Last updated: July 30, 2021
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"When Grant went A-Courtin'," by His Wife's Sister: Emma Dent Casey
Library of Congress
I was a very little girl when general Grant first came to our house; in fact, I was not yet seven years old. It was I whom he first met, and in years after, when my sister Julia had become his wife, it used to be my teasing boast that I knew him best because I had known him longest. All this was a long time ago, a very long time ago, as I look back upon all that has happened since. For I was only seven then; now I am two and seventy. We lived at White Haven then, the place where I met General Grant, and where he met my sister and courted her, and where they afterward lived at different times.
The farm of White Haven was even prettier than its name, for the pebbly, shining Gravois ran right through it, and 'there were beautiful groves growing all over it., and acres upon acres of grassy meadows where the cows used to stand knee-deep in blue grass and clover. We lived at St. Louis in the winters, but we always spent the summers at White Haven. It was a fine farm of twelve hundred acres, which my father, Frederick Dent, had bought soon after he moved from Cumberland, Md. to Missouri. It was about twelve miles from St. Louis and something like five or six miles from Jefferson Barracks.
The house we lived in stood in the centre of a long sweep of wooded valley and the creek ran through the trees not .far below it. The house itself was a pleasant, rambling old place, painted white and with big double porches running the full length of the front. There was a great stone chimney at each end, and these, as well as the porches, were covered with clambering honeysuckles and other vines. Through the grove of locust trees a walk led from the low porch steps to an old-fashioned turnstile gate, about fifty yards from the house. Some little distance behind the house were the stables and pens for the stock, and flanking these on either side were the eighteen cabins where our slave people lived. It was just a sweet, old fashioned, "down south Befo’ de wah" sort of place where my father was proud to dispense real old-time Southern hospitality.
My father had taken many of the notions of the Southern planter to Missouri with him. He was a Marylander by birth and the first white male child born in the town of Cumberland. He had lived in Pennsylvania for a while and married my mother there. He moved to Missouri and prospered. White Haven was bought tor a summer residence and here all his children, save John and Julia, came into the world.
The Old Home Before the war
There were eight of us children-four boys and four girls. John the oldest, was followed by George Wrenshal, Fred ·(afterward General Dent), and Nellie, in 1828, then Mary, in 1830, and it was my fate to arrive some six years later – the last to come and the last to go away, for all the others are dead.
My father was at this time a white-haired man, smooth-shaven, and, like all the Dents, rather under medium size. He usually dressed in the sober black long coat, dark trousers, and high stock habitually affected by gentlemen of the period. He was a man little given to talking, much preferring to sit in a big rocking-chair on the front porch with a newspaper in his hand and a long reed-stemmed or churchwarden pipe in his mouth. He was a Democrat of the old school, an ardent southerner, and, though opposed to secession, he was later called a "rebel.” He owned slaves up to the very day of the Emancipation Act, and though the time came when he, naturally, called himself a “Grant" man, he remained loyal to the principles of Democracy, as he conceived them, until the day of his death - which took place in the White House during General Grant’s second administration.
I may say here that my own views always agreed with my father’s in politics, and in these He was always very fond of saying during the war that "Emmy and I are the only rebels in the house.”
My Mother was a Miss Ellen Wrenshall before her marriage, and both her parents were of English birth. She was a small, slender woman with rather serious gray eyes, a smiling mouth, and a gentle voice. I remember that she wore snowy caps and dainty kerchiefs on her head, as I have occasionally seen very old-fashioned old ladies do since.
I was nearing my seventh birthday, that bright spring afternoon in 1843 when, with my four little darky playmates, Henrietta, Sue, Ann, and Jeff, I· went out hunting for birds' nests. They were my slaves as well as my chums, for father had given them to me at birth, and as we were all of about an age, we used to have some good times together. This day, I remember, we were out in front of the turnstile and I had my arms full of birds' nests and was clutching a tiny unfledged birdling in one hand when a young stranger rode blithely up to the stile.
"How do you do, little girl?" he called out to me. "How do you do? Does Mr. Dent live here?"
I was very much embarrassed. Every feminine mind will know how I felt to be caught like that. Besides, I thought him the handsomest person I had ever seen in my life, this strange young man. He was riding a splendid horse, and, oh, he sat it so gracefully! The whole picture of him and his sleek, prancing steed was so good to look upon that I could do nothing but stare at it - so forgetting the poor little crying thing in my hand that I nearly crushed it to death. Of course, I knew he was a soldier from the barracks, because he had on a beautiful blue suit with gold buttons down the front, but he looked too young to be an officer. I stood staring at him., and he sat his horse, smiling at me until he said again:
"Come, little girl. Can’t you answer me? Is this Mr. Dent’s house?" By this time Jeff was standing on his head and cracking his bare, black ankles together, in a modest effort to "show off", while the other little pickaninnies were capering about and slyly giggling, as if to urge me to some new mischief. But I said at last, "Yea, Sir", and let my arms drop and the little bird and the treasured nests all went tumbling down on the ground. The young stranger laughed pleasantly and got off his horse.
