“I Am In to Do All I Can”
There are but two parties now, Traitors & Patriots and I want hereafter to be ranked with the latter.
This war, predicted for years by many, North and South, nevertheless burst like a spring storm across the nation in 1861. Nearly everyone, including Grant, did not believe it would last long, a few months at most, over by the end of summer. Grant felt a rush of patriotism within himself, yet the unanswered question loomed: How and where would this ex-military officer find his place?
ON APRIL 19, the day after his chairmanship, Grant rode fourteen miles south to Hanover to recruit volunteers. That evening, he made his very first public speech. The yield from this venture was twelve recruits.
Officers were chosen by election in volunteer regiments. Grant returned to Galena just as the town’s eighty recruits prepared to vote for officers. He was urged to accept the position of captain, but he declined. He had resigned from the army as a captain in 1854 and did not want to resume his career at the same rank. He promised “I would aid the company in every way I could.”
In the next days, Grant worked tirelessly, drilling volunteers with pine laths substituting as guns, helping with military organization and procedures, and working with a team of women to make uniforms. He decided on the design, purchased the material, and hired cutters.
In this turbulent atmosphere, Grant sent a moving letter to his father. “What I ask now is your approval of the course I am taking, or advice in the matter,” he wrote. His appeal, which speaks to the powerful relationship of father and son in the mid-nineteenth-century family, is all the more remarkable when one remembers the pair’s continuing struggles. At this critical moment, the son wanted the father’s blessing.
Knowing his father was well aware of his previous lack of political commitment, he hastened to add, “Whatever may have been my political opinions before I have but one sentiment now. That is we have a Government, and laws and a flag and they must all be sustained. There are but two parties now, Traitors & Patriots and I want hereafter to be ranked with the latter.”
WASHBURNE ENCOURAGED GRANT to go to Springfield, telling him Republican governor Richard Yates would find a position for a West Point graduate with military experience. On April 25, citizens from town and countryside turned out to see off the Jo Daviess County troops. Grant walked down the long High Street stairs to join the regiment, now part of the Eleventh Illinois Infantry. So many well-wishers crowded the street that Methodist minister John Heyl Vincent had to climb onto an Illinois Central boxcar to offer a farewell address and prayer before the jubilant, awkwardly marching volunteers entrained to Springfield.
Confusion reigned as Grant arrived in muddy Springfield. He located the governor’s office inside the Greek Revival state capitol where Abraham Lincoln had given his “House Divided” speech in 1856. Upon entering, he found the office thronged with men seeking positions. He was intercepted by Gustave Koerner, former lieutenant governor, who had volunteered to assist Yates in this crisis. A German immigrant, Koerner had built a political career in Illinois on his shrewd judgments of men and issues. He was not impressed by the ex-quartermaster. He described Grant as “hardly of medium height, broad-shouldered and rather short-necked,” whose “features did not indicate any very high grade of intellectuality.” Grant “was very indifferently dressed, and did not at all look like a military man.” To Grant’s disappointment, Governor Yates did not have time to see him.
On April 27, 1861, Grant celebrated his thirty-ninth birthday—away from his family, with no commission and no uniform, wanting to participate in the war but not certain how he could serve. Walking about Springfield, he was disgusted to see self-centered jockeying for military positions. He wrote his father, “I was perfectly sickened at the political wire-pulling for all these commissions and would not engage in it.”
The next day, with no position in view, Grant intended to take the nine P.M. train home to Galena. After eating dinner at the Chenery House, he lingered for a moment at the front door. Governor Yates, also dining at the hotel, called out, “Captain.” The governor understood Grant was leaving Springfield but asked if would remain overnight and call at the executive office the next morning.
Washburne’s prediction came true. Yates offered Grant a position as an aide in the office of Adjutant General Tom Mather. He started immediately. Sitting at a three-legged table in an anteroom, Grant found himself performing the tedious duties of a clerk—writing military forms and orders and even searching for old muskets in the arsenal. He was asked all manner of questions about military regulations, and people were impressed by his ready answers. Uncomplaining, he wrote Julia, “Papers are not my forte and therefore my services may not be as valuable as he anticipates.” She was not surprised to read her husband’s next sentence: “However I am in to do all I can and will do my best.”
