I have been back reading U.S. Grant’s Memoirs of the Civil War. It is probably the third or fourth time, and each time I find new “nuggets” of what made this man “tick.”

President Lincoln worked with a lot of Generals during the war. Most of them could recognize risk, but many of them were unwilling to act on it. General McClellan was probably the most well-known of this type.

As Lincoln looked over the entire panoply of Generals in the Army, it was the younger, less conspicuous, less voluble man in the West who kept “popping up” and who ultimately captured Lincoln’s attention–Ulysses S. Grant.

Grant’s first great battle was at Shiloh in 1862. His Army ran straight into a Confederate Army along the Tennessee/Mississippi border. Grant put his whole Army at risk, and after a two-day slugfest with thousands of casualties and, at times, the outcome uncertain–the Confederate Army withdrew from the field.

Grant’s next great victory came in 1863 at Vicksburg, a place he surrounded by taking the risk of moving his troops down the west side of the Mississippi River, then crossing them below Vicksburg and finally attacking the city from its South and East. It was unexpected and risky, but Vicksburg finally surrendered.

Yet, it was his action, later that same year at Chattanooga that finally propelled Grant to becoming the General of all of the Union’s Armies. In October 1863, the Union forces at Chattanooga were virtually surrounded and were starving. The Secretary of War and the President were worried that they could collapse and sent in Grant.

Grant got to Chattanooga late in the month, traversing by horseback a mountainous trail covered with thousands of corpses of dead horses and mules who had already perished from lack of fodder. It wasn’t a promising picture, and the Army itself needed food.

Within a week, Grant had decided on a different route to bring in food and supplies by pushing through Confederate Territory and coming up from the southwest over a shorter distance. By using the Tennessee River, then cutting cross-country to the same River and building a bridge at Brown’s Ferry near Chattanooga– supplies for the Army started coming in. The troops called it the “Cracker Line,” as it brought them crackers (and food) that they hadn’t seen for weeks.

The decision was risky, but Grant acted. A starving Army can’t fight.

The terrain around Chattanooga is rough and mountainous…you may have driven through it on I-75 if you have gone that way to Atlanta. Confederate forces held most of the high ground. But, by mid-November, Grant had moved thousands of new troops over the same “Cracker Line,” primarily at night to avoid their discovery. On November 24th, over a 10-mile-long line, 60,000 Union troops attacked simultaneously taking Missionary Ridge, the valleys east and south of Chattanooga, and ultimately Lookout Mountain itself.

During this same time, Grant was under tremendous pressure from Washington to rush to the aid of General Burnside in Knoxville to the north. Yet, he withstood that pressure until Chattanooga was secure, then sent General Sherman’s troops north to relieve Knoxville. After that, most of Tennessee was under the control of the Union.

It was clear, after Chattanooga, that Grant was the man who would assess risk and then act on it. Within 4 months of the victory in Chattanooga, Lincoln would bring him to Washington and Virginia to become General of all Union Armies. Thousands would still die in our Civil War, but its outcome was now assured.

Rolland Kidder is a Stow resident.