Instead of Pope, Lincoln might have chosen Grant, but that general’s record was tarnished by the close call he had experienced at the battle of Shiloh in early April. There he had incautiously allowed his army to be surprised by the Confederates, who almost defeated him before reinforcements from Don Carlos Buell arrived to turn the tide. Lincoln nearly yielded to critics insisting on Grant’s removal. “Mr. Washburne,” he told the general’s patron in Congress, Elihu B. Washburne, “Grant will have to go. I can’t stand it any longer. I am annoyed to death by the demands for his removal.” When Washburne insisted that such a step “would be an act of injustice to a deserving officer,” the president relented, saying: “Well, Washburne, if you insist upon it, I will retain him, but it is particularly hard on me.” Gustave Koerner claimed that if it had “not been for the most strenuous efforts of Washburne, who stood very high at Washington, … there is no doubt but Grant would have been deprived of his command.” Two years later, Washburne told Grant that “when the torrent of obloquy and detraction was rolling over you, and your friends, after the battle of Shiloh, Mr. Lincoln stood like a wall of fire between you and it, uninfluenced by the threats of Congressmen and the demands of insolent cowardice.”
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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