Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete

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Inquiries at the village of Florida divulged the fact that Colonel
Harris, learning of my intended movement, while my transportation was
being collected took time by the forelock and left Florida before I had
started from Salt River. He had increased the distance between us by
forty miles. The next day I started back to my old camp at Salt River
bridge. The citizens living on the line of our march had returned to
their houses after we passed, and finding everything in good order,
nothing carried away, they were at their front doors ready to greet us
now. They had evidently been led to believe that the National troops
carried death and devastation with them wherever they went.

In a short time after our return to Salt River bridge I was ordered with
my regiment to the town of Mexico. General Pope was then commanding the
district embracing all of the State of Missouri between the Mississippi
and Missouri rivers, with his headquarters in the village of Mexico. I
was assigned to the command of a sub-district embracing the troops in
the immediate neighborhood, some three regiments of infantry and a
section of artillery. There was one regiment encamped by the side of
mine. I assumed command of the whole and the first night sent the
commander of the other regiment the parole and countersign. Not wishing
to be outdone in courtesy, he immediately sent me the countersign for
his regiment for the night. When he was informed that the countersign
sent to him was for use with his regiment as well as mine, it was
difficult to make him understand that this was not an unwarranted
interference of one colonel over another. No doubt he attributed it for
the time to the presumption of a graduate of West Point over a volunteer
pure and simple. But the question was soon settled and we had no
further trouble.

My arrival in Mexico had been preceded by that of two or three regiments
in which proper discipline had not been maintained, and the men had been
in the habit of visiting houses without invitation and helping
themselves to food and drink, or demanding them from the occupants.
They carried their muskets while out of camp and made every man they
found take the oath of allegiance to the government. I at once
published orders prohibiting the soldiers from going into private houses
unless invited by the inhabitants, and from appropriating private
property to their own or to government uses. The people were no longer
molested or made afraid. I received the most marked courtesy from the
citizens of Mexico as long as I remained there.

Up to this time my regiment had not been carried in the school of the
soldier beyond the company drill, except that it had received some
training on the march from Springfield to the Illinois River. There was
now a good opportunity of exercising it in the battalion drill. While I
was at West Point the tactics used in the army had been Scott's and the
musket the flint lock. I had never looked at a copy of tactics from the
time of my graduation. My standing in that branch of studies had been
near the foot of the class. In the Mexican war in the summer of 1846, I
had been appointed regimental quartermaster and commissary and had not
been at a battalion drill since. The arms had been changed since then
and Hardee's tactics had been adopted. I got a copy of tactics and
studied one lesson, intending to confine the exercise of the first day
to the commands I had thus learned. By pursuing this course from day to
day I thought I would soon get through the volume.

We were encamped just outside of town on the common, among scattering
suburban houses with enclosed gardens, and when I got my regiment in
line and rode to the front I soon saw that if I attempted to follow the
lesson I had studied I would have to clear away some of the houses and
garden fences to make room. I perceived at once, however, that Hardee's
tactics--a mere translation from the French with Hardee's name attached
--was nothing more than common sense and the progress of the age applied
to Scott's system. The commands were abbreviated and the movement
expedited. Under the old tactics almost every change in the order of
march was preceded by a "halt," then came the change, and then the
"forward march." With the new tactics all these changes could be made
while in motion. I found no trouble in giving commands that would take
my regiment where I wanted it to go and carry it around all obstacles.
I do not believe that the officers of the regiment ever discovered that
I had never studied the tactics that I used.

CHAPTER XIX.

COMMISSIONED BRIGADIER-GENERAL--COMMAND AT IRONTON, MO.--JEFFERSON CITY
--CAPE GIRARDEAU--GENERAL PRENTISS--SEIZURE OF PADUCAH--HEADQUARTERS AT
CAIRO.

I had not been in Mexico many weeks when, reading a St. Louis paper,
I found the President had asked the Illinois delegation in Congress
to recommend some citizens of the State for the position of
brigadier-general, and that they had unanimously recommended me as first
on a list of seven. I was very much surprised because, as I have said,
my acquaintance with the Congressmen was very limited and I did not know
of anything I had done to inspire such confidence. The papers of the
next day announced that my name, with three others, had been sent to the
Senate, and a few days after our confirmation was announced.

