Category Archives: Americana

150 years ago continued

Americana, General U.S. Grant, War

 

On February 16, 1862, Brigadier General Simon Buckner surrendered Fort Donaldson and about 13,500 men to Brigadier General Grant. Buckner and Grant had been friends in their previous and now different lives. The  military leaders of both the North and the South had often been in the old United States Army together and most had gone to West Point together. When the Civil War started, the majority of the seasoned officers were from the South and most of them deserted the Union. Simon Buckner was one of these.

Buckner had been born in Kentucky   but went north to go to West Point and graduated one year after Grant. He fought in the Mexican-American war and then Buckner returned to New York to teach at West Point but – and I love this part – he quit the teaching post as a protest of West Point’s policy of compulsory chapel attendance. About this time, he married a woman from Connecticut. When the war broke out, Buckner was offered a generalship in the Union army by President Lincoln himself, but he turned it down and, eventually ended up in the Confederate army. And then ended up at Fort Donaldson under a general who deserted his post, leaving Buckner to face Grant.

Ulysses S. Grant was born Hiram Ulysses Grant but his mother dropped the Hiram when he went to West Point. She realized his initials would be HUG when she was stenciling his footlocker and she was afraid that he would be teased which, at 5′-1″ and 117 pounds was probably right (the Congressman that sponsored Grant to West Point added the S for Grant’s mother’s maiden name of Simpson, but, in a clerical error, it was changed to S for Sam and he became Sam Grant at West Point). Like Buckner – and Robert Lee, for that matter – Grant fought in the Mexican-American war. He then hoped to teach math at West Point; instead, he ended up at the almost end of the world, Fort Vancouver in Oregon Territory.

Away from his wife and probably bored, Grant left the Army in disgrace for binge drinking. On his way home, broke and in disgrace, Grant ran into Buckner in New York and – probably very embarrassed – borrowed money from him while he was waiting for money to be sent from Ohio so that Grant could get back to his wife and his home. Buckner and Grant met again, almost eight years later, at Fort Donaldson.

The surrender of Fort Donaldson and an army of 13,500 men was the first major victory for the Union and the first of only three times during the Civil War when an entire army was captured – all by Grant. It was an equally major catastrophe for the South. The victory kept Kentucky in the Union and opened up the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers for the North to start driving south in a campaign to open the Mississippi River all the way to New Orleans.

Buckner expected his old friend, Sam Grant, to be sympathetic to his position and asked for special consideration in his and his army’s loss, but for Grant, war was war and it trumped friendship.  He replied to his old friend and one time benefactor, in a letter that included the famous quotation, “No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works.” A pissed off Buckner replied “Sir:—The distribution of the forces under my command, incident to an unexpected change of commanders, and the overwhelming force under your command, compel me, notwithstanding the brilliant success of the Confederate arms yesterday, to accept the ungenerous and unchivalrous terms which you propose.”

Grant offered to loan Buckner money and to help him with his imminent imprisonment, but a still pissed Buckner declined and was sent to prison in Boston. Five months later, he was exchanged for another general.  Grant became instantly famous and was promoted to Major General U. S. – “Unconditional Surrender” – Grant.

While Grant only had about 500 killed, he did have another 2,000 wounded and the battle was not as easy as it later looked.  Grant made several major mistakes – like leaving the battlefield to meet with the Navy but not leaving anybody in command – that he was able to overcome and Grant being Grant, they were mistakes that he never made again.

 

150 years ago

Americana, General U.S. Grant, War

Today, 150 years ago, one year into our Civil War, Union –  the Union being the United States of America -troops were finished moving into position to attack Fort Donelson on the  Cumberland River. Five days and a 150 years ago, on February 6, 1862,  the Union  had won its first major victory against the secessionists – the Confederate States of America – in the battle for Fort Henry on the Tennessee River.  The Union forces were led by a little known, a newly promoted Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant.

