One of my favorite Civil War anecdotes comes from the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant. It’s a tale about his brief, early war tenure as colonel of the 21st Illinois Infantry. Soon after the 21st was dispatched to Missouri in July 1861, Grant received orders to advance against Confederates commanded by Colonel Thomas Harris, whose men had encamped near the small town of Florida, some 25 miles distant. Though he was a seasoned combat veteran of the Mexican War, this was Grant’s first time in command of troops, and he was uneasy.
National Portrait Gallery, Colorized by Patrick and Dylan BrennanUlysses S. Grant
As he and his regiment approached the site of Harris’ camp, Grant’s nerves frayed; “my heart kept getting higher and higher until it felt to me as though it was in my throat,” he wrote. When they crested the hill beyond which the enemy camp was located, Grant’s “heart resumed its place”—Harris and his soldiers were not there, having abandoned the area a few days prior. The future commander of all Union armies divined a valuable lesson from the experience: “It occurred to me at once that Harris had been as much afraid of me as I had been of him…. 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.”
In the end, Grant’s steady rise up the ranks of the Union army was the result of a combination of skill, grit, and good fortune. But it’s a rise that would not have gotten off the ground had Grant not first secured an officer’s commission during the war’s early months. In this issue’s cover story, “The Making of a General” (p. 24), Glenn W. LaFantasie focuses on Grant’s determination (bordering on desperation) to re-enter the army in the summer of 1861—but only at a rank he felt befitted his antebellum military experience.
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Related topics: Ulysses S. Grant