When appointed brigadier-general I at once thought it proper that one of
my aides should come from the regiment I had been commanding, and so
selected Lieutenant C. B. Lagow. While living in St. Louis, I had had a
desk in the law office of McClellan, Moody and Hillyer. Difference in
views between the members of the firm on the questions of the day, and
general hard times in the border cities, had broken up this firm.
Hillyer was quite a young man, then in his twenties, and very brilliant.
I asked him to accept a place on my staff. I also wanted to take one
man from my new home, Galena. The canvass in the Presidential campaign
the fall before had brought out a young lawyer by the name of John A.
Rawlins, who proved himself one of the ablest speakers in the State. He
was also a candidate for elector on the Douglas ticket. When Sumter was
fired upon and the integrity of the Union threatened, there was no man
more ready to serve his country than he. I wrote at once asking him to
accept the position of assistant adjutant-general with the rank of
captain, on my staff. He was about entering the service as major of a
new regiment then organizing in the north-western part of the State; but
he threw this up and accepted my offer.

Neither Hillyer nor Lagow proved to have any particular taste or special
qualifications for the duties of the soldier, and the former resigned
during the Vicksburg campaign; the latter I relieved after the battle of
Chattanooga. Rawlins remained with me as long as he lived, and rose to
the rank of brigadier general and chief-of-staff to the General of the
Army--an office created for him--before the war closed. He was an able
man, possessed of great firmness, and could say "no" so emphatically to
a request which he thought should not be granted that the person he was
addressing would understand at once that there was no use of pressing
the matter. General Rawlins was a very useful officer in other ways
than this. I became very much attached to him.

Shortly after my promotion I was ordered to Ironton, Missouri, to
command a district in that part of the State, and took the 21st
Illinois, my old regiment, with me. Several other regiments were
ordered to the same destination about the same time. Ironton is on the
Iron Mountain railroad, about seventy miles south of St. Louis, and
situated among hills rising almost to the dignity of mountains. When I
reached there, about the 8th of August, Colonel B. Gratz Brown
--afterwards Governor of Missouri and in 1872 Vice-Presidential candidate
--was in command. Some of his troops were ninety days' men and their
time had expired some time before. The men had no clothing but what
they had volunteered in, and much of this was so worn that it would
hardly stay on. General Hardee--the author of the tactics I did not
study--was at Greenville some twenty-five miles further south, it was
said, with five thousand Confederate troops. Under these circumstances
Colonel Brown's command was very much demoralized. A squadron of
cavalry could have ridden into the valley and captured the entire force.
Brown himself was gladder to see me on that occasion than he ever has
been since. I relieved him and sent all his men home within a day or
two, to be mustered out of service.

Within ten days after reading Ironton I was prepared to take the
offensive against the enemy at Greenville. I sent a column east out of
the valley we were in, with orders to swing around to the south and west
and come into the Greenville road ten miles south of Ironton. Another
column marched on the direct road and went into camp at the point
designated for the two columns to meet. I was to ride out the next
morning and take personal command of the movement. My experience
against Harris, in northern Missouri, had inspired me with confidence.
But when the evening train came in, it brought General B. M. Prentiss
with orders to take command of the district. His orders did not relieve
me, but I knew that by law I was senior, and at that time even the
President did not have the authority to assign a junior to command a
senior of the same grade. I therefore gave General Prentiss the
situation of the troops and the general condition of affairs, and
started for St. Louis the same day. The movement against the rebels at
Greenville went no further.

