According to Bruce Catton's Grant Moves South, around the time this photo was supposedly taken, Grant had just been appointed to command at Cairo by John C. Fremont in St. Louis and arrived to find things in a deplorable shape. There were NO headquarters facilities, virtually no camps, many mosquitoes, much sickness, and a sea of mud studded with the carcasses of dead horses and mules everywhere. Grant secured probably the only decent structure in the tiny, beat-up river town which was the local Post Office and established his office on the ground floor with living quarters rooms above. He had only just been promoted brigadier general of volunteers and had yet to get time to travel to St. Louis - the nearest available location - to order a uniform, so he continued for some time to wear civilian clothes! McClernand was also a new soldier, having previously been nothing but a politician. I'm glad to see this photo because I had been thinking about it ever since reading the book, but I wonder if this really is Grant and McClernand? I can easily accept the possibility, but without knowing more about the photograph I would tend to be at least skeptical.
Thanks for the info. It's is difficult to ID the men with 100% certainty but a resemblance is seen. A closeup doesn't make things easier.
One reason I question the identity of Grant, especially, is the set of unquestionably authentic photos, also supposedly made in Cairo, of Grant and members of his staff in October, 1861 obviously after Grant received not only his brigadier general's uniform but also a handsome presentation sword he's cradling in his lap. He wore the unaccustomed long beard until sometime before the February, 1862 Fort Donelson campaign.
I have to say I completely forgot about Grant's long beard at that time.
Again, according to Lloyd Lewis' Captain Sam Grant, he left Galena for Springfield wearing civilian clothes, then knocked about for some time trying to secure a position, even traveling fruitlessly to Cincinnati to attempt to see his Old Army associate McClellan. Until he was finally appointed colonel of an Illinois regiment there was no need to go to the expense of buying a uniform, and even after he secured the position there wasn't time. He was shunted from remote post to post in western and southern Missouri for several months without any respite to take leave and go home to Galena where he knew he could get a proper uniform made, so he apparently continued for some time to wear his civilian clothes. I can't recall any photos of Grant wearing a colonel's uniform and believe the one above was the first made of him during the war, so I don't know if he ever even owned one! By the time the war broke out Grant had been living and working in Galena at his brothers' shop, mainly keeping the books and sometimes acting as a traveling sales rep, so he probably had a decent wardrobe, especially under Julia's watchful eye.
I'll add some more concerning his Galena year that I suspected but didn't know until I read Lewis. Grant's father no longer played any part in running the business - he had set as a goal when a young man to retire at sixty, assuming he lived so long, and kept his goal, having turned over the business to Grant's two brothers. One of them, Samuel Simpson, was already ill with the consumption that would kill him on September 16, 1861, thus making Ulysses' coming almost a necessity. That Sam spent most of his remaining year living with the father in, I believe, Louisville or near it, and stayed with Ulysses, Julia, and their children when he returned to visit Galena, maintaining no residence of his own there. Once in Galena Ulysses unsurprisingly and characteristically kept a low profile and hated to wait on customers in the store, spending most of his time in the back room office keeping the books, which of course with his West Point training and aptitude for mathematics - his best subject - he performed admirably. Below is a photo of Samuel Simpson Grant's monument in the Galena cemetery.
In Miller's Photographic History of the Civil War (Volume I, page 188), the persons in this image are identified.
Great. Thanks you for this. A little larger text for people like me who need glasses.
I've never been a fan of Miller's and don't know if I would believe their identification or not - somehow Jacques the butcher isn't very convincing!
From Catton's description in Grant Moves South instead of a desert back in 1861 it was a swamp.
Just over 2,100 people in Cairo in 1860. Everyone knew Jacques the butcher!
Looking at a population report shows 15,203 in people in 1920 and only 2,831 in 2010. The town is dying.
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