  slogan. Grant's Democratic opponent was Horatio Seymour, former governor of New York. The race was a close one, and Grant's narrow margin of victory in the popular vote (300,000 ballots) may have been attributable to some manipulation of newly enfranchised black voters. The vote of the electoral college was more one-sided, with Grant getting 214 votes, compared to 80 for Seymour.

Grant entered the White House on 4 March 1869 with no civilian political experience, although with lots of military political experience. At age 46 he was the youngest man elected president until then. His appointments to office were uneven in quality but sometimes refreshing. Grant did name Ely Parker, a Seneca Indian who had served with him as a staff officer, commissioner of Indian affairs, and Grant's wife persuaded him to appoint the noted financier Hamilton Fish secretary of state. Americans did not seem to mind that the Grants lived beyond their means. They redecorated the White House lavishly and entertained accordingly, with state dinners sometimes consisting of 29 courses irrigated by nine French wines. On 18 March 1869 Grant signed his first law, pledging to redeem in gold the greenback currency issued during the Civil War, thus placing himself with the financial conservatives of the day. He appointed the first Civil Service Commission, but after initially backing its recommendations, he abandoned his support for the reforms when faced with congressional opposition. Grant was more persistent but equally unsuccessful when the Senate rejected a treaty of annexation with the Dominican Republic which Grant had been persuaded would be of strategic importance. His negotiation of the Treaty of Washington provided for the settlement by international tribunal of American claims against Great Britain arising from the wartime activities of the British-built raider Alabama, whose sale to the Confederacy had violated Britain's declared neutrality. Grant won reelection in 1872, defeating Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York Tribune and the candidate for the coalition formed by Democrats and Liberal Republicans, by some 800,000 votes in the popular election and capturing 286 of 366 electoral votes. During the campaign, newspapers discovered that prominent Republican politicians were involved in the Crédit Mobilier of America, a paper entity designed to siphon profits of the Union Pacific Railroad. More scandal followed in 1875 when Secretary of the Treasury  Bristow exposed the operation of the "Whiskey Ring" which had the aid of high-placed officials in defrauding the government of tax revenues. When the investigation reached the president's private secretary, Orville E. Babcock, Grant regretted his earlier statement, "Let no guilty man escape." Grant accepted the resignation of Secretary of War William W. Belknap before he could be tried on charges of accepting bribes. Discouraged, Grant closed his second term by assuring Congress: "Failures have been errors of judgment, not of intent."  Grant supported both amnesty for Confederate leaders and civil rights for former slaves, although he was ineffective in enforcing the civil rights laws. His 1874 veto of a bill to increase the amount of legal tender diminished the currency crisis during the next quarter century, and he received praise two years later for his handling of the controversial election of 1876, when both Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Jones Tilden claimed election to the presidency.

After leaving office, Ulysses and Julia Grant set forth on a round-the-world trip in May 1877. Grant's reputation as the man who had saved the Union having preceded him, he was greeted everywhere as a hero. In Great Britain he and his wife were feted by Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle. In Germany they were greeted by Bismarck, and in Japan they shook hands with the emperor. In 1879 Grant found that a faction of the Republican Party was determined to nominate him for a third term. Although he did little to openly encourage support, he received more than 300 votes in each of the 36 ballots of the 1880 convention, which finally nominated James A. Garfield. In 1881 Grant helped found the investment firm of Grant and Ward, in which his son Ulysses, Jr., was a partner. Grant put his capital and those of his friends at the disposal of the firm and encouraged others to follow, including many soldiers of his former command . In 1884 the firm collapsed, swindled by Ferdinand Ward. This impoverished the Grant family and further tarnished Grant's reputation. In 1884 Grant, with the help of an historian named Badeau, began to write reminiscences of his campaigns for the Century Magazine and found this work so profitable that he began his memoirs, despite excruciating throat pain, later diagnosed as cancer.  He signed a contract with Mark Twain to edit and publish the memoirs. In June 1885 the Grant family moved to a cottage in Mount McGregor, NY in the Adirondack Mountains, and a month later Grant died there, shortly after completing his memoirs. They enjoy high rank among military autobiographies, in spite of inaccuracies and even distortions of the historical record.

