Section 15 of Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Jim Clevenger, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant by Ulysses S. Grant, Chapter 15 San Francisco Early California Experiences Life on the Pacific Coast Promoted Captain Flush Times in California San Francisco at that day was a lively place. Gold or placer digging, as it was called, was at its height. Steamers plied daily between San Francisco and both Stockton and Sacramento. Passengers in gold from the southern mines came by the Stockton boat from the northern mines by Sacramento. In the evening when these boats arrived, Long Wharf, there was but one wharf in San Francisco in 1852, was alive with people crowding to meet the miners as they came down to sell their dust and to have a time. Of these, some were runners for hotels, boarding houses or restaurants. Others belonged to a class of impecunous adventurers of good manners and good presence who were ever on the alert to make the acquaintance of people with some ready means in the hope of being asked to take a meal at a restaurant. Many were young men of good family, good education and gentlemanly instincts. Their parents had been able to support them during their minority and to give them good educations but not to maintain them afterwards. From 1849 to 1853 there was a rush of people to the Pacific Coast of the class described. All thought that fortunes were to be picked up without effort in the gold fields on the Pacific. Some realized more than their most sanguine expectations, but for one such there were hundreds disappointed, many of whom now fill unknown graves. Others died, wrecks of their former selves and many, without a vicious instinct, became criminals and outcasts. Many of the real scenes in early California life exceed in strangeness and interest any of the mere products of the brain of the novelist. Those early days in California brought out character. It was a long way off then and the journey was expensive. The fortunate could go by Cape Horn or by the Isthmus of Panama. But the mass of pioneers crossed the plains with their ox-teens. This took an entire summer. They were very lucky when they got through with the yoke of worn-out cattle. All other means were exhausted in procuring the outfit on the Missouri River. The immigrant on arriving found himself a stranger in a strange land, far from friends. Time pressed, for the little means that could be realized from the sale of what was left of the outfit would not support a man long at California prices. Many became discouraged, others would take off their coats and look for a job no matter what it might be. These succeeded as a rule. There were many young men who had studied professions before they went to California and who had never done a day's manual labor in their lives who took in the situation at once and went to work to make a start at anything they could get to do. Some supplied carpenters and masons with material, carrying plank, brick or mortar as the case might be. Others drove stages, drays or baggage wagons until they could do better. More became discouraged early and spent their time looking up people who would treat or lounging about restaurants and gambling houses where free lunches were furnished daily. They were welcomed at these places because they often brought in minors who proved good customers. My regiment spent a few weeks at Benisha Barracks and then was ordered to Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River then in Oregon Territory. During the winter of 1852-1853 the Territory was divided all north of the Columbia River being taken from Oregon to make Washington Territory. Prices for all kinds of supplies were so high on the Pacific Coast from 1849 until at least 1853 that it would have been impossible for officers of the Army to exist upon their pay if it had not been that authority was given them to purchase from the commissary such supplies as he kept at New Orleans wholesale prices. A cook could not be hired for the pay of a captain. The cook could do better. At Benisha in 1852 flour was twenty-five cents per pound, potatoes were sixteen cents, beets, turnips and cabbage six cents, onions thirty-seven and one-half cents, meat and other articles in proportion. In 1853 at Vancouver vegetables were a little lower. I with three other officers concluded that we would raise a crop for ourselves and by selling the surplus realized something handsome. I bought a pair of horses that had crossed the plains that summer and were very poor. They recuperated rapidly, however, and proved a good team to break up the ground with. I performed all the labor of breaking up the ground while the other officers planted the potatoes. Our crop was enormous. Luckily for us the Columbia River rose to a great height from the melting of the snow in the mountains in June and overflowed and killed most of our crop. This saved digging it up for everybody on the Pacific Coast seemed to have come to the conclusion at the same time that agriculture would be profitable. In 1853 more than three-quarters of the potatoes raised were permitted to rot in the ground or had to be thrown away. The only potatoes we sold were to our own mess. While I was stationed on the Pacific Coast we were free from Indian wars. There were quite a number of remnants of tribes in the vicinity of Portland in Oregon and of Fort Vancouver in Washington Territory. They had generally acquired some of the vices of civilization but none of the virtues except in individual cases. The Hudson Bay Company had held the Northwest with their trading post for many years before the United States was represented on the Pacific Coast. They still retained posts along the Columbia River and one at Fort Vancouver when I was there. Their treatment of the Indians had brought out the better qualities of the savages. Farming had been undertaken by the company to supply the Indians with bread and vegetables. They raised some cattle and horses and they had now taught the Indians to do the labor of the farm and herd. They always compensated them for their labor and always gave them goods of uniform quality and at uniform price. Before the advent of the American the medium of exchange between the Indian and the white man was pelts. Afterward it was silver coin. If an Indian received in the sale of a horse a $50 gold piece, not an infrequent occurrence the first thing he did was to exchange it for American half dollars. These he could count. He would then commence his purchases paying for each article separately as he got it. He would not trust anyone to add up the bill and pay it all at once. At that day $50 gold pieces, not the issue of the government, were common on the Pacific Coast. They were called slugs. The Indians along the lower Columbia as far as the Cascades and on the lower Willamette died off very fast during the year I spent in that section. For besides acquiring the vices of the white people, they had acquired also their diseases. The measles and the smallpox were both amazingly fatal. In their wild state before the appearance of the white man among them the principal complaints they were subject to were those produced by long involuntary fasting, violent exercise in pursuit of game, and overeating. Instinct more than reason had taught them a remedy for these ills. It was the steam bath.  Bushes were stuck in the ground in two rows about six feet long in some two or three feet apart. Other bushes connected the rows at one end. The tops of the bushes were drawn together to interlace and confined in that position. The hole was then plastered over with wet clay until every opening was filled. Just inside the open end of the oven the floor was scooped out so as to make a hole that would hold a bucket or two of water. These ovens were always built on the banks of a stream, a big spring, or pool of water. When a patient required a bath a fire was built near the oven and a pile of stones put upon it. The cavity at the front was then filled with water. When the stones were sufficiently heated the patient would draw himself into the oven. A blanket would be thrown over the open end and hot stones put into the water until the patient could stand it no longer. He was then withdrawn from his steam bath and doused into the cold stream nearby. This treatment may have answered with early ailments of the Indians with the measles or smallpox it would kill every time. During my year on the Columbia River the smallpox exterminated one small remnant of a band of Indians entirely and reduced others materially. I do not think there was a case of recovery among them until the doctor with the Hudson Bay Company took the matter in hand and established a hospital. Nearly every case he treated recovered. I never myself saw the treatment described in the preceding paragraph but have heard it described by persons who have witnessed it. The decimation among the Indians I knew of personally and the hospital established for their benefit was a Hudson Bay building not a stone's throw from my own quarters. The death of Colonel Bliss of the Adjutant Generals Department which occurred July 5th, 1853 promoted me to the captaincy of a company then stationed at Humboldt Bay, California. The notice reached me in September of the same year and I very soon started to join my new command. There was no way of reaching Humboldt at that time except to take passage on a San Francisco sailing vessel going after lumber. Redwood, a species of cedar which on the Pacific coast takes the place filled by white pine in the east then abounded on the banks of Humboldt Bay. There were extensive saw mills engaged in preparing this lumber for the San Francisco market and sailing vessels used in getting it to market furnished the only means of communication between Humboldt and the balance of the world. I was obliged to remain in San Francisco for several days before I found a vessel. This gave me a good opportunity of comparing the San Francisco of 1852 with that of 1853. As before stated there had been but one wharf in front of the city in 1852, Long Wharf. In 1853 the town had grown out into the bay beyond what was the end of this wharf when I first saw it. Streets and houses had been built out on piles where the year before the largest vessels visiting the port lay at anchor or tied to the wharf. There was no filling under the streets or houses. San Francisco presented the same general appearance as the year before, that is eating, drinking and gambling houses were conspicuous for their number and publicity. They were on the first floor with doors wide open. At all hours of the day and night in walking the streets the eye was regaled on every block near the waterfront by the sight of players at Faro. Often broken places were found in the street large enough to let a man down into the water below. I have but little doubt that many of the people who went to the Pacific Coast in the early days of the Gold Excitement and have never been heard from since or who were heard from for a time and then ceased to write found watery graves beneath the houses or streets built over San Francisco Bay. Besides the gambling and cards there was gambling on a larger scale in city lots. These were sold on change much as stocks are now sold on Wall Street. Cash at time of purchase was always paid by the broker but the purchaser had only to put up his margin. He was charged at the rate of two or three percent a month on the difference besides commissions. The sandhills some of them almost inaccessible to foot passengers were surveyed off and mapped into 50 varalots a vara being a Spanish yard. These were sold at first at very low prices but were sold and resold for higher prices until they went up to many thousands of dollars. The brokers did a fine business and so did many such purchasers as were sharp enough to quit purchasing before the final crash came. As the city grew the sandhills back of the town furnished material for filling up the bay under the houses and streets and still further out. The temporary houses first built over the water in the harbor soon gave way to more solid structures. The main business part of the city now is on solid ground. Made were vessels of the largest class lay at anchor in the early days. I was in San Francisco again in 1854. Gambling houses had disappeared from public view. The city had become staid and orderly. End of Section 15. Recording by Jim Cleventure, Little Rock, Arkansas. Jim at J-O-C-C-L-E-V dot com. Section 16 of Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant. This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Jim Cleventure. Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant by Ulysses S. Grant. Chapter 16. Resignation. Private Life. Life at Galena. The Coming Crisis. My family, all this while, was at the East. It consisted now of a wife and two children. I saw no chance of supporting them on the Pacific Coast, out of my pay as an Army officer. I concluded, therefore, to resign and, in March, applied for a leave of absence until the end of July following, tendering my resignation to take effect at the end of that time. I left the Pacific Coast very much attached to it, and with the full expectation of making it my future home. That expectation and that hope remained uppermost in my mind until the Lieutenant General of C. Bill was introduced into Congress in the winter of 1863-1864. The passage of that bill and my promotion blasted my last hope of ever becoming a citizen of the further West. In the late summer of 1854, I rejoined my family to find in it a son whom I had never seen, born while I was on the isthmus of Panama. I was now to commence, at the age of thirty-two, a new struggle for our support. My wife had a farm near St. Louis to which we went. But I had no means to stock it. A house had to be built also. I worked very hard, never losing a day because of bad weather, and accomplished the object in a moderate way. If nothing else could be done, I would load a quart of wood on a wagon and take it to the city for sale. I managed to keep along very well until 1858, when I was attacked by fever and ague. I had suffered very severely and for a long time from this disease while I boy in Ohio. It lasted now over a year, and, while it did not keep me in the house, it did interfere greatly with the amount of work I was able to perform. In the fall of 1858, I sold out my stock, crops, and farming utensils at auction and gave up farming. In the winter, I established a partnership with Harry Boggs, a cousin of Mrs. Grant, in the real estate agency business. I spent that winter at St. Louis myself, but did not take my family into town until the spring. Our business might have become prosperous if I had been able to wait for it to grow. As it was, there was no more than one person could attend to and not enough to support two families. While a citizen of St. Louis and engaged in the real estate agency business, I was a candidate for the office of county engineer, an office of respectability and emolument, which would have been very acceptable to me at that time. The incumbent was appointed by the county court, which consisted of five members. My opponent had the advantage of birth over me. He was a citizen by adoption and carried off the prize. I now withdrew from the co-partnership with Boggs, and in May 1860 removed to Galena, Illinois, and took a clerkship in my father's store. While a citizen of Missouri, my first opportunity for casting a vote at a presidential election occurred. I had been in the army from before attaining my majority and had thought but little about politics, although I was a Whig by education and a great admirer of Mr. Clay. But the Whig party had ceased to exist before I had an opportunity of exercising the privilege of casting a ballot. The Know Nothing Party had taken its place but was on the wane, and the Republican Party was in a chaotic state and had not yet received a name. It had no existence in the slave states, except at points on the borders next to free states. In St. Louis City and county, what afterwards became the Republican Party was known as the Free Soil Democracy, led by the Honorable Frank P. Blair. Most of my neighbors had known me as an officer of the army with Whig proclivities. They had been on the same side and on the death of their party, many had become Know Nothings or members of the American Party. There was a lodge near my new home and I was invited to join it. I accepted the invitation, was initiated, attended a meeting just one week later and never went to another afterwards. I have no apologies to make for having been one week a member of the American Party, for I still think native-born citizens of the United States should have as much protection as many privileges in their native country as those who voluntarily select it for a home. But all secret, oath-bound political parties are dangerous to any nation, no matter how pure or how patriotic the motives and principles which first bring them together. No political party can or ought to exist when one of its cornerstones is opposition to freedom of thought and to the right to worship God according to the dictate of one's own conscience or according to the creed of any religious denomination, whatever. Nevertheless, if a sect sets up its laws as binding above the state laws wherever the two come in conflict this claim must be resisted and suppressed at whatever cost. Up to the Mexican War there were a few out-and-out abolitionists men who carried their hostility to slavery into all elections from those for a justice of the peace up to the presidency of the United States. They were noisy, but not numerous. But the great majority of people at the north where slavery did not exist were opposed to the institution and looked upon its existence in any part of the country as unfortunate. They did not hold the states where slavery existed responsible for it and believed that protection should be given to the right of property and slaves until some satisfactory way could be reached to be rid of the institution. Opposition to slavery was not a creed of either political party. In some sections more anti-slavery men belonged to the Democratic Party and in others to the Whigs. But with the inauguration of the Mexican War in fact with the annexation of Texas the inevitable conflict commenced. As the time for the presidential election of 1856 the first at which I had the opportunity of voting approached party feeling began to run high. The Republican Party was regarded in the south and the border states not only as opposed to the extension of slavery but as favoring the compulsory abolition of the institution without compensation to the owners. The most horrible visions seemed to present themselves to the minds of people who one would suppose ought to have known better. Many educated and otherwise sensible persons appeared to believe that emancipation meant social equality. Treason to the government was openly advocated and was not rebuked. It was evident to my mind that the election of a Republican president in 1856 meant the cessation of all the slave states and rebellion. Under these circumstances I preferred the success of a candidate whose election would prevent or postpone cessation to seeing the country plunged into a war the end of which no man could foretell. With a Democrat elected by the unanimous vote of the slave states there could be no pretext for cessation for four years. I very much hoped that the passions of the people would subside in that time and the catastrophe be averted altogether. If it was not I believed the country would be better prepared to receive the shock and to resist it. I therefore voted for James Buchanan for president. Four years later the Republican Party was successful in electing its candidate to the presidency. The civilized world has learned the consequence. Four millions of human beings held as chattels have been liberated. The ballot has been given to them. The free schools of the country have been open to their children. The nation still lives and the people are just as free to avoid social intimacy with the blacks as ever they were or as they are with white people. While living in Galena I was nominally only a clerk supporting myself and family on a stipulated salary. In reality my position was different. My father had never lived in Galena himself but had established my two brothers there the one next younger than myself in charge of the business assisted by the youngest. When I went there it was my father's intention to give up all connection with the business himself and to establish his three sons in it. But the brother who had really built up the business was sinking with consumption and it was not thought best to make any change while he was in this condition. He lived until September 1861 when he succumbed to that insidious disease which always flatters its victims into the belief that they are growing better up to the close of life. A more honorable man never transacted business. In September 1861 I was engaged in an employment which required all my attention elsewhere. During the eleven months that I lived in Galena prior to the first call for volunteers I had been strictly attentive to my business and had made but few acquaintances other than customers and people engaged in the same line with myself. When the election took place in November 1860 I had not been a resident of Illinois long enough to gain citizenship and could not therefore vote. I was really glad of this at the time for my pledges would have compelled me to vote for Stephen A. Douglas who had no possible chance of election. The contest was really between Mr. Breckenridge and Mr. Lincoln between minority rule and rule by the majority. I wondered as between these candidates to see Mr. Lincoln elected. Excitement ran high during the canvas and torch-like processions enlivened the scene in the generally quiet streets of Galena many nights during the campaign. I did not parade with either party but occasionally met with the White Awakes Republicans in their rooms and superintendent their drill. It was evident from the time of the Chicago nomination to the close of the canvas that the election of the Republican candidate would be the signal for some of the southern states to secede. I still had hopes that the four years which had elapsed since the first nomination of a presidential candidate by a party distinctly opposed to slavery extension had given time for the extreme pro-slavery sentiment to cool down, for the Southerners to think well before they took the awful leap which they had so vehemently threatened. But I was mistaken. The Republican candidate was elected and solid, substantial people of the Northwest and I presume the same order of people throughout the entire North felt very serious but determined