Hamlin Garland


Myth & Mistake in U.S. Grant’s Civil War History 5 comments

Shortly after General Ulysses S. Grant captured Fort Donelson in mid-February 1862, his superior, Henry Halleck, ordered Grant’s main force on an expedition up the Tennessee River under a subordinate, General Charles Smith. Grant was to remain downriver at Fort Henry. He was certainly not, however, “virtually in arrest and without a command,” as claimed in his Personal Memoirs. Such noted biographers as Ron Chernow, Dr. Brooks Simpson, and Bruce […]