A funeral cortege seven miles long accompanied his coffin to a temporary vault in New York City's Riverside Park. In 1897, on the 75th anniversary of his birth, his remains were removed to a granite tomb at Riverside Drive in Manhattan. Grant's Tomb is one of the largest mausoleums in the world, 150 feet high, with a domed rotunda and allegorical relief figures representing episodes in Grant's life. Two figures representing victory and peace support a granite block containing Grant's epitaph, his own words, "Let us have peace." Julia Grant, who died in 1902, was interred beside her husband, as they had planned.

Grant to Ord after the battle of Corinth (3-4 Oct. 1862): "It is a great annoyance to gain rank and command enough to attract attention. I have found it so and would really prefer some little command where public attention would not be attracted toward me."

And to think there are legions of credulous Grant fanatics out there who take statements like this at face value, as proof even, that Grant was the modest man the history books make him out to be. Woodbury and Candace Scott
come to mind. And then there are the scholars who know better, but pull their punches because they don't want to hurt the sales of their books. I guess we should be grateful to them for providing the quotes.

¹David Herbert Donald writes on pp. 490-91 of "Lincoln": Still he was not yet ready to bring Grant in from the West. One reason was that the general was beginning to be talked about as a possible presidential candidate in 1864. He was a favorite of the influential New York Herald, and, since his political views were unknown, he was wooed by both Democrats and Republicans. With General McClellan conspicuously courting the Democrats, Lincoln was not about to appoint another general-in-chief who had political aspirations, and he asked E.B. Wahburn, the representative from Grant's district, to report on the general's political ambitions. Washburne reffered him to J. Russel Jones, a close friend of Grant and his investment advisor [What was Grant, poor as a churchmouse in 1861, doing with an investment advisor in 1864? - ed.], who brought to the White House Grant's letter pledging that nothing could persuade him to be a candidate for the presidency, particularly since there was the possibility of reelecting Lincoln. "You will never know how gratifying that is to me," the President said after reading the letter. "No man knows, when that presidential grub gets to gnawing away at him, just how deep it will get until he has tried it; and I didn't know but what there was one gnawing at Grant."

Footnote no. 491 on p. 668: "gnawing at Grant": Ida M. Tarbell, The Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Doubelday, Page & Co., 1909, 2:187-189. For a thorough evaluation of Grant's position on the nomination, see John Y. Simon, ed., The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982), 9:541-544.

The letter which Grant wrote (only to a Democrat) to deny any presidential aspirations, is as follows:

To Barnabas Burns:
Chattanooga Tennessee
December 17th 1863
B. Burns, Esq., Chairman Dem. Cen. Comm.
     Your letter of the 7th inst. asking if you will be at liberty to use  my name before the convention of the "War Democracy", as candidate for the office of the Presidency is just received. -- This question astonishes me. I do not know of anything I have ever done or said  which would indicate that I could be a candidate for any office whatever within the gift of the people.
     I shall continue to do my duty, to the best of my ability, so long as permitted to remain in the Army, supporting whatever Administration  may be in power [italics mine - ed.], in their endeavor to suppress the rebellion and maintain National unity, and never desert it because of my vote, if I had one, might have been cast for different candidates.
     Nothing likely to happen [italics mine - ed. What does this mean?] would pain me so much as to see my name used in connection with a political office. I am not a candidate for any office nor for favors from any party. Let us succeed in crushing the rebellion, in the shortest possible time, and I will be content with whatever credit may then be given me, feeling assured that a just public will award all that is due.
     Your letter I take to be private. Mine is also private [actually not all that private - ed.]. I wish to avoid notoriety as far as possible, and above all things, desire to be spared the pain of seeing my name mixed with politics. Do not therefore publish this letter but wherever, and by whatever party, you hear my name mentioned in connection with the candidacy for any office, say that you know from me direct that I am not "in the field," and cannot allow my name to be used before any convention.
     I am, with great respect, your obt. svt.
U. S. Grant

² Herbert, "Lincoln", pp. 525-26: Inevitably reports of these plans reached Lincoln's ears. He was neither surprised nor worried by most of the schemes to replace him as the nominee of the Republican party, but he was alarmed when he heard that the dissidents were thinking of running Grant. He did not think the general had political aspirations but, concluding that he ought to sound him out again, he asked Colonel John Eaton, who had worked closely with Grant in caring for the freedmen in the Mississippi Valley, to go the Army of the Potomoac and ascertain his views. At City Pont, Eaton told Grant that many people thought he ought to run for president, not as a party man but as a citizens' candidate, in order to save the Union. Bringing his hand down on the arm of his chair, Grant replied: "They can't do it! They can't compel me to do it!" He went on to say that he considered it "as important for the cause that he [Lincoln] should be elected as that the army should be successful in the field." When Eaton reported the conversation to the President, his relief was obvious. "I told you," he said., "they could not get him to run until he had closed out the rebellion."