after this event. It was very much discussed whether the South would carry out its threat to secede and set up a separate government the cornerstone of which should be protection to the divine institution of slavery for there were people who believed in the divinity of human slavery as there are now people who believe Mormonism and polygamy to be ordained by the Most High. We forgive them for entertaining such notions but forbid their practice. It was generally believed that there would be a flurry that some of the extreme Southern states would go so far as to pass ordinances of cessation but the common impression was that this step was so plainly suicidal for the South that the movement would not spread over much of the territory and would not last long. Doubtless, the founders of our government the majority of them at least regarded the confederation of the colonies as an experiment. Each colony considered itself a separate government that the confederation was for mutual protection against a foreign foe and the prevention of strife and war among themselves. If there had been a desire on the part of any single state to withdraw from the compact at any time while the number of states was limited to the original 13 I do not suppose there would have been any to contest the right no matter how much the determination might have been regretted. The problem changed on the ratification of the Constitution by all the colonies. It changed still more. When amendments were added and if the right of any one state to withdraw continued to exist at all after the ratification of the Constitution it certainly ceased on the formation of new states at least so far as the new states themselves were concerned. It was never possessed at all by Florida or the states west of the Mississippi all of which were purchased by the treasury of the entire nation and the territory brought into the union in consequence of annexation were purchased with both blood and treasure and Texas was a domain greater than that of any European state except Russia was permitted to retain as state property all the public lands within its borders. It would have been in gratitude and injustice of the most flagrant sort of state to withdraw from the union after all that had been spent and done to introduce her. Yet, if separation had actually occurred Texas must necessarily have gone with the south both on account of her institutions and her geographical position. Cessation was illogical as well as impracticable. It was revolution. Now the right of revolution is an inherent one. When people are oppressed by their government it is a natural right they enjoy to relieve themselves of the oppression if they are strong enough either by withdrawal from it or by overthrowing it and substituting a government more acceptable. But any people or part of a people who resort to this remedy stake their lives, their property and every claim for protection given by citizenship on the issue. Victory or the conditions imposed by the conqueror must be the result. In the case of the war between the states it would have been the exact truth if the south had said we do not want to live with you northern people any longer. We know our institution of slavery is obnoxious to you and as you are growing numerically stronger than we it may at some time in the future be in danger. So long as you permitted us to control the government and with the aid of a few friends at the north to enact laws constituting your section a guard against the escape of our property we were willing to live with you. You have been submissive to our rule heretofore but it looks now as if you did not intend to continue so we will remain in the union no longer. Instead of this the seceding states cried lustily let us alone you have no constitutional power to interfere with us newspapers and people at the north reinterrated the cry individuals might ignore the constitution but the nation itself must not only obey it but must enforce the strictest construction of that instrument the construction put upon it by the southerners themselves the fact is the constitution did not apply to any such contingency as the one existing from 1861 to 1865 its framers never dreamed of such a contingency occurring if they had foreseen it the probabilities are they would have sanctioned the right of a state or states to withdraw rather than that there should be war between brothers the framers were wise in their generation and wanted to do the very best possible to secure their own liberty and independence and that also of their descendants to the latest days it is preposterous to suppose that the people of one generation can lay down the best and only rules of government for all who are to come after them and under unforeseen contingencies at the time of the framing of our constitution the only physical forces that had been subdued and made to serve man and do his labor were the currents in the streams and in the air we breathe rude machinery propelled by water power had been invented sails to propel ships upon the waters had been set to catch the passing breeze but the application of stream to propel vessels against both wind and current and machinery to do all manner of work had not been thought of the instantaneous transmission of messages around the world by means of electricity would probably at that day have been attributed to witchcraft or a league with the devil in material circumstances had changed as greatly as material ones we could not and ought not to be rigidly bound by the rules laid down under circumstances so different for emergencies so utterly unanticipated the fathers themselves would have been the first to declare that their prerogatives were not irrevocable they would surely have resisted cessation could they have lived to see the shape it assumed I traveled through the Northwest considerably during the winter of 1860-1861 we had customers in all the little towns in southwest Wisconsin southeast Minnesota and northeast Iowa these generally knew I had been a captain in the regular army and had served through the Mexican war consequently wherever I stopped at night some of the people would come to the public house where I was and sit till a late hour discussing the probabilities of the future my own views at that time were like those officially expressed by Mr. Seward at a later day that the war would be over in 90 days I continued to entertain these views until after the battle of Shiloh I believe now that there would have been no more battles at the west after the capture of Fort Donaldson if all the troops in that region had been under a single commander who would have followed up that victory there is little doubt in my mind now that the prevailing sentiment of the south would have been opposed to cessation in 1860-1861 if there had been a fair and calm expression of opinion unbiased by threats and if the ballot of one legal voter had counted for as much as that of any other but there was no calm discussion of the question demagogues who were too old to enter the army if there should be a war others who entertained so high an opinion of their own ability that they did not believe they could be spared from the direction of the affairs of state in such an event declined vehemently and increasingly against the north against its aggressions upon the south its interference with southern rights et cetera, et cetera they denounced the northerners as cowards paltrunes Negro worshippers claimed that one southern man was equal to five northern men in battle that if the south would stand up for its rights the north would back down Mr. Jefferson Davis said in a speech delivered at La Grange, Mississippi before the cessation of that state that he would agree to drink all the blood spilled south of Mason and Dixon's line if there should be a war the young men who would have the fighting to do in case of war believed all these statements both in regard to the aggressiveness of the north and its cowardice they too cried out for a separation from such people the great bulk of the legal voters of the south were men who owned no slaves their homes were generally in the hills and poor country their facilities for educating their children even up to the point of reading and writing were very limited their interest in the contest was very meager what there was, if they had been capable of seeing it was with the north they too needed emancipation under the old regime they were looked down upon by those who controlled all the affairs of the interest of slave owners as poor white trash who were allowed to ballot so long as they cast it according to direction I am aware that this last statement may be disputed an individual testimony perhaps seduced to show that in anti-bellum days the ballot was as untrammeled in the south as in any section of the country but in the face of any such contradiction I reassert the statement the shotgun was not resorted to mask men did not ride over the country at night intimidating voters but there was a firm feeling that a class existed in every state with a sort of divine right to control public affairs if they could not get this control by one means they must by another the end justified the means the coercion, if mild, was complete there were two political parties it is true in all the states both strong in numbers and respectability but both equally loyal to the institution which stood paramount in southern eyes to all other institutions in state or nation the slave owners were the minority but governed both parties had politics ever divided the slave holders and the non-slave holders the majority would have been obliged to yield or internecine war would have been the consequence I do not know that the southern people were to blame for this condition of affairs there was a time when slavery was not profitable and the discussion of the merits of the institution was confined almost exclusively to the territory where it existed the states of Virginia and Kentucky came near abolishing slavery by their own acts one state defeating the measure by a tie vote and the other only lacking one but when the institution became profitable all talk of its abolition ceased where it existed and naturally as human nature is constituted arguments were adduced in its support the cotton-gen probably had much to do with the justification of slavery the winner of 1860, 1861 will be remembered by middle-aged people of today as one of great excitement South Carolina promptly seceded after the result of the presidential election was known other southern states proposed to follow in some of them the union sentiment was so strong that it had to be suppressed by force Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri all slave states failed to pass ordinances of secession but they were all represented in the so-called Congress of the so-called Confederate States the governor and lieutenant governor of Missouri in 1861 Jackson and Reynolds were both supporters of the rebellion and took refuge with the enemy the governor soon died and the lieutenant governor assumed his office issued proclamations as governor of the state was recognized as such by the Confederate government and continued his pretensions until the collapse of the rebellion the south claimed the sovereignty of states but claimed the right to coerce into their confederation such states as they wanted that is all the states were slavery