B 
 I 
 
 m 
 
EillUItllfll 
 
THE BEACON BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 M. A. DEWOLFE HOWE 
 
 ULYSSES S. GRANT 
 
 BY 
 
 OWEN WISTER 
 
ULYS S E S S. GRANT 
 
 OWEN WISTER 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 SMALL, MAYNARD fif COMPANY 
 MDCCCCI 
 
t EC12. 
 
 Copyright, 1900 
 By Small, Maynard &? Company 
 
 {Incorporated) 
 
 Entered at Stationers Hall 
 
 First edition (7,000 copies), December, I goo 
 Second edition (2,000 copies ), February, 
 
 Press of 
 George H. Ellis, Boston 
 
The frontispiece to this volume is from 
 a photograph taken in 1865 by H. F. War 
 ren, and now in the collection of the Bos- 
 tonian Society in Boston. The present 
 engraving is by John Andrew & Son, Bos 
 ton. 
 
 513433 
 
To M. C. W 
 from 
 
 o. w. 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 This short book is derived from long 
 ones ; from pamphlets, speeches, essays, and 
 newspapers; from certain pages of the 
 official records ; and from a few personal 
 memories kindly given by friends of General 
 Grant to the writer. These latter change 
 nothing in the features, but serve to touch 
 up the likeness, of the established portrait. 
 Grant is a large figure to pack in a small 
 box: the task has been one of omission. 
 Those authors to whom the writer is most 
 grateful are Richardson, Fiske, Coppee, 
 Porter, Humphreys, Sherman, Sheridan, 
 Newhall, Ehodes, and Badeau (" Grant in 
 Peace"). The writer will think that he 
 has made his own contribution to the subject 
 if he shall have tempted any reader to be 
 come more thoroughly acquainted with it. 
 
 o. w. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA, August 1, 1900. 
 
CHBOXOLOGY. 
 
 1822 
 
 April 27. Hiram Ulysses [Ulysses Simp 
 son] Grant was born at Point Pleasant, 
 Clermont County, Ohio. 
 
 1823 
 
 His family removed to Georgetown, 
 Brown County. 
 
 1839 
 Entered West Point. 
 
 1843 
 
 Graduated twenty-first in a class of 
 thirty-nine, and reported for duty as 
 brevet second lieutenant, Fourth In 
 fantry, at Jefferson Barracks, near St. 
 Louis. 
 
 1845 
 
 October 1. Full second lieutenant, Seventh 
 Infantry, at Corpus Christi, Texas. 
 
 1846 
 May 8. His first battle, Palo Alto. His 
 
xii CHEOM)LOGY 
 
 second the following day at Eesaca de la 
 
 Palma. 
 
 September 21-23. Gallant conduct at 
 
 Monterey. 
 
 1847 
 
 March 29. Was at Yera Cruz under 
 General Scott. 
 
 April 18. Was in battle of Cerro Gordo, 
 and August 20 in those of San Antonio 
 and Churubusco. Regimental quarter 
 master. 
 
 September 8. Brevetted first lieutenant 
 for gallant and meritorious conduct at 
 Molino-del-Eey. 
 
 September 12-13. Was in battle of Cha- 
 pultepec. 
 
 September 13. Brevetted captain for gal 
 lant conduct at Chapultepec. 
 September 16. Full first lieutenant. 
 
 1848 
 
 August 22. Married Julia B. Dent, of St. 
 Louis. 
 
 Was stationed at Detroit and Sackettfs 
 Harbor. 
 
CHBONOLOGY xiii 
 
 1852 
 
 June. Ordered to Pacific Coast. 
 September. Stationed at Columbia Bar 
 racks (Fort Vancouver). 
 
 1853 
 
 August 5. Full captain. 
 October. Stationed at Fort Humboldt. 
 
 1854-1861 
 
 July 31, 1854. Eesigned from the army, 
 and was in civil life first at St. Louis 
 and finally at Galena, Illinois. 
 
 1861 
 
 April 18. Was made chairman of a meet 
 ing at Galena to raise volunteers. Yainly 
 sought a commission in the army until 
 June 16. Was appointed colonel of the 
 Twenty-first Illinois Volunteers. 
 August 7. Brigadier-general of volun 
 teers, dating from May 17. 
 September 4. Occupied Cairo. 
 September 6. Occupied Paducah. 
 November 7. Was defeated at Belmont. 
 
xiv CHBONOLOGY 
 
 1862 
 
 February 16. Captured Fort Donelson. 
 Promoted to the grade of major-general 
 of volunteers. 
 
 April 6-7. Fought the battle of Shiloh. 
 October 3-5. Commanded engagements at 
 Corinth. 
 
 December 20. His first failure against 
 Vicksburg precipitated by the capture 
 of his base at Holly Springs. 
 
 1863 
 
 January 30. Assumed command opposite 
 Vicksburg. 
 
 February-April. Attempted various routes 
 to invest Vicksburg. 
 April 30. Crossed to the Vicksburg side 
 of the river. 
 
 May 1. Battle of Port Gibson. 
 May 7. Cut loose from his base of sup 
 plies at Grand Gulf. 
 May 12. Battle of Eaymond. 
 May 14. Battle of Jackson. 
 May 16. Battle of Champion s Hill. 
 
CHEONOLOGY xv 
 
 1863 (continued) 
 May 19. Vicksburg invested. 
 July 4. Vicksburg surrendered to him. 
 Major-general United States Army. 
 November 24-25. Won the battle of Chat 
 tanooga. 
 
 1864 
 
 March 2. Bank of lieutenant-general re 
 vived for him. 
 
 May 5-6. Fought Lee in the battle of 
 the Wilderness and 
 May 8-21. Battle of Spottsylvania. 
 May 23-26. Battle of North Anna. 
 May 3l-June 12. Battle of Cold Harbor- 
 July-November. Operations round Peters 
 burg. 
 
 1865 
 
 April 1. Battle of Five Forks. 
 April 3. Pursued Lee after the fall of 
 Eichmond. 
 
 April 6. Battle of Sailor s Creek. 
 April 9. Eeceived Lee s surrender at 
 Appomattox Court-house. 
 
xvi CHRONOLOGY 
 
 1866 
 July 25. Eank of general given to him. 
 
 1867-8 
 
 August 12-January 14. Was Secretary 
 of War ad interim. 
 
 1868 
 
 May 19. Was unanimously nominated 
 for President at the National Eepublican 
 Convention in Chicago. 
 November. Was elected by 214 votes 
 to 80. 
 
 1872 
 
 September 14. Settlement of the Alabama 
 claims. 
 
 November. Ee- elected President by 300 
 votes against 66. 
 
 1877 
 
 May 17. Sailed from Philadelphia on 
 his journey round the world. 
 
 1879 
 
 December 16. Landed at Philadelphia 
 from his journey. 
 
CHKONOLOGY xvii 
 
 1883 
 December 24. Was injured by a fall. 
 
 1884 
 
 May 6. Failure of the Marine Bank and 
 of Grant & Ward. 
 November. Final illness declared itself. 
 
 1885 
 
 March 4. Was placed on the retired list 
 with the rank of general. 
 July 23. Ulysses S. Grant died at Mount 
 McGregor, near Saratoga, New York. 
 
ULYSSES S. GRANT 
 
ULYSSES S. GRANT. 
 
 I. 
 
 AT the age of thirty -nine, Grant was 
 an obscure failure in a provincial town. 
 To him and his family, for whom he 
 could not earn needful bread, his father 
 had become a last shelter against the 
 struggle for life. Not all the neighbours 
 knew his face. At the age of forty- 
 three his picture hung in the homes of 
 grateful millions. His name was joined 
 with Washington s. A little while, and 
 we see him step down, amid discordant 
 reproach, from Washington s chair, hav 
 ing helplessly presided over scandal and 
 villany blacker than the country had 
 thus far witnessed. Next, his private 
 integrity is darkly overcast, and the 
 stroke kills him. But death clears his 
 sky. At the age of sixty-three, Grant 
 died ; and the people paused to mourn 
 and honour him devotedly. All the 
 neighbours know his face to-day. 
 
II. 
 
 NONE of our public men have a story 
 so strange as this. It is stranger than 
 Lincoln s. It is very much the strangest 
 of them all. We have been too near the 
 man and his time to see them clear 
 through personal, political, and military 
 feelings, mostly violent. All the people 
 are not dead yet. Nearly all the writers 
 have a case to argue. Sheridan must 
 justify his treatment of "Warren. Sher 
 man must bolster up Shiloh. Beaure- 
 gard must diminish Sidney Johnston. 
 Badeau must belittle Meade, and also 
 the losses in the Wilderness. These are 
 mere instances. The heroes and their 
 biographers all write alike, inevitably 
 moved and biassed by the throb of prox 
 imity. Such books are not history. 
 They make inspiring material, when 
 read in each other s light. They are 
 personal reminiscences. History never 
 begins until reminiscence is ended. 
 
ULYSSES S. GKANT 3 
 
 Even Mr. Bopes, in his championing of 
 Buell the soldier, omits Buell the man. 
 Now Buell, sulking over his wrongs, 
 declined, when invited, to come back and 
 take a command again. He found his 
 dignity more important to him than the 
 Union. Grant, meeting singular injus 
 tice after winning Donelson, has such 
 words as these to say : "If my course is 
 not satisfactory, remove me at once. I 
 do not wish to impede in any way the 
 success of our arms." Good authority 
 rates Buell a more military soldier than 
 Grant, and very likely he was. But 
 Buell thought of himself and forgot his 
 country, while Grant thought of his 
 country and forgot himself. Out of this 
 very contrast a bright light falls, and we 
 begin to see Grant. Writing intemper- 
 ately, his friends explain him as a sort 
 of Napoleon ; his enemies, as a dull 
 blunderer, accidentally reaping the 
 glory which other people sowed. These 
 extremes meet in error. We have not 
 
4 ULYSSES S. GEANT 
 
 produced a Napoleon, and military tal 
 ents of greater brilliancy than Grant s 
 fought on both sides. Purely as cap 
 tains, Lee, Jackson, Sherman, Thomas, 
 if not others, are likely to stand higher ; 
 while Sheridan during his brief oppor 
 tunity proved such a thunderbolt that, 
 did history know men by their promise 
 instead of by their fruits, he might out 
 shine the whole company, and rank with 
 Charles of Sweden or Conde. 
 