 Footnote no. 526 on p. 673: "Closed out the rebellion": John Eaton, Grant, Lincoln and the Freedman (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1907), pp. 186-191.

8) Gordon Granger was a thorn in the side of Grant who used him to strike at Thomas.
Gordon Granger was born of Gaius and Catherine Granger in Joy, New York on 6 Nov. 1822. After graduating from West Point in 1845 (35th out of 41), he fought in the Mexican War under Winfield Scott and earned two brevets. He then served on the frontier and promoted to first lieutenant in 1852. At  the outbreak of the Civil War he was promoted to captain and fought at Wilson's Creek, Missouri in August 1861. Afterward he was promoted to colonel and in March 1862 to brigadier general. He commanded the cavalry in the campaign against New Madrid and Island No. 10, and in Halleck's advance on Corinth. In September 1862 he was appointed major general and held independant command in Kentucky for nearly a year. At Chickamauga, Tennessee, in September 1863 he commanded the reserve corps, sometimes called the Army of Kentucky, under William S. Rosecrans. Granger's reinforcement of Thomas on Snodgrass Hill the afternoon of 20 Sept. 1863 saved the Union forces from disaster. Although he engaged in other battles around Chattanooga, helped in the relief of Knoxville, and took part in the capture of Mobile, his abrasive personality had got him on the wrong side of Grant who hindered Granger's further advancement. He is described as having been "outspoken and rough in manner, kindly and sympathetic at heart...[His] independence occasionally came near to insubordination, and at odrinary times he lacked energy." He was another "difficult" person from whom Thomas was able to get good work, along with Baldy Smith and Jeff C. Davis.

Granger assumed command of the Department of Texas on 10 June 1865 under Sheridan, then commander of the Military Division of the Southwest. Upon his arrival in Galveston he declared that the institution of slavery was dead, setting off joyful displays by Texas freedmen. He instituted a punitive policicy against former Confederate officials and counseled blacks to remain on the plantations and to sign labor agreements with their former owners while awaiting further assistance from the Freedmen's Bureau which had not yet been established in the state. After six weeks of apparently upsetting too many apple carts, he was relieved of his command.

In 1869 Granger married Maria Letcher, daughter of a Lexington, Kentucky, physician. His most important assignment after leaving Texas was to command the District of New Mexico (1871-76). He resided in Santa Fe until his death, on 10 January 1876.

 A half-mile to the rear, the Union commanders stood atop the Figuers house, observing
 the gray wave sweeping their way. With them stood 15-year-old Hardin Figuers. When
 the shooting started, Federal officers told Figuers to climb down and take cover, but
 Schofield stopped the boy, handing him his fieldglasses and pointing to the front.
 "Take a look, boy," he supposedly said. "You'll never see a sight like this again."
 Indeed, Figuers was watching the death of the Confederacy in the West.
 

