With Nary A Pa'r in His Hand

As Garry Wills' Nixon Agonistes was the first presidential biography to emphasize poker, Shelby Foote's The Civil War: A Narrative, published in three magnificent volumes between 1958 and 1974, was the first work of history to explore how the game's lore and logic fit into the overall scheme of America's most definitive conflict. While Wills had used poker as a colonoscope into the bowels of a politician he felt little sympathy for, Foote had great reserves of empathy for the game and its players. Poker had come of age in his beloved Mississippi Delta, and his ancestors avidly played it throughout the 19th century, along with quite a few of his favorite Civil War officers.



In the early years of the 20th, however, Foote's paternal grandfather, Hugh, lost nearly all of the family's considerable fortune playing stud – often while drunk – in Memphis cardrooms and later at the Elks Club of Greenville. Perhaps the only upside of the squandered inheritance was that Shelby Foote III learned early in life how profoundly the game could affect both a man who played it and the people who depended on him.



Foote's 3,000-page narrative made vividly clear how integral the national game was to both war efforts – how the feints, bluffs, and general poker mindset of Grant, Lee, Hood, Forrest, Sherman, and others often determined how critical battles played out. Foote quotes a friend of "Fighting Joe" Hooker on the gumption of that charismatic Union commander. "He could play the best game of poker I ever saw, until it came to the point where he should go a thousand better, and then he would flunk." Not surprisingly, this shortage of intestinal fortitude turned out to have enormous military consequences, as well. Having been placed by Lincoln at the head of the Federal army, Hooker quickly brought much needed discipline and boosted morale. He even quit drinking in order to remain clearheaded as he faced off with Lee – though a belt of good moonshine might have bolstered him when the chips were down at Fredericksburg. After outflanking Lee and crossing the Rapidan River with a two-to-one troop advantage, Hooker was on the verge of crushing the rebellion with a single decisive blow. It seemed to Gen. Darius Couch that Hooker "had 90 chances in his favor to 10 against him." He held overwhelming advantages in men and artillery, a commanding position from which to annihilate Lee's infantry, with an open path to Richmond after that.



But when Lee's pinned-down veterans suddenly took the initiative, Hooker lost his nerve – "flunked," as his friend might have put it – and ordered a retreat. His generals refused to believe it. When the order reached Henry Slocum, he called the messenger "a damned liar! Nobody but a crazy man would give such an order when we have victory in sight! I shall go and see General Hooker myself, and if I find out that you have spoken falsely, you shall be shot on my return." And yet it was true. Even more bizarrely, Hooker then ordered his main force to take a vulnerable position in the Wilderness, a place called Fairview, where he suffered a humiliating defeat by Lee and Stonewall Jackson.



The consensus among historians is that Lee, in the words of John Steele Gordon, had "played Joseph Hooker like a fiddle, bluffing him into a defensive posture when he had overwhelming superiority." Lee, of course, made a habit of performing such tricks on a series of Union commanders. In the early days of the war, as he desperately searched for reinforcements, he bluffed George Meade into thinking the Army of Northern Virginia was back at full strength; Meade's failure to attack bought Lee invaluable time. When the battles were finally joined, Lee's ability to mislead, intimidate, and outmaneuver stronger opponents was often enough to carry the day.



After several more defeats at Lee's hands, Lincoln finally put the whiskey-loving gambler Ulysses S. Grant in command of all Federal armies. Unlike his dithering predecessors Winfield Scott, George McClellan, Ambrose Burnside, Meade, and now Hooker – but very much like Lee, the first man to whom Lincoln had offered the job – "Uncle Sam" Grant preferred forcing the action with poker-inflected aplomb. He was especially good at misrepresenting his own position and strength and divining his opponents' intentions, which he usually countered with devastating effectiveness. Chattanooga was surrounded? Vicksburg refortified? Raise!



Negotiating with John Pemberton for the surrender of Vicksburg, Grant's initials picked up a new connotation when he insisted upon the "Unconditional Surrender" of the rebel garrison. "Then, sir," replied Pemberton, "it is unnecessary that you and I should hold any further discussion. We will go to fighting again at once." Then a parting shot: "I can assure you, sir, you will bury many more of your men before you will enter Vicksburg."



Grant remained silent in the face of this threat; "nor did he change his position or expression," according to Foote. "The contest was like poker, and he played it straight-faced while his opponent continued to sputter. … If the Confederate played a different style of game, that did not necessarily mean that he was any less skillful." Indeed, Pemberton's counterbluff helped persuade Grant to allow the graycoats defending the city to be paroled – with their horses, no less – instead of being taken captive, though another factor was certainly Grant's desire not to have to feed 30,000 starving prisoners. In this pot, at least, Foote declared that Pemberton "won; for in the end it was the quiet man who gave way and the sputterer who stood firm." It was Grant's troops, however, who marched into Vicksburg on July 4, 1863, and Pemberton's who abandoned the city's high fortress above the river, ceding control of the Mississippi to the Union and effectively cutting the Confederacy in two.



