Grant and Sherman: The Friendship that Won the Civil War Read Free Page A

cheeks were round and plump and rosy; his hair was fine and brown, very thick and wavy. His eyes were a clear blue, and always full of light. His features were regular, pleasingly molded and attractive, and his figure so slender, well formed, and graceful that it was like that of a young prince to my eye … When he rode up to White Haven that bright day in the spring of 1843 he was pretty as a doll.
     

    Grant came to call several times, always urged to stay for supper by Mrs. Dent, who liked him immediately. Of the slender lieutenant’s quiet political discussions with her husband, she commented, “That young man explains politics so clearly that I can understand the situation perfectly.” Emma and her fifteen-year-old sister Nellie began to regard him as a gift that had somehow been bestowed upon them. Then their vivacious older sister Julia, who had recently turned nineteen, came back from St. Louis. “She was not exactly a beauty,” Emma said, mentioning that one of Julia’s eyes would go out of focus in a condition known as strabismus, “but she was possessed of a lively and pleasing countenance.” Grant suddenly began to ride over from the barracks every other day. “It did not take Nell and myself long to see that we were no longer the attractions at White Haven,” Emma noted. Having grown up on a big farm with three older brothers as well as her three younger sisters, Julia loved the outdoors. “He and she frequently went fishing along the banks of the creek, and many a fine mess of perch I’ve seen them catch together.” Julia’s impression of her new friend Lieutenant Grant was that he was “a darling little lieutenant.”
    An excellent rider, Julia had a spirited Kentucky mare. According to Emma, “Lieutenant Grant was one of the best horsemen I ever saw, and he rode a fine blooded animal … Many a sharp race they used to have in the fine mornings before breakfast or through the sunset and twilight after supper.”
    White-haired Colonel Dent—a courtesy title by which many men of his station in life were then known in the South, regardless of military experience—could be a peevish man, given to sitting by himself on the porch reading a newspaper and puffing on a long reed-stemmed pipe, but he, like his wife, believed in having many young guests. Grant was encouraged to bring his brother officers with him. There were picnics and dances around the countryside; one of the young officers always included was a handsome giant named James Longstreet, a cousin of Colonel Dent’s who had been known at West Point as Pete.
    When Julia’s pet canary died, Grant organized a funeral for the bird. Julia remembered that “he was kind enough to make a little coffin for my canary bird and he painted it yellow. About eight officers attended the funeral of my little pet.”
    It seemed not to occur to this young couple that they were falling in love. At a time when Grant was home on leave visiting his family in Ohio, his regiment was ordered to Louisiana to become part of the Army of Observation during the annexation of Texas, in the confrontation that would lead to the Mexican War. An officer friend told Julia that if Grant did not appear at White Haven by the following Saturday, it would mean that he had gone straight on down the Mississippi from Ohio to catch up to his regiment and “would not be at the Barracks again.” Julia later wrote: “Saturday came and no Lieutenant. I felt very restless and, ordering my horse, rode alone towards the Barracks … I halted my horse and waited and listened, but he did not come. The beating of my own heart was the only sound I heard. So I rode slowly and sadly home.”
    Grant was in fact hastening toward St. Louis from Ohio, where, on learning that he was about to be sent far from Julia for a long time, he discovered that there was something “serious the matter with me.” When he arrived at Jefferson Barracks, the post was virtually deserted, with his friend