10. William Babcock Hazen 1830-87
USMA /34); Infantry. After Indian fighting (1 wound, 1 brevet) he taught tactics at West Point 21 Feb. - 18 Sept. 1861. Commissioned Col. 41st Ohio 29 Oct. 1861, after having been promoted 1st Lt. 1 April and Captain 14 May 1861. During the operations in Kentucky he commanded his regiment at the 19th Brig., Army of the Ohio (Dec. 61- Jan. 62). At Shiloh and on the advance upon Corinth he led 19th Brigade, 4th Division (3 Jan. - 2 June 1862) and also commanded these troops (10 July-29 Sept. 1862) while supervising repairs on the Nashville & Decatur R.R., and as commanding offercer of Murfreesboro. At Perryville he commanded the same brigade, now in the IV Corps (Sept. - Nov. 1862) and was promoted B.G. USV 29 Nov. 1862. He led 2nd Brigade, 2nd Division, Left Wing, XIV Cumberland (5 Nov. 62-9 Jan. 63) at Murfreesboro (Stones River) and then commanded 2,2,XXI (9 Jan. - 3 Sept. and 13 Sept.-9 Oct. 1863) at Chickamauga. In the battles around Chattanooga and at Missionary Ridge he commanded 2,3, IV (10 Oct. 1863-17 March 1864). At Chattanooga he led the force which floated down the Tennessee River in the night of 27 Oct. 1863 which took Brown's Ferry. He also led this brigade at Rocky Face Ridge, Resaca, Adairsville, Cassville, Pickett's Mills, Kennesaw Mountain, Chattahoochee, Peach Tree Creek, and Atlanta (17 April-17 Aug. 1864). He next commanded 2nd Division, XV, Tenn. (17 Aug. 64-18 May 1865) at Jonesboro, East Point, on the March to the Sea, and in the Carolinas. Maj. Gen. USV 13 Dec. 1864. From 23 May to 1 Aug. 1865 he commanded the XV Corps. Continuing in the R.A. as Col. 28th Inf., then 6th Inf. (1869), Hazen was prominent in frontier affairs. In 1870 he was an observer with the German armies fighting France. In 1880 he became B.G. USA, Chief Signal Officer and head of the Weather Bureau. A.G. Greely's ill-fated arctic expedition, 1881-84, thus was under Hazen's command, and he got a presidential reprimand for bitter criticism of War Sec. Robert Lincoln for failure to authorize timely rescue efforts. Experts and the public sided with Hazen, so the court-martial (headed by Gen. Hancock) did not harm Hazen's career. He died in office at age 56. See Warner, Generals in Blue.
Boatner