We children followed him up to the porch, trailing in his wake and close to his feet like a troop of little black-and-tan puppies. On the way he asked me several questions, which I do not now remember, and which I don’t think I answered at all. At the porch we heard him introduce himself to my father as Lieutenant Grant. Then my mother and sister Nellie came out to meet him, and my mother sent us children scampering off to our play again. But the charms of the wild were deadened to me for the time. I came back to sit on the steps of the porch and gaze, round-eyed and silent, into the handsome face of the stranger.
The young soldier explained the cause of his visit. Ha had been, he said, the roommate and classmate of my brother Fred (afterward General Dent) at West Point, and when he had been ordered from the Academy to Jefferson Barracks, Fred had made him promise to call on us. My father and mother made him welcome and he spent the afternoon with us.
The Lieutenant Captivates Little "Emmy"
That was our first introduction to Lieutenant Grant. Julia was not at home upon this occasion. She had been spending the winter with a friend in St. Louis, and had not yet returned. My brothers were not at White Haven that day, either, and so the burden of entertaining Fred’s friend fell upon my parents and sister Nellie. Nellie, in the absence of Julia, was, of course, the "young lady" of the house, and no one could play the part better than that self-confident young miss of fifteen years. My own contribution toward the entertainment of the stranger was one continuous stare up at his face.
But no one ought to have been blamed for staring at him. At that time Lieutenant Grant’s personal appearance was very attractive. He was very youthful looking, even for his age, which was just twenty-one. His 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. Indeed, I know that many parsons who only knew General Grant after he had become famous did not think him handsome, but I can assure them that when he rode up to White Haven that bright day in the spring of 1843 he was as pretty as a doll. At any rate, he enchanted me. He was my first sweetheart.
Having found the road to our house, Lieutenant Grant seemed to find it pleasant to ride out that way frequently. He came perhaps twice a week during the next two months and generally stayed through the afternoon and sometimes to supper. We all liked him, particularly the feminine part of the family, and sister Nellie and I began to wrangle as to which one of us should "have" him.
That was lots of fun for Nellie, who was a great tease, but I am afraid it sometimes taxed my childish jealousy to the limit. sister Julia was still in St. Louis, and so the Lieutenant and I had some great romps together. He always called me his little girl, and many a delightful ride I’ve had on his shoulder. I remember that he used to … "too big a girl" for such things.
But I do not think my resentment against Lieutenant Grant ever lasted very long, for everywhere he went about the place I and my small train of raggedy little darkies tagged after him. Sometimes, when he could not get rid of us any other way, we and Nellie used to get the horses and go out for short horseback rides. It was their only means of escape from the aharp eyes of me and my small cohort of "black perils".
Sister Julia Arrives Upon the Scene.
The Sister Julia came home. She had already heard of the Lieutenant through the letters of my mother, who liked him very much. Quite to the contrary of the usual course under such circumstances. Julia appeared to like the young soldier, also from the first moment they met. As tor Lieutenant Grant - I have heard him say since that with him it was a case of love at first sight. His attentions certainly seemed to indicate it. Ho also told me once, when he was in the White House, that he had never had but one love affair, but the one sweetheart in his life. Not even the boyish amours that usually precede a young man’s real passion had ever been his. His wife was the "lady of his dreams, the heroine of his romance.
At the time Lieutenant Grant met her, sister Julia was as dainty a little creature as one would care to see. She was not exactly a beauty, a slight defect of one of her eyes marring the harmony of her features, but she was … pleasing countenance. Aside from this cast in her eye she was very prettily made, indeed, end was considered to have an exquisite figure. She was plump, but neither tall nor stout, and she had the slimmest, prettiest foot and hand I have ever seen on any woman, while her arms were beautifully rounded. Her hair and eyes were brown, and she had a rosy complexion that would be the envy of most girls of today.
The defect in Julia's eye was due to an accident in babyhood, and it never appeared to detract from her charms in the least. Indeed, it was in General Grant’s eyes an added grace, for he would never allow it to be remedied, although the very simplest use of the surgeon’s knife would have removed it. I remember upon one occasion, during their residence at the White House, in the General's first term, Mrs. Grant determined to have the operation performed. She had never been able to quite believe the General when he had said that he loved her more with the cast than he would without it, because she had had it when he courted her. So she determined to have it remedied and surprise him. Evor7 precaution to keep any knowledge of the operation from "Dudy" - the name by which Mrs. Grant always called her husband was taken. A specialist was summoned to the White House in secret and one or the children’s bedrooms improvised into an operating room £or the time being. But at the very moment when Julia was in the act of submitting to the knife, through some unforeseen cause, the General unexpectedly entered the room. He took in the situation at a glance and immediately showed - that rarest of emotions with him – positive annoyance.
"Now, Julia," he said, "I don’t want you to do that. Your eye was that way when I married you and it’s got to stay that way. You’re pretty enough to suit me just as you are."
And he ordered the surgeon away. My sister carried that defect with her to her death.