Yates observed how Grant made order out of chaos. This first assignment quickly brought another: on May 4, the governor put Grant in charge of Camp Yates, the largest recruiting center in Illinois, located on the state fairgrounds. Here Grant supervised and drilled the arriving regiments of thirty-day volunteers. He rented a room at the Chenery House and shared a bed with Augustus Chetlain. The Weekly North-Western Gazette in Galena reported with pride that Grant had brought Camp Yates “under strict military law. The horse-play and insubordination of the past was gone.”
In succeeding weeks, Grant traveled to other recruiting centers in Mattoon, Belleville, and Anna to superintend the mustering of thirty-day men. He made such an impact at Mattoon—a soldier reported, “Everything he did was done without hesitation”—that the men named their quarters “Camp Grant.”
NEAR THE END of May, his mustering work completed, Grant returned to Springfield and drew his service pay of $130. Charles Lanphier, editor of Springfield’s Illinois State Register, ran into a tired Grant at the Chenery House and asked, “What are you doing here, captain?”
“Nothing—waiting,” he replied, downcast. Discouraged, without an assignment commensurate with his military experience, Grant decided to return to Galena to see his family and take stock of the best way forward. Shortly after his arrival, Horace H. Houghton, longtime editor of the Weekly North-Western Gazette, called to ask if he might interview him. From this interview, Grant received his first newspaper commendation.
We are now in want of just such soldiers as he is, and we hope the government will invite him to higher command. He is the very soul of honor, and no man breathes who has a more patriotic heart. We want among our young soldiers the influence of the rare leadership of men like Captain Grant.
Houghton offered this assessment before Grant had fought a single battle.
On May 24, Grant wrote Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas in Washington, “I have the honor, very respectfully, to tender my services, until the close of the War, in such capacity as may be offered.” Up to this moment, he had been hoping to be appointed a colonel of volunteers—the prerogative of states—but now he also sought to become colonel of a regular regiment, an appointment that could be made only by President Lincoln.
The letter was never answered. The harried Thomas must have put the request in a drawer, because fifteen years passed before it was discovered—in 1876—by a subsequent adjutant general.
The Civil War was beginning without Grant.
IN EARLY JUNE, Grant visited his parents in Covington, Kentucky, but he traveled there with a dual purpose. He knew the army’s Department of the Ohio was located across the Ohio River in Cincinnati. George McClellan commanded the department, which encompassed Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. At Fort Vancouver, Grant had outfitted McClellan’s railroad survey.
Anxious to see McClellan, Grant swallowed his pride and went to McClellan’s headquarters. When he was informed that McClellan had just gone out, he waited for a long time, then finally told an officer he would return the next day.
The following day, Grant encountered “the same story”: the general had gone out. Grant watched the staff members, “with quills behind their ears,” so busy writing reports “that they did not say a word” to him. A disappointed Grant left again.
On his way back to Illinois, he stopped to visit West Point classmate Joe Reynolds in Lafayette, Indiana. While he was there, a telegram from Governor Yates caught up with him. He opened it to read that Yates had appointed him colonel to command the Seventh Regiment, which he had mustered into service at Mattoon a month earlier.
Grant accepted this assignment eagerly. Many West Pointers looked down their noses at volunteers; he did not. He admitted that when he’d first encountered volunteers in the Mexican War, he’d had reservations, but they’d disappeared once he observed the bravery of the men in battle. But when Jesse read the news of his son’s assignment, he could not resist telling him that he had settled for less than the best.
Grant did not look like a colonel upon arriving to assume command. The volunteers chortled to one another. One reported, “He was dressed very clumsily, in citizens’ clothes—an old coat, worn out at the elbows, and badly dinged plug hat.” Grant arrived knowing that less than half of the recruits had extended their enlistment beyond thirty days. Painfully aware of his shortcomings as a speaker, he accepted the offers of Democratic congressmen and military officers John A. Logan and John A. McClernand to speak to the troops. He was so impressed by their eloquence that when Logan introduced him, he could only get out, “Men, go to your quarters.”
These first days of Grant’s command would presage the way he would conduct himself in the months to come. He led not by shouting or threats, but quietly, often with written orders. His troops quickly labeled him “the quiet man.” In his first order he wrote, “In accepting this command, your Commander will require the co-operation of all the commissioned and non-commissioned Officers in instructing the command, and in maintaining discipline, and hopes to receive also the hearty support of every enlisted man.” “Cooperation” would underpin Grant’s leadership.
