Ulysses S. Grant by Michael Korda Page A

(when he could afford them), admiring citizens sent him cigars by the box—a tidal wave of tobacco that would continue to the end of his life. He became, like Freud and Winston Churchill in a later age, a chain smoker of cigars, seldom photographed without one; in the end, like Freud, he would die of his addiction, from cancer of the jaw and throat.
    But in 1862 that was far in the future. Grant did not have long to enjoy his success. No sooner had he put up his second star than he was in trouble again. Buell, taking advantage of Grant’s victories, at last moved to take Nashville, and was followed there by Grant, who had been named “Commander of the Military Department of Western Tennessee”—a title that was vague but implied that he was Buell’s superior officer. This provoked Halleck, who must have felt that he had created a monster, to complain to the new general in chief in Washington, George B. McClellan, who had replaced the ailing Scott (and in whose waiting room Grant had twice sat fruitlessly waiting for an interview), that Grant had quit his command to go to Nashville, failed to keep him (Halleck) informed, and was probably drinking again. McClellan wired back that Halleck should “not hesitate to arrest him at once,” but Halleck contented himself with giving Gen. C. F. Smith command of the advance into Tennessee, while ordering a shaken Grant to remain at Fort Henry to await further investigation.
    Grant finally managed to smooth Halleck’s ruffled feathers; therumors of his drinking were disposed of by Rawlins—although there remains a strong possibility that they were true—and by March 1862 Grant was once again headed south, in command of forty thousand troops. Smith seems to have taken all this intrigue calmly and was happy enough to give up a command he had never sought—Grant had not been one of his more successful pupils at West Point, but he seems to have recognized in him superior qualities of leadership. Grant’s commanders now included at least two unusual characters, Brig. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, temporarily in disgrace and assumed by many to be insane, but who would soon rise to become one of the most successful Union generals, and Lew Wallace, the future author of Ben Hur and governor of the Territory of New Mexico, who would play a leading role in ending the career of Billy the Kid.
    Halleck had finally managed to achieve overall command of the area and conceived a plan in which Buell and Grant (once he was restored to command) would move south, meet at Pittsburg landing on the Tennessee, and concentrate their forces, then push on to Memphis. This plan was jeopardized almost at once by Buell’s slowness—it is possible that Buell had not forgiven Grant for preempting his flotilla and his limelight to undertake the attack on Fort Henry—so that Grant arrived at Pittsburg Landing before Buell, to face a larger Confederate force under the command of generals A. S. Johnston and P. G. T. Beauregard.
    Whether Grant was drinking or not remains open to question, but he was certainly not at his best. It may be that the quarrel with Halleck and the temporary loss of his command had shaken his confidence, or that Julia Grant was still on her way south to be withhim, or that he wasn’t confident that Buell would arrive in time to be of any use. Or it may simply be that Rawlins’s concentration was focused elsewhere and that Grant had access to whiskey again (the one item that was never in short supply in both armies). For whatever reason, Grant spread his forces out loosely on the south side of the Tennessee River, and placed his own headquarters at Savannah, nine miles west (and downstream) of Pittsburg Landing, and on the opposite side of the river, which meant that he had to commute back and forth by river steamer every day. He later claimed that he was waiting anxiously for the arrival of Buell, who had agreed to meet him at Savannah, but that seems unlikely—word could have been