"Oh, yes, I think I can manage them," Grant replied in his quiet, even tone.

Within a week he had scraped off the regiment's hard crust, and found that there was nothing underneath but a lot of good-natured farm youths, full of high spirits and a little rough. He began to enforce discipline, and camp life took on some of the pleasant amenities of a Sunday School picnic. The men spoke to one another politely without calling on Jesus Christ or using double-damned oaths. They even saluted the officers now and then. That had been brought about in a week; in a month he had a model regiment. +

How was it done? The method was simple; Grant's ways were invariably simple ways. He reformed this rough regiment by being rougher than any other man in it. Men who started disorderly rows were picked up by the scruff of their necks and thrown pell-mell into the guard-house. Those who used insolent language to their officers were tied to posts and kept tied up all day. One day the morning roll-call was an hour late; the men got up as they pleased. That day Grant stopped all rations; there was no breakfast, dinner or supper.

The regimental "bad man"-known by his nickname of "Mexico"-swaggered drunk before the commander's tent, and dared anybody to touch him. Grant had him tied up to a post. "For every minute I stand here I'll have an ounce of your blood," the boisterous "Mexico" shouted at his colonel. Grant turned around and said to a sergeant, "Put a gag in that man's mouth." This was done. When the time came to let "Mexico" loose, Colonel Grant untied him with his own hands. "Now salute me and go to your quarters," he said. "Mexico" saluted mournfully and walked away without a word.

Straightening out the regiment was not such a hard job for Grant, but there was a tougher problem on his hands. How in the world was he to get a uniform, and a horse? Officers were supposed to furnish their own equipment; they were supposed to have some financial resources. Grant was penniless. How

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Colonel Dent Disapproves

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could he insist on his officers appearing properly dressed if he were not properly dressed himself? His father, always deaf and always thinking of money, became very deaf when his son asked him for a loan of a few hundred dollars. As for his brothers, they thought they had already done enough.

Still there remained Colonel Dent, his father-in-law. Oh, it was no use to approach him. That irate Southern gentleman was so full of rage that he did not want to look on Grant's face. He considered him a renegade, a traitor, and other things saturated with opprobrium, because Grant had gone into the Union army. "Don't talk to me about this Federal son-in-law of mine," Colonel Dent exclaimed-according to John Fenton Long. "There shall always be a plate on my table for Julia, but none for him."

Grant became a sort of social problem . . . Grant and his uniform. For two or three weeks he had to let his lieutenantcolonel conduct the regimental dress parades, for Grant possessed neither a uniform nor a horse. This was embarrassing, and subjected him to some ill-natured ridicule. Finally a Galena business man named E. A. Collins came forward and advanced enough money to purchase his equipment.)

The epic quality in Grant's career was slow in rhythm heavy, sluggish .. and without any gleam of sentimental heroism. Patrick Henry smote his breast and said, "Give me liberty or give me death"-and the world pauses to contemplate the scene. Napoleon stood on the bridge at Arcola, a heroic figure entirely surrounded by sizzling bullets.

Grant does nothing of the kind. He passes in and out among the ranks of his command, seeing that the men keep their guns clean, that they are supplied with rations and clothes, and that they are drilled with precision. He has nothing special to say; the great beating light of advertisement falls on other men, yet

the tide of his career is beginning to turn. But its course is almost imperceptible in movement, like the gradual rising of the water-line on a beach.

We see him marching his command across Illinois into Missouri in search of a particularly obnoxious rebel named Colonel Thomas Harris. This Confederate colonel and his men were considered terrific fighters, though from contemporary newspaper accounts it appears that they expended most of their energy in robbing hen-roosts. Grant said in his Memoirs

As we approached the brow of the hill from which it was expected we could see Harris's 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 that 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.

For weeks Grant's regiment wandered over the harsh Missouri roads, looking for vanishing Confederates and never finding any. Much shoe leather was worn out, but the experience did the regiment a lot of good. It helped Grant, too. He said that it was in Missouri that he learned how to handle a regiment in the field.

He might have remained in Missouri for the rest of the war,

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Luck and Ability

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as many officers did, engaged in bandit-hunting and inconsequential skirmishes, if the kindly Fates had not set his feet in the path that leads to glory.

Success is the product of ability multiplied by circumstance. Grant was an able soldier, but who can doubt that there were others, perhaps many others, in the Union army who were as able as he? Their careers were frittered away inconspicuously, chasing snipers in Missouri, perhaps, or drilling recruits in training camps. They never encountered the right combination of circumstances.

Grant himself said with becoming modesty: "There are many men who would have done better than I did under the circumstances in which I found myself."

While Grant was marching aimlessly through Missouri, Lincoln and his cabinet were creating brigadier-generals by the dozen. These appointments were made amid the clamor of political squabbles. Mr. Elihu B. Washburne, Congressman from the northwest corner of Illinois, insisted that at least one brigadier-general ought to come from his district. He was

a shrewd politician who did not want his constituents to get an impression that he had gone to sleep in Washington. That is how it happened that Grant read one day in a St. Louis newspaper that he had been made a brigadier-general.

In later years Washburne basked comfortably in the light of Grant's renown, and claimed all the credit for bringing him to the front. And Grant himself wrote to thank Washburne "for the part you have taken in giving me my present position. I think I see your hand in it. .. ."

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CHAPTER XIV

GRANT AT CAIRO

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ITH this step upward in the world Grant entered a wider field of action. He had permanent headquarters of his own at Cairo, in Illinois, and a hazily defined territory or district. His headquarters were at the Cairo Hotel, which W. H. Russell, correspondent of the London Times, described as "almost untenable by reason of heat and flies."

The streets and barrooms were filled with crowds of soldiers who did not know what to do with themselves. Innumerable vendors of food and trinkets had stands on the populous corners-selling fried catfish, sweetish, sickly looking little cakes, and souvenirs of one kind or another. There was a holiday air about the camp, as there was about the war everywhere during its first six months.

Grant's immediate superior was Major-General John C. Frémont, in command of the department of the Missouri, with headquarters at St. Louis. Frémont was a romantic, addleheaded person who had lived for years in the show window of celebrity. He was an exhibitionist, an actor by temperament who had never happened to get on the stage.

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When it came to a question of common sense Frémont's mind was as empty as a drum . . yet he had his points. His popular title of "Pathfinder" had come to him on account of his daring explorations in the Far West. It was said that he had placed the Stars and Stripes on the highest peak of the Rockies, though unfortunately there were no motion pictures