Also in his first order he confronted the vexing problem of camp discipline. Grant’s predecessor had attempted to impose discipline by creating a security guard of eighty soldiers “to keep the men from climbing the fence and going in to the city to see the girls.” By contrast, Grant’s order reflected his trust in their common sense: “From Reveille until Retreat no passes will be required. In extending this privilege to the men of this command the Col Commanding hopes that his leniency will not be so abused as to make it necessary to retract it. All men when out of Camp should reflect that they are gentlemen—in camp soldiers.” As a young soldier, Grant had appreciated that Stephen Kearney at Jefferson Barracks had let the men come and go as long as they reported on time for roll calls and drill. He would do the same.
A lieutenant in Grant’s first command wrote, “The effect of that order was wonderful. The men responded enthusiastically, and discipline ceased to be a problem.”
Grant realized the major problem with volunteers began with officers. Unlike the regulars, who were promoted through a proven competency observed from above, volunteer officers were elected by their peers. Too often the election became a popularity contest, which meant that new shoulder straps could be awarded for reasons having little to do with proven skills in the field.
Planning for the fighting that lay ahead, he asked Julia to send him his copy of “McClellan’s report of battles in the Crimea.” McClellan had spent an entire year in Europe studying the tactics used in the Crimean War, a war fought in 1854–1856 between Russia on one side and British, French, and Ottoman forces on the other. He was ready to study these battles with new purpose.
Now confident in his ability to lead, Grant went home to Galena for a visit. Julia was delighted to see “Victor,” which became her pet name at that time after “he had read to me the triumphs of Victor Emmanuel” in uniting Italy. One goal of the trip: Grant needed a uniform and a horse but did not have enough money for either. With times tight and his brothers unable to loan him any money, he turned to his father’s former partner, E. A. Collins, who endorsed a note for $500. Grant left with a new uniform and a new horse, Rondy. However, he still continued to favor his plain blue coat and ordinary black felt hat. James L. Crane, a Methodist chaplain attached to the Seventh Regiment, reported that Grant “never had about him a single mark to distinguish his rank.” As for the uniform, Crane recalled that “he never wore it, except on dress parade.”
When Grant assumed command, he faced a crisis of the clock. His men, as volunteers in a state militia, had signed up for only thirty days. Disliking their previous colonel, they had decided not to enlist for an additional three years. The clock was ticking—their service would end on June 28.
Grant accepted the challenge of persuading them to extend their service. A large part of that decision would be based on their confidence in their new colonel. On Friday, June 28, the men of the Seventh, almost to a man, signed up for three years, in the process becoming the Twenty-first Illinois.
THE NEW NAME brought a new assignment. Grant received orders to move the Twenty-first Illinois 110 miles west to Quincy, Illinois, on the Mississippi River. The agent for the Great Western Railroad contacted Grant and asked when he desired transportation.
“I do not want any.” He told the startled agent, “It would be good preparation for the troops to march there.”
Beginning on July 3, Grant’s first march became another opportunity to learn discipline. Each morning, after camp had been set up for his nearly one-thousand-man regiment, Grant would post the hour of departure for the next day. If a man was not ready to march, he would be left behind—without breakfast and more than once without pants.
On a stop in a small town, some men filled their canteens with whiskey from a local grocery store. Later, observing some wobbling marchers, Grant stopped to inspect their canteens. Whenever he found whiskey in a man’s canteen, he ordered him to empty it on the ground and for the rest of the day be tied to the back of one of the baggage wagons.
Four days into the march, he wrote Julia, “Passing through the towns the whole population would turn out to receive us.” He appreciated how the state supported its volunteers.
During the Mexican War, Grant had resisted his assignment as quartermaster. Now he realized the experience had served him well in his new command. Colonel John Williams reported to Governor Yates that Grant was the first officer who understood precisely what he wanted. “Grant’s requisition upon me for supplies seemed to be complete in every detail, for nothing was added to or omitted from the requisition.”
While camped on the Illinois River, Grant purchased a second horse from a local farmer. Jack, cream-colored with a silver white mane and tail, proved more suitable and flexible for his purposes than Rondy, a high-spirited stallion.