But, to get back to their first acquaintance, the visits of the young army officer to our house became even more frequent after Julia came home. He rode over from the barracks perhaps aa often as four times a week and was always pressed to stay to supper by my hospitable mother. He never seemed to require too much pressing, however; it did not take Nell and myself long to see that we were no more the attractions at White Haven for Lieutenant Grant. He showed a very quiet but marked preference for Julia’s company, which only she pretended not to notice. There was nothing of the "gushy" in his attentions to her, however, in fact, Julia was not the sort of girl to encourage that kind of thing, and what with four teasing brothers and two younger sisters on hand constantly, life would have been made something of a burden for her if she had. Their. conduct toward each other was always frank and unaffected; in fact, their whole manner toward each other was that of a boy and a girl who are friends and not ashamed to show their liking for each other. There was little or the sentimental about either of them.
My mother, especially, was very much pleased with the young soldier. She had grown to be very fond of him even before this, because of the simplic1ty of' demeanor and unconsciousness of self which always distinguished him. She greatly enjoyed hearing him discuss politics with my father, and I think the rare common sense he displayed, his quiet, even tones, free from gestures and without affectation, especially attracted her. On many and many an occasion, after he had ridden away, I have heard her say:
"That young man will be heard from some day. He has a good deal in him. He will make his mark.”
There were some merry days along the Gravois then., with sister Julia at home and the Lieutenant riding over from the barracks about every other day. He and she frequently went fishing along the shady banks of the creek, and many a fine mess of perch I’ve seen them catch together. Sometimes my brothers and Nellie and their friends would go with them, and we would have quite a fishing-party. More often my full train of little darkies, with my small self" acting aa engine and pilot, would tag after them, insisting upon carrying the bait or catching the "hoppergrasses" used to entice catfish to the hook, or even upon doing part of' the angling ourselves. Generally they did not appear to mind us much, but sometimes the lover and the lady would "give us the slip" and gallop away on horseback – after having lured us further down the stream, to look for a finer fishing-hole. I would be quite disconsolate at first, upon discovering such perfidy, and would frequently go into perfect tantrums of anger at being so imposed upon. But when they returned, the Lieutenant could generally tease or coax me out of my temper-though I sometimes gave him back the "sass" which white youngsters who play with colored children so easily pick up, before I surrendered.
One instance of my "sass", at about this time, I remember, which he took occasion to recall to me a good many years later at a dinner in the White House. He had not been paying attention to Julia very long at this time, and she had gone away from home again for a short visit. I was going to school in a little log schoolhouse about half a mile distant, and I always rode a little pony which Billy, the black boy, let all the way. He was my pony, and I was very jealous of letting my sisters ride him. On this particular morning Lieutenant Grant, who had spent the night at our house, came out into the yard as Billy brought up my horse and said that he would ride to school with me. Sister Nelly heard what he said, and as it was a very fine morning for a gallop, she said:
"Why, Emmy, I believe I'll go too. Then Billy needn't go with us. I’ll ride your pony and you can get up behind me."
"Indeed. I'll not,” I said. "You shan’t ride my pony with me on behind. He’s my pony. I won’t do it.”
Nelly was annoyed, but the Lieutenant laughed, "Oh, well, then, Emmy," he cried, leaning down at me from his saddle, "you may ride with me. How would you like that? Come, you shall sit up here on my lap."
"'No, I will not," I said, "I won’t ride on your lap, either." I was quite as indignant as any miss of seven years could have been. The soldier was vastly amused, but he stopped teasing and began to try coaxing.
“All right, Emmy. But I'd ride in your lap if I could. Will you ride behind me, then - if you won’t ride behind Miss Nelly?”
When a Little Girl was Saucy Long Ago.
After a little more cajolery, I yielded to this plan. He reached down his hand, I put my foot on his stirrup, and he swung me up behind him. Very gingerly, and only after a little persuasion, I put my arms around his waist to hold on, and away we went.
As we emerged from the wood, and went slowly down the hill into the valley, my gallant Sir Knight glanced toward the schoolhouse and saw all the youngsters inside with their noses pressed flat against the windowpanes. School had "taken up", and its small denizens were studying us with more zeal than ever they gave to their books. Lieutenant Grant’s eyes twinkled as he turned and said over his shoulder, with an odd gravity in his voice:
"'They’re looking at us, Emmy. They’re saying, "Look at Emmy Dent; She’s got her sweetheart with her.'"
Nothing could have ruffled more my small dignity.
"No, you’re not my sweetheart, you old black n*****r fool." I cried. "More like sister Nell’s beau, you mean."
The Lieutenant flushed to the roots of his hair. And Nelly blushed as furiously as the poor lieutenant.
"Hush, Emmy, hush!" she cried, very red.·
Long year’s afterward, when White Haven was only a memory to all of us. General Grant proved that he still remembered those early days by twitting me with this incident during a dinner at the White House. There was a distinguished company present, and I had just paid him one of my prettiest compliments, when he called the attention of the whole assembly to me: .
"You have heard what Mrs. Casey has just said", · he cried, with his eye merrily twinkling. "Can you believe that this same person once called me “an old black n*****r fool?"