From St. Louis I was ordered to Jefferson City, the capital of the
State, to take command. General Sterling Price, of the Confederate
army, was thought to be threatening the capital, Lexington, Chillicothe
and other comparatively large towns in the central part of Missouri. I
found a good many troops in Jefferson City, but in the greatest
confusion, and no one person knew where they all were. Colonel
Mulligan, a gallant man, was in command, but he had not been educated as
yet to his new profession and did not know how to maintain discipline.
I found that volunteers had obtained permission from the department
commander, or claimed they had, to raise, some of them, regiments; some
battalions; some companies--the officers to be commissioned according to
the number of men they brought into the service. There were recruiting
stations all over town, with notices, rudely lettered on boards over the
doors, announcing the arm of service and length of time for which
recruits at that station would be received. The law required all
volunteers to serve for three years or the war. But in Jefferson City
in August, 1861, they were recruited for different periods and on
different conditions; some were enlisted for six months, some for a
year, some without any condition as to where they were to serve, others
were not to be sent out of the State. The recruits were principally men
from regiments stationed there and already in the service, bound for
three years if the war lasted that long.

The city was filled with Union fugitives who had been driven by guerilla
bands to take refuge with the National troops. They were in a
deplorable condition and must have starved but for the support the
government gave them. They had generally made their escape with a team
or two, sometimes a yoke of oxen with a mule or a horse in the lead. A
little bedding besides their clothing and some food had been thrown into
the wagon. All else of their worldly goods were abandoned and
appropriated by their former neighbors; for the Union man in Missouri
who staid at home during the rebellion, if he was not immediately under
the protection of the National troops, was at perpetual war with his
neighbors. I stopped the recruiting service, and disposed the troops
about the outskirts of the city so as to guard all approaches. Order
was soon restored.

I had been at Jefferson City but a few days when I was directed from
department headquarters to fit out an expedition to Lexington,
Booneville and Chillicothe, in order to take from the banks in those
cities all the funds they had and send them to St. Louis. The western
army had not yet been supplied with transportation. It became necessary
therefore to press into the service teams belonging to sympathizers with
the rebellion or to hire those of Union men. This afforded an
opportunity of giving employment to such of the refugees within our
lines as had teams suitable for our purposes. They accepted the service
with alacrity. As fast as troops could be got off they were moved west
some twenty miles or more. In seven or eight days from my assuming
command at Jefferson City, I had all the troops, except a small
garrison, at an advanced position and expected to join them myself the
next day.

But my campaigns had not yet begun, for while seated at my office door,
with nothing further to do until it was time to start for the front, I
saw an officer of rank approaching, who proved to be Colonel Jefferson
C. Davis. I had never met him before, but he introduced himself by
handing me an order for him to proceed to Jefferson City and relieve me
of the command. The orders directed that I should report at department
headquarters at St. Louis without delay, to receive important special
instructions. It was about an hour before the only regular train of the
day would start. I therefore turned over to Colonel Davis my orders,
and hurriedly stated to him the progress that had been made to carry out
the department instructions already described. I had at that time but
one staff officer, doing myself all the detail work usually performed by
an adjutant-general. In an hour after being relieved from the command I
was on my way to St. Louis, leaving my single staff officer(*6) to
follow the next day with our horses and baggage.

The "important special instructions" which I received the next day,
assigned me to the command of the district of south-east Missouri,
embracing all the territory south of St. Louis, in Missouri, as well as
all southern Illinois. At first I was to take personal command of a
combined expedition that had been ordered for the capture of Colonel
Jeff. Thompson, a sort of independent or partisan commander who was
disputing with us the possession of south-east Missouri. Troops had
been ordered to move from Ironton to Cape Girardeau, sixty or seventy
miles to the south-east, on the Mississippi River; while the forces at
Cape Girardeau had been ordered to move to Jacksonville, ten miles out
towards Ironton; and troops at Cairo and Bird's Point, at the junction
of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, were to hold themselves in readiness
to go down the Mississippi to Belmont, eighteen miles below, to be moved
west from there when an officer should come to command them. I was the
officer who had been selected for this purpose. Cairo was to become my
headquarters when the expedition terminated.

