The historic partnership of Ulysses S. Grant and Elihu B. Washburne failed to survive the pressures of presidential politics.

GALENA, Ill. – Two very different men from this northwest Illinois town forged a friendship that helped save the Union in its hour of greatest need but foundered years later on the shoals of politics.

Ulysses S. Grant was a down-on-his-luck Army washout working in his father’s leather goods store when Fort Sumter fell in April 1861. Like tens of thousands of patriotic Americans, he answered President Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers and returned to serve his country.

Elihu B. Washburne was Galena’s congressman – a native of Maine who came west to make his fortune, practiced law, and joined the Republican Party in its infancy. He was a longtime acquaintance of Abraham Lincoln who was among the handful of dignitaries who greeted the Railsplitter when he arrived in Washington for his inauguration in 1861.

The Washburne-Grant partnership changed the course of the Civil War and, for years, proved mutually beneficial.

After Grant enlisted, the Galena lawmaker acted as his patron. Washburne helped Grant secure a promotion to brigadier general and acted as his champion and advocate in Washington.

Washburne was uniquely positioned to assist his Galena neighbor.

When Grant, an Ohio native, told Washburne that he intended to seek a commission from Ohio Governor William Dennison, Washburne persuaded him to approach Illinois Governor Richard Yates instead and promised to intercede on his behalf, according to historian John Y. Simon.

When Illinois members of Congress nominated candidates for brigadier general, Grant’s name stood at the top of the list — and he knew who to thank. “I think I see your hand in it, and admit I had no personal claims for your kind office in the matter,” he wrote to Washburne. “I can assure you, however, my whole heart is in the cause we are fighting for, and I pledge myself that, if equal to the task before me, you shall never have cause to regret the part you have taken.”¹

Grant took command in Cairo, Ill., and began his push south in February 1862. He overwhelmed Confederates at Fort Donelson and repelled a furious Confederate attack at Shiloh to win an important Union victory. When Grant came in for criticism that he had been caught by surprise by the rebels in southwestern Tennessee, Washburne offered a vigorous defense in a speech on the House floor delivered on May 2, 1862.

“I come before the House to do a great act of justice to a soldier in the field, and to vindicate him from the obloquy and misrepresentations so persistently and cruelly thrust before the country,” Washburne began. Grant was being unfairly maligned by armchair critics, Washburne asserted. “As to the question whether there was, or not, what might be called a surprise, I will not argue it; but even if there had been, General Grant is in no wise responsible for it, for he was not surprised.”

Washburne let himself get carried away in his eagerness to defend his neighbor when he declared “There is no more temperate man in the Army than General Grant. He never indulges in the use of intoxicating liquors at all.” In fact, Grant struggled with alcoholism, but the evidence is clear that he was sober during the fighting, according to Grant biographer Ron Chernow.²

Washburne’s speech cemented the bond between the Galena residents, according to James G. Blaine. The speech “was of great value to General Grant, both with the Administration and the country,” the Republican bigwig wrote in the first volume of his Twenty Years of Congress. It “laid the foundation of that intimate friendship which so long subsisted between him and Mr. Washburne.”³

Washburne later helped shepherd the legislation through Congress to create the rank of lieutenant general that made Grant the highest-ranking officer in the Union army.⁴ The bond between Grant and Washburne ranks as one of the most important partnerships of the war. And it continued after the surrender at Appomattox.

Grant repaid Washburne for his friendship and support after he was elected president. Grant picked Washburne as his secretary of state — an appointment that was either a symbolic gesture of gratitude or a genuine plan to install a faithful ally in the most prestigious Cabinet post. In any event, Washburne resigned a week after his nomination was confirmed and was sent to Paris by Grant to serve as U.S. minister to the French government.

Washburne’s tenure coincided with the end of the Franco-Prussian war and the rise of the Paris Commune. With the commune came a reign of terror. Impoverished Germans living in the French capital were particularly vulnerable to retribution by enraged Parisians. Washburne sheltered as many as 600 at the U.S. legation, according to historian David McCullough, and he arranged for 56 Americans trapped in the city to leave. In 1876, before his tour of duty was over (he stepped down in the fall of 1877) some were mentioning him as a possible candidate for president.⁵

By 1880, when he was back in the United States, Washburne found himself the object of even more presidential speculation. He wanted nothing to do with it. His friend Grant was seeking an unprecedented third term in the White House and Washburne insisted that he was a “Grant man,” according to Augustus L. Chetlain, a Galena resident who was on friendly terms with Grant and Washburne.

