Book Reviews The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, Volume V: April 1-August 31, 1862. Edited by JOHN Y. SIMON. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press, 1973). xxv + 458 p.; introduction, chronol- ogy, maps, illustrations, calendar, index. $15.) Like its predecessors, Volume V of the Grant Papers is skillfully edited and artfully produced by John Y. Simon and his editorial team. The "packaging" is increasingly es- sential since Grant's correspondence is thin and given to silences on issues which in- trigued his contemporaries and historians. In an army in which generals said too much (who has the courage to edit the McClellan Papers?), Grant said little, offi- cially or privately. Perhaps that is why he survived. In any event, this volume covers some of the most distressing days in Grant's Civil War career--and he met adversity with characteristic restraint. Grant's problems started with the heroic miscalculation that his Army of the Ten- nessee would not be attacked by the full force of Albert Sidney Johnston's army. Grant and Sherman were too good as offi- cers not to recognize the Confederate pres- ence around their Pittsburgh Landing posi- tion; the skirmishing started two days before the Confederate attack of April 6. But Grant was surprised by the weight and tim- ing of the Shiloh attack-and from a force he estimated at twice its actual size. Noth- ing in his papers clears him of a considerable error in judgment. The eventual defeat of Johnston's army by the evening of April 7 was only the end of one crisis. After Shiloh Grant faced a new set of opponents, only one of whom was the Confederate Army at Corinth, Mississippi. The rebels were the least of Grant's prob- lems since his army and Buell's Army of the Ohio, commanded jointly by Henry Wager Halleck, outnumbered the Confederates and ground ahead to take Corinth in early June. In the meantime, Grant's reputation plunged, diminished by the complaints of cashiered officers, rearward politicians, and |
journalists whose grasp of Shiloh was more fanciful than tactical. Some of the critics were right, but for the wrong reasons. Grant's own response to the charges of drunkenness, absence, and negligence are sparse; he explained the battle unofficially only to his wife, father, and one Illinois con- gressman. Only Simon's notes outline the controversy because Grant ignored the charges until he suspected Halleck was eas- ing him out of his command. Halleck reas- sured Grant that his position was secure. As Grant wrote his wife, "my record in this war will bear scrutiny without writing anything in reply to the many attacks made," and he hoped his father and aides would quit publishing counterattacks in his behalf. After the capture of Corinth, Grant's at- tention turned to pacifying the western half of Tennessee and northern Mississippi, evac- uated by the rebels. It was no easy task, complicated by guerrilla raids, illicit trade, runaway slaves, and rapacious northern merchants pursuing the profits of war. Al- though Grant's staff was now more efficient in handling routine army administration, it could not cope with the byzantine politics of military occupation, and Grant's letters show that in July and August 1862, some of his hardest fights were not on the battlefield. Grapplying with the complex problems of consolidating the early summer advances, Grant felt the sting of Shiloh less and the satisfactions of command more. ALLAN R. MILLETT Ohio State University Henry Ward Beecher: The Indiana Years, 1837-1847. By
JANE SHAFFER ELSMERE. (In- dianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1973. xiii + 317p.; illustrations, bibliographical note, and index. $7.50.) Jane Elsmere, finding the treatment of Henry Ward Beecher's formative years "un- |