Then, to my great confusion and amid the laughter of the guests, he very solemnly related the whole circumstance almost aa I have done here.
Not long after this Julia came home again and Lieutenant Grant quite naturally resumed his courtship. And now that my other sister’s eyes and mine were opened to the true state of affairs we resigned our aspirations and became "just children" again.
It did not interfere in the least with our good times, and what I like to think that we did not interfere too much in the good times of - what I might now call., perhaps, the enamored couple. The soldier did most of his courting on horseback. My sister was an enthusiastic rider and a good one as well, and she had a splendid Kentucky mare, which she named Missouri Belle, and which was as fleet as a doe. Lieutenant Grunt was one of the best horseman ever saw, and he rode a fine blooded animal he had brought from Ohio. Many a sharp race they used to have together in the fine mornings before breakfast or through the sunset and twilight after supper.
Of course, we had the other pleasures of country life at that time, too. There were picnics and dances, but naturally I do not remember much of these. However, I do recall very well the day when Julia and the Lieutenant and a party of friends went to a camp meeting and were caught in a terrible thunderstorm that overtook them on their way home.
The party went to the camp meeting in a big lumbering farm wagon filled with straight-back chairs and plenty of hay to sit on. Brother John and Nelly were of the crowd, but my presence did not seem to be required. At least three of that gay young party were to help make history. There were Lieutenant Grand and sister Julia; Lieutenant Longstreet, afterward the Confederate general and one of Grant's warmest friends, and Miss Fanny Morrison, who was the daughter of old General Morrison; and there was Hazlett-the brilliant, dashing Hazlitt- and a young widow, a Mrs. Porter, who had been Miss Betty Beale, young Gordenier, John, and Nelly.
A merry party they made, and they stayed until the last hymn was sung. It was on their way home that a terrific thunderstorm came up. They had no time to find shelter, as there were no houses near and the girls were afraid to seek shelter of the trees while the lightning played like the forked tongues of serpents against the black sky. There was a great heavy tarpaulin in the wagon, but no frame to stretch it over. A frame had to be improvised; the tall, pole-like Hazlitt was chosen for the victim. Standing him up in the center of the wagon they used him as a tent pole to hang the tarpaulin on, and the girls crawling under it managed to keep comparatively dry. All the boys but Hazlitt were thoroughly soaked, because the tarpaulin was only large enough to cover the girls.
This was not to be the last time the Lieutenant Grant was to get a good wetting. Just before the outbreak of the Mexican War his regiment was ordered South into Louisiana. The day his regiment received its orders to move from Jefferson Barracks the Lieutenant apparently discovered that he was not quite ready to go to war. There was something he needed, which many another soldier has needed, to make him do his best on the battlefield. That very night he mounted his horse and rode over to White Haven. It was a terrible night; nothing less than a mission of some great import could have lured or driven a man out on such a night and for such a ride. The rains had been drenching the earth like a deluge for several days and the creeks were swollen and raging. When the young officer reached the banks of the Gravois, he found it a mad, muddy torrent, which bad torn trees and bridges from its banks and was carrying them with a roar of waters through the valley to the river. But what was that to daunt a lover’s ardor! Like the hero of the legend, "he spurred his steed and plunged in." But he plunged in over his head, with his horse under him. When they arose to the surface there was no turning back in that wild flood of foam-flecked water; there was nothing to do but go forward they went, the Lieutenant swimming at the side of his horse, sturdily breasting the swollen current until they landed safely upon the other aide.
It was a bedraggled swain that stood in the presence of his lady-love a tew moments afterward. We all enjoyed heartily the sight of his ridiculous figure with his clothes flopping like wet rags around his limbs, and none laughed more heartily than my sister Julia. Lieutenant Grant took it all good humoredly enough, but there was a sturdy seriousness in his usually twinkling eyes that must have suggested, perhaps, to Julia that he had come on more serious business, for the teasing did not last long. John carried him off to find some dry clothes, and when he returned the usually natty soldier looked scarcely more like himself than he had when he came out of' his bath. John was taller and larger than Grant, and his clothes did not fit the Lieutenant "soon enough." Of course, this roused more laughter, which the soldier took in the same good part, but those rosy telltale cheeks of' his reddened, as usual with him when the inward state of his feelings did not agree with his outward composure.
I think it shows something-of' the character of the man that Lieutenant Grant should not have allowed his rather outer appearance at the house of his sweetheart that night to have unsteadied his purpose in coming there. When he left the barracks he had it in his mind to offer the lady his hand and heart. He offered it. Nothing in the world could have prevented him, probably, since he had once had it in mind. It was characteristic of the man, as his campaign of after-years from Spotsylvania to Appomattox showed. Grant was often most slow and hesitating in his efforts to come to a decision. But when that decision was once made it was immovable and acted upon immediately.
It is, perhaps, not necessary to say that when Lieutenant Grant rode away from White Haven the morning after, he took with him what he had gone for.
When Grant Went a-Courtin'
Concluding the Personal Recollections of His courtship and Private Life
by His Wife’s sister: Emma Dent Casey.
