FARMER, Silas. The History of Detroit and Michigan.

...or The Metropolis Illustrated a Chronological Cyclopedia of the Past and Present: Including a Full Record of Territorial Days in Michigan and the Annals of Wayne County.

Detroit: Silas Farmer & Co., 1884.

8vo.; brown half-morocco with morocco-grained cloth boards stamped in gilt and blind; upper and lower boards gilt; edges marbled; marbled end-sheets.

First edition.

Silas Farmer (1839-1902) was an indefatigable chronicler of Detroit’s history when not managing his father’s highly successful map and book publishing business. He accumulated a massive archive of Michigan-related memorabilia and in 1882 was named official historian of Detroit and began compiling the material for this sweeping work, published in 1884. Farmer had met Grant twenty years earlier, just after the Battle of Nashville. When Framer introduced himself, Grant replied, “From Detroit? Why, I used to live there once,” and he engaged Farmer in lengthy conversation. “The name Detroit proved a passport to his attention,” Farmer wrote, and he evinced great willingness to hear of his old home.”

In November 1848, fresh from Mexico and just three months after marrying Julia, Grant reported to the regimental headquarters in Detroit. Before the newlyweds had a chance to acclimate themselves, however, Grant was transferred to Sackets Harbor, New York. The next year, however, he was back in Detroit and rented a “neat little house” at 253 East Fort Street (the house was later moved and exhibited at the Michigan State Fair Grounds). “I saw Grant and his wife at their Fort Street house,” remembered a fellow officer, James E. Pitman. He used to go out and play cards and his wife played whist….He was devoted to her completely, there was not a hint of trouble at any time.”

The city itself, however, was, in Pitman’s words, “full of mischief.” While Pitman found Grant to be “a gentleman in his habits and his instincts,” there was also no getting around the fact that “Detroit was a frontier town and all used whiskey freely. Grant drank no more than the rest of the officers, he was not noticeable either way, either for leaving it alone or taking it. They all drank, it was common, expected, the normal habit amongst the officers.” Julia got him to take the Sons of Temperance pledge, but drinking may have played a role in a slip and fall case that Grant filed against a wealthy merchant—and future Senator—Zachariah Chandler. “If you soldiers would keep sober,” Chandler said in court, “perhaps you would not fall on people’s pavement and hurt your legs.” Grant won six cents in damages. Both went on to distinguished careers during the war, as Chandler became a leading Republican voice against the Confederacy in the Senate. He was just as vocal in denouncing McClellan’s incompetence. After Appomattox, Grant had the pleasure of seeing Chandler defer to him as a conquering hero during a victory parade. Their old grievance long forgotten, Grant brought Chandler into his presidential Cabinet as Secretary of the Interior in 1872.