m Lincoln, who said simply, "I can't spare this man--he fights."On April 11, General Halleck arrived at Pittsburg Landing and took personal command of the army. In the ensuing campaign against Corinth, Miss., Grant occupied an ambiguous and humiliating position. Nominally second in command of the army, he was in fact ignored during the slow advance that occupied the Union troops until the end of May. When Halleck was called to Washington in July, Grant was left in command of the District of West Tennessee, holding a wide territory with few troops. He was, nevertheless, able to drive Maj. Gen. Sterling Price's Confederates from Iuka, Miss., on September 19-20, and a part of his army, under Brig. Gen. William S. Rosecrans, defeated Price and Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn at Corinth on October 3-4.The next series of battles that Grant was involved in will forever engrave his name into the annals of history. On Oct. 25, 1862, Grant was made commander of the Department of Tennessee and was charged with taking Vicksburg, Miss., the principal Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River. He first followed a rather conventional strategy, advancing with 30,000 men overland through Mississippi while sending Brig. Gen. William T. Sherman's troops down the river from Memphis. On December 20, Van Dorn destroyed Grant's principal supply base at Holly Springs; nine days later Sherman was bloodily repulsed at Chickasaw Bayou.Grant now faced the most important decision of his career. To pull back to Memphis and mount a new expedition would be an admission of defeat and a severe blow to Union morale. To any retreat Grant had an instinctive aversion. "One of my superstitions," he wrote, "had always been when I started to go anywhere, or to do anything, not to turn back, or stop until the thing intended was accomplished." He decided, therefore, "There was nothing left to be done but to go forward to a decisive victory." That is precisely what he did, in a pl...