The next question the Lieutenant disposed of with equal promptness. It was, of course, the customary interview, with my father. We were all very fond of the soldier by this time, and I am sure had the rest of us been taken into the young people's confidence we should have sympathized with him, but there was no such surety about the stand of my father. That my father liked him as a man Grant knew very well, but as a son-in-law - that was a different matter. My father had been strongly opposed to Julia’s marrying into the army. She was his favorite daughter, and her health had never been strong. My father knew how arduous, pinched and restless was army life and how it provided few of the home comforts and opportunities for the care which a woman in delicate health might require. For that reason I feel sure that he had made up his mind, if he had thought about the matter at all, to refuse his consent to their marriage in case the Lieutenant should ask him for Julia.
However, he might have spared himself the pains or any thoughts upon the subject at all. For Julia, once having said yes, had made his decision for him. When Julia wanted a thing of my father, she usually got it. But father did not know that Julia wanted Lieutenant Grant, however, and the Lieutenant did not know that Julia always got what she wanted. On the day he came to ask her father for her hand, after greeting the rest of us on the porch, he strode quietly into the sitting-room where our parents were. My mother glanced at him, and in spite of his calm bearing she guessed his errand and slipped out. The determined young soldier stood straight before my father and looked him in the eye.
"Mr. Dent," he said., "I want to marry your daughter, Miss Julia."
My father looked back at him and smiled. I was peeping through the shutters.
For a minute the older man did not answer but sat soberly thinking. The soldier boy awaited his answer, unmoved.
"Mr. Grant,·" my father spoke at last, "If' it were Nelly you wanted, now, I’d say "Yea"."
"But I don’t want Nelly," said the soldier, bluntly. "I want Julia."
"Oh, you do, do you? - - Well, then, I s’tpose it’ll have to be Julia.”
We were all gathered on the porch when father came out and told us about it. The Lieutenant’s frankness had pleased him and had, I think, won him over in spite of himself.
After the Mexican War.
After the Lieutenant went south with his regiment he passed for the time being out or my young life. I accepted him as sister Julia's beau, and when I thought of him it was because he was somewhere near the place where my brother Fred was, more than because of any great interest in him during his absence. Julia received a number of letters from him with due regularity, and these were usually read to the family. They were brief but very interesting always, and generally had more to say about the movements of the army than of himself. I think I have remarked before that he was never a great hand to talk about himself, nor could he write about himself, either.
He wrote and told us, I remember, when my brother was wounded at the battle of Buena Vista and spoke of it as nothing alarming. His words prevented my mother from worrying as she would otherwise have done, because she trusted his judgement and good sense thoroughly, and she knew that he would be entirely frank with her.
Nothing else happened beyond the ordinary news and duties of our daily lite at White Haven, that I can remember, during the full course of the Mexican War. Of course, when the war was over, this soldier - he was Captain Grant now - hastened to White liaven as soon as he could obtain his leave. The ardors of the campaign in Mexico had changed him very little so far as we could discern. His face was more bronzed from the exposure to the sun, and he wore his captain’s double-barred shoulder straps with a little more dignity than he had worn the old one, perhaps. His shoulders had broadened some, and his body was stouter, and it may be that he had grown a little more reserved in manner. But what change there was in him was certainly little enough, considering all that he had gone through with the others of his regiment. The most striking thing to my childish mind was that he was not burned to a rich brown where he had once been so rosy fair, and that he was still smooth-shaven of cheek and lip, whereas most of the young officers of the time rejoiced proudly in some curiosity or other of hirsute ornamentation.
Captain Grant had not long returned from the duties of the field before he and Julia concluded to have their wedding day. They decided to be married in St. Louis, and accordingly we moved into our city house.
The Captain was now almost constantly at our house. He showed his future bride the most devoted, yet quiet, attention, and these were happy days for us all. I remember them particularly, because the Captain frequently took me … during these happy prenuptial days, and the theatre was an enjoyment of which I had not, at that time, had enough.
Our house was filled with a gay company, for both my sister and the Captain were very popular in St. Louis, but aa I spent the most of my days in the school, I did not see so much of the visitors as the other members of my family. I remember that the handsome James Longstreet and the charming Miss Garland, who afterwards became the dashing Confederate general’s wife, were among our most frequent visitors. Longstreet and Grant were always the closest of friends, and even the Civil War did not alter their deep personal regard for each other. Longstreet was our cousin on my Father's side, and a great favorite with us. Miss Garland, too, was also a favorite with us, and with Captain Grant, because of her personal grace and beauty of her character.
The marriage of Captain Grant and Julia took place in 1848, at our St. Louis home. There was nothing unusually striking about it which I can call to mind. It was just a sweet, old-fashioned home wedding, without ostentation or any fanfare of hymeneal trumpets. It was one of those weddings which the newspapers of today would call "very quiet," but the house was filled with young people and our many friends. The ceremony took place at eight o’clock in the evening, in the large parlors, which had been decorated for the occasion. The Captain’s groomsmen were all army off'icers but, lest I be inaccurate, I will not attempt to mention them by name. My sister's bridesmaids were Miss O'Fallon, Miss Shurlds, Miss I,ouise Pratt, and, perhaps, Miss Fanny Walsh.
