General Grant's Birthday

After leaving Cornell we got on Highway 1 and headed to Anamosa, where we caught US 151 and headed up to Galena. Obviously we weren't taking the direct route to Chicago; I had never taken this route before. We thought we might take a brief Civil War tourist break before heading on the a big railroad museum in Union, IL. We instead hit the Civil War jackpot.

Galena had looked to be the end of the line for U.S. Grant. He had been forced out of the peacetime army, apparently for drinking on duty at a remote frontier outpost. After failing at farming and business in St. Louis, he ended up working at his Dad's store in Galena shortly before the Civil War broke out. He caught on with an Illinois unit, and with help from Galena's congressman, he got a promotion and made history. He then only visited Galena intermittently, and mostly lived in New York City after serving two terms as president. Yet Galena has since claimed him as its own, for reasonable historical reasons and excellent tourist promotion reasons.


It happened to be Grant's birthday celebration when we hit town. They had a whole weekend of tourist events, helpfully listed out at the tourist information building:

From the sign, it looks like they had planned to reenact the battle of Vicksburg for 9:00 on Saturday, but somebody must have objected to having 12 miles of trenches dug around town, not to mention eating rats, dysentery, shelling, and so on. So they substituted a skirmish. We arrived just in time for one, which we watched from across a little river. The blues successfully charged the hill, braving ladies with cameras:

With a little artillery support:



The artillery limbered up after the battle for the tourists:




We then inspected the living quarters of the troops, which were authentically equipped with inflatable puppies like those carried into battle by the armies on both sides of the Civil War:



Then back onto beautiful Highway 20 and on to Union! Where the train museum is.