Grant Grant gets promoted

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Salt Lake Herald Feb 23, 1896
by former Chaplain of the 21st Illinois Infantry
James L Crane

Upon being promoted to General, Grant offers a staff position to the 21st Illinois chaplain….

"Well, Chaplain, if you will not take a permanent position on my staff, will you stay with me a few weeks till I have time to make my selection ? " I stayed with him the two or three weeks he remained at Ironton. At the end of that time I went with him to St. Louis, to procure some tents and other travelling equipage necessary to prepare the several regiments for marching southward. We started from Ironton about dusk one evening, and walked up to Pilot Knob to take the cars. Ten regiments were encamped in the neighborhood at this time. Pilot Knob is a mile and a half from Ironton. While we were leisurely measuring the distance, and had gone half way, we were met by three soldiers, who ordered us to halt. Grant told them they had no business to halt men at that point. One of the men was in his shirt-sleeves, and was without arms, and drunk. The other two had muskets, and appeared to be sober. Grant ordered the two with muskets to arrest the drunken man. The drunken man ordered them, with an oath of prodigious energy, to charge on us with their bayonets, and they did it. We retreated in good order. But the pointed steel was offensively close to me, and I called out: " This is General Grant, commander of the post; you better be careful." But the man in shirt-sleeves replied, with a vehemence surpassing my own: " Grant ! I don't know him. You can't fool me, boss. Go in, boys! " But his comrades refused to go in, and shouldered arms, and started off toward Ironton. The man in shirt-sleeves cursed them for cowards, and tried to take from one of them his gun, that he might charge on us in person. But he was too drunk. When we reached the depot, Grant ordered a sergeant and seven soldiers to go in pursuit of the men who had met us, and bring them back to their quarters, and place them under guard, and keep them on bread and water till he should return from St. Louis.

I have wondered how long they were fed on bread and water, for Grant never returned to Ironton; General Prentiss took his place there.