As I Saw Grant’s wedding
During the ceremony I sat as quietly as I could on a pier table with Miss Amanda Shurlds, who afterward became by brother John’s wife. We tried to be seen and not heard, but I fear we succeeded in being heard more than anybody else. At any rate, I have since learned £rom the lips of Cadmus Wilcox (afterward General Wilcox) that I was the most pestiferous little nuisance during the whole weddin., that I was under his feet all the time when I was not under somebody's else foot, and that he had most heartily wished me in bed. No doubt we were both as ubiquitous and chittering as most small girls are apt to be on such occasions. But, at least, I sat still long enough to admire my big sister's extreme prettiness as she stood in her bridal dress beside her quiet, self-possessed soldier. Captain Grant was as cool under the fire of the clergyman’s questions as he bad been under the batteries of the Mexican artillery. He did not look as if he were ashamed or afraid to be there, as I have seen some other bridegrooms look.
The couple spent that night at our home, and left the next day for a visit to captain Grant’s people. They returned again after a few weeks, and tho Captain was ordered to join his regiment, the Fourth Infantry, at Detroit. From there they went to Sacket Harbor, and we saw them only once or twice, when they came on brief visits to us, during the next two or three years. It was during one of these visits in the summer of 1850, that little Fred, now Major-General Frederick Dent Grant, was born. This event took place at White Haven.
In 1853 Captain Grant was ordered to California. The trip was too long and arduous for h1s wife to undertake, and she came to live with us in St. Louis. She also visited a good deal with Captain Grant’s parents, who were at Bethel, Ohio, and it was while she was there that their second son, Ulysses - whom we called Buck, because be was born in the Buckeye State - appeared upon the scene. At the hour when Buck first opened his uncomprehending eyes on the Ohioan landscape his father was crossing the Isthmus of Panama bound for his duties on the Pacific coast.
Captain Grant did not enjoy life beyond the Rockies. His post was not a congenial one, and he and his superiors did not always agree. This is a matter of history, but it was not for this that he asked for a leave of absence in 1864. It was because he had become homesick for a sight of his wife and little son, and the new little one whom he had never seen. The war department graciously refused him his leave. He asked again. Other men leas entitled to furloughs were receiving them every day for the mere asking, but again Captain Grant’s request was denied - this time a bit more sharply. It is not true, as has been stated, that the Captain's personal habits at that time led him into such difficulties that he was asked to resign.
One day in the late summer of 1854, while young Fred and the tiny toddler, Buck, were playing on the 1ong front porch at White Haven, a man drove up in a buggy. As he threw the lap robe over the dashboard in preparing to climb out the children stared at this dark-bearded stranger with eyes of astonishment. Who could he be? They were even a little afraid of him. Then one of the darky women came running out of the house waving her arms and crying,
“Fo' de Lawd’s sake! Hyar am Mars Grant!"
A Good Officer Makes a Good Farmer.
He had resigned and left the army because the war department had refused him permission to go home to see his family. There is little doubt, also, that the meagerness or his pay aa contrasted with the expense or keeping himself in one part of country and his family in another decided him to take the step which he did.
The Captain visited with us for a while, but he could not be long idle. He was a man whose whole nature demanded work. He did not know how to be lazy. He resolved to become a farmer. At the time of her marriage my father had given Julia eighty acres of land, a part of the White Haven estate, and situated only about half a mile from our dwelling. On this land the Captain and Mrs. Grant decided to build their home. It was good land, and with the aid of the three slaves which father had given Julia they had no fear of not earning a living.
Perhaps I ought to explain something about those slaves. For two generations the story has been current in certain parts of the country that Captain Grant himself was a slave owner. He never was, but his wife was. The Dents had owned slaves from the date of their settlement in this country. At the time I was growing up my father owned about thirty slaves, of all sizes and sexes. Either at birth, or as we grew older, he gave to each of his three girls three negroes. These, with the parcels of the homestead which he gave us as his bridal present, were supposed to be our dot. When Julia was born father gave her the girl Eliza, a little ginger-colored Julia Ann, and ran, who was about the most polished specimen of human ebony you ever saw. They were to serve her as maid, cook, and house boy. My sister Nelly, who afterward became Mrs. Sharp, had Phyllis, Sisy, and John. As for me, I was given Mary, my old nurse, Lucy, Louise and Jeff.
Thus, we ware each provided with our slaves, and at her marriage Julia, of' course, brought her three to Captain Grant. And although I know that he was opposed to human slavery as an institution I do not think that he was at any time a very rank abolitionist or that he opposed it so violently that the acceptance of Julia's slaves had to be forced upon him.
