That friendship would define the next decade of both of their lives in ways that neither could have predicted when they first shook hands across the counter of a leather goods store.

The Commission That Almost Was Not

When the Civil War began in April 1861, Ulysses S.

Grant moved quickly to return to military service.

He would rise with startling speed, from a colonel commanding Illinois volunteers to the general who captured Fort Donelson, opened the Mississippi at Vicksburg, and eventually commanded all Union armies.

Ely Parker tried to follow the same path.

Parker applied for a commission in the Union Army almost immediately after the war began.