When a war meeting was held to secure en listments Captain Grant was made chairman of the meeting but declined an offer of the captaincy of the company enlisted, saying "I have been a captain in the regular army. I am fitted to command a regiment." On 25 April, however, he accompanied the troops to Spring field, where on 8 May he was attached to the adjutant-general's office as mustering officer, mustering in several regiments, among which was the 7th District Regiment (later the 21st Illinois). On 24 May 1861 he tendered his services to the War Department at Washington, suggesting that he was competent to command a regiment, but received no reply and had al most abandoned hope of making any headway in the military service when (17 June) he was appointed colonel of the above regiment, though compelled to borrow money to purchase the proper officer's outfit. He served with his regi ment under Pope in Missouri '(endeavoring to suppress guerilla warfare), until 7 August, when he was appointed by Lincoln brigadier-general of volunteers, on 4 September assuming com mand of the district of southeastern Missouri and western Kentucky, with headquarters at Cairo. Immediately on his arrival he seized Paducah, Ky., a town of great strategic im portance at the junction of the Tennessee and the Ohio rivers, on 25 September occupied Smithland, and then spent several weeks in organization and drill, in fortifying important locations and in reconnaissances against the enemy. On 7 November he attacked and cap tured the Confederate camp at Belmont, Mo., but the arrival of Confederate reinforcements compelled him to retire to his transports.
In February 1862, after much persuasion, Gen. H. W. Halleck allowed Grant to proceed against Fort Henry on the east bank of the Tennessee. Accordingly, with 15,000 troops, and accompanied by the gunboat flotilla under A. H. Foote, Grant set out, and on the 6th, after a terrific bombardment by the gunboats, compelled the fort to surrender. He then in vested Fort Donelson, on the west bank of the Cumberland River, 12 miles away. A Con federate sortie on the 15th failed to loosen Grant's grip and on the 16th Gen. S. B. Buck ner proposed an armistice and the appoint ment of commissioners to settle terms of capit ulation, but Grant replied: "No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works.° Buckner surrendered the fort and about 15,000 troops and Grant became famous as "Unconditional Surrender Grant." This brilliant piece of work was the first im portant victory for the Union cause and its moral effect was tremendous. In spite of the jealousy of Halleck and his efforts to belittle and humiliate Grant, who afterward for a time was virtually under arrest, Lincoln nominated Grant as major-general of volunteers, to date from the surrender, and the Senate confirmed the appointment. See FORT HENRY AND FORT DONELSON.
Grant's next important battle was at Shiloh (q.v.) or Pittsburg Landing. At that point were five divisions of Grant's army, while he himself was at Savannah, nine miles away, awaiting the arrival of an army under Don Carlos Buell. On 6 April the Confederate army, under Gen. A. S. Johnston, attacked the Union troops at the Landing and beat them back to the Tennessee River with great loss; but Grant, having been reinforced by Buell's army, reformed his lines, renewed the battle on the 7th and drove the Confederates, now under Beauregard, Johnston having been killed in action, back to Corinth, Miss. The highly
colored reports of this battle in the newspapers of the North called forth the most violent and acrid denunciations of Grant, who was charged with neglecting his army through dissipation, with recklessly exposing his men and with being in the rear at a critical time; moreover the public was dismayed by the large loss of life, this being the bloodiest battle up to that time in the history of the country. But Lincoln, un swayed by the widespread clamor for Grant's removal, resolutely rejected all such demands, saying "I can't spare this man, he fights.* On 11 April Halleck arrived at the Landing and in a spirit of petty jealousy took personal com mand of the army, much to Grant's chagrin, and the latter, though nominally second in com mand, was completely ignored in the following ludicrous campaign against Corinth (q.v.), which was occupied by the Union troops 30 May. Grant was so disgusted by what he deemed an unwarranted displacement that he contomplated• leaving the army but was dis suaded by Sherman. On 11 July, however, Halleck was called to Washington and left Grant in charge of the district of West Ten nessee, embracing the territory west of the Cumberland River, with headquarters at Corinth. On 19-20 September Grant forced Price to retreat at luka (q.v.), on 3-4 October a part of his army under Rosecraip, signally defeated Price and Van Dorn at Corinth (q.v.) and on the 25th he was placed in command of the Department of the Tennessee, charged with the special duty of taking Vicksburg.
By November 1862 Grant was in sufficient force to undertake an offensive campaign. Sending Sherman to attack Vicksburg in front, Grant went to the interior to tut off escape by the rear. First came the reverse at Holly Springs (q.v.) 20 December and on the 29th the sanguinary battle of Chickasaw Bayou (q.v.) was fought, but on 10-11 Jan. 1863 Sherman managed to capture Arkansas Post or Fort Hindman (q.v.) and thus saved from utter failure a campaign that had been planned on an unsound basis and subjected to consider able interference by a series of political in trigues. Nevertheless Grant possessed the en ergy and perisistency necessary to accomplish the task before him; the plan of campaign was changed several times without appreciable re sult, but finally, after months of seemingly hopeless work, by a series of brilliant ma noeuvres, a regular siege of Vicksburg was insti tuted in May and on 4 July 1863 the fortress and town were surrendered with over 30,000 troops, the largest body of soldiers that had been cap tured on this continent up to that time. (See YAZOO PASS AND STEELE S BAYOU ; PORT GIB SON; RAYMOND ; JACKSON ; CHAMPION'S HILL; BIG BLACK; MILLIKEN'S BEND; VICKSBURG ; PORT HUDSON ) . Grant was now the ((man of destiny* and a national hero; on 16 July Lin coln wrote a personal letter of congratulation and nominated him as major-general in the reg ular army; and in October he was placed in command of the Military Division of the Mis sissippi.