existed they did not seem to think this course inconsistent the fact is the southern slave owners believed that in some way the ownership of slaves conferred a sort of patent of nobility a right to govern independent of the interest or wishes of those who did not hold such property they convinced themselves first of the divine origin of the institution and next that that particular institution was not safe in the hands of any body of legislators but themselves meanwhile the administration of President Buchanan looked helplessly on and proclaimed that the general government had no power to interfere that the nation had no power to save its own life Mr. Buchanan had in his cabinet two members at least who were as earnest to use a mild term in the cause of cessation as Mr. Davis or any southern statesman one of them, Floyd, the Secretary of War scattered the army so that much of it could be captured when hostilities should commence and distributed the cannon and small arms from northern arsenals throughout the south so as to be on hand when treason wanted them the navy was scattered in like manner the president did not prevent his cabinet preparing for war upon their government either by destroying its resources or storing them in the south until a de facto government was established with Jefferson Davis as his president and Montgomery Alabama as the capital the secessionists had then to leave the cabinet in their own estimation they were aliens in the country which had given them births loyal men were put into their places, treason, in the executive branch of the government was stopped but the harm had already been done the stable door was locked after the horse had been stolen during all the trying winter of 1860, 1861 when the southerners were so defiant that they would not allow within their borders the expression of a sentiment hostile to their views it was a brave man indeed who could stand up and proclaim his loyalty to the Union on the other hand, men at the north, prominent men, proclaimed that the government had no power to coerce the south into submission to the laws of the land that if the north undertook to raise armies to go south these armies would have to march over the dead bodies of the speakers a portion of the press of the north was constantly proclaiming similar views when the time arrived for the president-elect to go to the capital of the nation to be sworn into office it was deemed unsafe for him to travel not only as a president-elect but as any private citizen should be allowed to do instead of going in a special car receiving the good wishes of his constituents at all the stations along the road he was obliged to stop on the way and to be smuggled into the capital he disappeared from public view on his journey and the next the country knew his arrival was announced at the capital there was little doubt that he would have been assassinated if he had attempted to travel openly throughout his journey End of Section 16 Recording by Jim Clevinger, Little Rock, Arkansas, Jim at joclev.com Section 17 of Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Jim Clevinger Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant by Ulysses S. Grant Chapter 17 Outbreak of the Rebellion Presiding at a union meeting Mustering officer of state troops, Lyon at Camp Jackson Services tendered to the government The 4th of March 1861 came and Abraham Lincoln was formed to maintain the union against all its enemies The cessation of one state after another followed until the 11 had gone out On the 11th of April, Fort Sumter, a national fort in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina was fired upon by the Southerners and a few days after was captured The Confederates proclaimed themselves aliens and thereby debarred themselves of all right to claim protection under the Constitution of the United States We did not admit the fact that they were aliens But all the same, they debarred themselves of the right to expect better treatment than people of any other foreign state who make war upon an independent nation Upon the firing on Sumter, President Lincoln issued his first call for troops and soon after a proclamation convening Congress in extra session The call was for 75,000 volunteers for 90 days service If the shot fired at Fort Sumter was heard around the world The call of the President for 75,000 men was heard throughout the northern states There was not a state in the north of a million of inhabitants that would not have furnished the entire number faster than arms could have been supplied to them if it had been necessary As soon as the news of the call for volunteers reached Galena Posters were stuck up, calling for a meeting of the citizens at the courthouse in the evening Business ceased entirely, all was excitement For a time there were no party distinctions All were union men determined to avenge the insult to the national flag In the evening the courthouse was packed Although a comparative stranger I was called upon to preside The sole reason, possibly, was that I had been in the army and had seen service With much embarrassment and some prompting I made out to announce the object of the meeting Speeches were in order, but it is doubtful whether it would have been safe Just then to make other than patriotic ones There was probably no one in the house, however, who felt like making any other The two principal speeches were by B. B. Howard, the postmaster And a Breckenridge Democrat at the November election to fall before And John A. Rollins, an elector on the Douglas ticket E. B. Washburn, with whom I was not acquainted at that time Came in after the meeting had been organized and expressed, I understood afterwards A little surprise that Galena could not furnish a presiding officer For such an occasion without taking a stranger He came forward and was introduced And made a speech appealing to the patriotism of the meeting After the speaking was over, volunteers were called for to form a company The quota of Illinois had been fixed at six regiments And it was supposed that one company would be as much as would be accepted from Galena The company was raised and the officers and non-commissioned officers elected Before the meeting adjourned I declined the captaincy before the balloting But announced that I would aid the company in every way I could And would be found in the service in some position if there should be a war I never went into our leather store after that meeting To put up a package or to do other business The ladies of Galena were quite as patriotic as the men They could not enlist, but they conceived the idea of sending their first company to the field uniformed They came to me to get a description of the United States uniform for infantry Subscribed and bought the material Procured tailors to cut out the garments and the ladies made them up In a few days the company was in uniform and ready to report at the state capitol for assignment The men all turned out the morning after their enlistment And I took charge, divided them into squads and superintended their drill When they were ready to go to Springfield I went with them And remained there until they were assigned to a regiment There were so many more volunteers than had been called for That the question whom to accept was quite embarrassing to the governor, Richard Yates The legislature was in session at the time, however, and came to his relief A law was enacted authorizing the governor to accept the services of ten additional regiments One from each congressional district for one month to be paid by the state But pledged to go into the service of the United States if there should be a further call during their term Even with this relief the governor was still very much embarrassed Before the war was over he was like the president when he was taken with the very alloyed At last he had something he could give to all who wanted it In time the Galena Company was mustered into the United States service Forming a part of the 11th Illinois Volunteer Infantry My duties I thought had ended at Springfield and I was prepared to start home by the evening train Leaving at nine o'clock Up to that time I do not think I had been introduced to Governor Yates or had ever spoken to him I knew him by sight, however, because he was living at the same hotel and I often saw him at table The evening I was to quit the capital I left the supper room before the governor and was standing at the front door when he came out He spoke to me, calling me by my old Army title captain and said he understood that I was about leaving the city I answered that I was He said he would be glad if I would remain overnight and call at the executive office the next morning I complied with his request and was asked to go into the adjutant general's office and render such assistance as I could The governor saying that my Army experience would be of great service there I accepted the proposition My old Army experience I found indeed a very great service I was no clerk nor had I any capacity to become one The only place I ever found in my life to put a paper so as to find it again Was either a side coat pocket or the hands of a clerk or secretary more careful than myself But I had been quartermaster commissary and adjutant in the field The Army forms were familiar to me and I could direct how they should be made out There was a clerk in the office of the adjutant general who supplied my deficiencies The ease with which the state of Illinois settled its accounts with the government at the close of the war Is evident of the efficiency of Mr. Loomis as an accountant on a large scale He remained in the office until that time As I have stated, the legislature authorized the governor to accept the services of ten additional regiments I had charge of mustering these regiments into the state service They were assembled at the most convenient railroad centers in their respective congressional districts I detailed officers to muster in a portion of them but mustered three in the southern part of the state myself One of these was to assemble at Belleville some eighteen miles southeast of St. Louis When I got there I found that only one or two companies had arrived There was no probability of the regiment coming together under five days This gave me a few idle days which I concluded to spend in St. Louis There was a considerable force of state militia at Camp Jackson on the outskirts of St. Louis at the time There is but little doubt that it was the design of Governor Clareborn Jackson To have these troops ready to seize the United States arsenal and the city of St. Louis Why they did not do so I do not know There was but a small garrison, two companies I think, under Captain N. Lyon at the arsenal And but for the timely services of the honorable F. P. Blair I have little doubt that St. Louis would have gone into rebel hands and with it the arsenal with all its arms and ammunition Blair was a leader among the Union men of St. Louis in 1861 There was no state government in Missouri at the time that would sanction the raising of troops or commissioned officers to protect United States property But Blair had probably procured some form of authority from the President to raise troops in Missouri and to muster them into the service of the United States At all events he did raise a regiment and took command himself as Colonel With this force he reported to Captain