Like any good poker player, Grant had a knack for capitalizing on the overly passive or aggressive tendencies of rebel generals, as well as those who served under him. As he wrote in his Memoirs, he'd been at West Point "at about the right time to meet most of the graduates who were of a suitable age at the breaking out of the rebellion to be trusted with large commands. Graduating in 1843, I was at the military academy from one to four years with all the cadets who graduated from 1840 to 1846 – seven classes. These classes embraced more than fifty officers who afterwards became generals on one side or the other in the rebellion, many of them holding high commands." He goes on to say that "what I learned of the characters of those to whom I was afterwards opposed" was of "immense service" to him during the war. Just as most poker players are loath to sit down in a high-stakes game against aggressive new faces, Grant bore in mind that the "natural disposition of most people is to clothe the commander of a large army whom they do not know, with almost superhuman abilities. A large part of the National army, for instance, and most of the press in the country, clothed General Lee with just such qualities, but I had known him personally, and knew that he was mortal; and it was just as well that I felt this."



Remaining uncowed by his adversary helped him chop Lee and his fearsome Army of Northern Virginia down to size. Information about its location and strength gathered through spies, telescopes, and telegraph messages was a lot like knowing the preflop action, the boardcards, the size of the pot, and how many chips your opponent has left; but it doesn't say how he is likely to play them on the river. To take the full measure of an adversary, you need to know his tendencies. And you certainly need not to fear him.



Grant had a similar gift for telling bluster and bluff from real courage. "I have known a few men who were always aching for a fight when there was no enemy near, who were as good as their word when the battle did come. But the number of such men is small." With a somewhat less dry sense of humor, he writes that Jefferson Davis had "an exalted opinion of his own military genius," and that on many occasions "he came to the relief of the Union army by means of his superior military genius."



North of Atlanta back in 1864, as Lincoln's presidency and the Union itself teetered in the balance, William Sherman severely outplayed Confederate general John Bell Hood, an uncompromising risk-taker who ended the war all but limbless. Always courageous in battle, the Kentuckian's poor judgment became a more serious drawback as he was given command of larger armies.



Before they faced off in Georgia, Sherman summoned every officer who'd known Hood at West Point or elsewhere. Foote tells us that one Kentucky colonel informed Sherman that, before secession, "I seed Hood bet $2,500, with nary a pa'r in his hand." Bluffing such a colossal sum in antebellum dollars confirmed Sherman's read of Hood as brave but impetuous; he thus reconfigured his troops defensively and put them on highest alert. As if on cue, Hood proceeded to shatter his army with three near-suicidal attacks on Sherman's well dug-in positions.



With Atlanta now defenseless, Mayor James Calhoun wrote a letter dated Sept. 11, 1864, imploring Sherman to spare the city. Sherman wrote back to establish his ruthless but ultimately compassionate intentions:



War is cruelty and you cannot refine it, and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices today than any of you to secure peace. … But, my dear sirs, when that peace does come, you may call on me for anything. Then will I share with you the last cracker, and watch with you to shield your homes and families against danger from every quarter. Now you must go, and take with you the old and feeble … to shield them against the weather until the mad passions of men cool down and allow the Union and peace once more to settle over your old homes at Atlanta. Yours, in haste, W. T. SHERMAN



Taking Atlanta reversed the overwhelming likelihood that Lincoln would lose the November election, and therefore may have done as much to end the war and preserve the Union as any other single campaign.



As Sherman's "bummers" ransacked the Georgia State House, some of them fueled their cooking fires with Confederate currency; others used bushels of $1,000 CSA war bonds to play poker for astronomically high – though ultimately meaningless – stakes. U.H. Parr of the 70th Indiana reported watching hundreds of his fellow soldiers playing draw and stud along the slope of a railroad embankment just before Sherman led them on the famous march through Georgia to Savannah, then north through the Carolinas. After three years of rebel momentum, the tide of the war had now turned, though it would take another several months of horrific fighting before Lee finally sat down with Grant in Appomattox.



In the meantime, their respective commanders in chief were maneuvering to achieve the best terms while avoiding as much bloodshed as possible. Die-hard Southern journalists accused Jefferson Davis of treason for even speaking to Union negotiators, while the charge in the North was that Lincoln planned to keep Yankee troops from exacting the vengeance many now saw as their due. "Each of the two Presidents," writes Foote, "thus had much to fret about while playing their game of high-stakes international poker." Fortunately for the United States, when all of the chips were finally pushed to the center of the table, it was Lincoln – thanks largely to the efforts of Sherman and Grant and their men – who held the mortal nuts in his hand, while Davis held nary a pa'r.