By Daniel J. Ursu, Roundtable Historian
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2024-2025, All Rights Reserved
Editor’s note: This article was the history brief for the March 2025 meeting of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable.
Ulysses S. Grant was the best-known Civil War-era resident of Galena, Illinois. In a recent history brief I highlighted another prominent Galena, Illinois, resident: Congressman Elihu Washburne. However, there was at least one other important Galena resident who played a major role in the Civil War, that being the mostly unsung hero, John Rawlins. Rawlins was a longtime confidant of Grant, became a Grant staff officer for most of the war, and rose to be the trusted and dependable Chief of Staff to Grant. Rawlins was the defender of Grant’s realm, his alter ego and insistent supporter of Grant’s sobriety and apologist for his insobriety, the latter portion being a somewhat complex and disputed role.
Rawlins was born in 1831 to a poor family with an alcoholic father. He was known as a self-made man, and he overcame his lack of education to become a member of the bar in 1854. Rawlins practiced law in Galena, was a married man, and was the father of three children. Similar to Grant, Rawlins was a Douglas Democrat and was active in the 1860 presidential campaign. But when Lincoln won, Rawlins went back to practice law in Galena.
However, when southern states seceded and Fort Sumter was attacked, Rawlins became fast friends with Grant, especially at a famous town meeting in Galena where Elihu Washburne also spoke. Rawlins proclaimed his support for the North and stated that he would “stand by the flag of our country and appeal to the God of battles.” Acting in accordance with his words, Rawlins, with Grant’s assistance, helped organize the 45th Illinois Volunteer Infantry. When Grant was appointed to lead the 21st Illinois Volunteer Infantry, he asked Rawlins to be a staff officer at Grant’s headquarters in Cairo, Illinois. Historians describe Rawlins as Grant’s most influential friend and advisor, overcoming his lack of military background by having a keen aptitude for the nature of war. As Grant was promoted, so too was Rawlins, eventually earning the rank of lieutenant colonel and ultimately the “Chief of Staff of the General Headquarters of the United States Army.”
Ron Chernow, in his authoritative book Grant, states that “Grant needed a commanding personality to manage his office and ride herd over his staff and from the outset selected John Rawlins for a special plan in his entourage. Rawlins was the pallid young lawyer with the full dark beard, saturnine aura, and enormous dark eyes who had bowled over Grant with his impassioned oratory at the Galena recruiting meeting on August 30, (1861). Rawlins was appointed assistant adjutant general with the rank of captain, effectively making him Grant’s chief of staff.”
Grant admired Rawlins for his sincerity of purpose and lack of ulterior motives in service to his country. Again from Chernow’s book, “Only Rawlins could penetrate the zone of privacy that Grant drew subtly about himself. With his single-minded devotion, Rawlins could confront him with uncomfortable truths and fiercely contest his judgment, spouting opinions in a stentorian voice…(with) his…mistrust of people, he was the ideal foil to Grant’s excessively trusting nature.”
Along with Congressman Washburne, Rawlins also helped Grant politically. Chernow states, “Grant thought him the most influential young man in northern Illinois…(he) assisted Grant in perfecting his relations with Washington.” For example, when Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Chase stated that Grant was clearing up the chaotic situation at his Cairo headquarters early in the war, his opinion was undoubtedly shaped by Rawlins passing messages to Washburne and thence to Chase.
Even though Grant’s most noticeable successes took place as the war went on, already by the end of 1861, other Union officers were jealous of Grant and found it handy to criticize Grant for his drinking habits, notwithstanding that most of these critics never even met Grant. Robert C. White, in his book American Ulysses, asserts that “once the label ‘drunkard’ became affixed to a man in the army, it could seldom be completely erased.” Congressman Elihu Washburne, reading such stories in the capital’s newspapers at the end of 1861, wrote to Rawlins to ask if there was any truth to the accusations. Rawlins wrote back on December 30, “I would say unequivocally and emphatically that the statement that General Grant was drinking very hard is utterly untrue and could have originated only in malice.” He drank on social occasions a glass of wine or champagne, but never “did he drink enough to in any manner affect him.” Again from White’s book, Rawlins stated about Grant “I regard his interest as my interest, all that concerns his reputation concerns me; I love him like a father.”
John Rawlins is seated to Grant’s immediate right.
Part of the complexity that I mentioned earlier is based on a letter about drinking that Rawlins wrote to Grant during the Chattanooga Campaign, but never sent. It was known by Rawlins that Grant received a bottle of wine apparently from his mother, and that Grant otherwise had access to whiskey that was being shared among other officers and staff. Substantial portions of the letter are reprinted in Chernow’s book, and the letter reads in part, “I again appeal to you in the name of everything a friend, an honest man, and a lover of his country holds dear, to immediately desist from further tasting of liquors of any kind. This moment every faculty of your mind should be clear and unclouded, the enemy threatens our lines with immediate attack…Since the hour Washington crossed the ice-filled Delaware with his barefooted patriots to the attack of Trenton, so much of weighty responsibility has not been imposed by our Government upon one man as it has now imposed upon you…two more nights like the last will find you prostrated on a sick bed unfit for duty…you only can prevent it, and for the sake of my bleeding country and your own honor I pray God you may.” Rawlins apparently mulled the letter over and decided instead to talk personally with Grant. In doing so, Rawlins determined his discussion had the desired effect and left the letter in his file. Nevertheless, those historians who insist that Grant was a drunkard “hang their hats” on that unsent letter.
There are many instances of Rawlins like-minded campaign strategy and battlefield support of Grant. Again from Chernow’s book Grant, in May of 1864 at the Battle of Spotsylvania, “by now, Rawlins had become a second Grant who internalized his tenacity and relentless sense of forward motion…’our progress towards Richmond is slow,’ (Rawlins) wrote to his wife, ‘but we are on the way and do not propose, unless some disaster overtakes us, ever taking a step backwards.'”
After the Overland Campaign, the siege of Petersburg, and Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Rawlins continued to serve Grant. When Grant won the presidency, he named Rawlins secretary of war, but Rawlins’ tenure was cut short when he died of tuberculosis less than a half year into his term at the young age of 30. Could Grant have avoided some of the pitfalls that bedeviled his presidency had his defender of the realm, chief supporter, and sincere proponent of Grant’s success been present? Alas, as a popular poet/songwriter of our time Bob Dylan would say, “The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind!”
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Related link:
Elihu Washburne – The Indispensable Civil War Congressman