Lyon and placed himself in regiment under his orders It was whispered that Lyon thus reinforced intended to break up Camp Jackson and captured the militia I went down to the arsenal in the morning to see the troops start out I had known Lyon for two years at West Point and in the old army afterwards Blair, I knew very well by sight I had heard him speak in the canvas of 1858, possibly several times, but I had never spoken to him As the troops marched out of the enclosure around the arsenal Blair was on his horse outside forming them into line preparatory to their march I introduced myself to him and had a few moments conversation and expressed my sympathy with his purpose This was my first personal acquaintance with the honorable afterwards Major General F. P. Blair Camp Jackson surrendered without a fight and the garrison was marched down to the arsenal as prisoners of war Up to this time the enemies of the government in St. Louis had been bold and defiant while Union men were quiet but determined The enemies had their headquarters in a central and public position on Pine Street near Fifth from which the rebel flag was flaunted boldly The Union men had a place of meeting somewhere in the city, I did not know where, and I doubt whether they dared to enrage the enemies of the government by placing the national flag outside their headquarters As soon as the news of the capture of Camp Jackson reached the city the condition of affairs was changed Union men became rampant, aggressive, and, if you will, intolerant They proclaimed their sentiments boldly and were impatient at anything like disrespect for the Union The secessionists became quiet but were filled with suppressed rage They had been playing the bully, the Union men ordered the rebel flag taken down from the building on Pine Street The command was given in tones of authority and it was taken down, never to be raised again in St. Louis I witnessed the scene, I had heard of the surrender of the camp and that the garrison was on its way to the arsenal I had seen the troops start out in the morning and had wasted them success I now determined to go to the arsenal and await their arrival and congratulate them I stepped on a car standing at the corner of Fourth and Pine Streets and saw a crowd of people standing quietly in front of the headquarters who were there for the purpose of hauling down the flag There were squads of other people at intervals down the street They too were quiet but filled with suppressed rage and muttered their resentment at the insult to what they called their flag Before the car I was in had started, a dapper little fellow, he would be called a dude at this day, stepped in He was in a great state of excitement and used adjectives freely to express his contempt for the Union and for those who had just perpetrated such an outrage upon the rights of a free people There was only one other passenger in the car besides myself when this young man entered He evidently expected to find nothing but sympathy when he got away from the mud-sills engaged in compelling a free people to pull down a flag they adored He turned to me saying, things have come to a pretty pass when a free people can't choose their own flag Where I come from if a man dares to say a word in favor of the Union we hang him to a limb of the first tree we come to I replied that after all we were not so intolerant in St. Louis as we might be I had not seen a single rebel hung yet nor heard of one. There were plenty of them who ought to be, however The young man subsided. He was so crestfallen that I believe if I had ordered him to leave the car he would have gone quietly out saying to himself, more Yankee oppression By nightfall the late defenders of Camp Jackson were all within the walls of the St. Louis arsenal prisoners of war The next day I left St. Louis for Mattoon, Illinois where I was to muster in the regiment from that congressional district This was the 21st Illinois Infantry, the regiment of which I subsequently became colonel I mustered one regiment afterwards when my services for the state were about closed Brigadier General John Pope was stationed at Springfield as United States mustering officer all the time I was in the state service He was a native of Illinois and well acquainted with most of the prominent men in the state I was a carpet bagger and knew but few of them While I was on duty at Springfield the senators representatives in Congress, ex-governors and the state legislators were nearly all at the state capitol The only acquaintance I made among them was with the governor whom I was serving and by chance with Senator S. A. Douglas The only members of Congress I knew were Washburn and Philip Falk With the former though he represented my district and we were citizens of the same town I only became acquainted at the meeting when the first company of Galena volunteers was raised Falk I had known in St. Louis when I was a citizen of that city I had been three years at West Point with Pope and had served with him a short time during the Mexican war under General Taylor I saw a good deal of him during my service with the state On one occasion he said to me that I ought to go into the United States service I told him I intended to do so if there was a war He spoke of his acquaintance with the public men of the state and said he could get them to recommend me for a position and that he would do all he could for me I declined to receive endorsement for permission to fight for my country Going home for a day or two soon after this conversation with General Pope I wrote from Galena the following letter to the Adjutant General of the Army Galena, Illinois, May 24, 1861 Colonel L. Thomas, Adjutant General, USA, Washington, D.C. Sir, having served for 15 years in the regular army, including four years at West Point and feeling yet the duty of everyone who has been educated at the government expense to offer their services for the support of that government I have the honor, very respectfully, to tender my services until the close of the war in such capacity as may be offered I would say, in view of my present age and length of service I feel myself competent to command a regiment if the President, in his judgment, should see fit to entrust one to me Since the first call of the President I have been serving on the staff of the Governor of this state rendering such aid as I could in the organization of our state militia and am still engaged in that capacity A letter addressed to me at Springfield, Illinois will reach me I am very respectfully your obedient servant, U.S. Grant This letter failed to elicit an answer from the Adjutant General of the Army I presume it was heartily read by him and certainly it could not have been submitted to higher authority Subsequent to the war, General Badoe, having heard of this letter applied to the War Department for a copy of it The letter could not be found and no one recollected ever having seen it I took no copy when it was written long after the application of General Badoe, General Townsend who had become Adjutant General of the Army while packing up papers preparatory to the removal of his office found this letter in some out-of-the-way place It had not been destroyed, but it had not been regularly filed away I felt some hesitation in suggesting rank as high as the colonelacy of a regiment feeling somewhat doubtful whether I would be equal to the position but I had seen nearly every colonel who had been mustered in from the State of Illinois and some from Indiana and felt that if they could command a regiment properly and with credit I could also Having but little to do after the muster of the last of the regiments authorized by the State Legislature I asked and obtained of the Governor leave of absence for a week to visit my parents in Covington, Kentucky immediately opposite Cincinnati General McClellan had been made a Major General and had his headquarters at Cincinnati In reality I wanted to see him I had known him slightly at West Point where we served one year together and in the Mexican War I was in hopes that when he saw me he would offer me a position on his staff I called on two successive days at his office but failed to see him on either occasion and returned to Springfield End of Section 17 Recording by Jim Clevenger Little Rock, Arkansas Jim at J-O-C-C-L-E-V dot com Section 18 of Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Jim Clevenger Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant by Ulysses S. Grant Chapter 18 Appointed Colonel of the 21st Illinois Personnel of the Regiment General Logan Reached to Missouri Movement against Harris at Florida, Missouri General Pope in command Stationed at Mexico, Missouri While I was absent from the State Capitol on this occasion The President's second call for troops was issued This time it was for 300,000 men for three years or the war This brought into the U.S. service all the regiments then in the State Service These had elected their officers from highest to lowest And were accepted with their organizations as they were Except in two instances A Chicago regiment, the 19th Infantry Had elected a very young man to the Colonelacy When it came to taking the field the regiment asked to have another appointed Colonel And the one they had previously chosen made Lieutenant Colonel The 21st Regiment of Infantry, mustered in by me at Mattoon Refused to go into the service with the Colonel of their selection in any position While I was still absent Governor Yates appointed me Colonel of this latter regiment A few days after I was in charge of it and in camp on the fairgrounds near Springfield My regiment was composed in large part of young men of as good social position as any in their section of the State It embraced the sons of farmers, lawyers, physicians, politicians, merchants, bankers and ministers And some men of mature years who had filled such positions themselves There were also men in it who could be led astray And the Colonel, elected by the votes of the regiment Had proved to be fully capable of developing all there was in his men of recklessness It was said that he even went so far at times as to take the guard from their posts And go with them to the village nearby and make a night of it When there came a prospect of battle the regiment wanted to have someone else to lead them I found it very hard work for a few days to bring all the men into anything like subordination But the great majority favored discipline and by the application of a little regular army punishment All were reduced to as good discipline as one could ask The ten regiments which had volunteered in the State service for thirty days, it will be remembered Had done so with a pledge to go into the national service if called upon within that time When they volunteered the government had only called for ninety days in listlets Men were called now for three years for the war They felt that this change of period released them from the obligation of re-volunteering When I was appointed colonel the twenty-first regiment was still in the State service About the time they were to be mustered into the United States service, such of them as would go Two members of Congress from the State, McClendon and Logan, appeared at the capital and I was introduced to them I had never seen either of them before, but I had read a great deal about them and particularly about Logan in the