As the men marched, they sang the popular gospel song “Jordan Am a Hard Road to Travel.” Lieutenant Joseph W. Vance wrote, “He put us to hard drill. He stopped all the straggling, all skylarking at night.” Most impressive, Vance reported, when Grant “punished a man, he did it in a quiet way, and in a spirit which did not enrage the one punished.” Grant told Julia, “I don’t believe there is a more orderly set of troops now in volunteer service. I have been very strict with them and the men seem to like it.”
Two days later, he issued a general order: “The Col commanding this Regiment, deems it his duty at this period of the march to return his thanks to the Officers and men composing the command on their general Obedience and Military discipline.” He heightened his commendation by reminding his men that all his previous service had been in the regular army. He further deemed “it not inappropriate at this time to make a most favorable comparison of this command with that of veteran troops in point of Soldierly bearing general good Order, and cheerful execution of commands.” Their good conduct made “the real necessity of a Guard unnecessary.”
JULIA ENTERED THE Civil War also. Social conventions had been changing since the early nineteenth century, such that women were no longer uniformly mandated to stay home but could choose public vocations appropriate to their gender—teachers and nurses. The aim was not to enter the male sphere, but to seed the public domain with domestic values and female influence. Julia was not a woman to accept social conventions.
She crossed the threshold of the war in stages. First, she sent her husband off to war—with her blessing. Second, she sent her oldest son, Fred. He joined his father on the march to Quincy. Julia reflected, “Strange to say, I felt no regret at [Ulysses’s] going and even suggested that our eldest son, just then eleven years old, should accompany him.”
Once at Quincy, with the prospect of battle looming when they crossed into Missouri, Ulysses sent Fred home. He wrote Julia, “I did not telegraph you because I thought you would be in a perfect stew until he arrived.” He told her, “He did not want to go at all.”
But he underestimated Julia. Before Fred arrived home, she wrote, “Do not send him home.” She added, “Alexander was not older when he accompanied Philip. Do keep him with you.” Julia knew her history. Alexander III of Macedon, called Alexander the Great, had accompanied his father, Philip II of Macedon, into battle while still a boy.
Third, Julia began to think of joining Ulysses herself. She was aware of his loneliness when he served on the Pacific coast for two years without her. One week later, he wrote, “I should like very much to go into Camp some place where you could visit me.” Grant the soldier also longed to be husband and father.
ON JULY 11, Grant crossed the Mississippi River into Missouri. His mission: to function like a police force in contested territory in the northeastern part of the state. His specific task: to hold bridges and railroads. In these first days, Grant’s men were constantly threatened by bushwhackers—irregular military forces who fought without uniforms and then melted away into the civilian population. He determined to protect private property and not mistreat citizens. He wrote Julia, “When we first came there was a terrible state of fear existing among the people,” adding gratefully, “They find that all troops are not the desperate characters they took them for.”
After four days in Missouri, Grant received orders to move against Thomas Harris, a Confederate guerrilla leader whose camp was reported to be at the Salt River. The farther Grant marched, he confessed, “I was anything but easy.” He thought he had conquered his fears of battle in the Mexican War, but as he drew near Harris’s camp, “my heart kept getting higher and higher until it felt to me as though it was in my throat.” He admitted, “I would have given anything then to have been back in Illinois, but I had not the moral courage to halt and consider what to do.”
As Grant and his men approached the river bottom, he saw that hills rose more than one hundred feet on either side of Salt Creek, more than enough to shield a Confederate force waiting in ambush. When his lead element reached the brow of the hill, they discovered that Harris had gone. The marks of his encampment were all that remained. In that moment, Grant owned up: “My heart resumed its place.”
This incident became an epiphany: “It occurred to me at once that Harris had been as much afraid of me as I had been of him.” Later, he would write, “This realization had great consequences for the future….This was a view of the question I had never taken before; but it was one I never forgot afterwards.”
FOR THE MONTH of July, Grant camped near Mexico, Missouri, 120 miles west of St. Louis. On July 24, Brigadier General John Pope, commander in northern Missouri, expanded Grant’s command to include four regiments stationed nearby (a regiment typically comprised one thousand men). During this rest period, he focused on readying his forces for the combat he knew would come soon. At the same time, Grant’s orders exhibited a growing sensitivity to the people in areas through which he traveled. He was listening—not only to his volunteers, but to the civilian population.
