1849.] WEDDING. WINTER AT SACKETT'S HARBOR. 129

AFTER remaining a few days at home, Grant returned to St. Louis, where, on the twenty-second of August, 1848, he was married, at the bride's residence, on the corner of Fourth and Cerre Streets, to Miss Julia B. Dent. He had saved her brother's life, in Mexico, and opposition to the match had ceased. It was a merry wedding, as all weddings should be. The dancing continued until midnight. A Santa Fé traveler diverted the company with a lively and graceful Spanish dance. Among the guests were many friends of the Dent family, and many of Grant's old comrades from the city and the barracks.

Soon after the wedding, the regiment was ordered to the northern frontier, with head-quarters at Detroit, where companies C and E were stationed. Though Grant's place as quartermaster was with head-quarters, a brother officer got him ordered to the undesirable winter residence of Sackett's Harbor, on Lake Ontario, where one company was, and the rival secured the position of acting quartermaster. Grant uncomplainingly obeyed, and, with his bride, spent the winter at Sackett's Harbor. But his case was laid before General Scott, who promptly ordered him back to Detroitafter the closing of navigation had rendered winter travel impracticable. He returned there, however, early in the following spring. With characteristic magnanimity, he never revenged himself upon the officer who had caused his banishment. On the contrary, he aided and befriended him in after life.

At Detroit Grant spent more than two years, in the dull, monotonous existence of a garrison officer in peace times, its daily routine of idleness only enlivened by an occasional "board of survey." The record of one of these exciting

I

130 THE YOUNG COUPLE BEGIN HOUSEKEEPING,

[1849.

events now before me, shows that in May, 1849, a few tentpoles, tents, knapsacks, and haversacks, were examined and thus condemned :—

"The Board are of the opinion that the above-enumerated articles have been worn out in the service, and are not fit for further use.

"U. S. GRANT, First Lieutenant, Fourth Infantry, President." The old barracks in the upper part of Detroit-not outside of it, where Fort Wayne stands-were tumble-down affairs. They extended from Catharine Street to the Gratiot Road, four or five blocks, and from Rivard Street to Russell, one block. The buildings were of wood, and surrounded by a board fence. The sutler's store, hospital, and officers' quarters have been removed a short distance, and are now occupied as dwellings or stores. The ground upon which they formerly stood is covered with residences and business blocks. Our German fellow-citizens have taken possession. Just north of the old fort is one of the largest breweries in the country, and on the corner where Grant's office was, an immense lager-beer hall is rising.

The barracks were only used as quarters for the men. The married officers lived in the town outside.

Lieutenant and Mrs. Grant immediately began housekeeping, with the bravery of honest, self-respecting poverty and the glowing confidence of young love, which sees only rosy tints in the overarching heavens. Their first home was near the garrison, in a little frame dwelling, with an arbor in front. It still stands on Fort Street East, between Russell and Rivard—a block which has changed very little since. Then, as now, Fort Street West was a fashionable quarter, but Fort Street East was occupied by Germans and other working people, and by some undesirable residents. When Grant took the house, it was suggested that he might have disorderly neighbors. But his domesticity was true, and he replied :

"No matter; if home has a hell outside of it, it ought to be a heaven within."

The dwelling belonged to George M. Rich, and was hired for two hundred and fifty dollars a year. Old neigh

1850.]

AND A SON IS BORN TO THEM.

131

bors still recall the pleasant interchange of evening visits, with their games of dominoes, and stories of Mexico and of pioneer life in Detroit.

In the spring of 1850 they left this house, Mrs. Grant going to her father's, in St. Louis, where her first son was born, and her husband making his home with his friend and comrade, Captain J. H. Gore, in a cottage rented from Mr. W. A. Bacon, at two hundred and fifty dollars per year, and situated on Jefferson Avenue, at the corner of Russell Street. With the Gores they remained permanently after Mrs. Grant's return. Jefferson is now The Avenue of Detroit, as one egotistical thoroughfare in every city is bent on being called. The pleasant cottage in which they lived, itself unchanged, is now surrounded by elegant residences. But then the country was very open. Immediately back of the house was a pasture. There were no sidewalks and the soldiers had laid a single plank up to the barracks, and dug a ditch beside it for a drain.

