CHAPTER III

AD INTERIM

I. WASTED YEARS

PEACE with Mexico brought lethargy to Grant. After his mild experience with the world as a cadet and then in garrison and camp, he had had his fling with war and had come through with merit, though no great prestige. But he was now condemned to the monotony of a subaltern's life in frontier posts, with nothing to look forward to but years of drudgery, unless he had the luck to strike a tour of duty which would open up the way to resignation and agreeable employment in civil life-like the professorship in mathematics to which he had aspired. But there was nothing of the kind in sight. As quartermaster he was stationed first at Sackett's Harbor, on Lake Ontario, for a cheerless winter, because another officer with greater pull at Washington had grabbed Detroit, the regimental headquarters which was supposed to have attractions in a social way, although a frontier post. Then for two years, Scott having righted this injustice, Grant had Detroit, to which he was entitled by position, but as he had no social instincts, being dumb with women, awkward and shy with men,

he got no pleasure from its tinsel gayeties. Few people knew that he was there. Another gloomy winter at Sackett's Harbor, and then in 1852 orders to goldcrazed California with his regiment. There was a baby boy, born two years earlier at White Haven, and a second on the way. He left his little family at Bethel and started on the tiresome journey to the coast.

On this trip he had a chance to show resourcefulness in an emergency, his only worthy opportunity between Chapultepec and '61. Transportation across the Isthmus had broken down by reason of the rush, and it was unexpectedly put up to Grant as quartermaster, by such ingenious methods as he could devise, to get his expedition of eight hundred people to the other side. There he found cholera and a far heavier burden all the details of caring for the sick, the burial of a hundred dead, the countless grewsome and mournful offices of such a plague. "Grant seemed to be a man of iron. . . seldom sleeping and then only two or three hours at a time. . . he was like a ministering angel to us all," writes one who knew him there. It is a striking thing that Grant in later years spoke oftener of his experience at Panama than of his battles in the Civil War.

His service on the coast was at Vancouver, on the Columbia, and at Humboldt, two hundred miles

from San Francisco, where in due time he gained his captaincy. It was a dismal life. He abhorred hunting, fishing bored him- the only recreations of his fellow officers; there were few books to read; he pined for wife and babies, one of whom he had not seen. He showed a letter once to an old sergeant on which his wife had traced the outline of his baby's hand, and as he put the letter back without a word his eyes were wet - a likely incident; for all his life his deepest sentiment was for his home.

Like many another officer thus circumstanced, he drank more than he should and in his case a little was too much. It did not cloud his judgment or impede his speech, but it impaired his power of locomotion and he was physically helpless while his mind was clear. Those who knew him testify to this so uniformly that it must be true; and while not of supreme importance it cannot be ignored. It helps explain the obstacles he had to overcome at the beginning of the war and the peculiar influence which Rawlins had so long as Rawlins lived. Without it we should miss an angle of his character which throws a dart of color for our better understanding of the man. We should not have had Lincoln's pat comment after Shiloh: "I can't spare this man. He fights." Or his whimsical remark that if he knew Grant's brand of whiskey he would send a barrel to his other generals.

Just why Grant quit the army has been a question in dispute. The reason which he gives in his own story, that he saw no chance of supporting wife and children on his pay and so concluded to resign, is no doubt strictly true. It is in harmony with what we know was his intention when he left West Point. There was nothing in the service, especially in time of peace, for which he cared, and when he left it no one could foresee the conflict close at hand. But there were circumstances not entirely pleasant which conspired to fix the date of his decision upon a step which had been long in mind. He would, of course, have liked to turn his military training to account in some profession better suited to his taste, but in his exile to the coast that prospect disappeared, and two or three unlucky business ventures taught him that he could not supplement his meager earnings in that way. His monthly pay as a lieutenant was thirty dollars, and besides he had for rations eighty cents a day and for a servant, sixty-five, with wood for fuel, a single room and kitchen an income all told of seventythree dollars and fifty cents a month. His monthly pay and allowance as captain during his last month of service was ninety-two dollars and fifty cents, and with the slowness of promotion that was all he could have expected for years a dismal prospect for a man whose wife and babies were by the speediest

route eight thousand miles away. As he was near his captaincy he, of course, had pride in taking on the higher rank, but after that the sooner civil life for him the better. Thus it stood with him in April, 1854, when, having been intoxicated while paying off his men, he was reproved by his commanding officer, Major R. C. Buchanan, noted throughout the service as a martinet, who told him that if he did not resign charges would be preferred. Grant resigned. He did not have to, and officers who served with him have Isaid that he would not have been sentenced to dismissal if he had stood trial. But he was tired of barracks life; he had just become a captain. He was anxious to get East where he could be with those who loved him and were dependent upon him, and without reflecting that the incident might later prove embarrassing, he wrote a letter resigning his new commission the same day he accepted it, to take effect July 31, 1854. By doing this he left his record clear of a court martial, but he could not guess that he would ever wear a uniform again or be of consequence enough to stir to life old service scandal and stimulate its sting. To Jefferson Davis, as Secretary of War, it fell to accept Grant's resignation. Jesse Grant was thriftily disturbed when he got word of it from the War Department. There is on file there his letter to Davis of June 1, protesting: "I never wished him to