General Winfield Scott Hancock
Winfield Scott Hancock braced himself to attention, nearly brushing his head on the underside of the headquarters tent. Grant gave him a deadeye look, and Grant’s adjutant, Parsons, made a small motion with a hand behind Grant’s back. Hancock forced himself to relax; Grant had let it be known at his first meeting that he had little use for military pomp. A superior who preferred results to grandiloquent show was all right from Hancock’s point of view. Far worse was that Grant apparently felt little desire to speak. He kept his intentions close, his orders terse, and he had this unnerving habit of simply looking at you until you felt compelled to go anywhere else, do anything, charge an enemy revetment empty-handed, just to get away from that silent, expectant, slightly-reproachful gaze. Or blurt out something to fill the silence, which Hancock despised in others and would not tolerate from himself. So he settled himself a respectful pose and resolved to wait Grant out.
Hancock had been a quartermaster in the West, working with Gideon White’s Creole Dragoons while they opened up the supply depot in Salt Lake City. Even then, he had wanted to be a line officer, in command of combat troops, but an unbroken string of glowing evaluations had made it clear he was too talented at logistics for the Army to transfer him. Then the War had come in earnest, and he had been frantic to get into it, in despair that he might sit out the conflict in California or Utah while his country tore itself apart. The saving telegram had come from an old friend at the War Department: John Pope had accepted command of a division in the east, and his former command was now vacant. Pope had been the military commander of the Department of Hispaniola, charged with expanding two weak brigades of Creole infantry into full divisions, over-strength ones if you counted the attached regiments of elite guards. Other officers had refused to apply or hesitated to accept; despite the size of the command, black troops were thought to be a step outside the regular chain of command, fit only for colonial work. One officer had even expressed his apprehension that the presence of such troops on the battlefield would arouse the Confederates to a berserk frenzy, imperiling not just the Creoles but every other man in blue as well. Hancock had not hesitated; the Lincoln administration was pressed for troops and these men would fight; leading them would get him into combat, and therefore he would lead them.
The recruits had been plentiful and the training rigorous; complaints had been few and progress rapid. Hancock had been amazed to learn that the core regiments of the US Creole Infantry were filled with long-service veterans. Some had joined up while Hancock was still a boy, many had ancestors who had fought the French under Toussaint Louverture and most had fought for the United States in Madagascar and Borneo. They were rough men, to be sure, but experienced in the routine of Army life, familiar with the rituals of encampment and careful with their weapons, well drilled and obedient to orders. Those veterans had taken on the task of whipping the recruits into shape and succeeded admirably; if Hancock had reservations about the quality of some of his officers, he had none in regard to the men themselves.
The move from Santo Domingo had been smooth and the overland rail journey from Philadelphia to Louisville, Kentucky almost without incident, thanks to the foresight of the Army quartermasters and the co-operation of the railroads. The trains had held no passengers but his officers and men, and no cargo but their baggage and equipment. Special arrangements had been made to feed the troops along the way; even had the civilians been willing to tolerate black soldiers in their public places, there was no establishment that could feed twenty thousand or more. The only ripple in their otherwise placid progress had occurred in southern Ohio, at a stop where one of his lieutenants had gone to purchase tobacco for his pipe. The station shopkeeper had refused to serve him, and had loudly expressed his disapproval of… well, of soldiers, and of people with dark skins, and of Lincoln, and the War, and much else besides. The lieutenant had been a proper Bostonian whose ancestry could be traced back to the
Mayflower, doing his part for Union and for abolition, and the harangue had bewildered and then enraged him. The lieutenant had made no response but to turn on his heel and stalk away, but when the train was ready to depart a half-dozen men had leapt off the rear car. In a trice, they had overturned the kiosk, snagged a tobacco pouch and then legged after the now-departing coaches. Hancock had done nothing but grin discreetly; the men would not have put themselves out for an officer they did not respect, and the sergeants would take care to see some petty punishment was levied for the sake of form.
Louisville had been entirely unprepared to be defended by twenty-five thousand men whose color ranged from sun-tanned to jet-black. Protests had been vigorous and immediate, and so it had been decided that the newly-named 1st Creole Corps could protect the city best if they were well out of sight of the citizens they were defending. It had not helped that one newspaper had complimented the Creoles for being ‘whiter at least than the current mayor’, a man the editor greatly disliked. And so the men had tramped south along the Louisville Pike, marching in review past the goggling citizens of Shepherdsville and making camp outside the tiny community of Belmont, whose residents – outnumbered a thousand to one – had so far wisely kept their thoughts about their visitors to themselves.
Grant had arrived not long after the Corps made camp, Hancock mused, deliberately holding himself still while Grant turned his attention back to the map table. All through that first inspection, Grant had quizzed Hancock mercilessly: how many men in this unit, where were they camped, how many sick or absent without leave, were their weapons clean. Hancock had not had the answers to every question, but Grant had been visibly pleased with Hancock’s ready answers, and with the men’s appearance, discipline and good health. At the end of the day, Grant’s last question had been, “Will they fight?” And Hancock had found himself free to say what he honestly believed: “They will.” Unsaid was Grant’s challenge to him – Will you, can you fight? Nothing but battle could truly answer that question, but Hancock believed that he would not be found lacking if the test were to come.
