James Fowler Rusling was one of those rare soldiers who seemed built for the record. A staff officer who served much of the war in the Army of the Potomac, he was educated, dependable, and left behind a rich memoir that later generations would mine for its sharp, honest portraits of the Civil War’s most famous commanders. Born in 1834 and a graduate of Dickinson College, Rusling entered the war in 1861 as a first lieutenant and regimental quartermaster of the 5th New Jersey Infantry. He would end his service in 1867 holding the honorary rank of brevet brigadier general, a tribute to his wartime contributions.
Over the course of the conflict, Rusling worked closely with many of the Eastern theater’s senior officers: George B. McClellan, Ambrose Burnside, Fighting Joe Hooker, George Meade, and others. At Gettysburg, he served as an aide on the staff of Major General Daniel Sickles, who suffered a wound so severe on the second day of the battle that it cost him his leg. Rusling escorted the wounded general to Washington for treatment.
He also encountered Western commanders, among them Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman. In 1889, Rusling published his memoir, Men and Things Seen in Civil War Days.
The book is full of observations on the generals he knew, but one passage stands out with particular clarity: his first meeting with Ulysses S. Grant. Rusling placed his finger on two character traits that defined the man, and in doing so left a vivid portrait that both aligns with other accounts and offers its own distinctive insight. The meeting took place in January 1864, in Nashville, Tennessee.
Grant had just emerged from a season of victory. After the triumph at Chattanooga and the relief of Knoxville, he had ridden from Chattanooga to Knoxville, where he found Burnside safe. Leaving that city, he had taken part of his staff through raw winter weather, the thermometer at zero, through Cumberland Gap to Lexington, Kentucky, then by rail to Louisville, and from there to Nashville, the headquarters of the Military Division of the Mississippi. That command stretched across an enormous sweep of country, from the Alleghenies to the Rocky Mountains, from the lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.
Rusling wrote that it was hardly necessary to add that Grant arrived in Nashville weather-stained and travel-worn. He was then about forty years old and looked it easily. He had dark sandy hair, light blue eyes, and a bearded face. His bearing was marked by a general indifference, though not slouching, and his figure was anything but soldierly as Eastern officers understood the term.
It was true that Grant wore a major general’s uniform, and right well had he earned it. But the clothing was rusty and seedy. His coat hung open, its lapels buttoned back. His hat bore a gold cord but was battered and worn.
He moved about unattended, head down, hands often in his pockets. To Rusling, he looked for all the world more like a country storekeeper or a Western farmer than the conqueror of Vicksburg and Chattanooga, now commander-in-chief of half a million men. Grant was a West Pointer, and he had distinguished himself in Mexico as a lieutenant. But he did not resemble the trim, well-set-up regular officer of tradition, and to Rusling’s Eastern eye he was a decided disappointment.
Rusling had grown accustomed to soldiers who looked the part, men like McClellan, Burnside, Hooker, and Meade, all of whom carried themselves with a certain soldierly trimness. Here was a man of different caliber, evidently intent on everything but show. On second glance, however, Grant improved. When he caught your eye, you found it clear and penetrating.
It could be hard as flint and soft as dew. Rusling perceived that there was a grip and grit in the man’s face and jaw that would enable him to dare great things, hold on mightily, and toil terribly when the hour struck. When Grant spoke, he was a man of few words and slow speech. But he knew exactly what he wanted, why he wanted it, and when.
When you left his presence, you could not help feeling that here was a man of grave and serious purpose, gentle in manner and bent on great things. Rusling thought Grant was cast in the mold of a Cromwell or a Wellington rather than a Napoleon, and one instinctively felt that he would be loyal to the end and could be trusted all the way through. Once settled at Nashville, Grant took a rebel house and was soon hard at work. His staff was small, and his headquarters were free of show.
He attended few parades and reviews. He hated long letters and prolix reports. Instead, he had the telegraph brought into his quarters. Every day, with a telegrapher at his side, he would communicate across his great military division and with Washington.
Every night, he knew precisely where the enemy was and what he was doing, and what his own forces were able to do and dare. Rusling recognized in this a profound sense of the value of time. In an hour, Grant could accomplish by telegraph what other commanders would waste days doing with pen and paper. He also knew how to decide.
That combination of qualities impressed Rusling deeply. The physical impression was the one repeated so often throughout the nineteenth century: Grant as the Western farmer, the storekeeper, a tough man of the frontier, not at all like the better-dressed, trimmer men of the East. But the second glance mattered just as much. Beneath that plain exterior there was softness as well as steel.
Rusling also noted Grant’s slow speech, a detail not so often recorded in other accounts. Most of all, Rusling saw two strengths in Grant. The first was his command of time, the urgency he felt, the constant sense of moving forward. The second was his willingness to decide.
Understanding time and feeling its pressure was one thing, but acting in the moment without fear was another, and Grant did both. Rusling’s memoir captured the moment when the war changed direction, when the man who would command it all arrived in Nashville looking nothing like a conqueror, yet carrying within him the very qualities the Union needed. He looked like a country storekeeper, but he ran his vast command by telegraph, made swift decisions, and moved with relentless purpose. That first impression, so disappointing and so misleading, gave way to a deeper recognition that here was a commander unlike any the Eastern officers had known.
The war in the East, and the whole struggle of the Republic, had found the general who would see it through.