11. Philip Henry Sheridan

John and Mary Minah Sheridan, Philip's parents, came to America in 1830 at the urging of John's uncle, Thomas Gainor, living in Albany, New York. John and Mary were second degree cousins from County Caven, Ireland. Before leaving Ireland the couple had two children, Patrick H. and Rosa. Rosa died aboard ship and was buried at sea. Philip Henry was born 6 March  1831. His birthplace is still a mystery. There are no records available at Albany, New York, Boston, Mass. (where their ship landed), nor at Somerset, Ohio. Sheridan at various times claimed all three places. He arrived with his parents in Somerset as a babe-in-arms and spent his childhood there. Sheridan attended school in Somerset until the age of fourteen, at which time he went to work for various businessmen, notably Fink and Dittoe. In 1848 Congressman Thomas Ritchie, friend of the family, obtained an appointment to West Point for Sheridan. In 1851, his third year at the Point, he was suspended for a year for fighting with a fellow cadet. Sheridan graduated 34th in a class of 52 in July, 1853, and was assigned to the 1st Infantry at Fort Duncan, Texas, as a 2nd Lt. In 1855 he was transferred to the 4th Infantry in the Pacific Northwest. In April, 1856, he was assigned to duty at the Grand Ronde Indian Reservation in Yamhill County, Oregon, and was promoted to 1st Lt. After the start of the Civil War, (April 4, 1861) Sheridan was promoted to Captain and in September of 1861, was called east to St. Louis for duty with the Union Armies of the West, the first step in his journey to greatness. Sheridan was assigned to supply under Gen. Hallick but eventually convinced him he would be of better service in the field and was reassigned to Gen. Curtis
who was preparing to drive the Confederates out of southern Missouri. At this point Sheridan, who had met up with William T. Sherman, was recommended by Sherman to be given command of one of Ohio's volunteer regiments but was turned down. Then Gen. Gordon Granger requested Sheridan be given command of the 2nd Michigan Cavalry vacated by Granger's promotion. He was accepted and jumped from Capt. to Colonel overnight (May 25, 1862). Two months later Sheridan was stationed at a forward post near Booneville, Mississippi. The Confederates pressed forward with 5,000 to 6,000 troopers to wipe out Sheridan's annoying outpost of only 827 men. Sheridan was equipped with repeating rifles and pistols which gave him some advantage but in repelling the enemy he proved his military genius. By loading troops on a train and discharging them noisily at Booneville, silently marching them back up track and reloading and discharging them time and again he deceived Confederate General Chalmers into thinking he was being reinforced. By this and other tactics Sheridan was able to rout a much larger force and because of this action Sheridan was commissioned Brig. General. He was at this time only 31 years old. After this engagement Sheridan was ordered to the town of Rienzi, Mississippi, and it was here a friend, Colonel Campbell of the 2nd Michigan, gave Phil a large Morgan horse which he promptly named Rienzi, and which later carried him to fame at the battle of Cedar Creek, Virginia. Sheridan's next engagement was under Gen. Rosecrans at Murfreesboro on Stones River south of Nashville Tenn. He played a part in holding back the Confederates under Gen. Bragg. In later years Grant stated that in this battle Sheridan saved Rosecran's army. He should have also added Gen. "Pap" Thomas' name. It was principally for his services at Murfreesboro (Stones River) that Sheridan was promoted in April, 1863 to Major General. During the battle of Chickamauga Sheridan left the field, but was not censured as were McCook and Negley for doing the the same thing. At Chattanooga, Sheridan's division was one of the forces which swept to the top of Missionary Ridge and with his division pursued the enemy and captured equipment and prisoners. On March 12, 1864 Gen. Grant was appointed General-in-Chief of the Union Armies, he soon called Sheridan to join him in Washington. Here Sheridan was appointed Chief of Cavalry, Army of the Potomac. As aides-de-camp Phil chose his brother Mike and Lieut. T. W. C. Moore, Capt. James W. Forsyth, an old friend, was a staff officer. Sheridan's main area of operation was the Shenandoah Valley. Here he