The house that the Grants built was of logs. The logs for it were cut and shaped by the Captain himself. It was planned by Mrs. Grant, and was both fashioned and furnished with an eye to the artistic, as well as for comfort and coziness. Though not pretentious to modern eyes it was not the mean, ramshackle hut that the popular mind supposes it to have been. It had five good rooms and a hall, which furnished all the space the Grants needed at that time. I know that it was on exhibition at the World's Fair in St. Louis, and it looked anything but elegant there, amid its more garish surroundings. But it had been built fifty years before, and it bad not been lived in for a great many of' those years.
The Captain’s father, Jesse Grant, gave him one thousand dollars to furnish it with, besides a team and wagon. With this team of two white horses, a cow, the three slaves, the eighty acres of land, and the log house the Grants began life as civilians.
A very prominent man has recently said on a public occasion that General Grant's life at this time was a failure. It 1s difficult for those who knew him intimately in those later fifties to regard it as such. It is true fame had not yet come to him, nor had riches, but he had never shown greater strength of character, greater fortitude under adverse circumstances, nor more determination than he did at this time - nor do I think that anything he did in the Civil War is more to his credit as a man than these simple days of hard work on his Missouri farm. If earning and winning the reputation of being one of the best farmers in a country of farmers is to be a failure, then, perhaps, the ex-army officer at that period was a failure. He worked early and late; his crops were put in always at the right time, and cultivated at the right time; they turned out better than the crops of his neighbors. He had Dan to help him, and in busy seasons he hired other help, but the bulk of the work he did himself. He was not ashamed of rough work on the farm, and, in fact, he liked it. Grant turned farmer after he left the army, not because he couldn't do anything else, but because he wanted to be a farmer. That he later left the farm and became a store-keeper was not due to any vacillation of character, but to ill finances.
The Truth About That Wood Peddling Story
There was a good deal of woodland on the Grant’s farm when they settled on it and he cleared away, corded and sold in St. Louis to the wood yards.
At this point I must say a word concerning the general belief in the Grant’s abject poverty at this time. - The Grants were not poor. They were not rich, but they were in comfortable circumstances, with plenty to eat and plenty to wear and no dependence upon their relatives or any others. There is the famous story of Captain Grant living in such poverty that he had to haul his poor little faggots of wood through the city with an ox team and blow on his ungloved finger~ to keep them from freezing. Mr. Winston Churchill., the novelist, has done Captain Grant the honor of depicting him as a sort of run-down-at-the-heels countryman of the ne’er-do-well and ill-luck class, as one whose wood peddling was barely able to keep hie meager clothes upon his meager body. It is a very interesting picture but it is not true. He never peddled wood about the streets.
The truth is that he and his negroes cut the wood and he often sent one of them to the city with a load to sell to the families or a Mr. Blow and Mr. Barnard. Mr. Barnard was the brother-in-law or my brother John's wife. During the Christmas holidays one winter the negro who generall7 drove the team for Captain Grant was ill and there was no one to send in his place. The Captain’s St. Louis friends sent him word that they were out of wood, and accordingly, he hitched up his team or white horses to his wagon, loaded on the wood, and hauled it to the city himself. He probably hauled several loads in this way. I do not know how many. Any other man with the same temper of spirit and the same lack of false pride would have done the same.
On one or these trips, as the Captain was driving along seated on his load of' wood, he suddenly came face to face with General Harney and his staff. The General, resplendent in a new uniform and gold trimmings, eyed the rigure of the farmer on the wagon with astonishment. Then he drew in his horse, Grant stopped his team, and the pair smiled into each others’ eyes.
"Why, Grant, what in blazes are you doing?" exclaimed Harney.
The Captain, sitting comfortably atop his load or wood with his ax and his whipstock at his side, shifted one muddy boot across the other and drawled:
"Well, General, I am hauling wood."
The thing was so obvious and Grant so naïve that General Harney and his staff roared with laughter. They shook his hand and joked with him and finally carried him oft to dine with them at the Planters’ Hotel. That is the true story of Captain Run-down-at-the-heels Grant peddling wood for a pittance in the streets.
The next two or three years formed a period of change and unrest for the Dent and Grant families, just as they did for the country at large. About 1858 the Grants traded their farm for a cottage in St. Louis. The Captain's health had broken under the ardors of farm work and he felt compelled to seek something else. They lived in this cottage until about 1860, when the Captain’s father offered him a share in the elder Grant’s country store at Galena, Ill. Captain Grant went to Galena first and Julia followed him some months later. Now for the first time in their wanderings, they were obliged to leave their slaves at home, for Illinois was a free state.
It was some time before I saw much more of my sister and her husband. On February 14, 1861, I was married to Mr. James F. Casey of Caseyville, Ky., and we went south for the winter. At that time mutterings of the coming storm were already resounding in our ears like sullen peals of thunder, and we all knew that the Irrepressible Conflict was close at hand.
All the world knows how Grant was at Galena when Sumter was fired on, how the affair at Camp Jackson led him to offer his, services to the cause of the Union, and how they were accepted. During the conflict that followed the Grants made their headquarters at Cairo as much as possible, and when Mrs. Grant was not there or in the field with her husband she was visiting at her old home. Sometimes the General himself would come up for a day or so at a time from the south to see his family and enjoy a breath of rest.
