Showing posts with label Description of Grant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Description of Grant. Show all posts

Saturday, March 30, 2024

Governor Rutherford B. Hayes to Sardis Birchard, December 19, 1868

COLUMBUS, December 19, 1868.

DEAR UNCLE:—Got home safe this morning. Had a good time. The most satisfactory part of the trip was several hours' quiet talk with General Grant. It was a most delightful talk. After he warms up he is just about such a man as Charley Boalt used to be quite as cheerful, chatty, and good-natured, and so sensible, clear-headed, and well-informed. I feel just as much at ease with him as I do with intimate friends like Hastings or Force more so than with Bushnell or even Buckland! This sounds strange, but I mention it because it will give you an idea how completely and wonderfully he remains unspoiled by his elevation. I think I will come up soon and give you some of his talk.

Sincerely,
R. B. HAYES.
S. BIRCHARD.

SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 3, p. 56-7

Monday, November 2, 2020

Diary of 5th Sergeant Osborn H. Oldroyd: June 19, 1863

Whitworth Projectile
For a month we have been watching our enemy vigilantly, and a panorama, consisting of a great variety of war scenes, has, during that time, passed before us. We have had charging, digging rifle-pits, blowing up forts and firing all sizes of cannon, to say nothing of percussion shells, spherical case shot, time shells, parrot, grape, cannister, shrapnel, etc., the memory of which will be vivid to all, both blue and gray, who have seen the show around Vicksburg. The terrible noises, too, that have rung in our ears, must echo for years to come. I may add our endurance of this southern sun, at times being short of rations, and at no time out of danger, yet all the time nearly uncomplaining-every one trying to make the best of it, and all as merry as the situation would admit. Each day some of the Boys have come in relating new discoveries on reconnoisance, and I do not think there is a foot of ground about these hills that has not been explored, a well or spring that has not been tested, or a single object of interest of any kind that has not been worked until it was stale.


SHELL WITH FUSE.—The fuse is graduated on the outside into equal parts, representing seconds and quarter-seconds. In the bottom of this channel is a smooth layer of a composition of lead and tin, with a piece of wick or yarn underneath it. On this is placed a piece of metal. When ready for firing, the dial is gauged at the proper point at which the fuse is to burn through into the shell.

Then each man has had his peculiar view of how a siege like this ought to be conducted—that is, from the standpoint of rank and file. However, we are all agreed that the quiet man in command of our forces is still able to anticipate the requirements of our situation. I call him quiet, for that is just what he is. There is no dash or glitter about him, but he is marked by a steady nerve, and piercing glance that seems to be always on the alert. Many a second lieutenant has fallen a victim to the sharpshooter because of his fresh uniform, while officers of more experience have escaped under slouched hats and old blouses. There seems to be no limit, however, to the experience of some of them.

A cook of the 96th Ohio happened to be cooking beans the other day, when Gen. A. J. Smith, commanding a division of the 13th Army Corps, came around on camp inspection. After being properly saluted by the cook, the general began a colloquy as follows:

Gen. Smith.— What are you cooking?
The Cook. —Beans, sir.
General Smith. —How long do you cook beans?
The Cook. —Four hours, sir.
Gen. Smith (with a look of withering scorn).—Four hours! You cook 'em six hours!

That cook’s beans were tender enough that day.

"Once again the fire of hell
    Rained the rebel quarters,
With scream of shot and burst of shell,
    And bellowing of the mortars.”

SOURCE: Osborn Hamiline Oldroyd, A Soldier's Story of the Siege of Vicksburg, p. 58-9

Friday, July 7, 2017

Diary of John Hay: November 16, 1864

I started for Grant's headquarters. We left the Navy Yard at two o'clock in the afternoon. The party consisted of Fox, Dyer, Wise, M. Blair, Pyne, Ives, Forbes, Ives, Tom Welles Foster, a Chinese English merchant, and Reid of the Gazette . The day was sad, blowy, bleak, and a little wet.

We dined, and some played cards and all went to bed. When we got up in the morning, we were at Hampton Roads. We made no stay there, but after communicating with the Admiral D. D. Porter, we started up the James River, he following in his flagship, the Malvern. He overtook us about noon or a little after, and came on board with Captain Steadman of the Navy. Porter is a good-looking, lively man, a very off-hand talker, a man not impressing me as of a high order of talent, — a hale-fellow; a slight dash of the rowdy.