I do not know all the reasons for the pull that U. S. Grant has on me: part of it probably has to do with the resurrection of a failed man, part with his lack of pretension, a lot with his change from a non-political – non involved – man to being the greatest, white, champion of civil rights the United States has seen until LBJ a hundred years later. For that, for trying to give Negros their rights, Grant’s reputation suffered during  a post Civil War remembrance that was colored by the Lost Cause of southern valor. As the Negros became happier in their chains, the man who kicked every southern general’s ass including Lee’s became an inept drunk and a butcher.

On the 100th anniversary of the Civil War, 50 years ago, we were starting to get bogged down in Vietnam and allegedly smart people were saying things like Military intelligence is an oxymoron and Grant was a drunk and a butcher and stupid. Now, one of the things about this anniversary is that Grant is being rehabilitated as scholars are re-looking at the war and his presidency. The English have thought of Grant as a great general for a long time, probably starting with British historian General John Fuller  who wrote extensively about Grant and wrote one of my favorite quotes that is both about Grant and our America as it should be:

In the year 1858, in the streets of the city of St. Louis might sometimes be seen a man leading a horse and cart – a seller of faggots. The man was no longer young, about five feet eight inches in height, though he looked shorter, for he stooped slightly, and when he drew up to off-load his wood his limbs trembled, for he suffered from ague. He was a thick-set, muscular man whose dark-brown hair and beard showed no trace of grey.

To the passer-by he was one of many thousands who had failed to make good  – that is, he was a poor, honest, hardworking fellow whose end seemed preordained – to do odd jobs until his days were numbered: to die, and to be forgotten. Yet in the United States of America, then as now, it would have taken a bold man to predict the end of a fellow citizen. The Thousand and One Nights is a romance founded on slender facts, on Eastern dreams which seldom come true without a knife, a bow string, or a cup of poisoned coffee. But here in this vast tumultuous continent facts find rooms wherein to wind and unwind themselves into tremendous romances. No man can tell the destiny of another; for there is magic in this land of vast possibilities, vast as its spaces, in which talent more so than birth sorts through the sieve of opportunity the human grist from the human chaff. This man, humble, work-worn, and disappointed, as he off-loaded his faggots, stood on the brink of his destiny as surely as the prince in the fairy tale when he lifted up the old peasant woman and her bundle of wood, and wading the river found on the far bank that in his arms rested a smiling princess.

The name of this humble seller of wood was Ulysses S. Grant, who within a few years, was destined to command vast armies, to win great battles, and to be twice chosen by his countrymen as their President. If this is not romance – what is?


Grant, who commanded two divisions of Army, was a young man at 39 and still untested. He was accompanied by a Union Navy force commanded by Flag officer Andrew Foote, and, at Fort Henry, the Navy had beaten the enemy before his troops were even able to attack the fort. Now, for the first time, 150 years ago, he would be tested.

Behind the curve

Americana, Politics

“Conceding that his refusal to release tax returns was “a mistake” and “a distraction” that helped cost him a South Carolina primary win, Romney said he would release his 2010 federal return along with an estimate of his 2011 taxes.” from the Los Angles Times. They – whoever they are – say that timing is everything and I am sure that they are right. I have never understood why somebody like Romney, who seems very intelligent, would not just instinctually realize that he can’t stonewall the release of his taxes. But he did stonewall the release until well after it hurt him in South Carolina.

As a Democrat, I am rooting for Romney to hold back on releasing all his taxes because that will be the best way to keep the issue alive. But, good timing has never been my strong suit; when I see that something is going to happen, I am usually ahead of the curve. And sometimes, the curve never gets there. In 1999, I was convinced that the era of the MacMansion in the boondocks was over and people wanted smaller, closer in homes. I missed the trend by almost ten years.

I comfort myself, however, by remembering that General Douglas MacArthur, an often a brilliant general, was also, often, ahead of the curve. It doesn’t comfort me, however, again, that being ahead of the curve caused MacArthur trouble. Several times, he saw that he was going to win a battle and started drawing troops out before the battle was actually won which actually prolonged the fight and, a couple of times, almost lot it for him.

So maybe Romney is right and stonewalling the release of additional taxes will help him, but I don’t think so.