newspapers Both were Democratic members of Congress and Logan had been elected from the Southern District of the State Where he had a majority of eighteen thousand over his Republican competitor His district had been settled originally by people from the Southern States And at the breaking out of cessation they sympathized with the South At the first outbreak of war some of them joined the Southern Army Many others were preparing to do so Others rode over the country at night denouncing the Union And made it as necessary to guard railroad bridges over which national troops had to pass in Southern Illinois As it was in Kentucky or any of the border slave states Logan's popularity in this district was unbounded He knew almost enough of the people in it by their Christian names to form an ordinary congressional district As he went in politics so his district was sure to go The Republican papers had been demanding that he should announce where he stood on the questions which at that time engrossed the whole of public thought Some were very bitter in their denunciations of this silence Logan was not a man to be coerced into an utterance by threats He did however come out in a speech before the adjournment of the special session of Congress Which was convened by the president soon after his inauguration and announced his undying loyalty and devotion to the Union But I had not happened to see that speech so that when I first met Logan My impressions were those formed from reading denunciations of him McLernon on the other hand had early taken strong grounds for the maintenance of the Union and had been praised accordingly by the Republican papers The gentlemen who presented these two members of Congress asked me if I would have any objections to their addressing my regiment I hesitated a little before answering It was but a few days before the time set for mustering into the United States service such of the men as were willing to volunteer for three years or the war I had some doubt as to the effect a speech from Logan might have But as he was with McLernon whose sentiments on the all-absorbing questions of the day were well known I gave my consent McLernon spoke first and Logan followed in a speech which he has hardly equaled since for force and eloquence It breathed a loyalty and devotion to the Union which inspired my men to such a point that they would have volunteered to remain in the Army as long as an enemy of the country continued to bear arms against it They entered the United States service almost to a man General Logan went to his part of the state and gave his attention to raising troops The very men who at first made it necessary to guard the roads in Southern Illinois became the defenders of the Union Logan entered the service himself as colonel of a regiment and rapidly rose to the rank of Major General His district which had promised at first to give much trouble to the government filled every call made upon it for troops without resorting to the draft There was no call made when there were not more volunteers than were asked for That congressional district stands credited at the War Department today with furnishing more men for the Army than it was called on to supply I remained in Springfield with my regiment until the 3rd of July when I was ordered to Quincy, Illinois By that time the regiment was in a good state of discipline and the officers and men were well up in the company drill There was direct railroad communication between Springfield and Quincy but I thought it would be good preparation for the troops to march there We had no transportation for our camp and garrison equippage so wagons were hired for the occasion and on the 3rd of July we started There was no hurry but fair marches were made every day until the Illinois River was crossed There I was overtaken by a dispatch saying that the destination of the regiment had been changed to Ironton, Missouri And ordering me to halt where I was and await the arrival of a steamer which had been dispatched up the Illinois River to take the regiment to St. Louis The boat when it did come grounded on a sandbar a few miles below where we were in camp We remained there several days waiting to have the boat get off the bar but before this occurred news came that an Illinois regiment was surrounded by rebels At a point on the Hannibal and St. Joe Railroad some miles west of Palmyra in Missouri And I was ordered to proceed with all dispatch to their relief We took the cars and reached Quincy in a few hours When I left Galena for the last time to take command of the 21st Regiment I took with me my oldest son Frederick D. Grant then a lad of 11 years of age On receiving the order to take rail frequency I wrote to Mrs. Grant to relieve what I supposed would be her great anxiety For one so young going into danger that I would send Fred home from Quincy by river I received a prompt letter and replied decidedly disapproving my proposition and urging that the lad should be allowed to accompany me It came too late Fred was already on his way up to Mississippi bound for Dubuque, Iowa From which place there was a railroad to Galena My sensations as we approached what I supposed might be a field of battle were anything but agreeable I had been in all the engagements in Mexico that it was possible for one person to be in but not in command If someone else had been Colonel and I had been Lieutenant Colonel I do not think I would have felt any trepidation Before we were prepared to cross the Mississippi River at Quincy my anxiety was relieved For the men of the besieged regiment came straggling into town I am inclined to think both sides got frightened and ran away I took my regiment to Paul Mara and remained there for a few days until relieved by the 19th Illinois Infantry From Paul Mara I proceeded to Salt River the railroad bridge over which had been destroyed by the enemy Colonel John M. Palmer at that time commanded the 13th Illinois which was acting as a guard to workmen who were engaged in rebuilding this bridge Palmer was my senior and commanded the two regiments as long as we remained together The bridge was finished in about two weeks and I received orders to move against Colonel Thomas Harris Who was said to be encamped at the little town of Florida some 25 miles south of where we then were At the time of which I now write we had no transportation and the country about Salt River was sparsely settled So that it took some days to collect teams and drivers enough to move the camp and garrison equippage of a regiment nearly a thousand strong Together with a weak supply of provisions and some ammunition While preparations for the move were going on I felt quite comfortable But when we got on the road and found every house deserted I was anything but easy In the 25 miles we had to march we did not see a person old or young male or female except two horsemen who were on a road that crossed hours As soon as they saw us they decamped as fast as their horses could carry them I kept my men in the ranks and forbade their entering any of the deserted houses or taking anything from them We halted at night on the road and proceeded the next morning at an early hour Harris had been encamped in a creek bottom for the sake of being near water The hills on either side of the creek extended to a considerable height possibly more than a hundred feet As we approached the brow of the hill from which it was expected we could see Harris's camp and possibly find his men ready for him to meet us My heart kept getting higher and higher until it felt to me as though it was in my throat I would have given anything then to have been back in Illinois but I had not the moral courage to halt and consider what to do I kept right on When we reached a point from which the valley below was in full view I halted The place where Harris had been encamped a few days before was still there and the marks of a recent encampment were plainly visible but the troops were gone My heart resumed its place. It occurred to me at once that Harris had been as much afraid of me as I had been of him This was a view of the question I had never taken before but it was one I never forgot afterwards From that event to the close of the war I never experienced trepidation upon confronting an enemy though I always felt more or less anxiety I never forgot that he had as much reason to fear my forces as I had his. The lesson was valuable Inquiries at the village of Florida divulged the fact that Colonel Harris, learning of my intended movement while my transportation was being collected, took time by the forlough and left Florida before I had started from Salt River. He had increased the distance between us by 40 miles The next day I started back to my old camp at Salt River Bridge The citizens living on the line of our march had returned to their houses after we passed and finding everything in good order, nothing carried away They were at their front doors ready to greet us now They had evidently been led to believe that the national troops carried death and devastation with them wherever they went In a short time after our return to Salt River Bridge I was ordered with my regiment to the town of Mexico General Pope was then commanding the district embracing all of the state of Missouri between the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers with his headquarters in the village of Mexico I was assigned to the command of a sub-district embracing the troops in the immediate neighborhood Some three regiments of infantry and a section of artillery There was one regiment encamped by the side of mine I assumed command of the whole and the first night sent the commander of the other regiment the parole and countersign Not wishing to be outdone in courtesy he immediately sent me the countersign for his regiment for the night When he was informed that the countersign sent to him was for use with his regiment as well as mine It was difficult to make him understand that this was not an unwarranted interference of one colonel over another No doubt he attributed it for the time to the presumption of a graduate of West Point over a volunteer pure and simple But the question was soon settled and we had no further trouble My arrival in Mexico had been preceded by that of two or three regiments in which proper discipline had not been maintained And the men had been in the habit of visiting houses without invitation and helping themselves to food and drink or demanding them from the occupants They carried their muskets while out of camp and made every man they found take the oath of allegiance to the government I at once published orders prohibiting the soldiers from going into private houses unless invited by the inhabitants And from appropriating private property to their own or to government uses The people were no longer molested or made afraid I received the most marked courtesy from the citizens of Mexico as long as I remained there Up to this time my regiment had not been carried in the school of the soldier beyond the company drill Except that it had received some training on the march from Springfield to the Illinois River There was now a good opportunity of exercising it in the battalion drill While I was at West Point the tactics used in the army had been scots and the musket the flintlock I had never looked at a copy of tactics from the time of my graduation My standing in that branch of studies had been near the foot of the class In the Mexican war in the summer of 1846 I had been appointed regimental quartermaster and commissary And had not been at a battalion drill since The arms had been changed since then and Hardy's tactics had been adopted I got a copy of tactics and studied one lesson intending to confine the exercise of the first day to the commands I had thus learned By pursuing this course from day to day I thought I would soon get through the volume We were encamped just outside of town on the common among scattering suburban houses with enclosed gardens And when I got my regiment in line and rode to the front I soon saw that if I attempted to follow the lesson I had studied I would have to clear away some of the houses and garden fences to make room I perceived at once however that Hardy's tactics, a mere translation from the French with Hardy's name attached Was nothing more than common sense and the progress of the age applied to scott's system The commands were abbreviated and the movement expedited Under the old tactics almost every change in the order of March was preceded by a halt Then came the change and then the forward march With the new tactics all these changes could be made while in motion I found no trouble in giving commands that would take my regiment where it wanted to go and carry it around all obstacles I do not believe that the officers of the regiment ever discovered that I had never studied the tactics that I used End of section 18, recording by Jim Clevenger, Lillaroff, Arkansas Jim at joclev.com