In pursuance of my orders I established my temporary headquarters at
Cape Girardeau and sent instructions to the commanding officer at
Jackson, to inform me of the approach of General Prentiss from Ironton.
Hired wagons were kept moving night and day to take additional rations
to Jackson, to supply the troops when they started from there. Neither
General Prentiss nor Colonel Marsh, who commanded at Jackson, knew their
destination. I drew up all the instructions for the contemplated move,
and kept them in my pocket until I should hear of the junction of our
troops at Jackson. Two or three days after my arrival at Cape
Girardeau, word came that General Prentiss was approaching that place
(Jackson). I started at once to meet him there and to give him his
orders. As I turned the first corner of a street after starting, I saw
a column of cavalry passing the next street in front of me. I turned
and rode around the block the other way, so as to meet the head of the
column. I found there General Prentiss himself, with a large escort.
He had halted his troops at Jackson for the night, and had come on
himself to Cape Girardeau, leaving orders for his command to follow him
in the morning. I gave the General his orders--which stopped him at
Jackson--but he was very much aggrieved at being placed under another
brigadier-general, particularly as he believed himself to be the senior.
He had been a brigadier, in command at Cairo, while I was mustering
officer at Springfield without any rank. But we were nominated at the
same time for the United States service, and both our commissions bore
date May 17th, 1861. By virtue of my former army rank I was, by law,
the senior. General Prentiss failed to get orders to his troops to
remain at Jackson, and the next morning early they were reported as
approaching Cape Girardeau. I then ordered the General very
peremptorily to countermarch his command and take it back to Jackson.
He obeyed the order, but bade his command adieu when he got them to
Jackson, and went to St. Louis and reported himself. This broke up the
expedition. But little harm was done, as Jeff. Thompson moved light and
had no fixed place for even nominal headquarters. He was as much at
home in Arkansas as he was in Missouri and would keep out of the way of
a superior force. Prentiss was sent to another part of the State.

General Prentiss made a great mistake on the above occasion, one that he
would not have committed later in the war. When I came to know him
better, I regretted it much. In consequence of this occurrence he was
off duty in the field when the principal campaign at the West was going
on, and his juniors received promotion while he was where none could be
obtained. He would have been next to myself in rank in the district of
south-east Missouri, by virtue of his services in the Mexican war. He
was a brave and very earnest soldier. No man in the service was more
sincere in his devotion to the cause for which we were battling; none
more ready to make sacrifices or risk life in it.

On the 4th of September I removed my headquarters to Cairo and found
Colonel Richard Oglesby in command of the post. We had never met, at
least not to my knowledge. After my promotion I had ordered my
brigadier-general's uniform from New York, but it had not yet arrived,
so that I was in citizen's dress. The Colonel had his office full of
people, mostly from the neighboring States of Missouri and Kentucky,
making complaints or asking favors. He evidently did not catch my name
when I was presented, for on my taking a piece of paper from the table
where he was seated and writing the order assuming command of the
district of south-east Missouri, Colonel Richard J. Oglesby to command
the post at Bird's Point, and handing it to him, he put on an expression
of surprise that looked a little as if he would like to have some one
identify me. But he surrendered the office without question.

The day after I assumed command at Cairo a man came to me who said he
was a scout of General Fremont. He reported that he had just come from
Columbus, a point on the Mississippi twenty miles below on the Kentucky
side, and that troops had started from there, or were about to start, to
seize Paducah, at the mouth of the Tennessee. There was no time for
delay; I reported by telegraph to the department commander the
information I had received, and added that I was taking steps to get off
that night to be in advance of the enemy in securing that important
point. There was a large number of steamers lying at Cairo and a good
many boatmen were staying in the town. It was the work of only a few
hours to get the boats manned, with coal aboard and steam up. Troops
were also designated to go aboard. The distance from Cairo to Paducah
is about forty-five miles. I did not wish to get there before daylight
of the 6th, and directed therefore that the boats should lie at anchor
out in the stream until the time to start. Not having received an
answer to my first dispatch, I again telegraphed to department
headquarters that I should start for Paducah that night unless I
received further orders. Hearing nothing, we started before midnight
and arrived early the following morning, anticipating the enemy by
probably not over six or eight hours. It proved very fortunate that the
expedition against Jeff. Thompson had been broken up. Had it not been,
the enemy would have seized Paducah and fortified it, to our very great
annoyance.

