From that hour slavery was doomed. The President issued his first call for seventy-five thousand volunteers for ninety days. The North and West seemed to respond as one man. The intense excitement reached the little town of Galena. The citizens were at once called together. Business was suspended. In the evening the court-house was packed. Captain Grant was asked to conduct the meeting. The people naturally turned to one who understood battles, when they saw war close at hand. With much embarrassment Grant presided. The leather business was finished for him from that eventful night. The women of Galena were as deeply interested as the men. They came to Grant to obtain a description of the United States uniform for infantry, subscribed and bought the material, procured tailors to cut the garments, and made them with their own willing hands. More and more, with their superior education, women are to play an important part in this country, both in peace and war. Captain Grant was now asked by Governor Yates, of Illinois, to go into the adjutant-general's office, and render such assistance as he could, which position he accepted, but he modestly says, "I was no clerk, nor had I any capacity to become one. The only place I ever found in my life to put a paper so as to find it again was either a side coat-pocket or the hands of a clerk or secretary more careful than myself. But I had been quartermaster, commissary, and adjutant in the field. The army forms were familiar to me, and I could direct how they should be made out." Though a man of few words, those few could be effective if Grant chose to use them. Meeting in St. Louis, in a street-car, a young braggart, who said to him, "Where I came from, if a man dares to say a word in favor of the Union we hang him to a limb of the first tree we come to," Grant replied, "We are not so intolerant in St. Louis as we might be. I have not seen a single rebel hung yet, nor heard of one. There are plenty of them who ought to be, however." The young man did not continue the conversation. In May, 1861, Grant wrote a letter to the adjutant-general of the army at Washington, saying that, as he had been in the regular army for fifteen years, and educated at government expense, he tendered his services for the war. No notice was ever taken of the letter, and, of course, no answer was returned. Soon after he spent a week with his parents, in Covington, Kentucky. Twice he called upon Major-General McClellan, at Cincinnati, just across the river, whom he had known slightly in the Mexican War, with the hope that he would be offered a position on his staff. But he failed to see the general, and returned to Illinois. He was not to serve under McClellan. A different destiny awaited him.