From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of Red Hat Summit 2020, brought to you by Red Hat. Hi, I'm Stu Miniman, and this is theCUBE's coverage of Red Hat Summit 2020. Of course, digital event this year, we are not together at Moscone, but we are bringing together many of the speakers, thought leaders, customers in this very important ecosystem. Really excited to welcome back to our program, Stephanie Cheris, who's the vice president and general manager of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux business unit inside of Red Hat. Stephanie, so great to see you. Have to give you a virtual hug and high five here, but always great to see you and have you on the program. Oh, thank you, Stu. It's great to be here. And this is what together means today, but it's great to be together with you again here at Summit. Yeah, the discussion is you talk kind of together apart for a time. We talk in tech that change is one of the only constants that we have and there are more changes than ever happening right now. So before we get into kind of your BU, talk a little bit about some of the big changes. There's organizational changes. I know we spoke to you in 2019 at IBM Think and Red Hat Summit because you've worked for both sides of the equation here. Give us kind of the latest from your standpoint. Yeah, certainly the leadership changes which have been public now for a couple of weeks, those are a big change for us. I think one of the things that has come through is IBM has really been respecting what Red Hat is, what we do, but also how we do it is very important and valued. And we at Red Hat believe in it so strongly, we're sticking to what Red Hat does best. Everything is open source, everything is collaborative. And honestly, I have to say it feels great as a Red Hatter to see Jim in the position he's in at IBM. Paul's passion, which clearly comes across in his key notes and his passion for how we have an open source development model, it's great to have him now take over the CEO role for Red Hat. So it's really exciting times. I think last year when we spoke, it was a bit of a wait and see and see what happens. And I think now the recent announcements really solidify the sort of synergy and partnership that IBM and Red Hat have and what our intentions are in the market. But at Red Hat, we still stay Red Hat and we're still driving things the way we always have. And that's great, feels good. That's great. And thank you so much for the updates. So when we talk about your business unit, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux, of course, REL, I've got a little too much history. I go back to when it was Raz before REL and kind of watched the growth of Linux to become really the underlying fabric of so much of what we see out there today for all of businesses, so many companies that could not exist if it wasn't for Linux. And in the seven years we've been having the cube, of course, we've really watched that move from Linux to not only be some of the foundations of what's happening in customers' environments, but also a major piece of cloud and cloud native. So give us that update as to here in 2020, why Linux has been around for quite a long time, but it still is relevant at that point. Yeah, so that's a great lead and ties exactly to how we look at REL in the Red Hat sort of entire portfolio. When you look at Linux and how it evolved, it started out as being a bit of a cheaper alternative to Unix, but it quickly became, because of the open source way and collaborative way it's developed, it quickly became sort of this springboard for innovation because you have all these incredible innovators collaborating upstream, all of that has fed to a whole different view of what Linux is. Cloud exists because of Linux, containers are just a different deployment mechanism for Linux workloads, artificial intelligence, those apps are built on Linux. So it's become this standardized foundation upon which innovation is done today. And for me, that's the most exciting thing because at Red Hat and in REL, our goal is to, one, have it just work, right? It has to be the standard. And while sometimes that can be misinterpreted as boring or a commodity, it is anything but a commodity. It's probably one of the most strategic decisions that someone makes is which REL distribution, which Linux distribution do they use? And at REL, we take real pride that it's built for the enterprise. It's built for security, it's built for resiliency and all of that, build it once, deploy it anywhere, translates into also using all the innovation, all the containerization capabilities, using it across multiple public clouds. So it's really that combination of having it just work, be the foundation of where you build once and then being able to leverage all the innovation that's coming out of the open source world today. Yeah, really interesting points, Stephanie. I think back to when we talked for years about the consumerization, excuse me, of IT and people thought that therefore there wouldn't be differentiation.  But if you look at how most companies build things, they really hyper-optimize them. I need to build what I need, I need to use the tools that are available and I need to be able to be agile. Well, you know, one of my highlights last year, talking to a lot of companies going through their digital transformation and a number of them at Red Hat Summit last year where they talked about both the organization and technology changes that they're making to move faster and of course, your portfolio is a big piece of helping them move forward. And that's one thing we're seeing, that ability to consume innovation and get the most and extract the most out of what they're running today in their data center as customers transform and take on this digital transformation. It's not just a technology statement. In most cases, it's an organizational statement as well and how do you bridge both those and move it forward? It's one thing we focus a lot on, right? With our open innovation labs with a lot of customers as well because it's not just about the technology, it's about the way we work and the way we do things as well. So Stephanie, every year or so I hear, it's like, oh, well, we've got a new way to do the operating system. There was the just enough operating system for a while when containerization came out. There was a little company named CoreOS that was like, oh, we're going to make a thin version. Of course, CoreOS is now a piece of Red Hat. So still with the cloud, there's always, we're going to change the way the operating system is done. We just love your viewpoint Red Hat has a few options and kind of a spectrum of offerings, but how do your customers think about the OS these days and how should we be thinking about rel specifically in that overall spectrum? No, so that's a great question, Stu. And we look at it as Linux and rel is the one thing that stays the same and helps you get the value out of all the work you've already put in, all the development work you've already put in and make sure that that translates to the future where everything is changing, how you deploy, where you deploy, what you deploy, all of that may change. But if you want to get the value out of the work and the development that has been done yesterday, you need something to stay the same. And in our view, that's rel. We build it with in mind for the enterprise, along life cycle, security support. We build all of that into it so that when you build on a rel kernel, you can take that if you want to deploy it in a container, you can deploy on rel itself, or if you need orchestration, you can deploy it on OpenShift. And that's part of the reason why you mentioned CoreOS. So we now have a rel CoreOS is within OpenShift 4.0 and beyond, of course. But what we did was we tailored down what is in rel. It's the same packages. It's the same certification, security, all of that work that we put in, right? We take the CoreOS piece of it, what's essential and really optimized for OpenShift. We build that into an immutable image and it goes out as part of OpenShift. It's not available separately because it's really tailored what we pick, the life cycle is all matching OpenShift. And what that does is provide you an OpenShift experience that's easy to update fully across the board, all the way down to the kernel, but you know it's the same Linux that you have in rel. And it's that consistency of technology that we really strive for. Same thing in public cloud. So when you build an image on prem on rel, you can take that image up into the public cloud and know it's the same level of security and it just will work. Part of my team and we take a lot of pride in the fact that it will just work. And while that may not sound super exciting, particularly in days like right now, being dependable and being reliable and knowing that it's secure, all of that is really important when you run your business that those features are anything but commoditized. Well, yeah, I think one of the real volumes that customers see with rel specifically is there's so much change going on there. And you look at the Linux community, you look at what OpenShift's doing in the Kubernetes community, there's so much code change going on, Red Hat, packages that make sure that you don't need to think about the almost chaos that's going out there in all of those communities, but you package those together. So Stephanie, rel 8 was of course, one of the highlights of last year's Red Hat Summit. So we'd love to hear if you've got any good customer stories, really the momentum of rel 8 as you've seen it, roll out around the world as, and then we'll talk about the new updates you have this week. Yeah, great. So rel 8 was a big deal for us last year, as you remember, and partly because not only all the features and functions, of