Perhaps I ought to have said before – though it will apply equally as well here - that during all the time I knew Grant, between his return from California in 1854 to the fall of Vicksburg, I never saw him intoxicated. I never saw him under the influence of liquor. If he ever was it was not known· to the members of his immediate family. Charges that he was a heavy drinker were made in those days and have been made since. General Grant never gave them any notice. Mrs. Grant also ignored them, though she felt deeply cut by the injustice of them, and, perhaps, it is not my place at this late date to resent the recent statements made by a prominent man in public life, under the very shadow of Grant’s tomb. Therefore, I will content myself with saying again, that if General Grant was ever a victim of the liquor habit it was a condition which he happily concealed from those nearest his heart, closest in their association with him, and who loved him best.
Perhaps. altogether, I saw General Grant at White Haven half a dozen times during the Civil War, when he came to spend a few days with his wife and children. On the occasion or these visits nothing of particular interest ever happened. Nor did the General ever discuss his campaigns with us, or any matters or the field. He believed from the first, however, in the certainty of the final triumph of the North, and was one among the misguided many who, at the beginning, expected the end to come in ninety days. However, he seldom discussed these things with us. My father and he remained the best of personal friends, and it was my father’s constant wish that, if the South must yield, she should yield to Grant. When Vicksburg fell, my father expressed himself, on the morning that the news reached us at the breakfast table, as being sorry for the South, but mighty glad for “Dudy’s sake." Dudy was Mrs. Grant's pet name for her husband, and she never called him any other.
I close my narrative with the recital of an incident which I suppose has been forgotten by every living person except myself. It was a long time after it occurred before General Grand knew it and if Fred Grant remembers it, I have never heard him speak of' it. We were living near Caseyville, Ky., at this time, not far from the banks of the Ohio, and the Grants were at Cairo, Ill. The General, of course, was in the South. He was engaged in the campaign which ended at Vicksburg. His son Fred came to Caseyville to visit Mr. Casey and myself for a week or ten days. He was very fond of us and we of him.
He had been there several days when one morning he went with his uncle, Mr. Casey, on horseback to Caseyville, which was not more than two miles distant. There were a good many band of guerillas prowling about the country at the time, as well as severa1 other bands of irregular Confederate soldiers, but, as they never molested us, we scarcely aware of their presence, and it had never occurred to us that they could have any reason to honor us with a call. The very morning that Mr. Casey and Fred went to town, however, a man dressed in the tattered uniform of a Confederate officer rode into the yard and asked me for a drink of water. I gave it to him, and as he lifted the cup to his lips he said, casually:
“I guess Fred Grant is visiting you, isn’t he?"
Instantly a cold suspicion struck me like a dart through the heart, and I answered him as casually as he had questioned me:
"Why, no. "
"OH!" he said, "isn’t he?"
"No, he's gone."
"Gone, has he? Is that so?" He looked at me with a smile slowly breaking out over his face.
"Surely, he has," he said again, as if speaking to himself. Then he remounted his horse; took off his hat, made me a sweeping bow, and rode away.
I did not lose a moment, but as quick aa one of the horses could be caught out or the pasture, I put a black boy on his back and sent him to find my husband. I sent Mr. Casey word to put Fred on a coal boat and get him down the river to Cairo as fast as ever he could. I also suggested that if he could communicate with a gunboat on the river, it might be very well.
About eleven o' clock another man rode up to the front door. His horse had been hard ridden, and both were in need of water. He too, as he drank, spoke to me with seeming indifference.
“You have a boy here, have you not?"
"No," I answered, "the boy has gone."
The man smiled as the other one had done, and said, "Well I suppose a hint to the wise is sufficient."
And he, too, rode away.
That afternoon, about four o’clock, a squad of eight hard-riding, grim looking, and tattered cavalrymen rode up to the gate. One of them, heavily armed, and looking as fierce as a Greek bandit, came up to the porch.
"Is this Mr. Casey’s?" he asked, politely. I told him it was.
"Isn't there a boy visiting here?"
"No., he has gone back to his mother, at Cairo."
"Are you sure?"
''Yes. And I think there is likely to be some gun-boats coming up the river very shortly, looking for someone. Perhaps you gentlemen will be interested in seeing them."
The fierce-looking bandit laughed pleasantly, said that it was a nice day, end rejoined his companions at the gate. They talked in low voices for a while, then sprang on their horses, waved their hats at me, and rode away. There is no doubt, of course, that they were looking for Fred, and had they found him they would certainly have dealt his father a bard blow. It is mere speculation to consider what affect this might have had on the cause of the Union.
Not long after that my husband and I went south to a plantation owned by my brother, at Friar's Point, Miss. And from then until long after the war we lived in the South, spending most of the year a from 1864 to 1880 in New Orleans.
I visited the Grants occasionally during the war and, later, at the White House, and life holds many memories of pleasant scenes in which the General and his wife figure, but having set myself the limit of the story or his courtship and their I early married life I bring these recollections to an end.