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lamplight.
    General Grant saw us out on parade two days ago and held up
the entire column while he got down off his horse to look at Bango. He was
always crazy about animals, even back in the old Georgetown days when I was a
boy and he was driving a logging wagon for his father. He said Bango was the
finest hound he'd ever seen.
    You would
not know old Useless Grant if you saw him now. I keep reminding myself he is
the same one that came through home 20 years ago, just out of West Point that
time he drilled the militia. He trembled when he gave commands & was so
thin & pale, you could see he hated it. It’s even harder to connect him
with the man that came back from being booted out of the Army for drinking
&   all the tales we heard about him
in St Louis & out in Ill. The men all swear by him because he is a Fighter
— & I think we ought to be proud he is from Georgetown.
    It was the operation against Belmont last October in
southeast Missouri across the river from Columbus, Kentucky, that first
attracted public attention to Grant. He attacked the Confederates and routed
them, but his men turned aside to loot the camp instead of pressing the attack,
and the Rebels cowering under the riverbank had time to catch their breath.
When reinforcements came from the opposite shore, they counterattacked and
Grant retreated.
    This was no victory. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t even a
successful campaign. He just went out and came back, losing about as many as he
killed. But the fact that struck everyone was that he had marched in dirty
weather instead of waiting for fair, had kept his head when things went all
against him, and had brought his command back to base with some real fighting
experience under its belt.
    By then we were pressing them all along the line. When
Thomas in the east defeated Zollicoffer, wrecking his army, Grant moved against
Middle Tennessee. Gunboats took Fort Henry by bombardment, and when that was
done Grant marched twelve miles overland to Fort Donelson and forced its
surrender in two days of hard fighting. The Rebels in the fort sent a note
asking for terms. Grant wrote back: "No terms except an unconditional and
immediate surrender can be expected. I propose to move immediately upon your
works."
    People back home went crazy with joy, ringing church bells
and hugging each other on the street. That was when I joined up. Everybody knew
the Donelson message by heart. "I propose to move immediately upon your
works"—they said it in every imaginable situation until it got to be a
joke. The nation had a new hero: Unconditional Surrender Grant, they called
him. Best of all, however, the fall of the forts had flanked the enemy armies.
The whole Confederate line caved in, from Kentucky to the Mississippi River.
They fell back, and we followed. That was when General Halleck was put in
command. I saw him once in St Louis; it was in February when I went down after
my commission. Old Brains, they called him. He looked a little like an owl and
he had a peculiar habit of hugging himself across the chest and scratching his
elbows when he was worried. He had plenty to worry him now. Buell moved slowly,
careful lest old foxy Johnston turn on him with something out of his bag of
tricks, and Grant went off to Nashville (—God knows why, Halleck said; it was
clear out of his department) and would not acknowledge any messages sent him.
About this time Halleck got an anonymous letter saying Grant had slipped back
to his old habits and was off on a bender. So Halleck took Grant's army away
from him and gave it to General Smith.
    O, my
darling it is six weeks today this very Sunday I’ve have been apart. Does it
not seem longer? That day that I’ve marched away for Paducah, going to the war
& everyone out in their Sunday best to cheer us off, it seems so long ago.
In your last you said how proud you were I looked so elegant in uniform, but I
was the one should have been proud for you put all the rest of them to shame,
& if I