course, which we put into it, but also because we really wanted to reposition what the value of an operating system is within a data center and within their innovation future. So we really focused all the features and functions into two buckets. One is about how do we help you with the operating system, run your business better, more efficiently, get the most out of the systems you have in the critical workloads that you run today? And how do we use the operating system to help you bridge into the next level of innovation? What's coming down the pipeline, things like containers? And we really wanted to make sure that as we see, most customers are looking to how they digitally transform, but of course no one has the freedom to throw away everything they've done in the past. They want to build upon that and get value out of it. So we really focused on balancing those two things. Now as we look at, in fact, one of the commitments we made because we heard it from customers was they wanted a more predictable deployment of our minor releases and our major releases. And we committed at the RHEL 8 launch that we would be delivering minor releases every six months and major releases every three years. And we have held to that. We delivered 8-1 six months after we delivered 8 and now you saw last week, we delivered 8.2. This is what it means for us to stand by our word and be dependable as an operating system. And the beauty of the subscription with RHEL is that if you're a customer and you're running RHEL 7, particularly in times right now, it's not that easy to get into your data center perhaps. And so if you don't choose to update to 8 now, you can stay on 7 until that time works. That's, to me, that's part of the beauty and the flexibility of the subscription model. We of course want to continue to bring you new capabilities and new features. But the subscription, our goal is to have a value subscription that you can get the most value from, no matter when you decide to upgrade or move forward with the different releases that we have. Yeah, well, yeah, congratulations on keeping. The release is going on schedule. It's one of the nice things about open source is we can see the roadmap out there. You've made this promise and you're keeping to it. So as you said, the announcement's been made, it's been talked about in the keynote. So give us a couple of the highlights as to what people should be looking at and looking to learn more when they dig into 8.2. Yeah, great. So we really wanted to stick with a few key messages with it and they do really tie to, how do we help you run your business and how do we help you grow your business? I'd say one thing that we announced and what we pivoted to with the 8.0 is we've really moved to, how do we deliver what we called an intelligent OS, which means an OS that helps you bridge the gap and brings more value to you in your data center than you got before. One of the key aspects to this was adding in the capability of Red Hat Insights. And we added insights capability into every single rail subscription that is under current support. So whether or not you moved to rail eight, whether you had rail seven, if you have a supported version of rail six, all of those had insights added to it. And what Insights is, is a, as a service on cloud.redhat.com, you can link up your servers and it will give you insight into operational capability. Is it configured correctly? Is it, could it be optimized for better performance? Where are you on your CVE updates? And what it does is take all that knowledge that Red Hat has from all the support cases and things that we're seeing, what's happening in the industry, what we're seeing other customers have, and we can even proactively help customers. The feedback on this capability has been huge. In fact, you'll see in the announcement last week, we've added a lot of new capabilities into this specifically for that reason. We've had customers, so you know, it's like having more ops people on my team because I'm getting this input in directly from Red Hat for things to look at. And so that to me was probably one of the key aspects that as we look from going to eight into 8.2, how do we build up that capability? And of course, last week you saw, we added a lot to that. And I think now more than ever, we want to make sure that everyone who has a rail subscription is getting the most value out of that. And I think Insights is one of the places where if you have a subscription and you can value or you can get more value from operational help, Insights is a place where we want to help you. Everything we had prior, we have now bucketized into a capability in the Insights called Advisor. It's really about performance, stability and security and doing an analysis for you. We've added a new capabilities around vulnerability. How do you remediate common vulnerabilities and exposures, compliance aspect, patch aspect, policies and drift. Kind of all of those we've now bucketed in into that Insights capability. So this brings a lot more value to something that we have already seen customers say, we didn't expect to get this amount of input and continuous growth because we constantly add new rules into that engine. And so what we knew yesterday won't be what we know tomorrow. And we look forward to sharing with that with everyone who has a subscription. So this is a place where I think it's an important place for folks to look, particularly now because operational efficiency is really key and security is really key. And we have a lot of capabilities involved. Yeah, sorry, go ahead. Please go ahead now. One other aspect in that that I wanted to mention was we also added a capability called subscription watch. And subscription watch helps you get a very simple clean view of all the subscriptions you have and where they're running. And that was one thing that we saw customers say there was friction in, how do I know where my entitlements are, how I'm using them across my entire enterprise and subscription watch can help with that. So this sort of cloud.redhat.com capability that we can assist with and is already part of your subscription. These are the kinds of things that we really want to help augment this to make really intelligent OS for the enterprise. Yeah, Stephanie, the comment I was going to make is there's certain shows that I go to that every year you go to it, you say, okay, it's a little bit bigger. They announced something, they made some progress on it. What has impressed me most about going to the Red Hat Show year after year is really the growth of the portfolio, if you will. So when I first started going to it, it was a lot of the people there were the hardcore Linux people. And then there's some storage people, some networking people as cloud and containers really grew. It really blossomed into this really robust ecosystem and growth there. So I would love just to get your viewpoint on the skill set because I'm sure there's plenty of companies out there that are like, well, I've got some people that are my Linux people and they might do things that aren't there, but how do you see the skill set and what Red Hat's doing really permutating more and more of companies' day-to-day activity? I think one of the things that I'm most proud of is even since last year, it's all the deeper collaborations we have between the various product lines. Certainly you'll talk with Joe Fitzgerald and he and I work together very closely on capabilities like insights. How do we add Ansible capabilities directly into RHEL? And what that does is really help, I think in any customer today, skills is probably one of the biggest concerns that they have. How do they grow those skills? How do they help folks grow and learn more and progress into the innovation areas? But clearly they still need their mission critical applications to run and how do they span that? And I think what we're really trying to do is be able to bring the strength of the portfolio together to help a customer have more flexibility in how they leverage their skills and how they grow their skills. Because I think coming back to that statement that you made earlier, it's not just about technology, it's about how if you really want to be agile, it's about how a company is organized. And I think we're hoping that we bring together the strength of the portfolio so that a customer is able to leverage their organization and leverage their skills in the best way possible. I think another place where we worked hard in 8.2 on the similar lines of bridging the portfolio was, we announced back in 8.0, we were putting containerization tools directly into RHEL with Bill DePodman and Scopio. In 8.2, we brought in the newest versions of Scopio and Buildup. In fact, in tech preview, you can get containerized versions of those. And so we're continuing to add, what we are seeing is that containerization is a journey for customers. Many customers just want to deploy a single container on a server or they want to deploy a single container in a VM. And they're not ready for orchestration. We wanted to put the tools in so that a customer could do that on RHEL, get started, get those containers deployed on RHEL, put those tools directly in. We added a tool called Utica, which is a tool built for security. It brings that security of SC Linux and brings that up and adds value at the container level. It's those kinds of things, as you see the bridge from RHEL into OpenShift, how do we help a customer bridge that skill journey as well along that path? And I think right now in Kubernetes and containers, skills is a big area of focus. So the more we can help ease that across the portfolio and bring those things together is really important. And I know we're working very closely with the Shesh and the team there in order to help bridge that. Excellent, Stephanie, I just want to give you the last word. We talked a lot about the ongoing journey that customers are going through. So give us your final takeaway as to how customers should be thinking about Red Hat in general and RHEL specifically as their journey goes forward. I think one of the things we're very proud of here at Red Hat is that we always, particularly in the open source communities with our customers, with our partners, we want to roll up our sleeves and help. And that's we want to co-develop, we want to work upstream with you. It's one of the things we're very proud of. And now particularly in this time, we want to make sure that folks understand we're here to help and we want to make sure that you're getting the most out of the subscriptions you have. And we help you on that journey both to get the most out of you can out of your data center today, but also be ready for the innovation that you want to consume going forward. And we're collectively working across Red Hat in order to make that happen. But even though this is different and it's the virtual experience edition of Red Hat Summit, it's great to be together and be able to share the whole message. Well, Stephanie, the open source community is definitely used to collaborating remotely. So thank you so much for joining us. It's a pleasure to see you and we hope to talk again soon. Great to see you, Stu. Thank you for the time. All right, you're watching the cubes coverage of Red Hat Summit 2020 digitally with remote guests from around the globe. I'm Stu Miniman and thank you for watching theCUBE.