18: Chapter XVIII.
<< 17: Chapter XVII. || 19: Chapter XIX. >>
While I was absent from the State capital on this occasion the
President's second call for troops was issued. This time it was
for 300,000 men, for three years or the war. This brought into
the United States service all the regiments then in the State
service. These had elected their officers from highest to
lowest and were accepted with their organizations as they were,
except in two instances. A Chicago regiment, the 19th infantry,
had elected a very young man to the colonelcy. When it came to
taking the field the regiment asked to have another appointed
colonel and the one they had previously chosen made
lieutenant-colonel. The 21st regiment of infantry, mustered in
by me at Mattoon, refused to go into the service with the
colonel of their selection in any position. While I was still
absent Governor Yates appointed me colonel of this latter
regiment. A few days after I was in charge of it and in camp on
the fair grounds near Springfield.
My regiment was composed in large part of young men of as good
social position as any in their section of the State. It
embraced the sons of farmers, lawyers, physicians, politicians,
merchants, bankers and ministers, and some men of maturer years
who had filled such positions themselves. There were also men
in it who could be led astray; and the colonel, elected by the
votes of the regiment, had proved to be fully capable of
developing all there was in his men of recklessness. It was
said that he even went so far at times as to take the guard from
their posts and go with them to the village near by and make a
night of it. When there came a prospect of battle the regiment
wanted to have some one else to lead them. I found it very hard
work for a few days to bring all the men into anything like
subordination; but the great majority favored discipline, and by
the application of a little regular army punishment all were
reduced to as good discipline as one could ask.
The ten regiments which had volunteered in the State service for
thirty days, it will be remembered, had done so with a pledge to
go into the National service if called upon within that time.
When they volunteered the government had only called for ninety
days' enlistments. Men were called now for three years or the
war. They felt that this change of period released them from
the obligation of re-volunteering. When I was appointed
colonel, the 21st regiment was still in the State service. About
the time they were to be mustered into the United States service,
such of them as would go, two members of Congress from the State,
McClernand and Logan, appeared at the capital and I was
introduced to them. I had never seen either of them before, but
I had read a great deal about them, and particularly about Logan,
in the newspapers. Both were democratic members of Congress, and
Logan had been elected from the southern district of the State,
where he had a majority of eighteen thousand over his Republican
competitor. His district had been settled originally by people
from the Southern States, and at the breaking out of secession
they sympathized with the South. At the first outbreak of war
some of them joined the Southern army; many others were
preparing to do so; others rode over the country at night
denouncing the Union, and made it as necessary to guard railroad
bridges over which National troops had to pass in southern
Illinois, as it was in Kentucky or any of the border slave
states. Logan's popularity in this district was unbounded. He
knew almost enough of the people in it by their Christian names,
to form an ordinary congressional district. As he went in
politics, so his district was sure to go. The Republican papers
had been demanding that he should announce where he stood on the
questions which at that time engrossed the whole of public
thought. Some were very bitter in their denunciations of his
silence. Logan was not a man to be coerced into an utterance by
threats. He did, however, come out in a speech before the
adjournment of the special session of Congress which was
convened by the President soon after his inauguration, and
announced his undying loyalty and devotion to the Union. But I
had not happened to see that speech, so that when I first met
Logan my impressions were those formed from reading
denunciations of him. McClernand, on the other hand, had early
taken strong grounds for the maintenance of the Union and had
been praised accordingly by the Republican papers. The
gentlemen who presented these two members of Congress asked me
if I would have any objections to their addressing my
regiment. I hesitated a little before answering. It was but a
few days before the time set for mustering into the United
States service such of the men as were willing to volunteer for
three years or the war. I had some doubt as to the effect a
speech from Logan might have; but as he was with McClernand,
whose sentiments on the all-absorbing questions of the day were
well known, I gave my consent. McClernand spoke first; and
Logan followed in a speech which he has hardly equaled since
for force and eloquence. It breathed a loyalty and devotion to
the Union which inspired my men to such a point that they would
have volunteered to remain in the army as long as an enemy of
the country continued to bear arms against it. They entered the
United States service almost to a man.
General Logan went to his part of the State and gave his
attention to raising troops. The very men who at first made it
necessary to guard the roads in southern Illinois became the
defenders of the Union. Logan entered the service himself as
colonel of a regiment and rapidly rose to the rank of
major-general. His district, which had promised at first to
give much trouble to the government, filled every call made upon
it for troops, without resorting to the draft. There was no call
made when there were not more volunteers than were asked for.
That congressional district stands credited at the War
Department to-day with furnishing more men for the army than it
was called on to supply.
I remained in Springfield with my regiment until the 3d of July,
when I was ordered to Quincy, Illinois. By that time the
regiment was in a good state of discipline and the officers and
men were well up in the company drill. There was direct
railroad communication between Springfield and Quincy, but I
thought it would be good preparation for the troops to march
there. We had no transportation for our camp and garrison
equipage, so wagons were hired for the occasion and on the 3d of
July we started. There was no hurry, but fair marches were made
every day until the Illinois River was crossed. There I was
overtaken by a dispatch saying that the destination of the
regiment had been changed to Ironton, Missouri, and ordering me
to halt where I was and await the arrival of a steamer which had
been dispatched up the Illinois River to take the regiment to St.
Louis. The boat, when it did come, grounded on a sand-bar a few
miles below where we were in camp. We remained there several
days waiting to have the boat get off the bar, but before this
occurred news came that an Illinois regiment was surrounded by
rebels at a point on the Hannibal and St. Joe Railroad some
miles west of Palmyra, in Missouri, and I was ordered to proceed
with all dispatch to their relief. We took the cars and reached
Quincy in a few hours.
When I left Galena for the last time to take command of the 21st
regiment I took with me my oldest son, Frederick D. Grant, then a
lad of eleven years of age. On receiving the order to take rail
for Quincy I wrote to Mrs. Grant, to relieve what I supposed
would be her great anxiety for one so young going into danger,
that I would send Fred home from Quincy by river. I received a
prompt letter in reply decidedly disapproving my proposition,
and urging that the lad should be allowed to accompany me. It
came too late. Fred was already on his way up the Mississippi
bound for Dubuque, Iowa, from which place there was a railroad
to Galena.
My sensations as we approached what I supposed might be "a field
of battle" were anything but agreeable. I had been in all the
engagements in Mexico that it was possible for one person to be
in; but not in command. If some one else had been colonel and I
had been lieutenant-colonel I do not think I would have felt any
trepidation. Before we were prepared to cross the Mississippi
River at Quincy my anxiety was relieved; for the men of the
besieged regiment came straggling into town. I am inclined to
think both sides got frightened and ran away.
I took my regiment to Palmyra and remained there for a few days,
until relieved by the 19th Illinois infantry. From Palmyra I
proceeded to Salt River, the railroad bridge over which had been
destroyed by the enemy. Colonel John M. Palmer at that time
commanded the 13th Illinois, which was acting as a guard to
workmen who were engaged in rebuilding this bridge. Palmer was
my senior and commanded the two regiments as long as we remained
together. The bridge was finished in about two weeks, and I
received orders to move against Colonel Thomas Harris, who was
said to be encamped at the little town of Florida, some
twenty-five miles south of where we then were.
At the time of which I now write we had no transportation and
the country about Salt River was sparsely settled, so that it
took some days to collect teams and drivers enough to move the
camp and garrison equipage of a regiment nearly a thousand
strong, together with a week's supply of provision and some
ammunition. While preparations for the move were going on I
felt quite comfortable; but when we got on the road and found
every house deserted I was anything but easy. In the twenty-
five miles we had to march we did not see a person, old or
young, male or female, except two horsemen who were on a road
that crossed ours. As soon as they saw us they decamped as fast
as their horses could carry them. I kept my men in the ranks and
forbade their entering any of the deserted houses or taking
anything from them. We halted at night on the road and
proceeded the next morning at an early hour. Harris had been
encamped in a creek bottom for the sake of being near water. The
hills on either side of the creek extend to a considerable
height, possibly more than a hundred feet. As we approached the
brow of the hill from which it was expected we could see Harris'
camp, and possibly find his men ready formed to meet us, my
heart kept getting higher and higher until it felt to me as
though it was in my throat. 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; I kept right on. When we reached
a point from which the valley below was in full view I halted.
The place where Harris had been encamped a few days before was
still there and the marks of a recent encampment were plainly
visible, but the troops were gone. My heart resumed its
place. It occurred to me at once that Harris had been as much
afraid of me as I had been of him. This was a view of the
question I had never taken before; but it was one I never forgot
afterwards. From that event to the close of the war, I never
experienced trepidation upon confronting an enemy, though I
always felt more or less anxiety. I never forgot that he had as
much reason to fear my forces as I had his. The lesson was
valuable.
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.
<< 17: Chapter XVII. || 19: Chapter XIX. >>