contested Gen. Early's Confederate troops, destroyed crops which were the breadbasket of the Confederate army, defeated and killed Gen. J.E.B. Stuart (famous cavalry leader of the south) and eventually, in the battle of Cedar Creek, drove Early out of the valley. As the war neared its end Sheridan was the leader in forcing Gen. Lee out of his Petersburg, Va. defenses and eventually cutting off his retreat at Appomattox Court House. At the end of the war Sheridan was sent to Texas to maintain peace with Mexico. Napoleon III had installed Maximilian and Carlota to the throne of Mexico. By maneuvering and threats he was able to install peace and force France to withdraw their claims. After serving sometime in New Orleans, La. as head of Reconstruction he was relieved after much controversy for his severity and was ordered to take command of the Department of the Missouri in Sept. 1867. Here he was ordered to subdue the Indians and place them on reservations. Several treaties were drawn up, few of which were kept due to the white man's encroachment on the Indian reservations. Sheridan's attitude toward the Indians can be fairly described as being genocidal. In 1869, after Grant became president and General Sherman became General of the Army, Sheridan was appointed lieutenant general with headquarters in Chicago. In this capacity he traveled throughout the west and from this knowledge was later instrumental in having Yellowstone declared a national park. He also went to Europe as an observer with Prussia in the French and Prussian War. Returning to Chicago he presided over the Great Chicago Fire of October 7-8, 1871. He brought troops into the city to stop looters and directed fire fighting and reconstruction. On June 3, 1875, Sheridan married Miss Irene Rucker, the youngest daughter of Gen. Daniel H. Rucker. She was 22 years younger than he. In 1883 Sherman reached retirement age. Lieutenant General Sheridan assumed the nation's highest military office at the comparative youthful age of fifty-two. In 1888 he suffered a series of heart attacks. Congress revived the grade of full General and he was given his fourth star by President Grover Cleveland. He was the fourth man in U.S. history to be so honored. (Washington, Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan) At 10:30 p.m., Sunday, August 5, 1888, Sheridan died at Nonquit, Mass. and is buried in Arlington Cemetery.
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Sheridan, Philip (Henry)
Soldier; born in Albany, N.Y. The son of Irish immigrant parents, he worked as a store clerk  before obtaining a West Point appointment; he was an undistinguished student, and because of a discipline infraction, he graduated in 1853, a year late. When the Civil War began, he was still an obscure lieutenant and was assigned only desk jobs; at one point he was almost court-martialed for violating an administrative regulation. His combat career did not begin until May 1862 when he was appointed colonel in the cavalry; after distinguishing himself in the Union advance on Corinth, Miss., and the battle of Booneville, Miss., he was promoted to general and commanded a division at Perryville and Stone's River (1862); as a corps commander, his troops took part in the charge up Missionary Ridge that won the decisive Battle of Chattanooga (1863). Grant then put him in charge of the cavalry of the Army of the Potomac; he led the raid on Richmond that resulted in the death of Jeb Stuart at Yellow Tavern (May 1864). As commander of the Army of the Shenandoah in 1864, he drove Confederate forces from the Shenandoah Valley and laid it waste (August 1864--February 1865), leaving the inhabitants, as he put it, "with only their eyes to weep with over the war." Sheridan's fabled "ride" occurred on October 19, 1864, when he rallied his routed forces at Cedar Creek. Commanding a combined force of infantry and cavalry, the intense, aggressive, and hard-driving Sheridan led a furious Union pursuit to Appomattox, where he joined Grant in compelling Lee's surrender on April 9, 1865. After the war he proved to be especially severe as a military governor in the South; he also organized punitive campaigns against the Plains Indian tribes. (He is reliably reported as having actually said, "The only good Indians I ever saw were dead.") In 1884 he succeeded Sherman as commander-in-chief of the army.

