Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers

by J. Walker McSpadden

During the ensuing few months he moved from pillar to post, trying various ventures and succeeding with none. The fates seemed against him. In St. Louis, whither he had drifted, he was regarded with open scorn as, what we would now designate, a "down-and-out." One reason for his poor success lay in the fact that he was a Northerner, and the city was seething with talk of secession. The clouds of Civil War were already gathering, and men began to distrust each his neighbor.

At this juncture his father, who seems rather to have turned against him also, came to his relief. He offered Ulysses a position in his leather business, now in charge of the younger boys. Ulysses thankfully accepted, although the pay was only fifty dollars a month. He brought his wife and boys to Galena, where at any rate he was sure of having a roof over his head.

"The brothers found him of no earthly account at driving bargains, or tending store," says General Charles King. "He could keep books after a fashion and do some of the heavy work in handling the miscellaneous stock."

Another soldier, who became his devoted follower in the later days, had his first sight of Grant at this down-at-the-heels period. "I went round to the store," he says; "it was a sharp winter morning, and there wasn't a sign of a soldier or one that looked like a soldier about the shop. But pretty soon a farmer drove up with a lot of hides on his sleigh, and went inside to dicker, and presently a stoop-shouldered, brownish-bearded fellow, with a slouch hat pulled down over his eyes, who had been sitting whittling at the stove when I was inside, came out, pulling on an old light-blue soldier's overcoat. He flung open the doors leading down into the cellar, laid hold of the top hide, frozen stiff it was, tugged it loose, towed it over, and slung it down the chute. Then one by one, all by himself, he heaved off the rest of them, a ten minutes' tough job in that weather, until he had got the last of them down the cellar; then slouched back into the store again, shed the blue coat, got some hot water off the stove and went and washed his hands, using a cake of brown soap, then came back and went to whittling again, and all without a word to anybody. That was my first look at Grant, and look at him now!"

But in all likelihood there would not have been another chance to "look" at him, had not the great Civil War broken out. It was to prove in his case that what seemed failure was merely lack of opportunity.

When South Carolina seceded and the call for troops came, the stoop-shouldered clerk in the hide store began to straighten up. The call to arms put new life in his blood. He felt his old confidence returning. He refused a local captaincy, after he had demonstrated what he could do in drilling recruits, saying: "I have been in the military service fourteen years, and think I am competent to command a regiment."

He went to Springfield, Illinois, and offered his services, and after some delay was given a desk in the adjutant-general's office. It was not long before he proved his efficiency, and his advice was sought more and more by the Governor, in organizing the State Guards. When the 21st regiment was mustered into service, he was made its colonel. He had put his foot on the first rung of the ladder of success.

The 21st, like other bodies of volunteers, was a loosely-knit, unruly set of men. They took military life as a huge picnic, but speedily got over that attitude—under Grant. On their first long hike, it is said that their canteens were filled with whiskey, instead of water—until Grant went through on a personal tour of inspection, and ordered every canteen emptied out on the ground. The way he took hold of that regiment and licked it into shape opened the eyes of Governor Yates and his staff. In two months it was the best drilled regiment in the State; and when President Lincoln wrote to the Governor asking suggestions for promotions, Grant's name headed the list. He was made a Brigadier-General.

The story of the Civil War and Grant's great part therein belong to a longer chronicle than this. Step by step this stern, quiet soldier fought his way up, winning his country's battles and his own as well. In the full tide of war he found himself—and better still his country discovered him. He was never after to prove recreant to his trust.

"We will fight it out along this line if it takes all summer," is one of his typical remarks, and one most often quoted. It was toward the last of the hard-fought war, when the Southern forces under Lee were doing their utmost to fend off the inevitable. Grant, now the commanding General of the Union forces, was still putting into practise the quiet, bull-dog qualities that had led his armies to victory.