n. What
brighter hopes he cherished were due to his father's purpose to make him
a partner with his brothers. He heard Lincoln and Douglas when they
canvassed the State, and approved of the argument of the former rather
than of the other. He had voted for Buchanan in 1856, his only vote for
a President before the war. In 1860 he had not acquired a right to vote
in Illinois.

These thirteen quiet years of Grant's life are not of account in his
public career, but they are a phase of experience that left its deep
traces in the character of the man. He was changed, and ever afterwards
there was a tinge of melancholy and a haunting shadow of dark days in
his life that could not be escaped. Nor in the pride and power of his
after success did he completely conquer the besetting weakness of his
flesh. The years from twenty-six to thirty-nine in the lives of most men
who ever amount to anything are years of steady development and
acquisition, of high endeavor, of zealous, well-ordered upward progress,
of growth in self-mastery and outward influence, of firm consolidation
of character. These conditions are not obvious in the case of General
Grant. Had he died before the summer of 1861, being nearly forty years
of age, he would have filled an obscure grave, and those to whom he was
dearest could not have esteemed his life successful, even in its humble
scope. He had not yet found his opportunity: he had not yet found
himself.

CHAPTER VII

THE SUMMONS OF PATRIOTISM

The tide of patriotism that surged through the North after the fall of
Fort Sumter in April, 1861, lifted many strong but discouraged men out
of their plight of hard conditions and floated them on to better
fortune. Grant was one of these. At last he found reason to be glad that
he had the education and experience of a soldier.

On Monday, April 15, 1861, Galena learned that Sumter had fallen. The
next day there was a town meeting, where indignation and devotion found
utterance. Over that meeting Captain Grant was called to preside,
although few knew him. Elihu B. Washburn, the representative of the
district in Congress, and John A. Rawlins, a rude, self-educated lawyer,
who had been a farmer and a charcoal burner, made passionate, fiery
speeches on the duty of every man to stand by the flag. At the close of
that meeting Grant told his brothers that he felt that he must join the
army, and he did no more work in the shop. How clearly he perceived the
mean