12. August Willich 1810-78
Son of a veteran of the Napoleonic wars, he was given a military education and was an officer in the Prussian army.
 
 

13. Osterhaus

14. Wilder

15. "Baldy" Smith

16. Wilson

17. James Abram Garfield
b. Nov. 19, 1831, near Orange [in Cuyahoga county], Ohio, U.S
d. Sept. 19, 1881, Elberon [now in Long Branch], NJ
20th president of the United States (March 4-Sept. 19, 1881), who had the second shortest tenure inpresidential history. When he was shot and incapacitated, seriousconstitutional questions arose concerning who should properlyperform the functions of the presidency. Garfield was the son of Abram Garfield and Eliza Ballou, whocontinued to run the family's impoverished Ohio farm after herhusband's death in 1833. The last president born in a log cabin,Garfield dreamed of foreign ports of call as a sailor but instead worked for a time on a boat on the Ohio Canal between Cleveland, Ohio, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Always studious, he attended Western Reserve Eclectic Institute (later Hiram College) at Hiram, Ohio, and graduated (1856) from Williams College. He returned to the Eclectic Institute as a professor of ancient languages and in 1857, at age 25, became the school's president. A year later he married Lucretia Rudolph and began a family that included seven children (two died in infancy). Garfield also studied law and was ordained as a minister in the Disciples of Christ church, but he soon turned to politics. An advocate of free-soil principles, he became a supporter of the newly organized Republican Partyand in 1859 was elected to the Ohio legislature. During the Civil War he helped recruit the 42nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry and became its colonel. After commanding a brigade at the Battle of Shiloh (April 1862), he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and while waiting for Congress to begin its session, he served as chief of staff in the Army of the Cumberland, winning promotion to major general after distinguishing himself at the Battle of Chickamauga(September 1863). It was about that time that Garfield had an extramarital affair with a Lucia Calhoun in New York City. He later admitted the indiscretion and was forgiven by his wife. Historians believe that the many letters he had written to Calhoun, which are referred to in his diary, were retrieved by Garfield and destroyed.  For nine terms, until 1880, Garfield represented Ohio's 19th congressional district. As chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations, he became an expert on fiscal matters and advocated a high protective tariff; as a Radical Republican, he sought a firm policy of Reconstruction for the South. In 1880 the Ohio legislature elected him to the U.S. Senate. At the Republican presidential convention the same year in Chicago, the delegates were divided into three principal camps: the "Stalwarts" (conservatives led by powerful New York Senator Roscoe Conkling), who backed former president Ulysses S. Grant, the "Half-Breed" (moderate) supporters of Maine Senator James G. Blaine, and those committed to Secretary of the Treasury John Sherman. Tall, bearded, affable, and eloquent, Garfield steered fellow Ohioan Sherman's campaign and impressed so many with his nominating speech that he, not the candidate, became the focus of attention. As the chairman of the Ohio delegation, Garfield also led a coalition of anti-Grant delegates who succeeded in rescinding the unit rule, by which a majority of delegates from a state could cast the state's entire vote. This victory added to Garfield's prominence and doomed Grant's candidacy. Grant led all other candidates for 35 ballots, but failed to command a majority; and on the 36th ballot the nomination went to a dark horse, Garfield, who was still trying to remove his name from nomination as the bandwagon gathered speed.  His Democratic opponent in November was General Winfield Scott Hancock, like Garfield a Civil War veteran, so both could wrap themselves in the symbolic "bloody shirt" of the Union. But Garfield also capitalized on his rags-to-riches background, and along with a campaign biography literally written by Horatio Alger, he reached back to his humble beginnings as a "canal boy" for the slogan "From the tow path to the White House." ("No man ever started so low that accomplished so much, in all our history," said former president Rutherford B. Hayes of Garfield. He was "the ideal self-made man.") In an era when it was still considered unseemly for a candidate to court voters actively, Garfield, aided by Lucretia (who remained an important adviser), conducted the first "front porch" campaign, from his home in Mentor, Ohio, where reporters and voters came to hear him speak. Notwithstanding allegations of involvement in the Crédit Mobilier Scandal, in which Garfield had received $329 from stock in the notorious company (a remuneration which Democrats characterized as a bribe and played up as a campaign issue by plastering walls, sidewalks, and placards with "329"), and a forged letter that supposedly revealed Garfield's advocacy of unrestricted Chinese immigration, he defeated Hancock (as well as the third-party Greenback candidate), though he won the popular election by fewer than 10,000 votes. The vote in the electoral college was less close: 214 votes for Garfield, 155 for Hancock. By the time of his election, Garfield had begun to see education rather than the ballot box as the best hope for improving the lives of African Americans. In his inaugural speech he said, "The elevation of the Negro race from slavery to the full rights of citizenship is the most important political change we have known since the adoption of the Constitution of 1787. No thoughtful man can fail to appreciate its beneficent effect upon our institutions and people....It has liberated the master as well as the slave from a relation which wronged and enfeebled both."  Garfield tried to put together a cabinet that would appease all factions of the Republican Party, but, prompted by his secretary of state, Blaine, he eventually challenged Conkling's patronage machine in New York. Instead of appointing one of Conkling's friends as collector of the Port of New York, Garfield chose a Blaine protégé, prompting the resignation of an outraged Conkling and strengthening the independence and power of the presidency. So demanding were the office seekers and the pressures of the patronage system that at one point Garfield wondered why anyone would want to seek the presidency. "My God," he exclaimed, "what is there in this place that a man should ever want to get into it!" The other significant development of Garfield's short term of office, the Star Route Scandal, involved the fraudulent dispersal of postal route contracts. "Go ahead regardless of where or whom you hit," Garfield told investigators. "I direct you not only to probe this ulcer to the bottom, but to cut it out." Despite such strong talk, Grant accused Garfield of having "the backbone of an angleworm." On July 2, 1881, after only four months in office, while on his way to visit his ill wife in Elberon, New Jersey, Garfield was shot in the back at the railroad station in Washington, D.C., by Charles J. Guiteau, a disappointed office seeker with messianic visions. Guiteau peaceably surrendered to police, calmly announcing, "I am a Stalwart. [Chester A.] Arthur is now president of the United States." For 80 days the president lay ill and performed only one official act--the signing of an extradition paper. It was generally agreed that, in such cases, the vice president was empowered by the Constitution to assume the powers and duties of the office of president. But should he serve merely as acting president until Garfield recovered, or would he receive the office itself and thus displace his predecessor? Because of an ambiguity in the Constitution, opinion was divided, and, because Congress was not in session, the problem could not be debated there. On September 2, 1881, the matter came before a cabinet meeting, where it was finally agreed that no action would be taken without first consulting Garfield. But in the opinion of the doctors this was impossible, and no further action was taken before the death of the president, the result of slow blood poisoning, on September 19. The public and the media were obsessed with this drawn-out passing of the president, leading historians to see in the brief Garfield administration the seeds of an important aspect of the modern president: the chief executive as celebrity and symbol of the nation. It is said that public mourning for Garfield was more extravagant than the grief displayed in the wake of President Abraham Lincoln's assassination, which is startling in light of the relative roles these men played in American history. Garfield was buried beneath a quarter-million-dollar, 165-foot (50-metre) monument in Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland.
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