 Yet Grant sits above and apart. Is 
 this accident ? Is it accident that at the 
 beginning of a certain four years this 
 middle-aged man should be nobody, and 
 at the end should be the one commander 
 out of all to win and retain the supreme 
 confidence of his government and his 
 people ? It has been called accident by 
 some grown- up writers. His own words 
 give the unconscious explanation: "I 
 feel as sure of taking Eichmond as I do 
 of dying." Not McClellan, not Meade, 
 not Lincoln himself, not any one at all, 
 
ULYSSES S. GBANT 5 
 
 had ever been able to feel as sure as 
 that. This utter certainty of the Union s 
 success burned in Grant like a central 
 fire, and, with all his limitations, made 
 his will a great natural force which grav 
 itated simply and irresistibly to its end. 
 Lincoln, beginning to feel it from afar, 
 answered the grave complaints that rose 
 after the carnage of Shiloh: "I can t 
 spare this man : he fights. " And pres 
 ently, during the impatient days of Vicks- 
 burg failures, he insists: " I rather like 
 the man. I think we ll try him a little 
 longer." Finally conies the renowned 
 remark, when they tell him of Grant s 
 intemperance: "I wish I knew what 
 brand of whiskey he drinks. I would 
 send a barrel to all my other generals." 
 Sherman felt the power near at hand, as 
 he fought under Grant, and wrote to him 
 that it was something which he could 
 liken "to nothing else than the faith a 
 Christian has in his Saviour. Through 
 this faith, then, the obscure man from 
 
6 ULYSSES S. GEAOT 
 
 Galena began in April, 1861, and by 
 April, 1864, was the will-power of his 
 country. 
 
 But why was such a man still obscure 
 at the age of thirty-nine? Again his 
 own words give the fundamental expla 
 nation : "As I grow older, I become 
 more indolent, my besetting sin through 
 life. 77 This was written in 1873 to his 
 minister to England, and no truer word 
 ever came from him. Together with 
 the remark about taking Eichmond, it 
 reveals the foundation upon which the 
 whole man was built. Great will and 
 great indolence met about equally in 
 Grant ; therefore he stood still, needing 
 a push from without to move him. The 
 gun that fired on Sumter was the push. 
 Until that day he resembled a large 
 animal hibernating. To what he did 
 and left undone his other qualities con 
 tributed ; but these two controlled, in 
 dolence and will. In their light his 
 story can be plainly read, his portrait 
 clearly seen. 
 
m. 
 
 VARIOUS ardent pens have attempted 
 to embellish Grant s boyhood. He has 
 even been given illustrious descent. It 
 is enough to know for certain that, 
 Scotch in blood and American since 
 1630, he was of the eighth generation, 
 and counted a grandfather in the Bevo- 
 lution, besides other soldier ancestors. 
 The first Grant, Matthew, probably 
 landed at Nantucket, Massachusetts, May 
 30, 1630. In 1636 he helped establish 
 the town of Windsor, Connecticut. He 
 was its first surveyor and a trusted 
 citizen. Samuel, Solomon, Noah, Adon- 
 iram, that is what the Grants in colonial 
 Connecticut were called. And with 
 such names as these they did what all 
 the other colonial Noahs and Adonirams 
 were doing. None of them rose to un 
 common dimensions ; but they, and such 
 as they, were then, as they are now, the 
 salt and leaven of our country. After 
 
8 ULYSSES S. GRANT 
 
 the Revolution, as our frontier widened 
 and the salt and leaven began to be 
 sprinkled westward, Captain Noah 
 Grant went gradually to the Ohio River, 
 leaving there no riches and many chil 
 dren. One of these, Jesse, became a 
 tanner, and in 1821 married Miss Han 
 nah Simpson from Pennsylvania. 
 
 On April 27, 1822, at Point Pleasant 
 on the Ohio River, twenty-five miles 
 above Cincinnati, was born their eldest 
 son, and christened Hiram Ulysses, 
 Hiram because his grandfather liked the 
 name, Ulysses because his step-grand 
 mother had been reading Fenelon. Sev 
 enteen years later, when the boy was ap 
 pointed to the Military Academy, "Mr. 
 Hamer, knowing Mrs. Grant s name was 
 Simpson, and that we had a son named 
 Simpson, somehow got the matter a little 
 mixed up in making the nomination, 
 and sent the name in Ulysses S. Grant." 
 Such is the father s narrative. And 
 before leaving Grant s plain, self-reliant, 
 
ULYSSES S. GKANT 9 
 
 uncommercial ancestry, of which his own 
 character is such a natural and relevant 
 product, let it be noted that Jesse, be 
 sides writing good clear prose, not un 
 like his son s, could turn verses fairly 
 well, and also that a neighbour remarked 
 of Ulysses that he "got his sense from 
 his mother. " As to Ulysses and the 
 congressional error in his name, he never 
 succeeded in correcting it. The conse 
 quences were that the boy came vari 
 ously to be known as Lyssus, Lys, Use 
 less, Uncle Sam, and Unconditional Sur 
 render. His whole story is here written 
 in nicknames. 
 
 Grant s boyhood is like his ancestry, 
 wholesome, pastoral, inconspicuous. 
 With a rustic schooling, a love of the 
 woods, a preference for idleness, and an 
 affinity for horse flesh, his recorded words 
 and deeds save one might be those 
 not of a thousand, but a million Ameri 
 can boys. He repeated " a noun is the 
 name of a thing . . . until I had come 
 
10 ULYSSES S. GEANT 
 
 to believe it," so he says himself. 
 "When I was seven or eight years of 
 age, I began hauling all the wood used in 
 the house and shops. . . . When about 
 eleven years old, I was strong enough to 
 hold a plough. From that age until 
 seventeen I did all the work done with 
 
 horses While still quite young, I had 
 
 visited Cincinnati, forty-five miles away, 
 several times alone. ... I did not like to 
 work ; but I did as much of it while 
 young as grown men can be hired to do 
 in these days, and attended school at the 
 same time. . . . The rod was freely used 
 there, and I was not exempt from its in 
 fluence." This steadfast, manly, not 
 bright boy had quiet grey-blue eyes, a 
 strong, straight nose, straight brown 
 hair, and a bulky build. His under 
 standing of horses, and the manner in 
 which he was successfully trusted with 
 them on overnight journeys while still a 
 child, bear witness to the tough fibre of 
 responsibility and courage in him. Nor 
 
ULYSSES S. GEANT 11 
 
 was lie pugnacious, but rather the re 
 verse ; and this, too, helps a portrait of 
 the boy from which the features of the 
 man seem a natural, slow development. 
 It would be strangely inconsistent to 
 find in Grant s adolescence any signs of 
 precocity, such as mark, for example, 
 the early years of Webster, another rustic 
 boy with very similar antecedents. For 
 intellect was Webster s gift, while char 
 acter was Grant s ; and character finds 
 no outward expression save in life s 
 chances. Napoleon owes his fame to 
 himself, but Wellington owes his fame to 
 Napoleon ; and, save for the Civil War, 
 Grant s force would have slumbered in 
 him from the cradle to the grave. 
 
 Here is the single prophetic incident. 
 It has been told in many ways ; and his 
 own is the best, as usual : 
 
 " There was a Mr. Ealston . . . who 
 owned a colt which I very much wanted. 
 My father had offered twenty dollars for 
 it, but Ealston wanted twenty-five. I 
 
12 ULYSSES S. GBANT 
 
 was so anxious to have the colt that . . . 
 my father yielded, but said twenty 
 dollars was all the horse was worth, and 
 told me to offer that price. If it was not 
 accepted, I was to offer twenty- two and a 
 half, and, if that would not get him, to 
 give the twenty-five. I at once mounted 
 a horse, and went for the colt. When I 
 got to Mr. Balston s house, I said to 
 him, Papa says I may offer you twenty 
 dollars for the colt, but, if you won t 
 take that, I am to offer twenty-two and 
 a half ; and, if you won t take that, to 
 give you twenty-five." 
 
 He was eight when this happened j 
 and when, after all his vicissitudes, he 
 came to die, the same native candour and 
 guilelessness, like truth at the well s 
 bottom, shone unclouded in his heart. 
 No experience of deceit seems to have 
 cured him of this inveterate simplicity 
 or warned him that others did not pos 
 sess it. " Grant believes every one as 
 honest as himself," was said of him dur- 
 
ULYSSES S. GBANT 13 
 
 ing later days of struggle. Is it wonder 
 ful that he failed in each business vent 
 ure? When he was elected President, 
 such a combination of firmness and in 
 tegrity was an outlook which naturally 
 filled the politicians with dismay. They 
 could not foresee that it would prove a 
 door wide open to every dollar which 
 they plotted to steal. When not far 
 from his end, he was asked if such and 
 such a thing had not distressed him, and 
 replied, "No, nothing but being de 
 ceived in people. " And this sorrow 
 ful thought haunts the preface to his 
 memoirs. Yes, that old horse story is 
 an omen. It raises laughter, to be sure ; 
 but change the figure of farmer Balston, 
 getting his undue price through the 
 boy s guilelessness, into Belknap of the 
 Fort Sill and national cemetery scandals, 
 into Babcock of the whiskey ring, into 
 Jay Gould of Black Friday, into Ferdi 
 nand Ward, the final thief who crossed 
 Grant s credulous path, and the old horse 
 story grows less mirthful. 
 
14 ULYSSES S. GKANT 
 
 His bringing up was evidently strict. 
 Both his talk and life were pure. He 
 seems to have got on without swearing, 
 even in battle, as extreme a sign of 
 calm force as can be imagined. Even 
 Washington broke out at Monmouth 
 Court-house. Grant s one weakness, 
 drinking, has therefore been the more 
 conspicuous. But in these early days 
 at Georgetown, Ohio (where the family 
 moved soon after his birth), he seems to 
 have been soberer than many in that re 
 gion. As for an army career, not only 
 had it never entered his head to be a 
 soldier, but he was averse to the notion 
 when suggested to him by his father. 
 " A permanent position in some respect 
 able college/ he writes, was his hope, 
 even after entering West Point. "I 
 had no intention of remaining in the 
 army." Indeed, in closely studying 
 Grant s temperament, it almost seems as 
 if he were not, in the last analysis, a sol 
 dier, but a patriot compelled to fight. 
 
ULYSSES S. GEASTT 15 
 
 Like poets, the world s great captains 
 are born, not made. The art of war, 
 war for war s sake, struck no spark in 
 Grant. But he brought to its practice a 
 sagacity and a grip of such dimensions 
 as (after some experience) to serve as 
 the equivalents of genius and instruc 
 tion. This is sometimes cited to point 
 the demagogic moral that education is 
 "un- American. " Ben Butler in his 
 book says: " Grant evidently did not 
 get enough of West Point in him to hurt 
 him any. . . . All the graduates in the 
 higher ranks in their classes never came 
 to anything." Now Robert E. Lee 
 graduated second. It took four years 
 and some half-dozen generals to beat 
 him. But Butler s book would be a 
 joke, were it not a stench. 
 
