Grant and Sherman: History’s Odd Couple

The two generals appear together on a 15-cent note that never circulated because after it was printed in 1866 Congress passed a law prohibiting the use of portraits of living people on currency.

(Donckelly.com)

Although they executed their most famous campaigns 450 miles apart, Generals Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman worked in concert as smoothly as if they shared the same headquarters. After two years together on the battlefields of the Civil War, the two were more than a pair of strategists; they were like-minded friends. Yet in some ways they couldn’t have been more different, Sherman intellectual and voluble, Grant intuitive and reserved. This historic odd couple is the fascinating subject of Grant and Sherman: The Friendship That Won the Civil War, by Charles Bracelen Flood (author of Lee: The Last Years and Hitler: The Path to Power). The book doubles as a biography of the Civil War while examining what Flood calls “the bond … known only to those who become friends at a time when they know that any day may be their last.”

Flood delves into their personal lives, war exploits, and friendship. Both Sherman, who served as an Army supply officer and aide in California in the 1840s before embarking on a string of failed business ventures, and Grant, who fought in the Mexican War but resigned from the Army in 1854 amid charges of drunkenness, were all but washed up when the Civil War broke out. Both enlisted out of loyalty to the Union and desire to make something of their lives.

Despite requesting never to rise above second in command, Sherman was quickly promoted to brigadier general in charge of Kentucky and Tennessee. But he grew more and more alarmed about the Confederates he imagined were amassing against him. Amid rumors of insanity, he was relieved of his command and took a 20-day leave. But then, after gaining confidence training troops and forwarding supplies to Grant, he as allowed to lead a division in March 1862. Grant, on the other hand, struggled to prove himself capable of leadership from the first, working his way from colonel of a regiment of fewer than 1,000 men in June 1861 to field commander of the 45,000-man Army of the Tennessee eight months later. The two men had known of each other as students at West Point, but their friendship was forged in the thick of the awful fighting at Shiloh, April 6, 7, and 8, 1862. Sherman’s calm under fire impressed Grant, and Grant’s dogged aggression in the face of near defeat won Sherman over. Their success there, the biggest yet for the North ten months into the war, energized the entire Union.

Flood argues that from then on, neither man could have achieved what he did without the other—nor could the United States. After the press, shocked at the high casualties at Shiloh, accused Grant of drunkenness and poor planning, he was demoted. He told Sherman he was leaving the Army. Sherman stood to be promoted if Grant quit, but he not only persuaded Grant to stay; he also vociferously defended him. Even when Sherman disagreed, he carried out Grant’s battle strategies to the utmost. As Grant wrote after they both took part in the bold siege of Vicksburg, which Sherman argued in favor of postponing, “He could not have done more if the plan were his own.”

Grant repaid Sherman by allowing him more and more control over his troops’ movements, and he fought for Sherman’s frequent promotions even as Sherman’s success and popularity made him Grant’s rival. He also covered for Sherman’s mistakes, like his failure to take Missionary Ridge during the Battle of Chattanooga in 1863 (which Grant later claimed was part of the plan), or the too-lenient peace treaty he signed with the Confederate General Joseph Johnston (requiring Grant to defend Sherman’s patriotism to an angry cabinet).

After Grant went to Washington in 1864 to take supreme command of the Union forces and lead the Army of the Potomac, he turned his Army of the West over to Sherman, and the two, though widely separated, functioned as the nationwide strategy-making team the Union had previously lacked. While Grant rammed the Army of the Potomac and Sherman disemboweled Georgia and the Carolinas, they stayed in close contact by telegraph and, rather than moving their armies as two unconnected entities, cooperated so that the Rebel factions opposing one could not escape to reinforce the troops the other was fighting.

Flood’s book is peppered with illuminating quotes from Grant, Sherman, and those who knew them. What results is both an excellent character study and a compelling, well-paced story. Flood briefly covers the men’s postwar careers, including Grant’s Presidency and Sherman’s generalship of the U.S. Army, but the book’s denouement comes in its 12 pages on the Union’s victory parade. After all that both generals, their armies, and the country had been through, the troops’ triumphant march through Washington makes for a moving, almost cinematic final act, which Sherman called “the happiest and most satisfactory moment of my life.”

Flood writes of the Grant and Sherman shaking hands on the grandstand: “There it was: the apotheosis of the friendship and military partnership that had brought the Union and its armies to this day. They were the men, the two generals, who more than any other soldiers had made this moment happen, and everyone there knew it.” As the author makes plain, without their friendship, the Union victory—and the Union itself—might well have perished from the earth.

—Christine Gibson is a former editor at American Heritage magazine.