Adam Badeau, Military history of Ulysses S. Grant from April 1861 to April 1865. Volume 1

[9] to army officers and Western traders; even in the town where he lived, he had not met the member of Congress who represented the district for nine successive years, and who afterwards became one of his most intimate personal friends. Of his four children, the eldest was eleven years old. He lived in a little house at the top of one of the picturesque hills on which Galena is built, and went daily to the warehouse of his father and brother, where leather was sold by the wholesale and retail. He was thirty-nine years of age, before his countrymen became acquainted with his name.

Fort Sumter fell on the 13th of April, 1861, and the President's call for troops was made on the 15th. On the 19th, Grant was drilling a company of volunteers at Galena, and four days afterwards went with it to Springfield, the capital of Illinois. From there, he wrote to the adjutant-general of the army, offering his services to the government, in any capacity in which he could be of use. The letter was not deemed of sufficient importance to preserve: it stated that Grant had received a military education at the public expense, and now that the country was in danger, he thought it his duty to place at the disposal of the authorities, whatever skill or experience he had acquired. He received no reply; but remaining at Springfield, his military knowledge made him of service in the organization of the volunteer troops of the state; and at the end of five weeks, the governor, Honorable Richard Yates, offered him the Twenty-first regiment of Illinois infantry.

Before receiving his colonelcy, Grant went to Cincinnati to visit Major-General McClellan, then in command of Ohio volunteers. The two had known