February 25, 1862 (Tuesday): Grant Waits On Orders

Grant's Headquarters at Fort Donelson

HEADQUARTERS DISTRICT OF WEST TENNESSEE,
Fort Donelson, February 25, 1862. 

General WILLIAM T. SHERMAN,
Commanding District of Cairo, Paducah, Ky.:
    Your letter of the 23d*, asking what disposition I will have made of large re-enforcements now on their way, is just received. I do not know what work General Halleck intends me to do next, therefore cannot say where it is best to have them. Probably they had better remain at Paducah until further orders are received from headquarters of the department.
    Our troops are now occupying Nashville. The rebels have fallen back to Chattanooga, only 3 miles from Georgia State line.
    Two soldiers from the Eighth Missouri Regiment, who were sent as spies, have just returned from Memphis. They describe the feelings of the people as much inclined to return to their allegiance.
Orders have been given for the evacuation of Columbus. This I get not only from the men themselves, but from a Memphis paper of the 19th, which they bring with them.
    There is a detachment of troops belonging to my command at Henderson, Ky., which there can be no further use of detaining there. If you have an opportunity of having them transported, I would like them to join their regiments.



U. S. GRANT,
Brigadier-General, Commanding.

*Not found.

Series I., Vol. 7, Part 1, Page 667

Nashville fell quickly to the advancing Union Army.  In some ways the overwhelming superiority in numbers in the west seems to have made the task at hand more difficult.  There was no central task to put the senior commanders to work collectively to achieve.  So Halleck fretted and wanted authority over Buell.  Buell moved cautiously, Grant looked for his next objective.  There was also the matter of defining an objective to the effort.  Had the Union forces maintained contact with the Confederate armies they could have perhaps destroyed them early in 1862, changing the entire dynamic of the war.  But at this point the administration and the generals in the field were both focused on the geographic and political dimensions of victory in Tennessee and Kentucky.