In the spring of 1864, President Abraham Lincoln feared that three years of costly defeats on the battlefield would prove too much for the North. There had been victories in the year that had passed, but the first two years of the war had also seen one defeat after another, with mounting casualty lists and growing dissension at home. After Gettysburg, opposition to the draft had inspired violent riots in several Northern cities, including New York City and Troy. As Lincoln considered the critical presidential election year of 1864, he feared that he might not win re-election and might not be able to lead the Union war effort to its conclusion.
While the war in the East had not proceeded well, the war in the West had served as a proving ground for two tenacious Army commanders and a bold Navy admiral whose achievements would give Lincoln hope. As the war in Virginia languished, a series of victories in the West brought recognition to Gens. Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman and to Adm. David G. Farragut. Together, these three leaders would work together in a military partnership that would form a triumvirate of victory for the Union.
The emergence of these leaders was a classic American tale of rising from a humble life to greatness. Grant and Sherman were born in Ohio and were exposed to the evils of slavery that were unique to the Border States. Both sought to escape poverty through military service, and had attended West Point. Initially, neither seemed likely to rank among history's great commanders.
Grant and Sherman battled personal demons. Grant was forced to resign from the Army in 1854 because of excessive drinking, and was working as a clerk in his family's leather goods store when the war began. Sherman was honored for his Mexican War service, but left the Army in 1853. Sherman failed in business and was managing a streetcar company in St. Louis at the start of the Civil War.
Farragut traveled a different path. He was 60 years old when the Civil War began and had first gone to sea during the War of 1812. Born in Tennessee, Farragut and his family had moved to New Orleans in 1808. After his mother died, Farragut was adopted by the family of David Porter, a naval officer who had been friends with his father. The stars were aligned in that twist of fate. Farragut grew up in this distinguished naval family, went to sea at a young age, and made the Navy his life.
Lincoln began hearing about Grant after his victories at Forts Henry and Donelson in February 1862. Grant had masterfully conducted the operations and supervised a combined naval and infantry attack that had taken the two river forts. Lincoln rewarded him with a major general's commission.
When Grant's forces were surprised and routed at Shiloh in April 1862, Lincoln stuck by his embattled commander. Even as rumors swirled about Grant's drinking habits, Lincoln responded to his critics, "I can't spare this man; he fights." Lincoln saw something within Grant that others failed to understand. Grant was a military leader driven toward victory — intent on relentlessly battering away until victory was won.
At Vicksburg, Grant's true brilliance was revealed. After many efforts to capture the Mississippi River city, Grant supervised a brilliant advance in cooperation with Sherman and with Farragut's naval forces, and took Vicksburg by siege. Vicksburg fell on July 4, 1863, just one day after Union victory at Gettysburg. Later that year, Grant was promoted to the supreme command in the Western Theatre. In March 1864, and against Grant's wishes, Lincoln promoted him to the rank of lieutenant general.
As Sherman's forces fought in Tennessee, Grant directed the Army of the Potomac against the Confederate forces in Virginia in 1864. These were brutal battles that tenaciously gnawed away at the enemy. Grant's strategy of wearing out Lee's army by attrition was effective, though it resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of Union soldiers at places like Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor. While Grant hammered away in the East, Sherman's army moved south toward Atlanta and then "marched to the sea," bringing flaming ruin to the Deep South and into the Carolinas. As Grant and Sherman pursued this path, Gen. Philip Sheridan laid barren the once fertile Shenandoah Valley and Farragut began strangling the Southern port cities. With the Confederate armies depleted and out-maneuvered, the Confederate forces surrendered in April 1865.
Grant was no warmonger. He suffered greatly from his hard driving approach and was haunted for the rest of his life by the deaths his orders caused. Grant conducted war fearlessly. He believed that only war taken directly to the enemy could bring victory, and that blood spilled on the battlefield was the cost of achieving peace. To his credit, Grant recognized, in a way that Lincoln also understood, the need for a coordinated military strategy in the East and West. In pursuing this strategy, Grant knew that it was dependent upon the effective use of naval assets. While some historians have criticized Grant's tactical abilities and argued that he simply managed the advantage of superior resources over the enemy, Grant was, in fact, a skilled tactician and a brilliant strategist.
Grant's operations against Vicksburg rank among the great campaigns of military history.
Historians have tended to focus on the Civil War's Eastern battles, but this approach not only denies the national dimensions of the war, it minimizes the strategic importance of the major Western battles. The Civil War was fought in many places, and the blood of too many Americans was shed at Antietam, Fredericksburg and Gettysburg, but the war that so tested the nation was a war that, in the end, was won in the West.
Ultimately, victory was brought about because of the partnership of Grant and Sherman and the integration of the naval resources under Farragut.
After much frustration, Lincoln finally found the leader he long awaited in Grant, a commander who advocated a strategy of total war based on a partnership with Sherman and Farragut — a partnership that would secure victory for the Union in 1865.
Bill Howard is a historian and author whose most recent book, "The Civil War Memoir of William T. Levey," was published by the Northshire Press.