Book: The Memoirs of General Ulysses S. Grant, Part 2.

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In the winter I established a partnership with Harry Boggs, a cousin of
Mrs. Grant, in the real estate agency business. I spent that winter at
St. Louis myself, but did not take my family into town until the spring.
Our business might have become prosperous if I had been able to wait for
it to grow. As it was, there was no more than one person could attend
to, and not enough to support two families. While a citizen of St.
Louis and engaged in the real estate agency business, I was a candidate
for the office of county engineer, an office of respectability and
emolument which would have been very acceptable to me at that time. The
incumbent was appointed by the county court, which consisted of five
members. My opponent had the advantage of birth over me (he was a
citizen by adoption) and carried off the prize. I now withdrew from the
co-partnership with Boggs, and, in May, 1860, removed to Galena,
Illinois, and took a clerkship in my father's store.

While a citizen of Missouri, my first opportunity for casting a vote at
a Presidential election occurred. I had been in the army from before
attaining my majority and had thought but little about politics,
although I was a Whig by education and a great admirer of Mr. Clay. But
the Whig party had ceased to exist before I had an opportunity of
exercising the privilege of casting a ballot; the Know-Nothing party had
taken its place, but was on the wane; and the Republican party was in a
chaotic state and had not yet received a name. It had no existence in
the Slave States except at points on the borders next to Free States.
In St. Louis City and County, what afterwards became the Republican
party was known as the Free-Soil Democracy, led by the Honorable Frank
P. Blair. Most of my neighbors had known me as an officer of the army
with Whig proclivities. They had been on the same side, and, on the
death of their party, many had become Know-Nothings, or members of the
American party. There was a lodge near my new home, and I was invited to
join it. I accepted the invitation; was initiated; attended a meeting
just one week later, and never went to another afterwards.

I have no apologies to make for having been one week a member of the
American party; for I still think native-born citizens of the United
States should have as much protection, as many privileges in their
native country, as those who voluntarily select it for a home. But all
secret, oath-bound political parties are dangerous to any nation, no
matter how pure or how patriotic the motives and principles which first
bring them together. No political party can or ought to exist when one
of its corner-stones is opposition to freedom of thought and to the
right to worship God "according to the dictate of one's own conscience,"
or according to the creed of any religious denomination whatever.
Nevertheless, if a sect sets up its laws as binding above the State
laws, wherever the two come in conflict this claim must be resisted and
suppressed at whatever cost.

Up to the Mexican war there were a few out and out abolitionists, men
who carried their hostility to slavery into all elections, from those
for a justice of the peace up to the Presidency of the United States.
They were noisy but not numerous. But the great majority of people at
the North, where slavery did not exist, were opposed to the institution,
and looked upon its existence in any part of the country as unfortunate.
They did not hold the States where slavery existed responsible for it;
and believed that protection should be given to the right of property in
slaves until some satisfactory way could be reached to be rid of the
institution. Opposition to slavery was not a creed of either political
party. In some sections more anti-slavery men belonged to the
Democratic party, and in others to the Whigs. But with the inauguration
of the Mexican war, in fact with the annexation of Texas, "the
inevitable conflict" commenced.

As the time for the Presidential election of 1856--the first at which I
had the opportunity of voting--approached, party feeling began to run
high. The Republican party was regarded in the South and the border
States not only as opposed to the extension of slavery, but as favoring
the compulsory abolition of the institution without compensation to the
owners. The most horrible visions seemed to present themselves to the
minds of people who, one would suppose, ought to have known better.
Many educated and, otherwise, sensible persons appeared to believe that
emancipation meant social equality. Treason to the Government was
openly advocated and was not rebuked. It was evident to my mind that
the election of a Republican President in 1856 meant the secession of
all the Slave States, and rebellion. Under these circumstances I
preferred the success of a candidate whose election would prevent or
postpone secession, to seeing the country plunged into a war the end of
which no man could foretell. With a Democrat elected by the unanimous
vote of the Slave States, there could be no pretext for secession for
four years. I very much hoped that the passions of the people would
subside in that time, and the catastrophe be averted altogether; if it
was not, I believed the country would be better prepared to receive the
shock and to resist it. I therefore voted for James Buchanan for
President. Four years later the Republican party was successful in
electing its candidate to the Presidency. The civilized world has
learned the consequence. Four millions of human beings held as chattels
have been liberated; the ballot has been given to them; the free schools
of the country have been opened to their children. The nation still
lives, and the people are just as free to avoid social intimacy with the
blacks as ever they were, or as they are with white people.

