I will try to keep you posted from time to time, by writing either to you or to Mary, of my whereabouts and what I am doing.  I hope you will have only a good account of me and the command under my charge.  I assure you my heart is in the cause I have espoused, and however I may have disliked party Republicanism there has never been a day that I would not have taken up arms for a Constitutional Administration.

You ask if I should not like to go in the regular army.  I should not.  I want to bring my children up to useful employment, and in the army the chance is poor.  There is at least the same objection that you find where slavery exists.  Fred. has been with me until yesterday; I sent him home on a boat.

Yours &c.

U.S.  Grant.

[Shortly after the date of the last letter, Grant was ordered to Mexico, Mo.  General Pope then commanded the district between the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers with headquarters at Mexico.  Grant was assigned to command a sub-district embracing the troops of the immediate neighborhood.  In regard to the hospitality which Grant mentions receiving in this secessionist district, we may note that the regiments before his accession to this command had visited houses without invitation and had helped themselves to food or had demanded it.  Grant at once published orders forbidding soldiers to go into private houses unless invited, or to appropriate private property.]

Mexico, Mo.,
Aug. 3d, 1861.

Dear father: 

I have written to you once from this place and received no answer, but as Orvil writes to me that you express great anxiety to hear from me often, I will try to find time to drop you a line twice a month, and oftener when anything of special interest occurs.

The papers keep you posted as to army movements, and as you are already in possession of my notions on secession nothing more is wanted on that point.  I find here however a different state of feeling from what I expected existed in any part of the South.  The majority in this part of the State are secessionists, as we would term them, but deplore the present state of affairs.  They would make almost any sacrifice to have the Union restored, but regard it as dissolved, and nothing is left for them but to choose between two evils.  Many, too, seem to be entirely ignorant of the object of present hostilities.  You cannot convince them but that the ultimate object is to extinguish slavery by force.  Then, too, they feel that the Southern Confederacy will never consent to give up their State, and as they, the South, are the strong party, it is prudent to favor them from the start.  There is never a movement of troops made, that the secession journals through the country do not give a startling account of their almost annihilation at the hands of the State troops, whilst the facts are, there are no engagements.  My regiment has been reported cut to pieces once that I know of, and I don’t know but oftener, whilst a gun has not been fired at us.  These reports go uncontradicted here and give confirmation to the conviction already entertained that one Southron is equal to five Northerners.  We believe they are deluded, and know that if they are not, we are.