 When Grant was near seventeen he 
 told his father that he would never do a 
 day s work at tanning after twenty -one. 
 The sensible Jesse saw no success for 
 him there, if his heart was not in it, and, 
 
16 ULYSSES S. GKANT 
 
 asking what would he like, was told 
 farming or trading or to get an educa 
 tion. He had no farm to give his son 
 nor money to send him to college, and 
 but a poor opinion of a trader s life on 
 the Mississippi. But West Point offered 
 free education and subsequent honour 
 able service. The father settled the ques 
 tion ; and this is the son s account of it : 
 " Ulysses, I believe you are going to re 
 ceive the appointment. What appoint 
 ment? I inquired. To West Point. 
 I have applied for it. But I won t go, 
 I said. He said he thought I would j 
 and I thought so, too, if he did." The 
 Italics are Grant s own, and he seldom 
 uses them. Since his career is offered 
 as an inspiration to American youth, it 
 is a pity that his bringing up so rarely 
 serves as a model for American parents. 
 A sound, sturdy wholesomeness in both 
 father and mother is the assisting cause 
 of most that was admirable in their son. 
 They made no grief over saying good-by. 
 
ULYSSES S. GEANT 17 
 
 But across the street a friend and her 
 daughter did ; and the boy exclaimed, 
 " Why, you must be sorry I am going. 
 They didn t cry at our house. 7 At 
 that house, however, during a period 
 of the Mexican War when the absent 
 son could not write home, the mother s 
 hair grew grey. 
 
 Local opinion of Congressman Hamer s 
 choice was not flattering. "I am as 
 tonished that he did not appoint some 
 one with intellect enough to be a credit 
 to the district," said a neighbour to the 
 cadet s father ; and no special achieve 
 ment during those four years of study 
 contradicts this view. The boy gradu 
 ated twenty-first in a class of thirty- 
 nine, good in mathematics and excellent 
 in horsemanship. But and here again 
 is the dimly felt moral fibre he was 
 often umpire in disputes ; and he was 
 greatly liked by his friends, who called 
 him Uncle Sam. " Indeed, he was a 
 very uncle-like sort of a youth, 7 writes 
 
18 ULYSSES S. GEANT 
 
 a comrade, Henry Coppee. "His pict 
 ure rises before me ... in the old torn 
 coat, obsolescent leather gig-top, loose 
 riding pantaloons, with spurs buckled 
 over them, going with his clanking sabre 
 to the drill-hall. He exhibited but little 
 enthusiasm in anything. " Here is testi 
 mony to that mental indolence, or tor 
 por, which pervaded his nature ; and he 
 gives more himself. l i I rarely read over 
 a lesson the second time. ... I read all 
 of Bulwer s, . . . Cooper s, Marryat s, 
 Scott s, Washington Irving s works, 
 Lever s, and many others that I do not 
 now remember. His letters home show 
 an appreciation of natural scenery, and 
 this he seems always to have had. 
 
 During his furlough at home after two 
 years at the Academy it is narrated by 
 Eichardson that, l in accordance with an 
 agreement between himself and class 
 mates to abstain from liquor for a year, 
 he steadily refused to drink with his old 
 friends. The object of the cadets was to 
 
ULYSSES S. GRANT 19 
 
 strengthen, by their example, one of 
 their number who was falling into bad 
 habits. 77 It has never been narrated 
 that C. F. Smith, the commandant of 
 cadets, sent for the boy once when he 
 was in danger of being dismissed, and 
 told him that he was capable of better 
 things. The words that passed on this 
 occasion have died with the two that 
 spoke them j but Grant loved and 
 honoured Smith with a special feeling, 
 and a great deal lies behind the short 
 sentence in the second chapter of the 
 memoirs. So West Point bears consist 
 ent witness to the good and the bad in 
 Grant. He left it in 1843, wishing 
 naturally to be a dragoon, but was com 
 missioned brevet second lieutenant in 
 the Fourth Infantry, to which he re 
 ported for duty on September 30 at 
 Jefferson Barracks, Missouri. 
 
IV. 
 
 HE was twenty-one, and five feet 
 seven inches high, but bulky no longer. 
 A threatening cough had reduced him 
 to one hundred and seventeen pounds, 
 his weight four years earlier, though he 
 had grown six inches. For a time his 
 hours were fairly free ; and he made the 
 acquaintance of a classmate s sister, Miss 
 Julia Dent, living in the neighbour 
 hood. When Texas and Mexican affairs 
 called his regiment to Louisiana in the 
 following May, he found that he re 
 garded Miss Dent as more than an ac 
 quaintance ; and they became engaged. 
 Before the end of the month he was in 
 camp near the Eed Eiver on high 
 ground, so healthy that they named it 
 Camp Salubrity ; and presently he was 
 cured of his cough, and developed a 
 reddish beard that is described as being 
 much too long for such a youth. Gen 
 eral Eichard Taylor, of the Confederacy, 
 
ULYSSES S. GBANT 21 
 
 remembers him at this time as "a 
 modest, amiable, but by no means prom 
 ising lieutenant in a marching regi 
 ment." But Taylor could scarcely have 
 held this estimate after Molino- del-Bey 
 and Chapultepec. In the months of 
 peace preceding, whether in Louisiana 
 or at Corpus Christi, Grant s thoughts 
 still saw the goal of a professorship ; nor 
 was his heart in the Mexican War, when 
 it came. He pronounces it "unholy," 
 and he writes : "The Southern Bebell- 
 ion was largely the outgrowth of the 
 Mexican War. Nations, like individ 
 uals, are punished for their transgres 
 sions. 7 This forty years retrospect is 
 consistent with his letter after Cerro 
 Gordo : "You say you would like to 
 hear more about the war. . . . Tell them 
 I am heartily tired of the wars." 
 
 On the intellectual side, his letters 
 read stark and bald as time-tables. 
 Mexico, Cortez, Montezuma, are noth 
 ing to him. But his constant love of 
 
22 ULYSSES S. GKANT 
 
 nature leads him to remark and count 
 the strange birds of the country j and he 
 speaks of the beauty of the mountain 
 sides covered with palms which "toss to 
 and fro in the wind like plumes in a 
 helmet. 7 This poetical note rings so 
 strangely in the midst of his even, mat 
 ter-of-fact words that one wonders, did 
 he not hear some one else say it, and 
 adopt it because he thought it good! 
 It was his habit to do this. It is thus 
 that many years later the famous "bot 
 tling up 7 of Butler came to be so de 
 scribed. 
 
 Yet, though his heart was not in this 
 war, he shone in its battles. He was in 
 all fights that he could be in, and in 
 several that he need not have been in. 
 For after the capture of Yera Cruz he 
 was appointed regimental quartermas 
 ter ; and this position puts an officer in 
 charge of the trains, and furnishes him 
 with a valid reason for staying behind 
 with them. Grant never did, however, 
 
ULYSSES S. GRANT 23 
 
 but was always in the thick of the 
 action. He was commended in reports, 
 brevetted first lieutenant for distin 
 guished service at Molino-del-Eey (but 
 deaths in that battle brought him full 
 first lieutenancy), and for " acquitting 
 himself most nobly 7 at Chapultepec he 
 received the brevet of captain. Yet 
 these honours do not show him so much 
 out of the common as what quietly hap 
 pened between him and General Worth 
 at San Cosme. He had found a belfry 
 which commanded an important posi 
 tion of the enemy j and to the top of 
 this he, with a few men, had managed 
 to get a mountain howitzer. Presently 
 General Worth observed, and sent a 
 staff officer for him Pemberton, of 
 Yicksburg. Worth " expressed his 
 gratification at the services the howitzer 
 in the church steeple was doing, . . . and 
 ordered a captain of voltigeurs to report 
 to me with another howitzer. ... I 
 could not tell the general that there 
 
24 ULYSSES S. GBANT 
 
 was not room enough in the steeple for 
 another gun, because he probably would 
 have looked upon such a statement as a 
 contradiction from a second lieutenant. 
 I took the captain with me, but did not 
 use the gun." Here in his prompt and 
 perfect sagacity stands the future Grant 
 quite plain. 
 
 Thus ends this chapter of his life, 
 and in it he may be said to have hit the 
 mark. His careless dress and modesty 
 had not entirely hidden the man be 
 neath them. And now follows a dark 
 ening time, in which he misses the mark 
 altogether. War had forced him to 
 exert himself. When war stopped, he 
 stopped also. His ease-loving nature 
 furnished no inward ambition to keep 
 him going j and so, in the dead calm 
 of a frontier post, he degenerated. This 
 drifting and stagnation filled thirteen 
 years, but is not long to tell. 
 
 In July, 1848, he left Mexico for Mis 
 sissippi with his regiment. He was a 
 
ULYSSES S. GKANT 25 
 
 brevet captain, and twenty-six years 
 old. In August lie was married. As 
 quartermaster, the regiment s new 
 headquarters at Detroit should have 
 been his post that winter ; but a brother 
 officer, ordered to Sackett s Harbor, pre 
 ferred the gayety of Detroit, and man 
 aged one sees the thing to-day often 
 enough to have Grant sent to Sack- 
 ett s Harbor, and himself made acting 
 quartermaster at Detroit. This mean 
 ness was righted by General Scott in the 
 spring ; and in later days Grant, having 
 the chance to even things with the 
 brother officer, did not take it, but 
 stood his friend. In June, 1851, Sack- 
 ettfs Harbor became regimental head 
 quarters ; and Grant was there for twelve 
 months, when he was ordered to the 
 Pacific by way of the Isthmus. On ac 
 count of her health, Mrs. Grant did not 
 go with him. He passed the next year 
 on the Columbia River, at what is now 
 Fort Vancouver, where he was both post 
 
26 ULYSSES S. GEANT 
 
 and regimental quartermaster. One 
 last year lie spent as captain of F Com 
 pany, Fourth Infantry, at Humboldt 
 Bay. Then he left the army, resigning 
 July 31, 1854. 
 
 Such were his moves and removes. 
 Of his doings the tale is equally brief. 
 He was known for his exploits with 
 horses. Otherwise he was unknown 
 save to the very few brought by chance 
 or duty into familiarity with him. To 
 provincial blood and environment he 
 added an extraordinary personal power- 
 lessness to express himself or go through 
 his manners. In fact, he had no man 
 ners, which is far better than having 
 bad ones, to be sure ; and a certain 
 something in him seems to have held 
 even the most familiar at a distance. 
 But even Georgetown and Galena found 
 him wanting ; and this social dumbness 
 did not wholly wear off until he had 
 been twice President and had travelled 
 round the world. 
 
ULYSSES S. GEANT 27 
 
 Either great strain or great ennui 
 may drive a strong, resourceless man to 
 drink j and both at different times 
 visited Grant, and overcame him. It 
 has been plainly written, but is seldom 
 remembered, that his head in these days 
 was singularly light : a strange thing in 
 such a temperament, but well authenti 
 cated. Very little was too much for 
 him. Never to touch liquor was his 
 only safety. 
 
