Fifty Years of Public Service / Personal Recollections of Shelby M. Cullom, Senior United States Senator from Illinois

by Shelby M. Cullom

CHAPTER XI GRANT

My acquaintance with General Grant began when he visited Springfield the first time immediately after the beginning of the Civil War. He came to Springfield with a company of soldiers raised at Galena. General John A. Rawlins, afterwards Secretary of War under President Grant, one of the best men whom I ever knew, and especially my friend, was with this company. General Grant offered his services to Governor Yates in any capacity, and the Governor requested him to aid General Mather, then our Adjutant-General. General Grant, having been a West Point graduate, and having served as a captain in the regular army, rendered the Adjutant-General very material service. On the morning I saw him in the Adjutant-General's office at Springfield, nobody ever dreamed that this quiet, unassuming subordinate would, in less than four years, become one of the greatest generals in all the world's history. At the outbreak of the war he resided at Galena, where he was in business.

He was sent by Governor Yates to muster in the various regiments, and continued in that work until made Colonel of the Twenty-fist Illinois Regiment. This regiment had been raised and organized by another man, whose habits were not regular, and under whose command the regiment had become demoralized. General Grant took the Twenty- first Illinois on foot from Springfield into Missouri, and before he had travelled very far with it, the men quickly learned that he was a real commanding officer, a strict disciplinarian, and that orders were issued to be obeyed. The regiment became one of the best in the service.

General Grant was soon made a Brigadier-General, the first to be commissioned from Illinois, and was sent to command at Cairo.

I became pretty well acquainted with him at Springfield, and subsequently I visited Cairo, and found there General Grant, Governor Oglesby, and other Illinoisans in command of regiments.

General Grant's career as a soldier is too well known to the world to be repeated by me here. The history of his career is the history of the Civil War. He was formally received by the people of Springfield on two occasions: once while he was still in command in the army; and again in 1880, after his trip around the world, he was my guest at the Executive Mansion in Springfield. He was then accompanied by Mrs. Grant, and by E. B. Washburne, who had been one of his closest personal friends during his administration.

The time was approaching for the National Convention at Chicago, and General Grant's friends had prevailed upon him to permit the use of his name as a candidate for a third term. Washburne had become considerably flattered by the demonstration that was made over him on the road from Galena to Springfield, and I believe he had an idea that he might be the nominee instead of General Grant, and hence for some reason or other he did not want to identify himself with General Grant at all. When the time came to go to the reception at the State House, Washburne could not be found. It seemed that he had hid in his bedroom until the party left the Executive Mansion for the State House, and then went by himself to the State House, and secreted himself in the office of the Secretary of State, where he surreptitiously watched proceedings from behind the sheltering folds of a curtain.

His conduct in the evening was still more remarkable. I had arranged a reception to General and Mrs. Grant and Mr. Washburne at the Executive Mansion that same evening, but Mr. Washburne gave some excuse which he claimed necessitated his presence in the East, and departed—apparently with the conviction that he might secure the Presidential nomination himself, and feeling that his presence in company with General Grant—an avowed candidate—created an embarrassing situation that he could not endure. I know that General Grant was deeply grieved at his conduct. The General's friends were so outraged that they determined Washburne should have no place upon the ticket at all.

General Grant was not a candidate for re-election at the end of his second term; I am not at all sure whether he would not have been glad to be re-elected for a third term—at least, he would have accepted the nomination had it been tendered to him. But the third-term proposition, at that time, received a severe blow when, in December, 1875, the House of Representatives passed a resolution by a vote of 234 to 18, declaring that in its opinion, the precedent established by Washington and other Presidents of the United States, in retiring from the Presidential office after their second terms, had become, by universal concurrence, a part of our republican system of government, and that any departure from this time-honored custom would be unwise, unpatriotic, and fraught with peril to our free institutions.

The passage of this resolution, the scandals in the administration, the hard times, and the bitter and determined opposition to General Grant at this time, put an end temporarily to all third-term talk.