Ulysses S. Grant's Unpleasant Ride

"Ulysses S. Grant Astride his Horse, Cincinnati" by William Sartain, 1863.

Library of Congress

What was General Ulysses S. Grant doing between his victory at Chattanooga on November 25, 1863, and his promotion to Lieutenant General four months later? History books rarely mention this section of time before Grant later faced Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Virginia. However, General Grant was already preparing for his next move during this crucial time and contemplating a possible move from the western theater of the Civil War to the eastern theater.

In the winter of 1864, General Grant was doing reconnaissance for an eventual campaign to take the southern railway city of Atlanta, Georgia. Civil War enthusiasts know the frequently told story of Atlanta falling to General William T. Sherman in September 1864, but General Grant initially made plans to capture Atlanta himself. During his reconnaissance, Grant traveled long distances to inspect possible supply routes that could be used to shuffle men and supplies to the front in Georgia. One of those possible supply routes could run through the Cumberland Gap, which sat across the borders of Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee. In January 1864, Grant traveled to the Gap to find out for himself if the mountain pass would make a good supply route for his plans.

Not long after Grant’s victory in Chattanooga, he decided to move his headquarters to Nashville, Tennessee. Grant moved his headquarters because he believed “remaining at Chattanooga I was liable to have my telegraphic communications cut so as to throw me out of communication with both my command and Washington.” Grant saw Nashville as “the most central point from which to communicate with my entire military division, and also the authorities at Washington.” Grant’s plans encompassed more than just the capture of Atlanta. Grant proclaimed, “I expected to retain the command I then had, and I prepared myself for the campaign against Atlanta. I also had great hopes of having a campaign against Mobile from the Gulf. I expected after Atlanta fell to occupy that place permanently and to cut off Lee’s army from the West . . .” Grant might have succeeded in taking Atlanta and Mobile, but his Commander-in-Chief had other plans. President Abraham Lincoln decided to promote Grant to Lt. General, the first officer since George Washington to hold that rank permanently. Grant and Lincoln decided that it would be best for him to accompany General George G. Meade’s Army of the Potomac in their pursuit of Robert E. Lee in Virginia. General Sherman would take over operations in the western theater and lead the charge to Georgia.

Before his promotion, however, Grant made his long trek through the rugged terrain of eastern Tennessee, and eastern Kentucky. Grant left from Knoxville, Tennessee, and moved north towards the Cumberland Gap in January 1864 during an intensely cold winter. Grant wrote a letter to his wife Julia before leaving Knoxville stating that, “I very much fear the enemy intend holding a position in this country for the Winter and to make this the great battle field [sic] in the Spring.” The weather in Knoxville reminded him of his pre-war Army days in Sacketts Harbor, New York, in the 1840s and 1850s. It was so bitterly cold that Grant remembered “the thermometer being down as low as zero every morning for more than a week while I was at Knoxville, and on my way from there on horseback to Lexington, Kentucky . . .” The biting cold, combined with the bad roads, made it one of Grant’s toughest rides as he made his way towards Lexington, the city he needed to reach to catch a train back to his headquarters in Nashville. However, before he reached the Bluegrass region of Kentucky, he would need to make a stop at Cumberland Gap to inspect the troops as well as the road conditions leading through the Gap.

What Grant found when he arrived at Cumberland Gap was not pleasant. The roads he wanted to use for moving men and supplies were some of the worst he had seen. Grant said, “The road over Cumberland Gap, and back of it, was strewn with debris of broken wagons and dead animals . . . The road had been cut up to as great a depth as clay could be by mules and wagons, and in that condition frozen; so that the ride of six days from Strawberry Plains to Lexington over these holes and knobs in the road was a very cheerless one, and very disagreeable.” The Army of the Ohio had been using the Gap as a supply route for some time, and now the route that Grant had considered as a trail to move supplies was looking very bleak. Grant mentioned that many of the Army of the Ohio’s “animals had nearly all starved” trying to pull supplies through the Gap.

After seeing the roads at the Cumberland Gap, Grant realized that his ambitious plans for a supply route in this area would not work. He headed for Lexington to catch the train, and many people came out to see Grant as he rode towards central Kentucky. Grant remarked that “I found a great many people at home along that route, both in Tennessee and Kentucky, and almost universally, intensely loyal.” Many people in the mountains had been very pro-Union during the war. Grant, however, left the mountains behind to begin his leadership of all Union armies in Virginia.

Further Reading

Catton, Bruce. Grant Takes Command. Little, Borwn, and Co. Boston, 1968.

Grant, Ulysses S. The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant. Editor: John Y. Simon. Vol. 10: January 1-May 31, 1864. Southern Illinois Press, Carbondale, 1982.

Grant, Ulysses S. Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant. Charles Webster & Co., New York, 1885.

Grant III, Ulysses S. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant: Warrior and Statesman. William Morrow and Co., Inc. New York, 1969.