While living in Galena I was nominally only a clerk supporting myself
and family on a stipulated salary. In reality my position was
different. My father had never lived in Galena himself, but had
established my two brothers there, the one next younger than myself in
charge of the business, assisted by the youngest. When I went there it
was my father's intention to give up all connection with the business
himself, and to establish his three sons in it: but the brother who had
really built up the business was sinking with consumption, and it was
not thought best to make any change while he was in this condition. He
lived until September, 1861, when he succumbed to that insidious disease
which always flatters its victims into the belief that they are growing
better up to the close of life. A more honorable man never transacted
business. In September, 1861, I was engaged in an employment which
required all my attention elsewhere.

During the eleven months that I lived in Galena prior to the first call
for volunteers, I had been strictly attentive to my business, and had
made but few acquaintances other than customers and people engaged in
the same line with myself. When the election took place in November,
1860, I had not been a resident of Illinois long enough to gain
citizenship and could not, therefore, vote. I was really glad of this
at the time, for my pledges would have compelled me to vote for Stephen
A. Douglas, who had no possible chance of election. The contest was
really between Mr. Breckinridge and Mr. Lincoln; between minority rule
and rule by the majority. I wanted, as between these candidates, to see
Mr. Lincoln elected. Excitement ran high during the canvass, and
torch-light processions enlivened the scene in the generally quiet
streets of Galena many nights during the campaign. I did not parade
with either party, but occasionally met with the "wide awakes"
--Republicans--in their rooms, and superintended their drill. It was
evident, from the time of the Chicago nomination to the close of the
canvass, that the election of the Republican candidate would be the
signal for some of the Southern States to secede. I still had hopes
that the four years which had elapsed since the first nomination of a
Presidential candidate by a party distinctly opposed to slavery
extension, had given time for the extreme pro-slavery sentiment to cool
down; for the Southerners to think well before they took the awful leap
which they had so vehemently threatened. But I was mistaken.

The Republican candidate was elected, and solid substantial people of
the North-west, and I presume the same order of people throughout the
entire North, felt very serious, but determined, after this event. It
was very much discussed whether the South would carry out its threat to
secede and set up a separate government, the corner-stone of which
should be, protection to the "Divine" institution of slavery. For there
were people who believed in the "divinity" of human slavery, as there
are now people who believe Mormonism and Polygamy to be ordained by the
Most High. We forgive them for entertaining such notions, but forbid
their practice. It was generally believed that there would be a flurry;
that some of the extreme Southern States would go so far as to pass
ordinances of secession. But the common impression was that this step
was so plainly suicidal for the South, that the movement would not
spread over much of the territory and would not last long.

Doubtless the founders of our government, the majority of them at least,
regarded the confederation of the colonies as an experiment. Each
colony considered itself a separate government; that the confederation
was for mutual protection against a foreign foe, and the prevention of
strife and war among themselves. If there had been a desire on the part
of any single State to withdraw from the compact at any time while the
number of States was limited to the original thirteen, I do not suppose
there would have been any to contest the right, no matter how much the
determination might have been regretted. The problem changed on the
ratification of the Constitution by all the colonies; it changed still
more when amendments were added; and if the right of any one State to
withdraw continued to exist at all after the ratification of the
Constitution, it certainly ceased on the formation of new States, at
least so far as the new States themselves were concerned. It was never
possessed at all by Florida or the States west of the Mississippi, all
of which were purchased by the treasury of the entire nation. Texas and
the territory brought into the Union in consequence of annexation, were
purchased with both blood and treasure; and Texas, with a domain greater
than that of any European state except Russia, was permitted to retain
as state property all the public lands within its borders. It would
have been ingratitude and injustice of the most flagrant sort for this
State to withdraw from the Union after all that had been spent and done
to introduce her; yet, if separation had actually occurred, Texas must
necessarily have gone with the South, both on account of her
institutions and her geographical position. Secession was illogical as
well as impracticable; it was revolution.

