1860.] SETTLES IN GALENA, ILLINOIS. 171 ear, and his eyesight is failing, but he is singularly clearheaded, and remembers dates with perfect minuteness. With good opportunities in boyhood, he would have become prominent and influential in public affairs. In March, 1860, Ulysses removed to Galena, Illinois, on the Galena River, four miles above its junction with the Mississippi. The little city of six or seven thousand people has a curious Swiss look. The river cuts it in twain, and the narrow and crowded main street threads the valley, while on the north side a bluff rises like a roof for two hundred feet. Upon the summit, and in terraces along the side, perch most of the residences. One ascends to them by wooden steps, leaving the top of the tallest spire far below. Galena, in the midst of the richest lead region in the world, underlying half a dozen counties of Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin, had fourteen thousand inhabitants a quarter of a century ago. Then all the lead was brought to the city to be shipped; people and wagons crowded the narrow streets, and a Tower of Babel went up in the form of an enormous brick hotel, containing two hundred rooms. Its owners, who named it the De Soto House, builded rasher than they knew. If the ghostly form of De Soto stalks through its deserted halls, they must remind him of the primeval quiet which he found on reaching the Mississippi. The intrusive railway, giving to half a dozen little stations equal facilities for shipping lead, has cut down the magnificent expectations of Galena, and left her far behind Dubuque, Iowa, nineteen miles distant, and on the other side of the Mississippi. Near Galena, in early days, Winfield Scott, Jefferson Davis, Albert Sydney Johnston, David E. Twiggs, and other well-known army officers, were frequently stationed. E. D. Baker, the Oregon senator, who was killed at the head of his regiment at Ball's Bluff in 1861, and William H. Hooper, Congressional delegate from Utah, were both old residents of the vicinity. At Hazel Green, Wisconsin, ten miles north, sleeps James G. Percival, the modest and lovable poet, the accomplished linguist and savant. 172 A CLERK IN THE LEATHER STORE. [1860. Grant's father-in-law, Colonel Dent, was likewise familiar with Galena in early days, and erected one of the very first buildings. He traded with the miners, supplied the military posts above with provisions, and ascended to the Falls of St. Anthony on the first steamer which ever ventured up to that point. Indian warriors, squaws, papooses, and dogs, on the approach of the boat, fled to the nearest American fort, and reported that an evil spirit, belching fire and smoke, was coming to destroy them. Grant took the little dwelling shown in our picture. It is on the top of a picturesque bluff, and he had to climb stairs two hundred feet high every time he went home from the store. The leather-house had a capital of one hundred thousand dollars, and its annual business reached the same amount. It dealt in shoe-findings, saddlery hardware, French calf, fancy linings, and morocco, all bought in the East, and in domestic leather tanned in the chestnut oak-woods of Ohio, from hides purchased in Galena. The captain cheerfully began his new duties. He wore a rough working dress and his favorite slouched hat; and smoked a clay pipe incessantly. He was temperate in every thing else, for he had totally abstained from drink for several years. He was courteous and popular with all who met him on business, but never sought acquaintances. He was a very poor salesman, could not chaffer, and did not always know the price of an article. So, whenever a difficult or an important customer was to be dealt with, Orvil, Simpson, or one of the clerks took him in charge. He weighed leather for filling orders, and bought hides, which he frequently unloaded and carried into the store on his shoulders. One day Rowley, clerk of the Circuit Court, sent down for leather to cover a desk in his office. The captain walked up to the court-house with the leather on his back, measured it, cut it, and tacked it on. A year and a half later, Grant was a major-general in the field, and Rowley a captain on his staff. During one of the periodic depressions of western currency, the house bought pork and shipped it to New York to pay Eastern bills, and save the enormous price of ex 1860.] A HARD STRUGGLE FOR A LIVING. 173 change. One day some farmers, who had brought a load of pork, asked for gold instead of notes, to pay their taxes. The clerk offered it at a rate which Grant thought exorbitant, so he suggested that they go to the bank and learn the current premium. The result was that they saved twelve dollars. Could such a man be expected to succeed in trade? In truth, Grant felt out of place. The life was distasteful to him. Jesse spent a few weeks in Galena every year, but the business was mainly in the hands of Orvil, thirteen years the younger, a fact which could not have been pleasant to the elder brother. An old neighbor remarks :- "Though very unnoticeable he attended to business faithfully and talked a great deal, but always about places that he had seen-never of what he had read. His conversation was entertaining, but fact, and not fancy, interested him." "I first encountered him," says another, "coming down the hill toward the store with Orvil. He wore a blue overcoat and old slouched hat, and looked like a private soldier. He had not more than three intimates in the whole town." The bread and butter question was still a serious one. The rent of the dwelling was only one hundred and twentyfive dollars per annum. Much of the time Mrs. Grant had no servant, but took the whole care of her house and the four children. Her husband had no extravagant habits; though not naturally frugal, he was now so perforce. Still, the six hundred dollars a year proved utterly inadequate to support him. It was raised to eight hundred, but even upon this he was unable to live. The want of money hampered him, and he went to the war considerably in debt, but paid every dollar from his earliest earnings in the army. Who will ever forget the autumn of 1860-the Presidential campaign which stirred every county in the Union and proved the last before the great rebellion. The Lead Region was thoroughly alive. Galena, -a democratic city,was in the strongest republican Congressional district of the United States. Elihu B. Washburne, a leading public man of the Northwest had been its representative for |