Chapter 2:
- Forts Henry and Donelson -- the credit which Sherman Denies to Grant.
Of the many remarkable things in General Sherman's book few will excite more comment than the deliberate attempt to take from General Grant the credit which belongs to him for several very important movements, and either assign it to others, as in the case of the move against Forts Henry and Donelson, or appropriate it for himself, as is done in claiming that he planned the ‘March to the Sea.’ No one general officer of his rank was under greater obligations to another throughout the war than Sherman to Grant, and on this account any unjust treatment of the latter deserves severer condemnation. General Sherman wrote his book while in Washington. A staff officer at his headquarters copied the rough manuscript daily. All the records of the War Department, including reports, field telegrams, and all other species of official correspondence pertaining to every movement of which he wrote, and arranged for ready reference, were at his disposal. He had only to ask for them, or to send an orderly after them. And yet, incredible as it may seem, he scarcely availed himself of this collection of records, but wrote from memory and from some portions of these which happened to be in his own possession. In reviewing the campaign up the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers, Sherman thus gives the credit to Halleck—or to ‘Cullum or I’—on page 219 of Vol. I:
Though it was mid-winter, General Halleck was pushing his preparations most vigorously, and surely he brought order out of chaos in St. Louis with
