Crucible of Command

by William C. Davis

  Moreover, he showed effective leadership in the trip across Panama.165 Soon afterward the Panama Herald published an article accusing the officers of the 4th Infantry of abandoning their men, specifically naming only Grant.166 The officers adopted resolutions condemning the anonymous report and endorsing his conduct. Grant thought of writing a defense for the home press, but changed his mind.167 Taking no notice of this first press libel established a policy that he followed for the rest of his life.

  Meanwhile, Jesse had been thinking of suggesting that his son resign and come home, perhaps to run his store at Galena, Illinois. That fit the thoughts on his own mind, but Grant told Julia that “I shall weigh the matter well before I act.”168 That time had come. He made his resignation effective July 31 to allow time to hand his responsibilities to a successor and prepare final reports.169 He also wrote one last note to Julia, from whom he had not heard a word in seven months, telling her simply that “I shall be on my way home.”170 The act stunned his father. Suddenly Jesse feared that his son “will be poorly qualifyed for the pursuits of privat life,” a sentiment at odds with his comment in 1848 that Ulysses “possessed a good deal of financial & business talent.”171

  Once back in St. Louis, Grant had his new son, the wife he adored, and no immediate employment. He approached the challenge as usual, with industry, perseverance, and optimism. While his family stayed at White Haven, he cleared Julia’s hundred acres. The following spring they moved to her brother Lewis Dent’s farm, Wish-ton-wish. Alternately he cut timbers for a house and cordwood to sell in St. Louis. In the summer of 1856 he built a modest home he called Hardscrabble. Julia had little good to say of it, but Grant felt proud of his work. He wrested a farm from raw land with only a team of horses and his own and a hired man’s labor. When not using it himself, he rented his team, making perhaps $50 a month, which helped. He expected that by 1858 he could be independent. “Evry day I like farming better and I do not doubt but that money is to be made at it,” he told Jesse, believing that soon he would be hauling potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, cabbage, beets, cucumbers, and more to St. Louis daily.

  Until then, he hinted to Jesse that a loan of $500 would see him through.172 Jesse Grant ignored the hint, regarding farming as beneath the family dignity. Then in February 1857 Grant abandoned subtlety. “I am going to make the last appeal to you,” he wrote. “There is no one els to whom I could, with the same propriety, apply.” He asked for $500 for two years. If he could not prosper with that, he was done. “I have worked hard and got but little and expect to go on in the same way,” he said, but was determined to try “until I am perfectly independent.”173 Prosperity eluded him. On December 23 he went to pawnbroker J. S. Freligh and pawned his watch to give his family a Christmas.174

  Grant later redeemed his watch, but that augured no improvement in his fortunes.175 Julia’s mother died in January 1857, and her father soon moved to the city. Grant then rented White Haven from him, paying in part by renting out Hardscrabble. Dent also rented two slaves to Grant, and sold or gave him a third, a thirty-five-year-old field hand named William Jones. The Grants moved in March 1858, and all that spring he hardly left the farm, working side-by-side with the Negroes. Meanwhile, Julia taught the children, and by now they had two more: Ellen born in 1855 and Jesse in 1858.176

  The year did not improve. The whole family fell ill. They almost lost Fred to typhoid, Julia suffered chills, and Grant’s recurring malaria lasted for months. He could scarcely work, and the farm fell behind.177 His illness cost him 1858 without a cash crop; it was time for a change. He agreed to take a share of ownership in one of Jesse’s businesses in the spring, but emphasized that he wanted a salary only temporarily, hoping to be in business for himself before long. “There is a pleasure in knowing that one’s income depends somewhat upon his own exertions and business capacity.”178 That spirit took over in the spring of 1859 when he changed his mind and commenced partnership with Julia’s cousin Harry Boggs in a general brokerage for real estate, securities, debt collection, and more.179 Grant spent weekdays in a back room at the Boggs house, with only a camp bed and a chair, and weekends at White Haven.180 Ever hopeful, he told Jesse that “I believe it will be something more than a support.”181

  In his new situation, Grant hardly had need of one field hand, let alone three. The two hired from Dent went back to the farm, but that left Jones, the only slave Grant ever owned.182 His first real exposure to slaves in any number came in St. Louis, and even more in Louisiana. Julia’s family owned many, and Dent gave her the use of servants both before and after her marriage. Grant’s postings in free states meant those slaves could not accompany him even when Julia did. Only after his resignation did he live in a household attended by servants, who were still her father’s property.183 Then Grant somehow acquired title to Jones.184 Since Dent gave his daughter the land for their farm, Jones was probably a gift, Dent hardly needing field hands when he moved to the city.

