Free Grant and Sherman: The Friendship that Won the Civil War by Charles Bracelen Flood

elected Colonel Simon S. Goode wore high boots and a broad-brimmed hat, and for weapons carried a big bowie knife and no fewer than six small pepper-box revolvers. It soon became apparent that he was a drunk, given to moving around the camp at night in a long cloak while he quoted Napoleon and told bemused sentries, “I never sleep.” After Grant left at the end of his two-day visit, under Goode’s unsteady hand the regiment rapidly deteriorated: the new recruits rioted, protesting the lack of proper food, and when the guardhouse became infested by vermin, they burnt it. Men dug tunnels under the fence at night to carouse through the streets of Mattoon and roam the countryside, stealing food: an old sergeant commented that “there wasn’t a chicken within four miles of us.” At one point, Colonel Goode went to a tavern with the men who had been assigned to guard duty that night and were supposed to be at their sentry posts. Scores of men of the Twenty-first began to desert.
    In response to vociferous complaints from the authorities and citizens of Mattoon, the governor’s office ordered the Twenty-first Illinois to be brought to Springfield by train; on the way, they created disturbances in the coaches carrying them. Once in camp at Springfield, Colonel Goode tried unsuccessfully to restore discipline by surrounding their regimental area at the state fairgrounds with a guard detachment of eighty men who wielded clubs in an effort to keep them from breaking out of what they regarded as a prison.
    Desperate to improve the situation, two lieutenants of the Twenty-first went to call on the Illinois secretary of state. They were ushered in to see Governor Richard Yates, who was aware that all the Illinois volunteers, currently in the status of state militia, believed that they would soon have the option of going home or being sworn into federal service for a three-year term of duty as was intended. Yates took the complaints about the worst-behaving Illinois regiment at face value and convened a meeting of the regiment’s officers. They told him they wanted a new colonel, “preferably Captain Grant,” and Grant was offered the colonelcy. He accepted.
    Ulysses S. Grant, who at this moment had neither a uniform nor a horse, went out to his new command by riding on the horse-drawn trolley to the state fairgrounds. A man who saw him walk into the encampment said that the new colonel “was dressed very clumsily, in citizen’s clothes—an old coat, worn out at the elbows, and a badly dinged plug hat.”
    As Grant headed toward headquarters and the word spread that this was the new commanding officer, the recruits began to jeer, shouting, “What a colonel! Damn such a colonel!” One private asked another, “What do they mean by sending a little man like that down to command this regiment? He can’t pound sand in a dry hole.” According to an observer, “Rustic jokes were passed upon him, and one young fellow made insulting gestures behind his back. Another daredevil slipped up behind him, and flipped his hat from his head. Grant turned and said, ‘Young man, that’s not very polite,’ and walked on.”
    Grant took command on June 17, 1861. He had eleven days in which to turn this insubordinate mob into a unit that would, man by man, choose either to go home or to sign up for three years of dangerous service. After Grant’s first night in camp, there were twenty men under arrest for leaving the post without permission, some facing additional charges of being drunk and disorderly. In addition to those arrested was a notorious troublemaker known as “Mexico,” who appeared drunk in front of Grant’s tent, defying anyone to touch him. When Grant had him tied to a post, Mexico shouted at him, “For every minute I stand here I’ll have an ounce of your blood!” Grant turned to a sergeant, said, “Put a gag in that man’s mouth,” and went about his duties. When Grant decided that Mexico had stood there long enough