For a week now, reports had been trickling north that Beauregard was preparing to move; Bowling Green might be a center of rebel sentiment, but there was a large minority of men there loyal to the old Union. Some Federal officers thought the Confederates would lunge westward across the Cumberland, others believed they would strike north for Louisville. If the latter were correct, Hancock’s men would be dangerously outnumbered, and the bright new brigadier general’s stars he wore on his collar would not be enough to make up the difference. That was the real reason Grant had come, Hancock suspected, to gauge the defenses and defenders of Louisville, to see what could be done if Beauregard came north…
Which he was now doing, according to reports from civilians and army scouts alike. A Captain Custer had ridden in this very morning with a pair of civilians on spirited Kentucky horses and all three had the same thing to say: ‘Old Beau’ was on the move. Hardee’s division had crossed the Green River and encamped north of Munfordville two nights past, one man vowed. He said he had ridden through night and day to bring word, and judging from his haggard face and dusty clothes, Hancock did not doubt him. But it had to be considered that Southern sympathizers might have their own reasons for passing on false information – to fix Hancock’s men in place while Beauregard thrashed FitzJohn Porter at Fort Rodgers instead, for one. All that Custer could say was that he had seen evidence of a large body of marching men – dust, mostly – and that they appeared to be moving fast. His cavalry had been unable to get closer; the roads were swarming with Forrest’s men, he said, ragged scarecrows that seemed to be on every road and track.
That last decided the question for Grant: Forrest’s cavalry weren’t moving at full speed, nor were there any reports of damage to the railroads and bridges, which cavalry would destroy as a matter of course if they were raiding. Forrest had to be scouting for an advancing army, or at least part of one, and there seemed little point in Beauregard coming north with less than every man he had. Grant had sent to Porter a week ago, wanting men sent upriver to Louisville from Fort Rodgers. Now the question was whether to move Hancock’s men south toward Elizabethtown, where a ridge locally named Murtaugh’s Hill was the prominent feature, to go a shorter way to the bridge over the Rolling Fork at Lebanon Junction, to remain at Belmont behind its little creek, or to move north and dig in at Shepherdsville. Grant had taken Hancock on a reconnaissance ride yesterday with a dozen officers for escort, and had quickly concluded that Belmont was the place to stand. A larger army might have been better located on Murtaugh’s Hill, if they could have gotten there before the rebels, but for two divisions that line was too long to hold. Shepherdsville and Lebanon Junction lay behind forks of the Salt River, larger than Belmont’s tiny Crooked Creek but just as easy to ford. The meager cover of the creek on Belmont’s south side could be improved by spadework, some of which the men had already done, so the Creole Corps could stand at Belmont as well as anywhere else. Grant had sent men back to strengthen the river crossing at Shepherdsville and telegraphed Louisville to turn out the militia to hold the trenches around the town, as extra precautions.
The question might well be moot. Hooker had left the wounded Lyon with a pair of under-strength divisions to recover the line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad through western Virginia, and was re-routing the rest of his army to Louisville. When Hooker’s men arrived, Hancock’s Creole Corps would join Sheridan’s enlarged Malay divisions above Island Number 10, leaving Hooker’s army to deal with Fort Polk on the Cumberland River, and the long-sought offensive on Nashville.
For his part, Hancock had not quite believed they could so easily have divined Beauregard’s true intentions, but he supposed it was possible. There was only one dry route north from Bowling Green, after all, and that was the high ground used by the Louisville & Nashville Railroad. As he approached the Creole camp, Beauregard might fix the Federal troops with a part of his force and swing around them to turn their flank, or sidestep to Frankfort or Lexington instead. But Louisville on the Ohio River was
the great prize in Kentucky, and Beauregard might think a determined, straightforward push would be all that was required to get his army there. Considering that the Confederates probably had superiority in numbers, Hancock wondered if a head-on approach might not just work, and in wondering sent a small but sincere prayer skyward that nothing would delay the help that was coming.
“I’m going to ride back to Louisville,” Grant said abruptly, moving to the portable desk and chair beside the map table. “You have matters in hand here. See that your men don’t slack off on the digging, and think now about how you will distribute your reserve ammunition if you have to fight. Keep a reserve,” he continued, seating himself and drawing a piece of paper forward with one smooth motion. “Don’t extend your lines any more than you already have. And most of all, Hancock,” Grant said, looking up from the sheet even as his pen flew across it, “keep your men together and don’t hold onto this position if you get flanked. Parsons will remain here.” That officer took two rapid steps forward and bent to whisper urgently in his general’s ear. Hancock had heard the Army gossip about Grant – that he was merely Winfield Scott’s secretary, devoid of initiative or feeling, and that he could not be trusted around alcohol. Parsons, it was said, served both the War Department and Grant’s wife by keeping a watchful eye on his superior. Louisville’s cosmopolitan society and riverfront lined with saloons would likely seem as grave a danger from Parson’s perspective as the oncoming rebel army. Grant neither paused in his writing nor looked up. “Major Parsons considers our business in Louisville demands his presence, so Captain Hill will remain with you instead. Do you have any questions?” Grant’s right arm swept the paper onto the floor of the tent; the left was already drawing another from the stack.
“No, sir; your orders seem clear. Dig in, but fall back rather than allow myself to be flanked or cut off.”
Grant looked up again for a second, his gaze penetrating and direct even as his hand continued to push the pen along its line. “Well put. I’ll be sending up Porter’s men as they arrive, and any of Hooker’s if they get here in time. I expect to be back before Beauregard gets here, if he comes this way after all.” Then the second page was pushed off the desk’s edge to join the first and the general’s gaze returned to the table where a third awaited his pen. “Thank you, Hancock. That is all.”