  In the spring of 1859 Julia wanted to take the children to Covington to see the Grant family, but feared to take a servant since her boat would make stops in Ohio. After the recent Dred Scott decision affirmed that the federal government had no authority over slavery in the territories, anti-slave people were outraged, and it could be dangerous for a slaveholder to stop even briefly in a free state in company with a slave.185 Just two weeks later her husband made a decision. Hard pressed to support his family let alone a slave, he went to the circuit court on March 29, 1859, and manumitted Jones.186

  The slave could have brought him $1,000 or more, even as he confessed he “could hardly tell” if his commission business would succeed.187 Grant had no strong feelings about slavery other than a general preference for the defunct Whigs, who opposed slavery’s extension. His sympathy with Mexicans and Indians under white domination could suggest that he felt the same toward slaves, but it is not evident in his developing political consciousness. He closely followed the 1858 congressional campaign in St. Louis between Republican Francis Preston Blair Jr. and Democrat John R. Barret, who defended a bogus pro-slavery territorial constitution framed at Lecompton, Kansas. Grant viewed the Lecompton Constitution as invalid, putting him at odds with Barret, yet he accepted the Dred Scott ruling on Congress’s authority.188 Grant found Blair too extreme, but at the same time would have found Barret’s weak stance on the Union unpleasant. Choosing the least of evils, he voted with a slim plurality electing Barret.189

  That was an unlikely vote for a man who soon emancipated his only slave, yet it is equally unlikely that a man morally opposed to slavery would support the pro-slavery Lecompton. Still, there was a consistency to his ballot. He claimed that “I was a Whig by education,” and the few glimpses of his political mindset certainly agree.190 When Henry Clay died in 1852, Grant was moved to declare that “Mr. Clay’s death produced a feeling of regret that could hardly be felt for any other man.”191 By his own admission, he thought little about politics in those years. Remote postings prevented soldiers from voting, which could only be done in a home county, so he missed the 1844 election when Clay lost to Polk. When Whig Zachary Taylor defeated Democrat Lewis Cass in November 1848, Grant was in Missouri and again unable to vote. Four years later when his friend Democrat Franklin Pierce defeated Winfield Scott, Grant was in Oregon.

  Then came November 1856 and Grant, a civilian resident of Missouri, cast his first ballot at the age of thirty-four. The Whigs had split, pro-slavery elements aligning with the Democrats, while anti-slavery men framed the new Republican Party or joined the pro-temperance, anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant but also largely anti-slave American Party, better known as the “Know Nothings.” Blair led the Republicans in Missouri but they were still amorphous, and a number of friends sharing what Grant called his “Whig proclivities” went over to the Know Nothings, who were themselves waning. Grant went to one of their meetings and allowed himself to be initiated as a member, but after learning more he never went again.192

  Grant flirted with temp
erance pledges once or twice, and a few scattered incidents over the next decade might suggest resentment at coddling of immigrants in preference to native-born Americans. His year in St. Louis could account for that, since by 1856 foreign-born people, most of them anti-slave, comprised half the population.193 The city also had a history of violent protest by nativists, especially as immigrants steadily took the city’s public offices. Grant pawned his watch to the Jewish broker John S. Freligh. Soon he saw a county engineer’s job that he wanted go to a Jewish immigrant from Prussia. Three anti-slave men on the hiring board chose the Prussian while the two Democrats went for Grant, reflecting party loyalty, but since immigrants held all but one St. Louis County office, Grant felt that foreigners enjoyed unfair advantage in public preferment.194

  He feared that people misunderstood him. “I am strongly identified with the Democratic party!” he complained to his father in September 1859. “Such is not the case.” He only voted for a Democrat once in 1856 when he cast for Buchanan what was in reality a vote against the new Republican candidate John C. Frémont, for Grant feared that a Republican victory might precipitate secession. Between a vote to contain slavery and a vote to avert disunion, he chose what seemed to him to be the greater good.

