In August, U. S. Grant, lately commissioned a Brigadier-General, was sent down to Cape Girardeau to look after matters in southeast Missouri, including Cairo, Ill., and he took with him his former regiment, the 21st Ill., to the command of which Col. John W. S. Alexander had succeeded. A peculiarity of Gen. Grant, which President Lincoln speedily noticed, was that wherever he was "things kept moving." There were no grand reviews, no sounding proclamations, no sensational announcements of plans, but somehow everybody about him was found to be speedily employed in an effective way against the enemy. But little clamor ever came from Grant for reinforcements or additional strength. If he was given a thousand men he at once set them to work doing all that 1,000 men were capable of. Given 2,000 men he would do twice as much, and so on. If supplies were not furnished him, he gathered them from the surrounding country, giving vouchers carefully based on the prevailing market rates. If no wagons or teams were at hand, he impressed them and gave vouchers.
As unassertive and modest as Grant seemed to be, he had a remarkable faculty for bringing in everybody near him and securing from them prompt and energetic obedience to his orders.
Among Gen. Grant's subordinates was our old acquaintance, Capt. J. B. Plummer, who had done such good work at Wilson's Creek and who was now in command of the 11th Mo. There was also Col. W. P. Carlin, a Captain in the Regular Army, whom the Governor of Illinois had wisely made Colonel of the 88th 111. Carlin, a graduate of West Point in the class of 1850, was a somewhat austere, highstrung man, wrapped up in his profession, an excellent soldier, and feverishly anxious to do his duty and justify his promotion to the important position he held.
Like all Regulars he was jealously sensitive about his rank, and one of his first performances was insistence that he outranked Col. C. E. Hovey, of the 33d Ill., and should therefore have command of the post. Hovey, who had been Principal of the Normal Institute before becoming a Colonel, felt that his position had been quite as high as that of a Captain in the Regular Army, and his men, who entered warmly into the dispute, could hardly understand how the Colonel of the 38th Ill. could outrank the Colonel of the 33d, and though they at last gave way, there was some bitterness of feeling.