Adam Badeau, Grant in peace: from Appomattox to Mount McGregor, a personal memoir

[401] though he was still obscure. They were themselves of the plainer Western sort, but not like some of those whose company he fell into at St. Louis. They, perhaps, had not the opportunity to do him the same service; indeed, at this period he did not need the same assistance, for he had become a clerk for his father and brother, with the prospect of partnership in a somewhat prosperous business.

Earlier than these associations of St. Louis and Galena was his army life; not perhaps very different from that led by most young soldiers at that time, in California, Oregon, Mexico, among the Indians, and on the Canada frontier. As an army officer he was of course thrown among the better class of citizens everywhere, and in the army itself he met most of the men who afterward became famous on the Northern or Southern side in the great war.

When Grant grew into fame and importance—after he had led the armies that destroyed the Rebellion, when he became prominent as an almost certain candidate for the Presidency—most of these earlier associates of every sort revived, or sought to revive, their relations with him. Some of his firmest friendships were with his former West Point comrades. Though he was absolutely free from the pedantry of West Point, I have never known a man whose associations there affected afterward his relations with men more remarkably. A chum at the Academy, a tent-mate in Louisiana or Mexico, always had a claim upon him that he recognized. He preferred West Point men as soldiers, he loved them as friends. Whether it was prejudice or partiality, or what not, he thought higher even of Sherman and Sheridan because they were graduates of the Academy; and all through the war and afterward men like Ingalls and Wallen and Dent had peculiar relations with him because of this earlier intimacy. Some richly deserved the retention of the tie; others not at all; but whether they deserved it or not the camaraderie of the cadet life and of camp lasted with Grant to the end. In