Illinois Republicans were unconvinced, Chetlain remembered. They “began to distrust Mr. Washburne’s sincerity as a supporter of Gen. Grant and began to talk about it openly” ahead of the Republican convention to be held in Chicago. “I went to Mr. Washburne and told him what I had heard, and added that he ought to stop certain of his friends I named from publicly supporting him, and that the feeling against him was growing bitter,” Chetlain recalled. “He replied he had done everything possible to prevent people from supporting him, and had said a thousand times that he was not a candidate, but a supporter of General Grant.”⁶

Washhburne grew increasingly worried about this unbidden groundswell and insisted on standing by Grant, Chetlain wrote, but his name kept coming up. One month before Republicans gathered in Chicago for their convention, the New York Tribune reported that Washburne would get thirteen votes for the nomination — hardly a groundswell but enough to attract attention if Grant stalled.⁷

Backing Grant was a trio of powerful senators known as the “Triumvirate.” Roscoe Conkling of New York, John Logan of Illinois and J. Donald Cameron of Pennsylvania were “Stalwarts” with powerful political machines and a shared loathing of President Rutherford B. Hayes. At the Interstate Industrial Exposition Building in Chicago, they controlled more than 300 delegates pledged to Grant.

Grant’s foes were less organized but just as plentiful as his supporters. They included “Half Breed” Republicans who rallied to Blaine. Liberal- and independent-minded Republicans who abhorred the corruption that marred Grant’s presidency (and disliked Blaine for similar reasons) balked at Grant’s bid for a third term in the White House.

The Grant and anti-Grant forces were evenly matched. One the first ballot, Grant received 304 votes, Blaine 284, and Senator John Sherman of Ohio ninety-three. Washburne did far better than the Tribune predicted, receiving thirty votes. As the balloting dragged on and on, support for Washburne remained consistent. As late as the thirty-fourth ballot, Washburne received thirty votes.⁸

Grant followed the proceedings via telegraph from Galena. When the deadlock finally broke and the convention rallied to dark-horse candidate James A. Garfield on the thirty-sixth ballot, Grant took the news in stride. “Well, I am glad that as good a man as Garfield has received the nomination,” Chetlain recounts.⁹

Grant’s followers were much less charitable when it came to Washburne. “The feeling among many of the Grant delegates, who had stood solidly and so long for their candidate, seemed to intensify against Washburne” after the convention adjourned, according to Chetlain, “and Gen. Grant shared in the feeling. Washburne’s conduct was condemned in bitter terms, and he was charged with having acted perfidiously. In the excitement, much was said and done which was clearly unjust to Mr. Washburne.”¹⁰

Five years later, Grant, now living in New York, was dying of cancer. Washburne made a hurried visit to the city in the hopes of reconciliation with his old friend but returned to Galena downcast. “He said he went to one of the leading hotels in the city and all the daily papers noticed his arrival,” Chetlain wrote. “When I asked him if he made an effort to see Gen. Grant, he answered. ” ‘No. The General knew I was in the city, and if he desired to see me he could have easily notified me. He was the greater man, and it was for him to extend his hand, which I would have taken with pleasure.’ I never,” Chetlain added, “heard him allude to the matter again.”¹¹

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I am working on a book about the rivalry between James G. Blaine and Roscoe Conkling. I have written an account of the Credit Mobilier scandal and a biography of Iowa Populist James B. Weaver. Both are available at amazon.com.

1. John R. Simon, “From Galena to Appomattox: Grant and Washburne,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Vol. 58, No. 2, Summer 1965, pp. 167-168; hereafter referred to as Simon. ↩︎
2. U.S. Congress, House, Congressional Globe, 37th Congress, 2nd session, May 2, 1862, pp. 1,931-1,932; Ron Chernow, Grant (New York: Penguin Books, 2017), p. 209; hereafter referred to as Chernow. ↩︎
3. James Gillespie Blaine. Twenty Years of Congress: from Lincoln to Garfield, Vol. 1 (Norwich, Conn.: The Henry Bill Publishing Company, 1884), p. 362. ↩︎
4. Chernow, pp. 335-337. ↩︎
5. David McCullough in Michael Hill, Elihu Washburne: The Diary and Letters of America’s Minister to France During the Siege and Commune of Paris (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), p. xv; Chicago Tribune, June 5, 1876, p. 1. ↩︎
6. Augustus L. Chetlain, Recollections of Seventy Years (Galena: The Gazette Publishing Co., 1899), p. 180; hereafter referred to as Chetlain. ↩︎
7. New York Tribune, May 8, 1880, p. 1.
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8. Proceedings of the Republican National Convention, held at Chicago, Illinois, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Monday and Tuesday, June 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th, and 7^th 1880 (Chicago: The Jno. B. Jeffery Printing and Publishing House, 1881), pp. 197, 267. ↩︎
9. Chetlain, p. 182. ↩︎
10. Ibid. ↩︎
11. Ibid., pp. 184-185. ↩︎