  Ultimately, Jones’s freedom represented personal motives. Frederick Dent was indulgent of his slaves.195 No one in his family wanted to see servants sold into an uncertain future. Jones probably came with the proviso that he be ultimately returned or freed, but Dent could not use him in the city. That left manumission as the only alternative. There would still be slaves with the Grants, for Dent feared his daughter could not run a household without servants. He did the same for his daughter Emma, too, and it is evident that they were on loan, as Dent retained full control over them long after they left his home.196 It is perhaps worth notice that while Boggs and Grant advertised themselves as agents for buying and selling almost everything, a conspicuous absence from their advertised portfolio was slaves.197 If Grant did not actively oppose slavery, neither did he promote doing business in it himself. By the fall of 1859, when something exploded at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, slaves were the last thing on his mind.

  Abolitionist John Brown and a score of followers forcibly occupied the United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry on October 17, 1859, bent on fomenting a slave uprising across the South. Since Lee was at hand, General Scott ordered him to take a company of marines and local volunteers to apprehend the raiders. Lee reached Harpers Ferry to find them barricaded in a brick fire-engine house that he easily surrounded. He sent his aide First Lieutenant James E. B. “Jeb” Stuart to the door with a demand for surrender. When Stuart signaled his refusal, a brief assault killed several and captured the rest, including Brown himself, who was subsequently tried by a Virginia court and sentenced to hang. Lee also captured a cache of weapons that Brown hid in Maryland. “They had been prepared by a band of conspirators for the purpose of invading the state of Virginia and exciting rebellion in the South,” he reported. That left not a jot of doubt in his mind that Brown and his men were traitors and deserved their fate.198 On November 30 Lee returned to Harpers Ferry with a detachment to keep order at Brown’s execution and prevent any disruption by the condemned man’s friends, whom he described as “the enemy.”199 If he even recalled Lieutenant Grant from Mexico, he had no way of knowing that the man he watched drop from the scaffold had been a boyhood friend of Grant’s father. The only threads connecting Lee and Grant were still gossamer thin.

  The affair sent a shock through the slave states. Washington delayed Lee’s return to his regiment so he could testify before a Senate committee investigating the incident.200 Hence, he was still at Arlington when an invitation came from the military affairs committee of the state legislature to help them organize and arm state militia in reaction to the threat now posed. Lee suggested that others had more knowledge and experience than he, but the general assembly’s call in a time of perceived peril should have told him that it regarded him as a man to look to in a crisis.201

  Lee felt less sure of himself than the legislature. He was a man much changed from the young officer of thirty years before. “I see my own delinquencies now when too late to amend, & point them out to you,” he told his children, warning that “you will find when you become old, it will then be too late.”202 Age and health preoccupied him. When first in Texas he stopped shaving and spoke of “my long grey beard” two months before he turned fifty.203 Two years earlier he told Mary that his death might be “not far distant.”204 A year later he spoke as a man feeling old before his time, hoping his children would be able to take care of him and his wife when they could no longer care for themselves.205 He complained of failing eyesight, could no longer read by lamplight, and needed large bold type for reading.206 His memory seemed to weaken, and like his own father, he had to ask Mary to remind him of their children’s birthdays.207 He referred to himself now as “an old soldier,” and suffered bouts of what he feared might be arthritis from “old age.”208 His legs ached, and then a pain in his right arm lasted through 1860, perhaps a sign of angina. “What a suffering set we are,” he told Custis in the spring of 1859, and a year later lamented his “complaining mood” and general dissatisfaction.209 By May of 1860 he was “tired & weary,” a feeling that he thought “belonged to old people & that therefore I was entitled to.”210

