Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 1.djvu/295

1862] supplied with ammunition and placed in position for active service. Divisions and brigades should, where necessary, be reorganized and put in position, and all stragglers returned to their companies and regiments. Your army is not now in condition to resist an attack. It must be made so without delay. Staff officers must be sent out to obtain returns from division commanders and assist in supplying all deficiencies.

When it is considered that Halleck found occasion to issue such an order a whole week after the end of the battle, it must be admitted that the sharp criticism and direct reprimand it contained were well deserved. It constitutes a formal record, never questioned, of the fact, confirmed by Grant's subsequent career, that, while he was a fighting strategist of the highest order, he was not strong either as a disciplinarian or as an organizer. The serious trouble between Halleck and Grant after the fall of Fort Donelson will be remembered. This order naturally produced another great strain in their relations. Halleck manifested his distrust of Grant's capacity as a commander soon afterwards in another striking way, to which I shall refer directly. That the order and what happened subsequently did not move General Grant to ask to be relieved from command, may seem surprising, but the Union cause was saved a second time from that misfortune.

Halleck was conscious that the resumption of the offensive against the enemy at the earliest possible moment was an absolute necessity. Like Grant, he overestimated the rebel strength; and what with this and the condition of Grant's troops, he determined to strengthen himself from every available quarter, and therefore ordered the whole force of General Pope, which was waiting for orders, to embark on boats on the Mississippi after its great success at New Madrid, as well as two divisions from Missouri, to Pittsburg, and, by April 20, he had a great army of fully one hundred thousand men under his immediate orders. By a special field order, the Army of the Tennessee was placed under the orders of General George H. Thomas