Chapter X




Grant's Difficulties in Securing a Command


The command of the local company was, of course, offered to Grant
as soon as it was formed, but he declined, believing himself
qualified for somewhat higher rank than a captaincy of volunteers.
Nevertheless, he did all he could to prepare the recruits for active
service in the field and when they were ordered to Springfield,
the capital of Illinois, he journeyed there to see them properly
mustered into the service of the state.

Springfield was a hubbub of noise and a rallying point for well-meaning
incompetence when he arrived upon the scene. New officers in new
uniforms swaggered in every public meeting place, bands of music
played martial airs at every street corner and volunteers sky-larked
and paraded in all sorts of impossible uniforms and with every form
of theatric display. But system and order were absolutely lacking,
and the adjutant-general's office, littered with blanks and well-nigh
knee deep with papers, was the most helpless spot in the welter of
confusion. All the material for a respectable army was at hand,
but how to form it into an effective force was more than anyone
seemed to know. The mass of military forms and blanks intended
for that purpose was mere waste paper in the hands of the amiable
but ignorant insurance agent who bore the title of adjutant-general,
and no one of the patriotic mob had sufficient knowledge to instruct