This is not, in fact, the moment during today's talk by Chris Mackowski at Grant Cottage when he imitated the Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger singing Under My Thumb, in describing newly promoted Lt.-Gen. Grant's relationship with his erstwhile superior, Maj.-Gen. Henry Halleck.
No, this was earlier in the engaging presentation about Civil War turning points, maybe when he talked about Grant's decision en route to Fort Donelson "not to thread telegraph wire" behind him so as to avoid Halleck's close supervision. Or it could have been when he sketched out Grant's finessing Halleck's timid order, after the victory at Donelson, not to take Nashville, by getting Brig.-Gen. Don Carlos Buell to take it, instead.
Mackowski, prolific and trenchant author and editor-in-chief of Emerging Civil War, is always worth listening to (i.e. not just when he is gracious enough to plug my book), and he set out Grant-related turning points from Donelson to Chattanooga and Wilderness. But he wound up with the key one at Vicksburg, and I wouldn't argue with that -- though I do think he was a little hard on Halleck, and, in this Grant-hallowed place, scanted the significance of Meade's great defensive victory at Gettysburg. Turning points crop up all over. But Mackowski is right that it was soldiers under Grant's orders who, through four years of warfare, Drove Old Dixie Down.
Update August 27: I don't mean to imply that Mackowski's talk was unserious. He properly noted, for example, the shock and horror felt through the nation at the news of the war's first mass-casualty battle, Shiloh.
Update August 27: I don't mean to imply that Mackowski's talk was unserious. He properly noted, for example, the shock and horror felt through the nation at the news of the war's first mass-casualty battle, Shiloh.
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