In the afternoon we passed by the island of Jamestown. On the low, flat, marshy island, where our first colony landed, there now remains nothing but ruins. An old church has left a solitary tower as its representative. A group of chimneys mark the spot of another large building. On the other side of the river, there is high, fine, swelling land. One cannot but wonder at the taste or judgment that selected that pestilential site in preference to those breezy hills. They probably wished to be near their boats, and also thought a river was a handy thing to have between them and the gentle savages that infested the shores of the James.

Fort Powhatan we saw also — where a battalion of negroes flaxed out Fitz Hughs command of the F. F. Vs.

We arrived at City Point at three o'clock. There are very few troops there but quite a large fleet lying in the river.

We went ashore; walked through the frame building standing in place of that blown up by the late fearful explosion. We climbed the steep hill, whose difficulty is mainly removed by the neat stairs that Yankee care has built since our occupation of the Point. At the top of the hill, we found a young sentry who halted us, and would not let us go further, till Porter, throwing himself on his dignity, which he does not use often, said: “Let that General know that Admiral Porter and Mr. Fox are here to see him.” He evidently impressed the sentry, for he said, after an instant's hesitation:— “Go ahead! I reckon it's all right.”

A common little wall-tent being indicated, we went up to beard the General. At our first knock he came to the door. He looked neater and more careful in his dress than usual; his hair was combed, his coat on, and his shirt clean, his long boots blackened till they shone. Everybody was presented.

After the conference was over we went back to the boat; the General accompanied us. We started down the river and soon had dinner. . . . . After dinner we all gathered around Grant who led the conversation for an hour or so. He thinks the rebels are about at the end of their tether, and said:— “I hope we will give them a blow this winter that will hasten their end.”

He was down on the Massachusetts idea of buying out of the draft by filling their quota with recruits at $300, from among the contrabands in Sherman's army. “Sherman’s head is level on that question,” he said in reply to some strictures of Mr. Forbes; “he knows he can get all these negroes that are worth having anyhow, and he prefers to get them that way rather than to fill up the quota of a distant State and thus diminish the fruits of the draft.” Sherman does not think so hopefully of negro troops as do many other Generals. Grant himself says they are admirable soldiers in many respects; quick and docile in a charge; excellent in fatigue duty. He says he does not think that an army of them could have stood the week's pounding at the Wilderness and Spottsylvania as our men did; “in fact no other troops in the world could have done it,” he said.

Grant is strongly of the belief that the rebel army is making its last grand rally; that they have reinforced to the extent of about 30,000 men in Virginia, Lee getting 20,000 and Early getting 10,000. He does not think they can sensibly increase their armies further. He says that he does not think they can recover from the blows he hopes to give them this winter.

He is deeply impressed with the vast importance and significance of the late Presidential election. The point which impressed him most powerfully was that which I regarded as the critical one — the pivotal centre of our history —the quiet and orderly character of the whole affair. No bloodshed or riot, — few frauds, and those detected and punished in an exemplary manner. It proves our worthiness of free institutions, and our capability of preserving them without running into anarchy or despotism.

Grant remained with us until nearly one o'clock at night — Monday morning — and then went to his own boat, the “Martin,” to sleep till day. Babcock, Dunn, and Badeau, of his staff, were with him.

. . . . We left Fort Monroe at 3½, and arrived at Washington Tuesday morning, the 15th, at 7 a. m.

SOURCES: Clara B. Hay, Letters of John Hay and Extracts from Diary, Volume 1, p. 245-50; Michael Burlingame & John R. Turner Ettlinger, Editors, Inside Lincoln’s White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay, p. 249-51.

Friday, November 21, 2014

Lieutenant-Colonel Theodore Lyman to Elizabeth Russell Lyman, April 12, 1864

Headquarters Army Of Potomac
April 12, ’64

Yesterday we all rode to Culpeper, and saw General Grant, who went last night to Washington, and did go thence to Annapolis. I was well pleased with all the officers down there; among others was a Lieutenant-Colonel Comstock, a Massachusetts man. He had somewhat the air of a Yankee schoolmaster, buttoned in a military coat. Grant is a man of a good deal of rough dignity; rather taciturn; quick and decided in speech. He habitually wears an expression as if he had determined to drive his head through a brick wall, and was about to do it. I have much confidence in him.

SOURCE: George R. Agassiz, Editor, Meade’s Headquarters, 1863-1865: Letters of Colonel Theodore Lyman from the Wilderness to Appomattox, p. 81