As their landlord had been for several years connected with the army, his heart was warm toward officers. He was by profession a teacher, and his little school-house stood immediately back of the dwelling; so he encountered both tenants nearly every day. He found the elder one very sociable, and had frequent chats with him. But Grant was silent, and Bacon rather regarded him as the boy and Gore as the man. Though seeing him daily for twelve months, Bacon remembered so little of him that, thirteen years later, when the "Unconditional Surrender" letter was flashed over the wires to a thrilled and exulting North, Bacon pondered-"Grant, Grant: was not that a Lieutenant Grant who lived in my house with Captain Gore?"

Finally, remembering that the lieutenant had one day scratched his name with a diamond ring on a pane of glass in an upper chamber, he went home and looked at the autograph, before he was quite sure of his old tenant's name.

Detroit was the head-quarters of a large department, of which Major Sibley, from whom our Sibley tent is named, was quartermaster. Grant was quartermaster and commissary only of the post. He spent little time in his own

132

GRANT'S LIFE IN DETROIT.

[1850.

office at the barracks, leaving its light duties to his sergeant; but he was frequently at the office of the departmental quartermaster, where he ordered supplies for his regiment. The present Quartermaster-General of Michigan, then Major Sibley's clerk, recalls that after first meeting the post quartermaster, asked of Grant's sergeant:

66

Why in the world have they put that lieutenant in as quartermaster and commissary? Is it because he knows less than any other officer in the regiment?"

"He is the ablest and best officer in the old Fourth," replied the sergeant indignantly. "He knows the duties of a soldier better than any other man in the regiment."

Two doors below Woodward Street, on Jefferson Avenue, in a building yet standing, was the large, well-filled sutler store of the important post. One proprietor was a son of General Brady, famous in the War of 1812, and in Grant's day spending his old age in Detroit. This store was the favorite head-quarters both for retired officers and those on duty. In the back room a barrel of whisky stood always on tap, and each visitor helped himself, Grant not more nor less frequently than the rest.

Frontier posts, in peace times, are fraught with the most dangerous temptations for army officers. Active campaigning has left in them that insatiable craving for excitement which is kindled by all experiences full of novelty, of hardship, and of peril. However conscientious, they have practically nothing to do. In many cases, too, they are without the restraining influence of wives and children. Is it strange that so many fall deep into drunkenness and

other vices?

Grant, who never could endure absolute idleness, did not seek relief in any excess of drinking. Horse-flesh was his "particular vanity." Detroit contained only twentyfive thousand people, and all the army officers were well known. The old residents still remember Grant for this trait. Whenever asked for reminiscences, they immediately tell stories of his gray horse, brought from Mexico, which was finally raffled off; or of his frequent gallops on the hardy little French ponies, which ran wild on the marshes

1850.]

OUTDOOR AND INDOOR PLEASURES.

133

just outside of town; or of his running or riding races, sometimes, to the consternation of the timid and the delight of the gay, on Jefferson Avenue itself, where his face was exceedingly familiar. Everybody knew the appearance of "Sam Grant" in a cutter in winter or a buggy in summer, flying along after his "Cicotte mare." Then, as now, driving was the favorite recreation of Detroit, and the people decidedly approved both of him and the beautiful jet-black little mare, for which, in the beginning, Grant agreed to pay Cicotte, her owner, two hundred dollars, on condition that she would pace a mile in two fifty-five, drawing two men in a buggy.

The place chosen for this test was Jefferson Avenue, where the spirited mare finished her mile inside of the prescribed time, with Grant and Cicotte riding behind her. the quartermaster bought her, and kept her for several years. Finally, he sent her to St. Louis, where she won a race for a thousand dollars, and was afterward sold for fourteen hundred.

Detroit had many attractions. A frontier city, and the home of Cass and Brady and other retired army officers, it was necessarily hospitable; and containing many old French families, it was fond of dancing and other gayeties. During the winter there were weekly assemblies at the leading hotel, the Exchange, where it is remembered that Grant, though a constant attendant, very seldom danced, but stood quietly looking on, with a pleasant word for everybody, and ready to drink in moderation with his more active comrades fresh from the cotillion. Mesdames Grant and Gore were fond of society, so there were also agreeable parties and masquerades at home, where candles, standing on stags' antlers, did service for gas, and supper was laid on the back piazza—the pleasant back piazza overlooking the garden full of peach-trees, where Grant loved to smoke his cigars in the golden twilight of summer evenings.

Rarely was life disturbed by more exciting events. Sometimes the military were called out to defend the authorities, holding some wretched fugitive slave in cus