  Worse, Lee felt isolated. In Texas he skipped meals with others to avoid “uninteresting men,” wishing he was back by his campfire on the plains eating his meals alone.211 He avoided sharing quarters and found that he “would infinitely prefer my tent to my-self.”212 In a group he felt more alone than out on the prairie, and that “my pleasure is derived from my own thoughts.” He walked the banks of the San Antonio River with only the wildlife for company, the wilderness suiting his mood.213 He rarely went anywhere, and rode across country rather than on the road where he might encounter other travelers. “I never call, or stop anywhere in my travels,” he confessed. “Solitude seems more consonant to my feelings & temperament.”214 He sought little fellowship, for “I am a great advocate of people staying at home & minding their own affairs.”215 In such a country, “& such a population,” he preferred to be left alone.216

  He did not feel at ease even with his family. The months at Arlington went not well. “I was much in the way of every body,” he wrote afterward, “& my tastes & pursuits did not coincide with the rest of the household.”217 Mary ignored her health, resulting in a relapse at the time of the Norris episode, and her frustrated husband complained that her behavior was “a great aggravation to me.”218 When finally orders took him back to his regiment in early February 1860, he was anxious to get away.219 Once in Texas, he wrote her that “my presence is not necessary,” and hoped that now “you have those around you whose Compy will give you more pleasure.”220 He told Annie that “now I hope every-body is happier.” He was. Now he could “enjoy a life in the prairie & solitude again.”221 When he wrote Mildred that he led “so monotonous a life that I have nothing to tell you,” he sounded pleased.222

  His mood discolored almost everything. When a child died he called it a blessing that it was saved before worldly sin polluted it, while its death was a merciful reminder to the grieving parents to prepare themselves.223 Seeing the hope in a newlywed couple, he gloomily told Mary he felt “sad to think how soon the clouds of disappointment darkens the prospect of lifes horizon,” which she had to see as a reflection on their marriage.224 When a fellow officer died just five months after his wedding, Lee told the new widow it was for the best, that “he has left the world before its brightness & pleasure had faded.” She could remember him always “undisturbed by real or imaginary disappointments.”225

  During his quarter century of marriage, Lee’s disappointments had been real enough. Mary complained; he assuaged. She stepped outside his rules of conduct; he scolded. She acted on impulse; he kept an iron grip on his totems of control and duty. They lived out a pattern of behavior sown in t
heir courting days, and grew to full maturity with them. Lee chided her constantly over spending. He was no miser, but he kept careful account of his money, admonishing his children “never to exceed your means.” She always overspent, kept no records, wrote checks on accounts with no funds, and bought “bargains” at twice their value.226 He still could not get her to “array yourself as becomes a lady,” while he bluntly told her that her efforts to manage housekeeping at Arlington were all but pointless after a lifetime of carelessness.227

  Sometimes Lee tried to rekindle in Mary the joyful spirit of the girl he first courted. At Arlington he picked a rose in the mornings for her breakfast plate, but to little avail.228 The week of Valentine’s Day in 1855 the family had guests for dinner almost every night, and much as he disliked such parties, he convincingly pretended to enjoy them for Mary’s benefit and their daughters’.229 Her worsening physical infirmity, and his evolution from lover to hectoring protector, made her ever more complaining. Her self-pitying moods, even her physical condition, scolded a husband who seemed happier when away from her, and Lee fell into the role. Occasionally he responded to her complaints by holding a mirror to her, reminding her that “so clouded is our vision by narrow & selfish views” that people “often complain of what we ought not & blame others when the fault is in ourselves.”230 He pleaded for her to “take a happier view of things,” and heard her complaints so often that he had no answers but platitudes: “We rarely know what is best for us, & as rarely see things as they really exist,”231 “God helps those who help themselves,” “Do not worry yourself about things you cannot help or change,” “Be content to do what you can for the well being of what belongs properly to you,” “Lay nothing therefore too much to heart,” “Desire nothing too eagerly, nor think that all things can be perfectly accomplished.”232 He had become Polonius.