In assuming a larger command, Grant discovered that the regiments that preceded the Twenty-first routinely “had been in the habit of visiting houses without invitation and helping themselves to food and drink, or demanding them from the occupants.” Furthermore, they carried their guns outside camp “and made every man they found take the oath of allegiance to the government.” On July 25, he issued an order prohibiting this kind of behavior: “No wandering will be permitted.” Within days he reported, “The people were no longer molested or made afraid.”
ON A HOT August afternoon, Methodist chaplain James Crane secured a copy of the St. Louis Democrat from a passing railroad car. While reading the newspaper, he came across Grant’s name in a list of new brigadier generals. A brigadier general normally commanded four thousand men. A few minutes later, as Grant walked by, he called out, “Colonel, I have some news that will interest you.”
Grant scanned the announcement and saw himself listed seventeenth of thirty-four new brigadiers. “Well, sir, I had no suspicion of it,” he replied. “It never came from any request of mine. That’s some of Washburne’s work.”
After perusing the newspaper, Crane reported, Grant “very leisurely rose up and pulled his black felt hat a little nearer his eyes.” He “walked away about his business with as much apparent unconcern as if some one had merely told him that his new suit of clothes was finished.”
A month later, Grant wrote Washburne, “I think I see your hand in it.” Grant pledged, “You shall never have cause to regret the part you have taken.”
Seven years earlier, Grant had resigned in dishonor; now he was being promoted to brigadier general. He was entitled to wear a star on each shoulder. He knew he needed to order a general’s uniform with two parallel rows of brass buttons, but at the moment he did not have time for such details.
LINCOLN APPOINTED JOHN C. Frémont to head the Department of the West—the area west of the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River. Frémont, forty-eight, handsome with graying hair, had earned the nickname “the Pathfinder of the West” for his eleven years of service in the army’s topographical corps. He had been the Republican Party’s first presidential candidate in 1856 but was defeated by James Buchanan. Frémont met with Lincoln at the White House, and was told, “I have given you carte blanche; you must use your own judgment and do the best you can.” Lincoln expected Frémont to deal adroitly with both Kentucky and Missouri, so-called border states, where Union supporters were contending against strong Confederate beliefs.
Frémont arrived in St. Louis on July 25 with an aristocratic air that almost immediately raised eyebrows. To general disapproval, he rented a lavish mansion for $6,000 a year and surrounded himself with a cadre of Hungarian and Italian guards in brassy uniforms. Soldiers and citizens alike found him inaccessible and less than inspiring.
On August 5, Pope sent Grant to St. Louis to confer with Frémont about the military landscape in Missouri. Pope wrote Frémont, “Col Grant is an old army officer thoroughly a gentleman & an officer of intelligence & discretion.” Upon arriving at Frémont’s luxurious headquarters, Grant recognized immediately that this was no Zachary Taylor, whose shunning of ostentation he had always admired. The soldier at the gate informed him that Frémont had put off their appointment until the next day.
No matter. Grant went to the theater that evening. He was impressed by Irish-American playwright Dion Boucicault’s popular The Relief of Lucknow, a drama written immediately after the 1857 Indian rebellion against British rule.
The next day Grant received orders from Frémont to proceed to Ironton, ninety miles south of St. Louis, and take command of the district in southeast Missouri. Upon Grant’s arrival, Edward Castle, Frémont’s superintendent of railroad transportation, wrote from Ironton, “Genl Grant I am pleased with. He will do to lead.”
Upon his arrival, Grant found military discipline absent in Ironton. He ordered, “All firing must be discontinued…in and around camp,” since it encouraged false alarms. He ordered the commander at nearby Pilot Knob “to suppress all drinking houses” in order “to enable him to preserve sobriety.”
Grant also found the troops in his command abuzz with rumors that General William J. Hardee was menacing the area with several thousand Confederate soldiers. Hardee, who had served as commandant of cadets at West Point from 1856 to 1860, was well-known for his textbook, Rifle and Light Infantry Tactics. Grant secured a copy but quickly perceived Hardee’s tactics to be “nothing more than common sense.”
In Ironton, Grant became acquainted with John W. Emerson, who owned the land where he made his headquarters. Several days after Grant’s arrival, Emerson found him sitting beneath a grand oak tree, examining a map. Seemingly dissatisfied, he asked the Ironton lawyer if he could secure a more accurate map. Emerson returned with a new map, then watched as Grant moved his finger down the Mississippi, telling him, “The rebels must be driven out,” and, “The rivers must be opened.”