When the National troops entered the town the citizens were taken by
surprise. I never after saw such consternation depicted on the faces of
the people. Men, women and children came out of their doors looking
pale and frightened at the presence of the invader. They were expecting
rebel troops that day. In fact, nearly four thousand men from Columbus
were at that time within ten or fifteen miles of Paducah on their way to
occupy the place. I had but two regiments and one battery with me, but
the enemy did not know this and returned to Columbus. I stationed my
troops at the best points to guard the roads leading into the city, left
gunboats to guard the river fronts and by noon was ready to start on my
return to Cairo. Before leaving, however, I addressed a short printed
proclamation to the citizens of Paducah assuring them of our peaceful
intentions, that we had come among them to protect them against the
enemies of our country, and that all who chose could continue their
usual avocations with assurance of the protection of the government.
This was evidently a relief to them; but the majority would have much
preferred the presence of the other army. I reinforced Paducah rapidly
from the troops at Cape Girardeau; and a day or two later General C. F.
Smith, a most accomplished soldier, reported at Cairo and was assigned
to the command of the post at the mouth of the Tennessee. In a short
time it was well fortified and a detachment was sent to occupy
Smithland, at the mouth of the Cumberland.

The State government of Kentucky at that time was rebel in sentiment,
but wanted to preserve an armed neutrality between the North and the
South, and the governor really seemed to think the State had a perfect
right to maintain a neutral position. The rebels already occupied two
towns in the State, Columbus and Hickman, on the Mississippi; and at the
very moment the National troops were entering Paducah from the Ohio
front, General Lloyd Tilghman--a Confederate--with his staff and a small
detachment of men, were getting out in the other direction, while, as I
have already said, nearly four thousand Confederate troops were on
Kentucky soil on their way to take possession of the town. But, in the
estimation of the governor and of those who thought with him, this did
not justify the National authorities in invading the soil of Kentucky.
I informed the legislature of the State of what I was doing, and my
action was approved by the majority of that body. On my return to Cairo
I found authority from department headquarters for me to take Paducah
"if I felt strong enough," but very soon after I was reprimanded from
the same quarters for my correspondence with the legislature and warned
against a repetition of the offence.

Soon after I took command at Cairo, General Fremont entered into
arrangements for the exchange of the prisoners captured at Camp Jackson
in the month of May. I received orders to pass them through my lines to
Columbus as they presented themselves with proper credentials. Quite a
number of these prisoners I had been personally acquainted with before
the war. Such of them as I had so known were received at my
headquarters as old acquaintances, and ordinary routine business was not
disturbed by their presence. On one occasion when several were present
in my office my intention to visit Cape Girardeau the next day, to
inspect the troops at that point, was mentioned. Something transpired
which postponed my trip; but a steamer employed by the government was
passing a point some twenty or more miles above Cairo, the next day,
when a section of rebel artillery with proper escort brought her to. A
major, one of those who had been at my headquarters the day before, came
at once aboard and after some search made a direct demand for my
delivery. It was hard to persuade him that I was not there. This
officer was Major Barrett, of St. Louis. I had been acquainted with his
family before the war.

CHAPTER XX.

GENERAL FREMONT IN COMMAND--MOVEMENT AGAINST BELMONT--BATTLE OF BELMONT
--A NARROW ESCAPE--AFTER THE BATTLE.

From the occupation of Paducah up to the early part of November nothing
important occurred with the troops under my command. I was reinforced
from time to time and the men were drilled and disciplined preparatory
for the service which was sure to come. By the 1st of November I had
not fewer than 20,000 men, most of them under good drill and ready to
meet any equal body of men who, like themselves, had not yet been in an
engagement. They were growing impatient at lying idle so long, almost
in hearing of the guns of the enemy they had volunteered to fight
against. I asked on one or two occasions to be allowed to move against
Columbus. It could have been taken soon after the occupation of
Paducah; but before November it was so strongly fortified that it would
have required a large force and a long siege to capture it.