 Mow he left the army is conflictingly 
 told. He could scarcely be expected to 
 explain it himself. It is only the 
 Franklins and the Eousseaus who can be 
 as impersonally candid as that. Eich- 
 ardson s version closely tallies with 
 what is still reported on the coast. 
 Grant s commandant asked for his resig 
 nation, which was not to be forwarded 
 to Washington, but held in escrow, so 
 to speak, that he might pull himself to 
 gether. He could not, and the plain 
 truth is that he drank himself out of the 
 army. 
 
28 ULYSSES S. GEANT 
 
 He departed into an era that was to 
 be one of deepening gloom, remarking, 
 "Whoever hears of me in ten years 
 will hear of a well-to-do old Missouri 
 farmer. 77 Expecting money at San 
 Francisco, he did not get it. Sixteen 
 hundred dollars were also owed him by 
 the post-trader at Vancouver. He saw 
 the man again, but the dollars never. 
 The chief quartermaster of the coast 
 found him penniless and forlorn, and 
 helped him to go East. In New York 
 he was generously helped by Buckner, 
 who had ascended Popocatapetl with 
 him. In the autumn he is seen working 
 as a labourer on his father-in-law s farm 
 near St. Louis. With his own hands he 
 builds a cabin on some of this land, and 
 names it "Hardscrabble." It is re 
 corded that every animal about his farm 
 was a pet. In 1858 he sold his farm at 
 auction. He went into real estate, and 
 next into the custom-house, and was 
 even an auctioneer, it is said. Some- 
 
ULYSSES S. GKANT 29 
 
 times army friends came to visit Mm, 
 for he retained their regard j and, with 
 overalls tucked in his boots, he would 
 dine with them at the Planter s House. 
 Personally lonely, he was also out of 
 sympathy with St. Louis politics ; and 
 although the events of the world had at 
 length begun to stir his strong brains, 
 and he had opinions, not only about 
 slavery, but also about the Italian war, 
 and studied maps and newspapers mi 
 nutely, his comments were received with 
 indulgence ; for his audience, looking at 
 the man, could scarcely look for wisdom 
 from him. 
 
 There came a time when he walked 
 the streets, seeking employment. So 
 painful was it all that those who knew 
 him preferred to cross the street rather 
 than meet him. Can any one gauge the 
 despair of a man who, little as he stud 
 ied himself, must have known how far 
 below himself he was living? 
 
 In March, 1860, Grant went to weigh 
 
30 ULYSSES S. GBANT 
 
 leather and buy hides for his father s 
 branch store in Galena. He was paid 
 six hundred dollars at first, and later 
 eight hundred. But th is did not sup 
 port his wife and four children. He 
 went to the war in debt, which he paid 
 from his first military savings. In 1866 
 he refused his inheritance, saying that 
 he had helped to make none of his 
 father 7 s wealth. This must be remem 
 bered in considering Grant s acceptance 
 of presents in acknowledgment of his 
 military services. 
 
 The year at Galena was more than 
 ever isolated. His quiet judgment, 
 however, seems to have been wide 
 awake. He went to hear Douglas dur 
 ing the campaign of this year, and, 
 being asked how he liked him, answered, 
 " He is a very able, at least a very smart 
 man." And from having been a Demo 
 crat so far as he was definitely any 
 thing political his change of view 
 dates from this occasion. The words 
 
ULYSSES S. GEANT 31 
 
 of Douglas caused him to rejoice over 
 Lincoln s election. Except his vote 
 for Buchanan, his single political man 
 ifestation previous to this had been 
 to join the Know-Nothings at St. 
 Louis, and attend one meeting. But 
 now he had listened to Douglas, and 
 preferred Lincoln ; and South Carolina 
 had seceded. The state of the country 
 became his one thought. It is interest 
 ing to reflect that South Carolina, the 
 first state to leave the Union, sent one 
 man in thirty -eight to the Ee volution, 
 while Grant s ancestral state, Connect^ 
 cut, furnished one man in seven, or five 
 times as many. Virginia furnished one 
 in twenty-eight. 
 
V. 
 
 ON Friday, April 12, 1861, news 
 reached Galena that South Carolina had 
 fired upon Fort Sumter. On Monday 
 came tidings of its capture. On Tues 
 day there was a town meeting, with a 
 slippery mayor. But two spirits of a 
 different quality spoke out. "Wash- 
 burne said, "Any man who will try to 
 stir party prejudices at such a time as 
 this is a traitor." Eawlins ended his 
 fervent speech, "We will stand by the 
 flag of our country, and appeal to the 
 God of battles." These two names 
 must always be joined with Grant s fort 
 unes ; and this was the first night of 
 their common cause. Washburne in 
 Congress became Grant s good angel 
 against the public, and Eawlins in 
 Grant s tent was his good angel against 
 temptation John A. Eawlins, farmer, 
 charcoal-burner, self-educated lawyer, 
 "swarthy, rough-hewn, passionate," as 
 
ULYSSES S. GEANT 33 
 
 Mr. Garland writes of him. In later 
 years Grant said, "I always disliked to 
 hear anybody swear except Eawlins." 
 It was over Grant s whiskey that many 
 of these oaths were raised ; and, though 
 we have heard much about the glasses 
 which he drank, we shall never know 
 the tale of those which he escaped 
 drinking, thanks to his friend. Grant 
 kept Eawlins close to him throughout 
 the war, and after it as long as he lived. 
 His loss was sorrowful and irreparable. 
 At the end of the town meeting, 
 Grant told his brother that he thought 
 he ought to go into the service. On 
 Thursday he found himself chairman of 
 a meeting to raise volunteers. After 
 his first few words of embarrassment, he 
 made himself plain enough. Though 
 an Abolitionist by no means, he says in 
 a letter to his father-in-law at this time, 
 "In all this I can see but the doom of 
 slavery." Believing he could better 
 serve his state at Springfield, he de- 
 
34 ULYSSES S. GBANT 
 
 clined the captaincy of a volunteer 
 company, but helped them form and 
 drill, and went with them to Springfield 
 on the same train. But, though Wash- 
 burne s belief in him was already con 
 siderable, his influence for a while 
 wrought nothing in the chaos of in 
 trigues and appointments. As the 
 French Colonel Szabad vividly describes 
 this period in our country: "Never 
 were commanders of such high rank 
 created with more rapidity and less 
 discernment. Those who had some 
 knowledge of the art of war, as well as 
 those who were ignorant of its first 
 principles, well-educated and intelligent 
 men, together with men totally illiterate 
 and vulgar, all received their stars with 
 an equal facility j and all alike believed 
 themselves capable of leading to vic 
 tory. 77 Nor is this a supercilious Euro 
 pean view. "When the baggage animals 
 were starving at Chattanooga, Lincoln 
 complained, "I can make a brigadier- 
 
ULYSSES S. GKANT 35 
 
 general any day I like, but these mules 
 cost $150 apiece. In the vast shuffle 
 and ferment, then, how should poor, 
 silent, unshowy Grant not be lost ? The 
 marvel is that he was found so soon. It 
 all seems as casual as fate. Tired of 
 waiting, though Washburne counselled 
 patience, he was about to return to 
 Galena, when he was taken into the 
 adjutant- general s office j and for a while 
 he sat in a corner, filling blanks with 
 such ease and naturalness that nobody 
 noticed it was well done. Next he was 
 sent for a few days to Camp Yates while 
 the commandant was absent. Force was 
 felt in him here ; and he was one of the 
 five officers appointed to muster in ten 
 regiments at Mattoon. It was called 
 Camp Grant. But none of this led to 
 anything. He wrote to his father, "I 
 might have got the colonelcy of a regi 
 ment possibly ; but I was perfectly sick 
 of the political wire-pulling for all these 
 commissions, and would not engage 
 in it." 
 
36 ULYSSES S. GBANT 
 
 While mustering, he had a few idle 
 days to wait, and, finding himself near 
 St. Louis, waited there. The town was 
 a pot of conspiracy. Claiborne Jackson, 
 the governor, with a Union mask on, 
 was stealing troops and arms for Seces 
 sion. Francis Blair and Nathaniel 
 Lyon, two most competent patriots, 
 watched him through his mask. At the 
 right moment they captured his entire 
 camp. A rebel flag which had been 
 flying in St. Louis then came down to 
 stay down. Grant looked on at this, 
 and presently, entering a street- car, was 
 addressed by a youth in words that may 
 be dwelt upon. The mouth of Ireland 
 never uttered a bull more perfect. Se 
 cession never drew its own portrait with 
 a straighter stroke. The profound self- 
 contradiction between the youth s two 
 sentences has placed him in history. 
 " Things have come to a damned pretty 
 pass," said he, "when a free people 
 can t choose their own flag. Where I 
 
ULYSSES S. GBANT 37 
 
 came from, if a man dares to say a word 
 in favour of the Union, we hang him to 
 a limb of the first tree we come to." 
 In Grant s reply the spirit of the Union 
 is likewise drawn: " After all, 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, how 
 ever." 
 
 He next wrote from home to Wash 
 ington offering his services, and with 
 some hesitation saying that he felt 
 himself competent to command a regi 
 ment. No answer came. He went to 
 Cincinnati to see General McClellan, but, 
 failing twice, gave this up too. Of his 
 enforced idleness he writes May 30, 
 " During the six days I have been at 
 home I have felt all the time as if a duty 
 was being neglected that was paramount 
 to any other duty I ever owed." But 
 now the troops of the Twenty-first Illi 
 nois had become insubordinate. It was 
 
38 ULYSSES S. GEANT 
 
 a regiment which he had mustered at 
 Mattoon ; and it would appear that the 
 officers, dissatisfied with their colonel, 
 had spoken to the governor of Grant. 
 The governor seems to have been puz 
 zled. Meeting a book-keeper from the 
 Galena store, he said : " What kind of a 
 man is this Captain Grant ? . . . He . . . 
 declined my offer to recommend him to 
 Washington for a brigadier -generalship, 
 saying he didn t want office till he had 
 earned it. 7 And the book-keeper re 
 plied, "Ask him no questions, but 
 simply order him to duty." On the day 
 when, through a friend s offices, Grant 
 had received the commission of colonel 
 of an Ohio regiment, Governor Yates 
 telegraphed him his appointment as 
 colonel of the Twenty-first Illinois ; and 
 this he chose, and went to Springfield. 
 
 There is a story that he was intro 
 duced to his command by two orators, 
 who both burst into eloquence and rhap 
 sodised for some time. His turn came, 
 
ULYSSES S. GKANT 39 
 
 and much was expected from him j but 
 his speech was this: "Men, go to your 
 quarters." They presently discovered 
 that they had a colonel, although the 
 colonel had no uniform, being obliged to 
 go home and borrow three hundred dol 
 lars to buy him horse and equipments. 
 
 This regiment had volunteered for 
 thirty days ; but, after listening to 
 McClernand s and Logan s patriotic ad 
 dresses, Grant relates that they entered 
 the United States service almost to a 
 man. He does not say that a month 
 later, in Missouri, when these same men 
 whom he had severely disciplined heard 
 that he was likely to be promoted, they 
 requested to be attached to his com 
 mand. He wrote his father this ; but 
 he adds that he does not wish it read to 
 the others, "for I very much dislike 
 speaking of myself." 
 
 His men did not know his feelings as 
 he drew near what he thought was to be 
 his first engagement. He writes: "As 
 
40 ULYSSES S. GKANT 
 
 we approached the brow of the hill 
 from which it was expected we would 
 see Harris s camp, and possibly find his 
 men ready to meet us, my heart kept 
 getting higher and higher, until it felt 
 to me as though it was in my throat ; . . . 
 but the troops were gone. My heart 
 resumed its place. It occurred to me 
 that Harris had been as much afraid of 
 me as I had been of him. . . . From that 
 event to the close of the war I never ex 
 perienced trepidation upon confronting 
 an enemy, though I always felt more or 
 less anxiety. . . . The lesson was valu 
 able." 
 
 Not much happened to Grant in Mis 
 souri ; and he took occasion to rub up 
 his tactics. "I do not believe, " he 
 says, "that the officers of the regiment 
 ever discovered that I had never 
 studied the tactics that I used." Very 
 likely the officers did not j but at Shiloh 
 the enemy discovered that no earth 
 works had been thrown up. Somewhat 
 
ULYSSES S. GKANT 41 
 
 later than this Missouri time a young 
 associate of Grant s, who perhaps plumed 
 himself a little upon his military read 
 ing, asked the general something about 
 Jomini s book. Grant replied, with a 
 tinge of impatience, that he had read 
 Jomini without much attention ; and 
 then he added : "The art of war is 
 simple enough. Find out where your 
 enemy is. Get at him as soon as you 
 can. Strike at him as hard as you can 
 and as often as you can, and keep mov 
 ing on." In this compact summary 
 speaks the master mind. But the enemy 
 got at Grant at Shiloh, and a little 
 Jomini would have helped there. Be 
 fore the battle of the Wilderness he is 
 said to have exclaimed to Meade, "Oh, 
 I never manoeuvre ! And it is said 
 that his library contained not a single 
 military work. Grant s master mind 
 undoubtedly did learn as he went on; 
 but, if books had taught him more of the 
 experience of the world s generals, he 
 
42 ULYSSES S. GBANT 
 
 would not have had to acquire so much 
 himself at the cost of thousands of lives. 
 Sherman s own letter to Grant, March 
 10, 1864, hints this, but with the indul 
 gent voice of friendship : "My only 
 points of doubt were as to your knowl 
 edge of grand strategy and of books of 
 science and history j but I confess your 
 common sense seems to have supplied all 
 this. There seems no doubt that Grant 
 possessed grand strategy and none that 
 his tactics remained weak to the end. 
 
 Common sense, indeed, was his great 
 weapon ; and with this finally came the 
 power of grasping a vast conflict of si 
 multaneous facts, and instantly forming 
 the right judgment of what he must do. 
 Those who saw him for the first time 
 must have been amazed to learn the 
 story of the thirteen torpid years. He 
 supervised the rations, the equipment, 
 the transportation. There was not a 
 material need or detail that he did not 
 thoroughly foresee and attend to. An 
 
ULYSSES S. GEANT 43 
 
 officer serving under him wrote back 
 to Galena, "This man is the pure gold." 
 As the stress of experience and responsi 
 bility roused him more and more, his 
 brain took in his command like a great 
 multiplication table. From the efficiency 
 of the private as a unit, how much he 
 must eat, how far he could march, what 
 load he could carry, he reckoned and 
 combined, and so knew what aggressive 
 strength he had or should want at any 
 given time, expressed so to speak in foot 
 pounds of soldiers. Upon this material 
 side the Mexican War was a great help 
 to him ; and upon quite another side he 
 has the following to say: "All the 
 older officers, who became conspicuous 
 in the Eebellion, I had also served with 
 and known in Mexico. . . . The acquaint 
 ance thus formed was of immense ser 
 vice to me in the War of the Eebellion, 
 I mean what I learned of the characters 
 of those to whom I was afterwards 
 opposed. . . . The natural disposition of 
 
44 ULYSSES S. GEANT 
 
 most people is to clothe a commander of 
 a large army, whom they do not know, 
 with almost superhuman abilities. A 
 large part of the National Army, for in 
 stance, and most of the press of the 
 country, clothed General Lee with just 
 such qualities; but I had known him 
 personally, and knew that he was mortal, 
 and it was just as well that I felt this." 
 At this early time, however, Grant 
 thought the war would be of short dura 
 tion ; and Lee was a long way from his 
 presentiments. 
 
 On August 7, 1861, while still in 
 south-eastern Missouri, he was made 
 brigadier-general, to his own great sur 
 prise. Of his methods of discipline soon 
 after this appointment a singular story 
 is told. The command was marching, 
 and food was scarce. A lieutenant with 
 an advance-guard reached a farm-house, 
 and, upon informing its mistress that he 
 was General Grant and was hungry, re 
 ceived a precipitate and copious meal, 
 
ULYSSES S. GEANT 45 
 
 and went on much comforted. Pres 
 ently Grant himself rode to the same 
 door, and asked for food. " General 
 Grant has just left here," he was told, 
 f and has eaten everything. ? " Umph, 
 said Grant, " every thing ?" A pie did 
 remain ; and for this the general gave 
 the woman fifty cents, requesting her to 
 keep it until called for. Eiding on to 
 camp, he ordered grand parade at once ; 
 and to the astonished assembly the act 
 ing assistant adjutant- general read the 
 following order: " Lieutenant W. of 
 the Indiana Cavalry, having on this 
 day eaten everything in Mrs. Selvidge s 
 house, at the crossing of the Ironton and 
 Pocahontas and Black Eiver and Cape 
 Girardeau roads, except one pumpkin 
 pie, Lieutenant W. is hereby ordered 
 to return with an escort of one hundred 
 cavalry, and eat that pie also. ? > Whether 
 authentic or not, the story is very like 
 Grant in several ways. The lieutenant 
 could have been with propriety severely 
 
46 ULYSSES S. GBAOT? 
 
 punished for personating his commander. 
 This method, however, achieved its pur 
 pose thoroughly. On the other hand, it 
 may be doubted if General Lee would 
 have chosen it. There is great difference 
 between native refinement, which Grant 
 had, and good taste, which he had not. 
 
 Insubordination, however, whether in 
 men or officers, was neither the only 
 nor the chief trouble which met the new 
 brigadier-general. It was something, 
 moreover, with which he could cope so 
 well that he was steadily gaining, not 
 only the obedience, but the regard of his 
 command. Another thing there was 
 against which he was quite powerless. 
 His wary quartermasterly eye watched 
 a ring of contractors in St. Louis too 
 closely for their convenience. They 
 could do what they liked with the futile 
 Fremont, now in command of the de 
 partment $ but Grant spoiled their 
 plans, and they accordingly revived the 
 story of his drinking. By order of his 
 
ULYSSES S. GEANT 47 
 
 surgeon lie had taken some whiskey ; 
 and that was the whole of it. But it was 
 enough. General Prentiss, a little jealous 
 about rank, departed from Grant s juris 
 diction, saying, " I will not serve under 
 a drunkard." The slander reached 
 Washburne through the newspapers j 
 and he, his faith in Grant already great, 
 but not yet impregnable as it soon be 
 came, wrote to Eawlins. Eawlins an 
 swered, explaining that the surgeon had 
 prescribed whiskey for an attack of 
 ague, and added that, much as he loved 
 Grant, he loved his country more, and 
 if at any time, from any cause, he 
 should see his chief unfit for the position 
 he occupied, he should deem it his duty 
 to report the fact at once. " Before 
 mailing the letter," continues Eichard- 
 son, " he handed it to Grant. The gen 
 eral, who had suffered keenly from these 
 reports, read it with much feeling, and 
 said emphatically : Yes, that s right, 
 exactly right. Send it by all means." 
 
48 ULYSSES S. GBANT 
 
 It is a creditable story to every one ex 
 cept Prentiss and the contractors ; and 
 it reveals Bawlins in a bright light. No 
 wonder Grant let him swear whenever 
 he wanted. 
 
 For a little while Grant was ordered 
 about hither and thither in Missouri ; 
 but there is nothing decisive to record 
 until, soon after being assigned the com 
 mand of the district of South-east Mis 
 souri, he took up his headquarters at 
 Cairo on September 4. 
 
 Here he stands upon the threshold of 
 his fame. So unpretending a figure 
 does he make that a first sight of him 
 perplexes and discourages each new 
 comer. Twelve weeks ago he had been 
 nothing. Then he was made a colonel. 
 Now he was a brigadier-general of vol 
 unteers. One summer had done this ; 
 but it had done as much for half a 
 hundred others. So here was quite a 
 large company with even chances. But 
 chance and the man are rare comrades. 
 
ULYSSES S. GKANT 49 
 
 Like many, he had expected this war 
 to be a smaller thing than our cam 
 paign in Mexico. That was twenty -six 
 months ; its losses, about a thousand lives 
 a month ; its cost, one hundred and sixty 
 million. The Eebellion lasted forty- 
 eight months. It was a battle-ground 
 somewhat larger than England, Scot 
 land, Ireland, France, Germany, Spain, 
 and Portugal put together. There were 
 eighteen hundred and eighty -two fights 
 where at least one regiment was en 
 gaged, and certain battles where some 
 hundred and fifty thousand men were 
 engaged. The losses in its four years 
 come to seven hundred lives a day. The 
 cost of it was three billion four hundred 
 million, or about two and a half million 
 dollars a day. Mr. Saintsbury, the 
 eminent English critic, has called this 
 a " parochial disturbance. " Wolseley, 
 the conspicuous English general, has said 
 that an army of fifty thousand trained 
 soldiers could have ended the matter in 
 
50 ULYSSES S. GEAKT 
 
 six months. But this military man, at 
 that time, had not suppressed the Boers. 
 Such utterances are, of course, merely 
 the voice of English petulance that our 
 house, when divided against itself, did 
 not fall. United, we were a disagree 
 able competitor for England. Moreover, 
 the Union s triumph might affect Eng 
 land s getting Southern cotton, it was 
 feared ; and in Lord Eussell s evasions 
 over the Declaration of Paris, and in 
 the sailing of the Alabama, and in the 
 welcome which London gave Benjamin 
 (of Davis s cabinet) when he came there 
 to live after the war, England s hostile 
 undertone to the Union speaks out 
 plainly. We had friends there: the 
 Prince Consort, and through him the 
 Queen ; John Bright and the Manches 
 ter men. But the rank and file of the 
 aristocracy were full of virtuous rage 
 at our presuming to be a great nation. 
 
 No more than Grant does Jefferson 
 Davis seem to have looked for a grave 
 
ULYSSES S. GRANT 51 
 
 struggle. He and the few leaders, who 
 took the South into Secession, managed 
 to make it believe that "one Southerner 
 was equal to five Yankees." And Davis 
 made a speech in which he announced 
 that he was ready to u drink every drop 
 of blood shed south of Mason and 
 Dixon s line." This line across our 
 country was quite seriously thought by 
 Secessionists to divide all Americans 
 geographically into heroes and cowards. 
 This tribal mania was very naturally 
 heightened by the performances of Gen 
 erals Butler and Schenck and the rout 
 of Bull Eun. In the East the Union 
 cause looked dark enough, when light 
 unexpectedly came from the West. 
 General Grant stands the central figure 
 in that light. 
 
 To follow him, a survey of the country 
 must be taken. Through the gallant 
 Lyon and Blair and Curtis and Pope, 
 Secession presently lost Missouri. This 
 made safe Illinois across the river ; for 
 
52 ULYSSES S. GKANT 
 
 all east from there was Union to the 
 Atlantic. But just south came doubtful 
 Kentucky, and south of that was Confed 
 erate Tennessee ; and from there to the 
 Gulf and east and west was all Seces 
 sion. Kentucky, then, was the first 
 point ; after that, the great river, the 
 highway whose gates were closed, and 
 which ran between the banks of Seces 
 sion all the way to New Orleans and the 
 Gulf. Now Kentucky, like Missouri, 
 had loyal citizens, but a Secession gov 
 ernor j and it was the part of the South 
 to secure this state, if possible. But no 
 sooner did General Polk with that aim 
 move upon Columbus on the river, thus 
 threatening Cairo, than Grant secured 
 Cairo himself. The Mississippi was 
 closed from Columbus down. If Polk 
 should get Paducah, the Ohio would be 
 locked up too. Grant saw this, and, tele 
 graphing the futile Fremont, "I am 
 nearly ready to go to Paducah, and shall 
 start, should not a telegram arrive pre- 
 
ULYSSES S. GBANT 53 
 
 venting the movement," waited till 
 night, and went. He took Paducah 
 without firing a gun. Through his 
 prompt sagacity the Ohio was locked 
 against Polk. He now wanted to "keep 
 moving, > according to his view of war ; 
 but Fremont could not see that Colum 
 bus should be taken, and Polk was al 
 lowed to fortify there and to send some 
 forces against a Union command in Mis 
 souri. On November 5, Grant wrote to 
 C. F. Smith, who was holding the mouth 
 of the Cumberland, "The principal point 
 to gain is to prevent the enemy from 
 sending a force in the rear of those now 
 out of his command." Accordingly, two 
 days after Grant steamed down the river 
 in the morning upon Belmont on the 
 west bank, and retreated up the river 
 again in the evening. He had surprised 
 and destroyed the enemy s camp j but 
 Polk crossed with re-enforcements from 
 Columbus, and, regaining the field, drove 
 him from it with a loss of five hundred 
 
54 ULYSSES S. GKANT 
 
 men. Grant was the last on the trans 
 port, riding his horse aboard on a plank 
 pushed out for him. In his plain dress, 
 he looked like a private. " There s a 
 Yankee, if you want a shot," said Polk 
 to his men j but they, busy firing at the 
 crowded boats, thought one shabby 
 soldier too poor a mark. Belinont was a 
 defeat, but one of those which are suc 
 cesses, just as there are victories which 
 are failures. It accomplished its object. 
 Polk did not send the troops into Mis 
 souri, as he intended : he kept them at 
 hand against further surprises. 
 
 Secession s frontier at this time was 
 a slight curve from Columbus eastward 
 and up to Bowling Green, then down to 
 Cumberland Gap. It thus lapped over 
 a little from Tennessee into Kentucky. 
 Its weak point was the hole made in it 
 by two rivers, the Tennessee and Cum 
 berland, crossing it twelve miles apart. 
 Two forts barred these precious high 
 ways Henry and Donelson. If these 
 
ULYSSES S. GBANT 55 
 
 two gates were knocked down, the 
 Union had a clear road to the heart of 
 the South j for, by the Tennessee, troops 
 could travel into Alabama, and be fed 
 also. Thus Secession s frontier could be 
 pushed back ; and, as it receded down 
 along the bank of the Mississippi, that 
 highway almost inevitably must open. 
 This was clear to many eyes, but to 
 McClellan s it was not visible. This 
 general-in- chief could see nothing be 
 yond his own movements. At St. Louis, 
 Fremont had been succeeded by a per 
 son equally incapable. General Halleck 
 was the sort of learned soldier who brings 
 learning into contempt. He was full of 
 Jomini and empty of all power to master 
 a situation. On him Grant, like others, 
 urged the value of striking Forts Henry 
 and Donelson. But Halleck, whether 
 under McClellan s influence or for other 
 reasons, snubbed him j and so for a while 
 the matter rested. At length, however, 
 after General Thomas near Cumberland 
 
56 ULYSSES S. GKANT 
 
 Gap had knocked the east end of Seces 
 sion s frontier southward, and conse 
 quently threatened its middle at Bowling 
 Green, Halleck, relinquishing his notion 
 that sixty thousand men were necessary, 
 let Grant go with seventeen thousand, 
 and seven gunboats under Commodore 
 Foote. This was February 2. In four 
 days, Grant had Fort Henry. In ten 
 more, Fort Donelson and the gates to the 
 rivers were open. Secession s frontier 
 was crashed through from Columbus to 
 Cumberland Gap, and shrank many miles 
 southward. It was quick and final j 
 and Grant had thought of it, and done 
 it. He was indebted to nobody. His 
 own letter about it, written to Wash- 
 burne a month later, is like him : "I see 
 the credit of attacking the enemy by the 
 way of the Tennessee and Cumberland is 
 variously attributed. It is little to talk 
 about it being the great wisdom of any 
 general. . . . General Halleck no doubt 
 thought of this route long ago, and I am 
 sure I did." 
 
ULYSSES S. GKANT 57 
 
 Let it be said that Grant s adversaries 
 helped him greatly. In dividing his 
 thirty thousand men and sending but 
 sixteen thousand to Donelson, Sidney 
 Johnston made a perilous error. In giv 
 ing the command to Floyd and Pillow, 
 he made the error worse. Grant knew 
 them. He struck, and won. They de 
 serted, leaving Buckner to conduct the 
 surrender. The news to the Union was 
 a breath of health after jaded months of 
 sickness. Grant s words, "I propose to 
 move immediately upon your works/ 7 
 and " unconditional surrender," were 
 like a backbone appearing in something 
 that had begun to look like a jelly-fish. 
 He was now made major-general of vol 
 unteers. 
 
 This battle, like all his others, has 
 been proved a mere bungle by hostile 
 critics. The spirit of these gentlemen 
 can be given to the reader in a word. 
 One of them, after exposing Grant s 
 tactics, exposes his English. "I pro- 
 
58 ULYSSES S. GRANT 
 
 pose to move immediately upon your 
 works," would be grammar, lie says, if 
 * immediately had come at the end. 
 
 But now Grant was suddenly relieved 
 of command, and put in arrest ! Hal- 
 leek had not heard from him ; and Hal- 
 leek had heard of his leaving his post 
 and going to Nashville. Grant s ene 
 mies, the contractors, had not enjoyed 
 his recent suggestion to Halleck that 
 "all fraudulent contractors be impressed 
 into the ranks, or, still better, into the 
 gunboat service, where they could have 
 no chance of deserting. 7 They there 
 fore had surrounded Halleck with 
 rumours, entirely false, of Grant s drink 
 ing. Halleck had had a spy watching 
 Grant s habits in a little house that was 
 his headquarters before the surrender. 
 He now, never waiting to learn the cause 
 of Grant s silence (which was due to in 
 terrupted communications) or Grant s 
 reason for going to Nashville (which was 
 to confer with Buell, who had occupied 
 
ULYSSES S. GEANT 59 
 
 that town), petulantly complained to 
 Washington. It was set right in nine 
 days 5 but Halleck was afraid to let 
 Grant know the hand he had in it. 
 Grant never vouchsafed a syllable to the 
 world s injurious assaults upon him at 
 this hour or at any other of his life. 
 But in a letter to Washbume he gives 
 us a glimpse into his silent soul. 
 " There are some things which I wish 
 to say to you in my own vindication, 
 not that I care a straw for what is said 
 individually, but because you have 
 taken so much interest in my welfare. ? ? 
 And one evening during the nine days 
 humiliation, a sword was presented to 
 him by some officers. After their speech 
 and departure, he stood looking at the 
 gift in silence where it lay before him on 
 the table of the gunboat cabin. Sud 
 denly pushing it from him, he ex 
 claimed, "I shall never wear a sword 
 again ! f and turned away. Only one 
 or two witnessed this breaking of the 
 
60 ULYSSES S. GKANT 
 
 real man from the depths of his grief. 
 And generally he managed to keep a 
 face like stone ; but, upon the occasion 
 when he learned of his friend McPher- 
 son s death, he went into his tent, and 
 wept like a child. 
 
 At this time he walked in intimate 
 silence with C. F. Smith, his West Point 
 commandant, and his temporary supe 
 rior now 5 and those who saw them say 
 that Gra-nt s manner to Smith was some 
 thing of an old pupil s respect and some 
 thing of a plain man s admiration for 
 his more polished and splendid friend, 
 while Smith, on his side, treated Grant 
 as a creature whose larger dimensions he 
 felt and bowed to. Some further pict 
 ures of Grant at Donelson show several 
 sides of the man. On the eve of the 
 surrender, Pillow had made a desperate 
 sortie while Grant was conferring with 
 Foote on his gunboat. For a while it 
 was a bad business ; and when Grant re 
 turned, he flushed at the havoc made in 
 
ULYSSES S. GKANT 61 
 
 his absence : his reputation was at stake. 
 He gathered the fragments, and before 
 evening knew he was master by a 
 shrewd inference which has become 
 historic. The enemy s haversacks held 
 three days rations. Others saw in this 
 a preparation for a three days fight ; 
 but Grant knew it meant, not fight, but 
 flight. He saw that next morning would 
 give him Donelson. He wrote to Hal- 
 leek, i i They will surrender to-morrow, > 
 and, when asked if this was not a pre 
 mature message, referred to the haver 
 sacks as the basis of his conviction. 
 When the surrender was arranged, 
 one of the young men the one who 
 had spoken of Jomini hoped that they 
 would have the picturesque formalities 
 of such occasions, the lowered flags and 
 so forth. But Grant said, emphatically, 
 no. l Why humiliate a brave enemy t 
 he inquired. "We ve got them. That 
 is all we want." When the crestfallen 
 Buckner capitulated, and Grant found 
 
62 ULYSSES S. GBANT 
 
 him penniless in the forlorn place, he 
 remembered Buckner s friendly help 
 when he had been penniless in New 
 York. " He left the officers of his own 
 army" (says Buckner in a speech long 
 afterward), "and followed me, with 
 that modest manner peculiar to himself, 
 into the shadow, and there tendered me 
 his purse. It seems to me, Mr. Chair 
 man, that in the modesty of his nature 
 he was afraid the light would witness 
 that act of generosity, and sought to hide 
 it from the world. We can appreciate 
 that, sir." Indeed, we can j and we can 
 appreciate Buckner s own warm heart 
 whenever history gives us a glimpse 
 of it. When Grant was bidding this 
 world good-by in patience and suffering, 
 Buckner was one of the last to visit him, 
 and take his hand. 
 
 The pen would linger over Donelson ; 
 over Smith s gallantry that saved the day 
 on the 15th, and his delightful address to 
 the Iowa volunteers ; over McClernand s 
 
ULYSSES S. GBANT 63 
 
 good fighting, and over Foote and his 
 gunboats. About the navy, indeed, a 
 word must be said. From Fort Henry, 
 which it took unaided, to the day when 
 Yicksburg fell and the great river 
 " rolled unvexed to the sea/ 7 the navy 
 was not only illustrious and invaluable, 
 but also it made fewer mistakes than the 
 army. The names of Foote, Porter, 
 Davis, and Farragut (let Ellett s be 
 added too) must be spoken together 
 with those of the land soldiers. As some 
 one has happily said, the army and the 
 navy were the two shears of the scissors. 
 From Donelson, Grant stepped into 
 a broadening labyrinth of action. He 
 wished at once to strike Polk at Colum 
 bus. Halleck prescribed caution ; and 
 Polk, unhindered, escaped south to 
 Corinth, where under Sidney Johnston 
 the South was massing all the strength 
 it could bring. Columbus fell to the 
 Union ; and New Madrid and Island No. 
 10, the next two barriers down the 
 
64 ULYSSES S. GEANT 
 
 river, were broken by Pope and Foote 
 in March and April. On land it grew 
 plain that somewhere about Corinth the 
 armies must try a big conclusion. This 
 happened not as Grant expected. Ee- 
 stored to command, he had rejoined the 
 army up the Tennessee Eiver, and had 
 approved wisely, according to many 
 good opinions the position at Pittsburg 
 Landing in the enemy s country, selected 
 by C. F. Smith. But he looked for no 
 battle just here. And here Sidney 
 Johnston surprised him. On Sunday 
 and Monday, April 6 and 7, was fought 
 the battle of Shiloh, Buell arriving 
 in time to re-enforce Grant for Monday s 
 fight. The words of Buell are the 
 words of an imbittered rival ; but they 
 tell the unanswerable truth. 
 
 "An army comprising seventy regi 
 ments of infantry, twenty battalions of 
 artillery, and a sufficiency of cavalry, lay 
 for two weeks and more in isolated camps, 
 with a river in its rear and a hostile army 
 
ULYSSES S. GEANT 65 
 
 claimed to be superior in numbers twenty 
 miles distant in its front, while the com 
 mander made his headquarters and 
 passed his nights nine miles away on the 
 opposite side of the river. It had no line 
 or order of battle, no defensive works of 
 any sort, no outposts, properly speaking, 
 to give warning or check the advance 
 of an enemy, and no recognised head 
 during the absence of the regular com 
 mander. On a Sunday the hostile force 
 arrived and formed in order of battle, 
 without detection or hindrance, within 
 a mile and a half of the unguarded 
 army, advanced upon it the next morn 
 ing, penetrated its disconnected lines. 
 . . . Of Grant himself is nothing to be 
 said? ... If he could have done any 
 thing in the beginning, he was not on 
 the ground in time. . . . But he was one 
 of the many there who would have re 
 sisted while resistance could avail. That 
 is all that can be said, but it is an hon 
 ourable record. " A. severe judgment, 
 
66 ULYSSES S. GKASTT 
 
 which controversy sustains and history 
 will affirm. Inexperience is the honest 
 explanation. 
 
 Grant s fame is not helped by cover 
 ing Shiloh, and Grant s fame can stand 
 the trnth. So also did Napoleon lose 
 touch of his enemy at Marengo through 
 failure to use his cavalry for reconnoi 
 tring. He went to sleep expecting no 
 battle in the morning ; and in the morn 
 ing he was surprised and defeated by 
 Melas, as Johnston surprised and de 
 feated Grant. Ee-enforced by Desaix s 
 return in the afternoon, he recovered 
 himself, as Grant, re-enforced by Buell, 
 recovered himself on the second day. 
 The Union lost some thirteen thousand 
 men, the South eleven thousand, and 
 understood thereafter that all American 
 blood was equally gallant, whether 
 Northern or Southern. 
 
 Grant made another mistake here ; 
 and his reasons for not pursuing the 
 enemy (who had lost Sidney Johnston 
 
ULYSSES S. GEAKT 67 
 
 the first day) are not convincing. Mr. 
 John Fiske, quoting Sherman s re 
 mark about it to himself, gives the 
 human clew to this bad military error : 
 "I assure you, my dear fellow, we 
 had had quite enough of their society 
 for two whole days, and were only too 
 glad to get rid of them on any terms. " 
 The writer has heard this same explana 
 tion from another soldier. 
 
 So the enemy, now under Beauregard, 
 fell back to Corinth, and with needless 
 and pompous caution was driven from 
 there by the learned Halleck after some 
 weeks. For the learned Halleck came 
 down now, and took command person 
 ally ; and Grant was again under a 
 cloud, a mere onlooker with the sterile 
 position of second in command. Again, 
 as always, he answered no word to the 
 furious storm of abuse which the coun 
 try let loose upon him. To Washburne 
 he wrote: "I would scorn being my 
 own defender . . . except through the 
 
68 ULYSSES S. GKANT 
 
 record ... of all my official acts. . . . 
 To say that I have not been distressed 
 . . . would be false. . . . One thing I will 
 assure you of, however : I cannot be 
 driven from rendering the best service 
 within my ability to suppress the pres 
 ent rebellion. " And to his father he 
 wrote: "You must not expect me to 
 write in my own defence, nor to permit 
 it from any one about me. I know that 
 the feeling of the troops under my com 
 mand is favourable to me ; and, so long as 
 I continue to do my duty faithfully, it 
 will remain so. I require no defenders. 7 ? 
 Nevertheless, his spirit was near being 
 broken. He had nothing given him to 
 do. He was in a sort of disgrace. There 
 seemed no outlook. Halleck had re 
 moved his willing hand from the plough. 
 At Corinth he had applied for a thirty 
 days leave, when Sherman, his good 
 friend, suspected that all was not well 
 with him. "I inquired for the gen 
 eral/ says Sherman, "and was shown 
 
ULYSSES S. GBANT 69 
 
 to his tent, where I found him seated on 
 a camp-stool, with papers on a rude 
 camp -table. ... I inquired if it were 
 true that he was going away. He said, 
 Yes. I then inquired the reason ; and 
 he said : Sherman, you know. You 
 know that I am in the way here. I 
 have stood it as long as I can, and can 
 endure it no longer. ... I then begged 
 him to stay, illustrating his case by my 
 own. Before the battle of Shiloh, I had 
 been cast down by a mere newspaper as 
 sertion. . . . He . . . promised to wait. 
 . . . Very soon after this ... I received 
 a note from him, saying that he ... 
 would remain. 77 Thus did Sherman at 
 the right time stretch his hand to Grant, 
 and help him rise from Shiloh, and go 
 on to Vicksburg, Chattanooga, and Ap- 
 pomattox. 
 
 As Donelson, so now Corinth dpened 
 more gates down the Mississippi Fort 
 Pillow and Memphis. Before the first 
 of May, Farragut and Porter had taken 
 
70 ULYSSES S. GKAOT 
 
 New Orleans. Vicksburg shotild have 
 followed as naturally as the last brick 
 in a tumbling row. But the learned 
 Halleck was there to save it with his 
 finical and disastrous meddling. He had 
 a hundred thousand men reporting for 
 duty : Beauregard had half that number. 
 He had also the moral impetus of vic 
 tory, while the South was shaken and 
 disconcerted by Shiloh and Sidney John 
 ston s death. The very brilliant ex 
 ploits of Mitchell had opened the way to 
 Chattanooga for him. Mobile and Vicks- 
 burg were but feebly protected. Other 
 men had gathered these opportunities, 
 which now slid away like sand through 
 his inanely opened fingers. He sat cau 
 tiously down 5 sent Buell to repair a 
 railroad, which was promptly torn up j 
 sent away troops to hold unprofitable 
 points 5 refused troops to Farragut, who 
 wished to strike Port Hudson and Vicks- 
 burg ; forbade Pope to risk a battle on 
 any consideration 5 and crowned his 
 
ULYSSES S. GKANT 71 
 
 whole crass performance with the words : 
 "I think the enemy will continue his 
 retreat, which is all I desire. " The 
 enemy immediately strengthened Port 
 Hudson, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga ; 
 and Halleck was made general-in-chief 
 at Washington ! To the blunders of this 
 time may be added the vast farce of the 
 legal tender act, when the government, 
 against the soundest advice and warning, 
 declined to borrow money at market 
 prices, because this would be a undigni 
 fied,^ and issued instead pieces of 
 paper, which it told the world were 
 worth a dollar, and presently enjoyed 
 the dignity of having the world value 
 at thirty-five cents. There are blunders 
 in 1862 so stultifying as to seem incredi 
 ble, had we not seen much the same 
 sort of thing since. But we were fight 
 ing Americans, not Spaniards, then. 
 Happily, Jefferson Davis made some 
 blunders, too ; and thus Grant had 
 only Pemberton, and not Van Dora, 
 
72 ULYSSES S. GKAOT 
 
 to fight at Vicksburg, when the time 
 
 came. 
 