Now, the right of revolution is an inherent one. When people are
oppressed by their government, it is a natural right they enjoy to
relieve themselves of the oppression, if they are strong enough, either
by withdrawal from it, or by overthrowing it and substituting a
government more acceptable. But any people or part of a people who
resort to this remedy, stake their lives, their property, and every
claim for protection given by citizenship--on the issue. Victory, or
the conditions imposed by the conqueror--must be the result.

In the case of the war between the States it would have been the exact
truth if the South had said,--"We do not want to live with you Northern
people any longer; we know our institution of slavery is obnoxious to
you, and, as you are growing numerically stronger than we, it may at
some time in the future be endangered. So long as you permitted us to
control the government, and with the aid of a few friends at the North
to enact laws constituting your section a guard against the escape of
our property, we were willing to live with you. You have been
submissive to our rule heretofore; but it looks now as if you did not
intend to continue so, and we will remain in the Union no longer."
Instead of this the seceding States cried lustily,--"Let us alone; you
have no constitutional power to interfere with us." Newspapers and
people at the North reiterated the cry. Individuals might ignore the
constitution; but the Nation itself must not only obey it, but must
enforce the strictest construction of that instrument; the construction
put upon it by the Southerners themselves. The fact is the constitution
did not apply to any such contingency as the one existing from 1861 to
1865. Its framers never dreamed of such a contingency occurring. If
they had foreseen it, the probabilities are they would have sanctioned
the right of a State or States to withdraw rather than that there should
be war between brothers.

The framers were wise in their generation and wanted to do the very best
possible to secure their own liberty and independence, and that also of
their descendants to the latest days. It is preposterous to suppose
that the people of one generation can lay down the best and only rules
of government for all who are to come after them, and under unforeseen
contingencies. At the time of the framing of our constitution the only
physical forces that had been subdued and made to serve man and do his
labor, were the currents in the streams and in the air we breathe. Rude
machinery, propelled by water power, had been invented; sails to propel
ships upon the waters had been set to catch the passing breeze--but the
application of stream to propel vessels against both wind and current,
and machinery to do all manner of work had not been thought of. The
instantaneous transmission of messages around the world by means of
electricity would probably at that day have been attributed to
witchcraft or a league with the Devil. Immaterial circumstances had
changed as greatly as material ones. We could not and ought not to be
rigidly bound by the rules laid down under circumstances so different
for emergencies so utterly unanticipated. The fathers themselves would
have been the first to declare that their prerogatives were not
irrevocable. They would surely have resisted secession could they have
lived to see the shape it assumed.

I travelled through the Northwest considerably during the winter of
1860-1. We had customers in all the little towns in south-west
Wisconsin, south-east Minnesota and north-east Iowa. These generally
knew I had been a captain in the regular army and had served through the
Mexican war. Consequently wherever I stopped at night, some of the
people would come to the public-house where I was, and sit till a late
hour discussing the probabilities of the future. My own views at that
time were like those officially expressed by Mr. Seward at a later day,
that "the war would be over in ninety days." I continued to entertain
these views until after the battle of Shiloh. I believe now that there
would have been no more battles at the West after the capture of Fort
Donelson if all the troops in that region had been under a single
commander who would have followed up that victory.

