“Where does he hail from?”
“Galena, Ill. He was clerking in a leather store when the war broke out.”
“I don't care if he was in Illinois when the war began, he was born in Ohio, graduated at West Point, and served in Mexico and out West.”
“Hurrah for Ohio!” (chorus of the Sixth Ohio cavalry). “Hurrah for Grant!”
“Hurrah!”
“Hurrah!”
“Hurrah!”
“Tiger!”
I do not know but what the “Ohio idee” was inaugurated on our picket line away back there in 1864. At any rate the Sixth Ohio boys insisted, when they were assured that the lieutenant-general was a native of that State, that “Bob Lee's goose was as good as cooked already.” It was rather a crude way of expressing a prophecy that proved as true as Holy Writ. The Ohio Volunteers were ready to cross sabers with the enemy without more ado. Grant was from Ohio, and that settled it.
The Bay State boys indorsed Grant after his record had been established. To be sure there was our own Gen. Butler, the hero of New Orleans. Butler was then in command of the Army of the James, with Fortress Monroe as his base of supplies. Somehow we had come to associate Butler with naval expeditions, and never thought of him in connection with a campaign on land beyond the support of the gunboats. It is probable that our estimates of military men were influenced by what we read in the newspapers. One of the boys declared that in a description of the capture of New Orleans he had read, mention was made of Butler being “lashed to the maintop,” while the fleet under Farragut was fighting its way up the Mississippi under fire from the guns of Forts Jackson and St. Philip. Said an Ohio trooper: