Elihu Benjamin Washburne House

A block from the Grant Home in Galena stands the house of the man who arguably made Grant's career possible. Elihu Benjamin Washburne was a congressman from Galena who championed the obscure former army officer when nearly everyone else overlooked him. Washburne pushed for Grant's commission, followed his campaigns, and used his congressional influence to keep Grant in command despite early critics who wanted him removed after Shiloh.

After the war, Washburne served briefly as Secretary of State under Grant and then as United States minister to France during the Franco-Prussian War of eighteen seventy to eighteen seventy-one, becoming the only diplomat from a major power to stay in Paris through the siege. His Italianate home in Galena, built in the eighteen fifties, stands today as part of the historic district that makes this small river town one of the most intact Civil War-era streetscapes in the Midwest.