Grant Takes Command

In April 1861, Ulysses Simpson Grant, a West Point graduate and former army officer, was clerking in his father's store in Galena, Illinois, after leaving the army. Declaring that the government, laws, and flag must be sustained, he volunteered with the State of Illinois and became colonel of the unruly 21st Illinois Infantry in June 1861. After organizing the regiment, he led it into northern Missouri to help maintain order, where he learned an important lesson when Confederates fled before a fight: he concluded that an opposing commander had as much reason to fear his forces as he had to fear theirs. Grant then received command of the post at Ironton, Missouri, where he got his official appointment as brigadier general early in August 1861. Sent next to Jefferson City to prepare for an expected attack, he was then ordered to St. Louis for important special instructions, which assigned him to Cape Girardeau to command the District of Southeast Missouri, including all of southern Illinois. On August 30, 1861, only five months after working as a store clerk, he took command of the Union Army in Cape Girardeau. That army would eventually become known as the Army of the Tennessee and, under Grant and William T. Sherman, would win at Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Champions Hill, Vicksburg, and Atlanta before its last major battle at Bentonville, North Carolina. Grant later became the 18th president of the United States in 1869, but while in Cape Girardeau in 1861 he was uncertain of his future, writing from the St. Charles Hotel to ask his wife for encouragement because the safety of the country depended upon his acts and because he feared too much might be expected of him.

Cape Girardeau, Missouri · United States