There is little doubt in my mind now that the prevailing sentiment of
the South would have been opposed to secession in 1860 and 1861, if
there had been a fair and calm expression of opinion, unbiased by
threats, and if the ballot of one legal voter had counted for as much as
that of any other. But there was no calm discussion of the question.
Demagogues who were too old to enter the army if there should be a war,
others who entertained so high an opinion of their own ability that they
did not believe they could be spared from the direction of the affairs
of state in such an event, declaimed vehemently and unceasingly against
the North; against its aggressions upon the South; its interference with
Southern rights, etc., etc. They denounced the Northerners as cowards,
poltroons, negro-worshippers; claimed that one Southern man was equal to
five Northern men in battle; that if the South would stand up for its
rights the North would back down. Mr. Jefferson Davis said in a speech,
delivered at La Grange, Mississippi, before the secession of that State,
that he would agree to drink all the blood spilled south of Mason and
Dixon's line if there should be a war. The young men who would have the
fighting to do in case of war, believed all these statements, both in
regard to the aggressiveness of the North and its cowardice. They, too,
cried out for a separation from such people. The great bulk of the
legal voters of the South were men who owned no slaves; their homes were
generally in the hills and poor country; their facilities for educating
their children, even up to the point of reading and writing, were very
limited; their interest in the contest was very meagre--what there was,
if they had been capable of seeing it, was with the North; they too
needed emancipation. Under the old regime they were looked down upon by
those who controlled all the affairs in the interest of slave-owners, as
poor white trash who were allowed the ballot so long as they cast it
according to direction.

I am aware that this last statement may be disputed and individual
testimony perhaps adduced to show that in ante-bellum days the ballot
was as untrammelled in the south as in any section of the country; but
in the face of any such contradiction I reassert the statement. The
shot-gun was not resorted to. Masked men did not ride over the country
at night intimidating voters; but there was a firm feeling that a class
existed in every State with a sort of divine right to control public
affairs. If they could not get this control by one means they must by
another. The end justified the means. The coercion, if mild, was
complete.

There were two political parties, it is true, in all the States, both
strong in numbers and respectability, but both equally loyal to the
institution which stood paramount in Southern eyes to all other
institutions in state or nation. The slave-owners were the minority,
but governed both parties. Had politics ever divided the slave-holders
and the non-slave-holders, the majority would have been obliged to
yield, or internecine war would have been the consequence. I do not
know that the Southern people were to blame for this condition of
affairs. There was a time when slavery was not profitable, and the
discussion of the merits of the institution was confined almost
exclusively to the territory where it existed. The States of Virginia
and Kentucky came near abolishing slavery by their own acts, one State
defeating the measure by a tie vote and the other only lacking one. But
when the institution became profitable, all talk of its abolition ceased
where it existed; and naturally, as human nature is constituted,
arguments were adduced in its support. The cotton-gin probably had much
to do with the justification of slavery.

The winter of 1860-1 will be remembered by middle-aged people of to-day
as one of great excitement. South Carolina promptly seceded after the
result of the Presidential election was known. Other Southern States
proposed to follow. In some of them the Union sentiment was so strong
that it had to be suppressed by force. Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky and
Missouri, all Slave States, failed to pass ordinances of secession; but
they were all represented in the so-called congress of the so-called
Confederate States. The Governor and Lieutenant-Governor of Missouri,
in 1861, Jackson and Reynolds, were both supporters of the rebellion and
took refuge with the enemy. The governor soon died, and the
lieutenant-governor assumed his office; issued proclamations as governor
of the State; was recognized as such by the Confederate Government, and
continued his pretensions until the collapse of the rebellion. The South
claimed the sovereignty of States, but claimed the right to coerce into
their confederation such States as they wanted, that is, all the States
where slavery existed. They did not seem to think this course
inconsistent. The fact is, the Southern slave-owners believed that, in
some way, the ownership of slaves conferred a sort of patent of
nobility--a right to govern independent of the interest or wishes of
those who did not hold such property. They convinced themselves, first,
of the divine origin of the institution and, next, that that particular
institution was not safe in the hands of any body of legislators but
themselves.

Meanwhile the Administration of President Buchanan looked helplessly on
and proclaimed that the general government had no power to interfere;
that the Nation had no power to save its own life. Mr. Buchanan had in
his cabinet two members at least, who were as earnest--to use a mild
term--in the cause of secession as Mr. Davis or any Southern statesman.
One of them, Floyd, the Secretary of War, scattered the army so that
much of it could be captured when hostilities should commence, and
distributed the cannon and small arms from Northern arsenals throughout
the South so as to be on hand when treason wanted them. The navy was
scattered in like manner. The President did not prevent his cabinet
preparing for war upon their government, either by destroying its
resources or storing them in the South until a de facto government was
established with Jefferson Davis as its President, and Montgomery,
Alabama, as the Capital. The secessionists had then to leave the
cabinet. In their own estimation they were aliens in the country which
had given them birth. Loyal men were put into their places. Treason in
the executive branch of the government was estopped. But the harm had
already been done. The stable door was locked after the horse had been
stolen.

During all of the trying winter of 1860-1, when the Southerners were so
defiant that they would not allow within their borders the expression of
a sentiment hostile to their views, it was a brave man indeed who could
stand up and proclaim his loyalty to the Union. On the other hand men
at the North--prominent men--proclaimed that the government had no power
to coerce the South into submission to the laws of the land; that if the
North undertook to raise armies to go south, these armies would have to
march over the dead bodies of the speakers. A portion of the press of
the North was constantly proclaiming similar views. When the time
arrived for the President-elect to go to the capital of the Nation to be
sworn into office, it was deemed unsafe for him to travel, not only as a
President-elect, but as any private citizen should be allowed to do.
Instead of going in a special car, receiving the good wishes of his
constituents at all the stations along the road, he was obliged to stop
on the way and to be smuggled into the capital. He disappeared from
public view on his journey, and the next the country knew, his arrival
was announced at the capital. There is little doubt that he would have
been assassinated if he had attempted to travel openly throughout his
journey.



CHAPTER XVII.

OUTBREAK OF THE REBELLION--PRESIDING AT A UNION MEETING--MUSTERING
OFFICER OF STATE TROOPS--LYON AT CAMP JACKSON--SERVICES TENDERED TO THE
GOVERNMENT.

The 4th of March, 1861, came, and Abraham Lincoln was sworn to maintain
the Union against all its enemies. The secession of one State after
another followed, until eleven had gone out. On the 11th of April Fort
Sumter, a National fort in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, was
fired upon by the Southerners and a few days after was captured. The
Confederates proclaimed themselves aliens, and thereby debarred
themselves of all right to claim protection under the Constitution of
the United States. We did not admit the fact that they were aliens, but
all the same, they debarred themselves of the right to expect better
treatment than people of any other foreign state who make war upon an
independent nation. Upon the firing on Sumter President Lincoln issued
his first call for troops and soon after a proclamation convening
Congress in extra session. The call was for 75,000 volunteers for
ninety days' service. If the shot fired at Fort Sumter "was heard
around the world," the call of the President for 75,000 men was heard
throughout the Northern States. There was not a state in the North of a
million of inhabitants that would not have furnished the entire number
faster than arms could have been supplied to them, if it had been
necessary.

As soon as the news of the call for volunteers reached Galena, posters
were stuck up calling for a meeting of the citizens at the court-house
in the evening. Business ceased entirely; all was excitement; for a
time there were no party distinctions; all were Union men, determined to
avenge the insult to the national flag. In the evening the court-house
was packed. Although a comparative stranger I was called upon to
preside; the sole reason, possibly, was that I had been in the army and
had seen service. With much embarrassment and some prompting I made out
to announce the object of the meeting. Speeches were in order, but it
is doubtful whether it would have been safe just then to make other than
patriotic ones. There was probably no one in the house, however, who
felt like making any other. The two principal speeches were by B. B.
Howard, the post-master and a Breckinridge Democrat at the November
election the fall before, and John A. Rawlins, an elector on the Douglas
ticket. E. B. Washburne, with whom I was not acquainted at that time,
came in after the meeting had been organized, and expressed, I
understood afterwards, a little surprise that Galena could not furnish a
presiding officer for such an occasion without taking a stranger. He
came forward and was introduced, and made a speech appealing to the
patriotism of the meeting.

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