Matthew Arnold, Civilization in the United States: First and Last Impressions of America.

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[28] a Colonel Thomas Harris, encamped on the Salt River. As Grant and his men approached the place where they expected to find Harris, “my heart,” he says, “kept getting higher and higher, until it felt to me as if it was in my throat.” But when they reached the point from which they looked down into the valley where they supposed Harris to be, behold, Harris was gone! “My heart resumed its place. It occurred to me at once that Harris had been as much afraid of me as I had been of him. This was a view of the question I had never taken before, but I never forgot it afterwards. I never forgot that an enemy had as much reason to fear my forces as I had his. The lesson was valuable.”

But already he inspired confidence. Shortly after his return from the Salt River, the President asked the Congressmen from Illinois to recommend seven citizens of that State for the rank of brigadier-general, and the Congressmen unanimously recommended Grant first on the list. In August he was appointed to the command of a district, and on the 4th of September assumed command at Cairo, where the Ohio River joins the Mississippi. His first important success was to seize and fortify Paducah, an important post at the mouth of the Tennessee River, about fifty miles from Cairo. By the 1st