The next day, Emerson noticed Grant had marked the new map with red crosses that he understood to mean places where Confederates were blocking river crossings. He observed dotted lines overland toward Forts Henry and Donelson in Tennessee. Grant had made further intricate lines in red pencil, not only down the Mississippi, but up the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. When Emerson commented that this looked like serious planning, Grant replied, “Possibilities—mere possibilities.”
If Grant’s arrival had raised morale, it did not help when his troops heard of the battle at Wilson’s Creek. On August 10, impulsive Union general Nathaniel Lyon picked a fight with well-organized Confederate troops at Wilson’s Creek, a long 215 miles from his supplies in St. Louis. Confederate generals Sterling Price and Ben McCulloch outnumbered Lyon’s Union forces two to one. Lyon was killed in the battle, the first Union general to die in the Civil War. Many questioned why Frémont did nothing to reinforce Lyon.
Shortly after Wilson’s Creek, Frémont ordered Grant to proceed to Jefferson City to defend the Missouri state capital. Already at the beginning of the Civil War, Missouri, as a border state, was experiencing deep divides. In a neighbor-against-neighbor war, it sent men and supplies to opposing sides and by the fall would have rival state capitals.
Following his arrival, Grant reported that he “found a good many troops in Jefferson City, but in the greatest confusion, and no one person knew where they all were.” He declared, “I am not fortifying here at all. Drill and discipline is more necessary for the men than fortification.” Drill and discipline were becoming signatures of Grant’s leadership.
As a new brigadier general, Grant needed to fill out his staff. Remembering John Rawlins’s abilities to navigate the political landscape in Galena, he asked his friend to join him. Rawlins accepted but first traveled to Goshen, New York, to be with his ill wife, who died on August 30. Grant’s appointment of a young man with no military training to be his chief aide would prove to be a masterstroke.
Newly minted brigadier general Ulysses S. Grant appoints Galena lawyer John A. Rawlins as his chief aide.
On August 27, Frémont summoned Grant to St. Louis to receive “special orders.” Frémont’s instinct to be aggressive in war had led him to favor Grant (whom he’d met only twice) over more senior generals John Pope and Benjamin Prentiss, for a special position of command. “I believed him to be a man of great activity and promptness in obeying orders without question or hesitation,” he indicated later. “I selected him for qualities I could not find combined in any other officer, for General Grant was a man of unassuming character, not given to self-elation, or dogged persistence, and an iron will.”
Grant’s new orders made him commander of southeast Missouri south of St. Louis as well as all of southern Illinois. Frémont wanted Grant to take and hold a position on the Mississippi River with a long-term goal “to establish a base of operations against Memphis and Nashville and in the short term “occupy Columbus in Kentucky as soon as possible.” He also wanted him to get a new uniform.
Grant proceeded by steamer to Cape Girardeau, 115 miles south of St. Louis on the west side of the Mississippi, to take charge of a small Federal garrison. In writing Julia of his new assignment, he balanced his usual self-deprecating tone with words that indicated he was embarking upon something much larger than he had ever anticipated: “I have a task before me of no trifling moment and want all the encouragement possible.” He wrote his father, “All I fear is that too much may be expected of me.”
At Cape Girardeau, Grant expected to go after guerrilla leader “Swamp Fox” Jeff Thompson, whose cavalry attacked supply lines along the Mississippi River. Within days, however, he decided Thompson was a small fish, so he hurried to Cairo, Illinois, for a larger catch.
JUST MONTHS EARLIER, the War Department had established a base of operations at Cairo, Illinois. Before 1861, Cairo’s claim to fame was chiefly as the muddy town standing on a low-lying delta where the Ohio River joined the mighty Mississippi. Cairo’s citizens lived behind fifteen-foot-high levee walls built to keep out the two great rivers.
Cairo, the southernmost city in the North, located farther south geographically than Richmond, Virginia, became a bustling military and naval base. The Union aimed to move down the Mississippi River and up the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. Grant had understood early on that if the Union could win this river war, it would be well on its way to winning the Confederate heartland. A major challenge would be whether army and naval commanders, often jealous of one another, could work together.
Grant arrived in Cairo on September 2 to take command. From the Cairo waterfront he walked directly to a bank building serving as army headquarters. He would be replacing Colonel Richard J. Oglesby, thirty-seven years old and currently in command. Oglesby’s office swarmed with people from Missouri, Kentucky, and Illinois, both complaining and requesting. Grant entered dressed in civilian clothes, and no one paid him any attention.
