and extraordinary endurance and bravery on the part of his men, who in the hard-fought engagements at Cerro Cordo, Contreras, Churubusco, Chapultapec and Molino del Rey, achieved no little glory for American arms. They achieved it not without severe sacrifices, however. Of Grant's regiment, which was attached to Worth's splendid division, and which went to Mexico five hundred and eleven strong, one hundred and ninety perished in the campaign. In such a campaign it is obvious that a young officer need not lack opportunities to distinguish himself.

TWICE BREVETTED FOR GALLANT DEEDS.

Grant, though a quartermaster, detached from the line, insisted upon joining in all the actions, and threw himself into the thickest of every fight. As a consequence, he won at Molino del Rey a brevet as First Lieutenant, and at Chapultapec, a still further brevet as captain. He was mentioned in the reports of his brigade commander as acquitting himself most nobly on several occasions under my observation." On the 18th of September, 1847, the city of Mexico was captured, and General Scott made a triumphal entry with his troops. In this triumph joined many officers, then serving as mere subalterns for the most part, who were destined afterwards to figure most conspicuously in the great civil war of 1861-5,-some on the side of the Union, and some (alas! for them) on the side of disunion and rebellion. Among these were Generals

Grant, McClellan, Hancock, Buell, Steele and Lyon, of the Federal, and Generals Lee and Beauregard, of the Rebel army. In Taylor's force were many more young men of destiny, including Braxton, Bragg, Pillow, and Hardee, of the regular, and Jess. Davis, of the volunteer army. A rollcall of all the officers mustered in the streets of Mexico on the morning of that triumphal entry would, if repeated a few years afterwards, have been answered from the heads of a hundred corps and divisions of the two great hostile hosts either of which swallowed up scores of armies, like that which we sent to Mexico. The campaigns of Scott and Taylor were thought to be very important in their immediate political consequences. They were far more important in developing generals for the great struggle to which this Mexican affair was a mere preliminary skirmish-or rather, a simple drill exercise.

MARRIED AND SETTLED.

With the capitulation of Mexico the war with the Mexican Republic ended; but it was not until the middle of the following summer that the treaty of peace was ratified by both countries, and the Army of Occupation withdrawn. Grant arrived home on furlough in August of that year, and on the (to him) very importamt errand of marrying Miss Dent-an arrangement to which the parents of that young lady had, perhaps, become more reconciled by the brilliant military record of the pro

posed son-in-law.

At all events, the pair werd married, and "settled down"-so much as an army quartermaster may be said to settle down-in quarters of their own, at Detroit-the first station to which Captain Grant was assigned. The Bedouinlike wanderings to which the exigencies of the service condemned him, were too much for even the strong devotion to a military life with which Grant had become imbued; and in 1854, after having been successively assigned to Sacketts Harbor, N. Y.; Detroit; Fort Columbus, N. Y.; Benicia, Cal.; Fort Vancouver, Oregon; and Fort Humboldt, Colorado; and having then obtained the full rank of Captain of the Fourth Infantry,* he resigned his commission, and betook himself to a citizen's life. When, in the fall of 1854, he retired from the army, to manage the little unimproved farm at "Hardscrabble," near St. Louis, a name which seems to have fitly characterized the place and its proprietor's farming course,-Grant was the father of two boys, and a devoted domestic pater familias Indeed, it was only his devotion to wife and children that induced him to relinquish that military life for which he was so well qualified, and to which his tastes had been so thoroughly trained.

THE FIRST GUN-GRANT RESPONDS.

Grant now spent nearly seven years-dull and unprofitable years apparently-in the pursuits of

* His commission, as such, bears date August, 1853.

civil life; first, on the farm near St. Louis, afterwards in that city as partner of a Mr. Boggs, in the real estate business, and finally as a partner with his father in the leather business, at Galena. It was his vocation as a tanner which led his admirers in after days to form Tanner's clubs in furtherance of his election as President. He was called from his hides and "findings" by the guns which battered down Sumpter; and a few days after the memorable commencement of hostilities Grant had raised a company at Galena, drilled them, and tendered his services, both at Washington and to the Governor of his State, at Springfield. Governor Yates took him into his service, on the recommendation of Elihu Washburne, as Adjutant General. He soon after tendered him the command of the Twenty-first Illinois Volunteer Infantry, and Grant, after waiting a few days for the War Department to make use of him in the regular army, if it chose, accepted the commission. Being sent to Quincy, Ill., and afterwards into Northeastern Missouri, to defend various railroad points, Col. Grant's regiment was assimilated with other troops into a brigade, and he was selected by General Pope, commanding the district, as acting Brigadier.

CHAPTER VIII.

GRANT'S MILITARY CAREER.

(CONTINUED.)

Colonel of the Twenty-first Illinois Volunteers-Brigadier General-His Fellows of that Rank-Captures Forts Henry and Donelson-Is Promoted to Major General-Battle of Shiloh.

THIS was early in July, 1861, and in August Grant received a commission as full brigadier general. His commission dates from the May preceding. He was one of the first "batch" of brigadier generals of volunteers, and amongst the rest were Heintzelman, Franklin, Couch, Kearney, Sherman, Pope, Buel, Sigel and twenty-five others, the most of whom became more famous as politicians than as soldiers. Grant's district embraced the Mississippi and its valley from Cape Girardeau to New Madrid, and the lower part of the Ohio Valley, including all of Western Kentucky. Establishing his headquarters at Cairo, the most important strategic point in all that valley, Grant threw a force over into Paducah just in time to save that point from being occupied by Bishop Polk's rebels, who would doubtless otherwise have soon shelled him out of Cairo, and made havoc generally.

THE BATTLE OF BELMONT.

Grant's first engagement was on the 7th of No

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