During the last half of December 1861, allegations were buzzing about Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s uncontrolled drinking. No one was sure who started the malicious rumors. Perhaps it was some of the crooked contractors and suppliers who wanted to retaliate because Grant was thwarting their schemes to defraud the government. Perhaps the stories were planted by detractors who second-guessed Grant’s decision in November to pick a fight with Confederates at Belmont on the Missouri side of the Mississippi River across from Columbus, Ky. Whoever was responsible knew resurrecting suspicions about his drinking would strike him where he was most vulnerable. The commotion precipitated a mini-flurry of correspondence—three letters from three people—urging an uncovering of the facts and ascertaining if the general might prove too incapacitated to carry out duties at his district headquarters at Cairo, Ill. In succession the correspondents were: an alarmed businessman who alerted a congressman who aroused a staff officer who, in turn, assured the congressman. All three of the correspondents, as well as the subject of their correspondence, had ties to Galena, Ill., a town in the lead mining region of northwest Illinois.
The businessman was Benjamin H. Campbell, originally from Virginia and residing since 1835 in Galena. A prosperous merchant and owner of a packet line doing trade on the upper Mississippi River, Campbell had just returned from a trip to St. Louis where worrisome stories circulated about Grant. On December 17, he sent a letter to his congressman with