Grant asked an aide to introduce him to Oglesby, but the colonel did not catch his name. After waiting a few minutes, Grant took a piece of paper and wrote out an order assuming command. When he’d read the paper, Oglesby looked up at this slight man in civilian clothes with “an expression of surprise.”
Grant moved into the St. Charles Hotel and set up his office in the bank building. As he continued his habit of dressing in civilian clothes, he looked more like a small-town banker than a brigadier general.
IN EARLY SEPTEMBER 1861, Kentucky still hung on to its neutrality but was being torn asunder by Union and Confederate factions operating in different sections of the state. After Fort Sumter, Kentucky’s Democratic governor, Beriah Magoffin, expressed his sympathy with secession and replied defiantly to Lincoln’s call for troops. The Kentucky House of Representatives on May 16 declared “strict neutrality” to be the state posture. This action contained both a rejection of pleas for secession and a hope that Kentucky would not become a war battleground.
Grant understood the importance of Kentucky as a key border state. Kentuckians had long cherished their role as mediator between North and South. They knew their state to be the birthplace of both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, presidents of the two warring entities. Having grown up in southern Ohio, Grant particularly understood Kentucky’s strategic importance as a geographic bridge between the “Old Northwest” states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois and the Confederate state of Tennessee.
On the morning of September 5, Grant received a spy from Frémont. Charles A. De Arnaud informed him that Confederate general Gideon Pillow had broken Kentucky’s neutrality by marching into Hickman, Kentucky, twenty-eight miles south of Cairo. As Confederate troops moved north toward Columbus, Kentucky, De Arnaud reported that Pillow intended to continue overland to Paducah, a port city on the Ohio River, with the intention of invading southern Illinois.
After hearing De Arnaud’s report, Grant sent him back to Frémont in St. Louis carrying his message: “I am now nearly ready for Paducah (should not a telegraph arrive preventing the movement) on the strength of the information telegraphed.”
Grant did not wait for a reply but prepared to leave for Paducah that evening. Forty-five miles up the Ohio River, this town of forty-five hundred lay at the mouth of the Tennessee River, the 650-mile tributary of the Ohio River. Born in the mountains of east Tennessee, the river meandered south into northern Mississippi and Alabama before turning north and ending at Paducah. Grant, who had been working with his maps ever since Ironton, understood the Tennessee River was a river route into the Confederacy.
During this busy day, Grant found time to write a message to the Speaker of the Kentucky House of Representatives: “I regret to inform you that Confederate forces in Considerable numbers have invaded the territory of Kentucky.” He astutely explained why he was about to descend on Paducah. At this adrenaline-filled moment, he was thinking both politically and militarily.
In the evening, Grant assembled the Illinois Ninth and Twelfth regiments on navy transports. Led by gunboats, they began the forty-five-mile voyage up the Ohio. Nearing Paducah, he ordered the boats to anchor for a few hours, waiting to arrive by the sun’s early light. As they went ashore, he saw secession flags flying in the breeze, a welcome for Confederate troops expected at noon.
“I never after saw such consternation depicted on the faces of the people,” recalled Grant. When his men disembarked, the flags were taken down. “Men, women and children came out of their doors looking pale and frightened at the presence of the invader.” Grant knew people had been expecting the four thousand Confederate troops, by now only ten to fifteen miles away. Instead, they found blue uniforms.
Before leaving, Grant wrote out a short proclamation to the Paducah citizens that began, “I have come among you, not as an enemy, but as your friend and fellow-citizen, not to injure or annoy you, but to respect the rights of all loyal citizens.” He concluded, “Whenever it is manifest that you are able to defend yourselves, to maintain the authority of your Government and protect the rights of all its loyal citizens, I shall withdraw the forces under my command from your city.” His proclamation assured them he would respect their rights. For a young officer who eschewed politics, this brief, skillfully written proclamation revealed Grant’s art of political persuasion.
LEAVING TROOPS IN Paducah, Grant returned to Cairo. From there he was prepared to take the fight to an enemy, some of whose leaders were his former classmates. He had signed up for what he thought would be a war of short duration; taking command at Cairo, he began to understand this could well be a long war.
Illustrator N. C. Wyeth brilliantly captures Grant on horseback, at ease in the saddle.