 Upon Halleck s promotion, Grant 
 was put in command of the armies of 
 the Mississippi and the Tennessee. The 
 battles of luka and Corinth were fought. 
 By November Grant was once again able 
 to go on with his interrupted strategy 
 of flanking the Mississippi. It was not 
 until the following spring that he walked 
 to his goal with a firm step. In the 
 months between he was not only ham 
 pered by many external embarrassments, 
 but his own mind had not come to a 
 final clear determination. The jealousy 
 of McClernand, the treachery that lost 
 him his base at Holly Springs, and his 
 own not very sound plan of co-operating 
 with Sherman on the east bank these 
 among other causes helped his first 
 failure. Then in the winter months his 
 canal-cutting, and various operations 
 upon both sides of the river, were de 
 feated by Nature herself. Perhaps he 
 
ULYSSES S. GKANT 73 
 
 should have known that land and water 
 were tangled in such a chaos here that 
 the first chapter of Genesis alone could 
 have straightened them for an army. 
 One sentence from Porter 7 s report of 
 the Yazoo Pass attempt, and what the 
 gunboats had to do in the narrow chan 
 nels that enmeshed them with vegeta 
 tion, draws the whole picture of this 
 winter without need of further com 
 ment : "I never yet saw vessels so well 
 adapted to knocking down trees, hauling 
 them up by the roots, or demolishing 
 bridges." Yet, perhaps, Grant knew 
 all this very well. His troops were in a 
 wretched watery camp opposite Vicks- 
 burg. Disease had heavily visited them. 
 The graves of their late comrades were 
 forever in their sight on the narrow 
 levee. Moreover, the country clam 
 oured for results ; and enemies, both 
 military and civil, were pressing Lin 
 coln for Grant s removal. It is re 
 corded that General Thomas arrived at 
 
74 ULYSSES S. GKAtfT 
 
 Porter s headquarters with an order to 
 relieve Grant, if it were necessary. 
 Porter told Thomas that he would be 
 tarred and feathered if his mission be 
 came known. 
 
 Perhaps Grant dug his canals and cut 
 his trees to give his soldiers less time to 
 think of their hardships, and to make 
 an appearance of activity until the high 
 water should subside and permit real 
 activity. His mind was digging, too, 
 deep into the national situation. In 
 silence and independence it reached its 
 own convictions, and then, attentively 
 listening to contrary opinions, disre 
 garded these and pursued its way. And 
 in everything that Grant did, the admi 
 rable navy supported him brilliantly. 
 On April 16 it ran the Yicksburg bat 
 teries in an hour and forty minutes. In 
 six days the transports followed ; and 
 Vicksburg beheld the army that had 
 been sitting in the mud for so many 
 weeks depart, to return presently on its 
 own side the river with a vengeance. 
 
ULYSSES S. GBANT 75 
 
 Grant s aria was at length raised to 
 strike. His first blow glanced at Grand 
 Gulf, the southernmost defence of Vicks- 
 burg ; but the next day he stood on the 
 east shore, the tall, defended, baffling 
 shore which Secession had called its 
 Gibraltar. To do this, he had had to 
 come down the river to cross at Bruins- 
 burg, some thirty- one miles below Vicks- 
 burg. "When this was effected, I felt 
 a degree of relief scarcely ever equalled 
 since/ he says. " I was on dry ground 
 on the same side of the river with the 
 enemy." 
 
 He now manoeuvred to deceive Pem- 
 berton, and easily did so. On May 1 
 he won the battle of Port Gibson. He 
 next made his great decision to cut loose 
 from his base of supplies, and not inform 
 Halleck until it was too late to stop him. 
 When Sherman with several others 
 strongly protested against this cutting 
 loose from the base of supplies the 
 triumphant flash of daring and right 
 
76 ULYSSES S. GEAKT 
 
 judgment which is Grant s highest claim 
 to purely military greatness the gen 
 eral listened, but went on with his plan. 
 And now, indeed, he raised his arm, and 
 struck. On May 17 he had Pemberton 
 penned in Vicksburg, and a telegram 
 from Halleck ordering him to wait for 
 General Banks ! In six days he had 
 won four battles, prevented Johnston s 
 joining Pemberton, and was now sur 
 rounding Yicksburg itself. After the 
 bloody frontal attack of the 22d (some 
 thing he owned in later life to have 
 been a mistake), he settled to a siege. 
 We must remember that Pemberton had 
 made many things easy for him ; Pem 
 berton was deceived by his preliminary 
 manoeuvres. Pemberton set about cut 
 ting him from his base a week after he 
 had no base. Pemberton divided his 
 own strength instead of falling on him 
 with the whole of it, when his was scat 
 tered. Pemberton ignored all of John 
 ston s better recommendations, ending 
 
ULYSSES S. GBANT 77 
 
 by refusing the advice to let Vicksburg 
 go, and escape with his army at least. 
 All these follies had been committed by 
 Pemberton j but we must also remember 
 that Grant knew Pemberton was the 
 man to commit them, and fought his 
 campaign accordingly. And so on July 
 4, 1863, Yicksburg surrendered. Pem 
 berton remained seated with his staff as 
 Grant came up on their veranda. None 
 of them seem to have been of the mettle 
 that loses gracefully; but in the words 
 of a gentleman, the Comte de Paris, 
 " As victory put Grant in a position to 
 be indifferent to this, he affected not to 
 notice it, and, addressing Pemberton, 
 asked him how many rations were 
 needed for his army. 77 Consideration 
 for people in distress was, after the 
 fact of surrender, his first thought here, 
 as it had been at Donelson. And with 
 the same humane watchfulness, when he 
 presently discovered a Mississippi steam 
 boat captain overcharging his men and 
 
78 ULYSSES S. GBANT 
 
 officers going home on furlough, he com 
 pelled the excess to be refunded. "I 
 will teach them/ 7 he said, "that the 
 men who have perilled their lives to 
 open the Mississippi Eiver for their 
 benefit cannot be imposed upon with 
 impunity." 
 
 So Pemberton surrendered Vicksburg 
 to Grant in a sulky temper, and pro 
 ceeded to write articles proving Johnston 
 was to blame. On the day before, the 
 noble and defeated Lee was saying to 
 a Confederate brother, "Never mind, 
 general, all this has been my fault : it is 
 I that have lost this fight, and you must 
 help me out of it the best way you can." 
 For on the preceding day, July 3, 1863, 
 the Union had won Gettysburg. On 
 this day of Vicksburg s surrender, Lee 
 began his retreat. Had two separate 
 nations [been at war, here they would 
 have stopped. But one piece of a na 
 tion was trying to separate itself from 
 the rest ; and the rest had to follow it, 
 
ULYSSES S. GKANT 79 
 
 and wholly crush it. This necessity was 
 clearly seen then by no one so much as 
 by General Grant. Off in the West 
 by himself, his clear, strong mind had 
 grasped it ; and every blow he struck 
 was to this end, and every counsel that 
 he gave. The North began to feel this 
 huge force resting for the moment on the 
 banks of the now open Mississippi. It 
 looked away from Virginia, scraped raw 
 with the vain pendulum of advance and 
 retreat, to Donelson, Shiloh, Corinth, 
 Vicksburg. Here it saw no pendulum, 
 but an advance as sure, if as slow, as 
 fate. Therefore, Grant s name began to 
 be spoken with a different sound. And 
 a Southern newspaper perceived in him 
 the largest threat to Confederate armies. 
 It called him "the bee which has really 
 stung our flanks so long." 
 
 After Donelson, Grant had written 
 Sherman: "I feel under many obliga 
 tions to you for the kind terms of your 
 letter, and hope that, should an oppor- 
 
80 ULYSSES S. GEANT 
 
 tunity occur, you will earn for yourself 
 that promotion which you are kind 
 enough to say belongs to me. I care 
 nothing for promotion, so long as our 
 armies are successful, and no political 
 appointments are made." He did not 
 now relish the suggestion of his being 
 ordered to the Potomac, which first came 
 to him at this time. He wrote: "My 
 going could do no possible good. They 
 have there able officers who have been 
 brought up with that army." 
 
 Meanwhile Vicksburg had made him 
 a major-general in the regular army. 
 Lincoln had written him his hearty per 
 sonal thanks, and the cause of the Union 
 had brightened at home and abroad. 
 The London Times and Saturday Eeview 
 had lately been quoting the Bible as 
 sanction for slavery ; for England dearly 
 loves the Bible ; but now many voices 
 in London became sure that slavery was 
 wicked; for England dearly loves suc 
 cess. 
 
ULYSSES S. GBANT 81 
 
 Grant was more pestered than ever 
 now with Jews and other traders. As 
 he wrote Chase on July 21 : " Any trade 
 whatsoever with the rebellious states is 
 weakening to us. ... It will be made 
 the means of supplying the enemy with 
 what they want." His sound sense, 
 however, could not wholly prevail 
 against the politicians. One would 
 gladly dwell upon the story of the cotton, 
 historically important, and romantic in 
 detail: how for one example a de 
 termined and beautiful lady with her 
 French maid spent some six weeks on 
 board a certain flag-ship, and came 
 triumphant away, bringing all the cotton 
 she wanted and leaving all the reputa 
 tion she had ; but we must go on to 
 Chattanooga. 
 
 Again, as in the preceding year, 
 Grant felt that one aggressive blow 
 struck should be followed up by an 
 other; and Halleck again rejected the 
 notion. Once more the gathered army 
 
82 ULYSSES S. GEANT 
 
 was dispersed on various errands of sec 
 ondary importance, and once more the 
 railroad of last year was solemnly ordered 
 to be repaired, this time by Sherman. 
 In September a fall from his horse in 
 New Orleans confined Grant to his bed 
 for twenty-one days. While he was still 
 in bed, General Eosecrans, after prelim 
 inary success in Tennessee, got himself 
 into the gravest difficulties at the bat 
 tle of Chickamauga, where, but for the 
 splendid fight that Thomas made the 
 second day, he would certainly have 
 been destroyed by General Bragg. As 
 it was, the Union forces escaped, and re 
 tired into Chattanooga. The army could 
 no longer attack. Very soon it could no 
 longer retreat. Order was nowhere, 
 and starvation was approaching. Jeffer 
 son Davis visited Bragg during this time, 
 and, looking down from a rock upon the 
 beleaguered, helpless army, felt much 
 natural joy. Like Donelson, like Vicks- 
 burg, like Corinth, Chattanooga also was 
 
ULYSSES S. GEANT 83 
 
 a vital strategic point, a mountain fun 
 nel the only one through which the 
 South-west could send supplies to Lee. 
 
 One coherent plan for relieving the 
 starvation General Eosecrans evidently 
 had ; and, to carry it out, he was going 
 to employ Hooker s command, at this 
 time sent to re-enforce him. It involved 
 bridging the Tennessee Eiver, thereby 
 to acquire the use of an approach not 
 commanded by the enemy. To state 
 what geographical precision this plan 
 had reached in the mind of General 
 Eosecrans involves a question of accu 
 racy between his memory and the mem 
 ory of General W. F. Smith. Both with 
 some acrimony have claimed the glory 
 of thinking of it, and upon this point 
 the official records are not quite specific ; 
 but the glory of doing it, and doing 
 it to perfection, is certainly General 
 Smith s. Enough has been said to re 
 mind the reader that we are walking 
 here, as everywhere, upon the treacher 
 ous embers of controversy. 
 
84 ULYSSES S. GEANT 
 
 Twice in September, Grant, still in 
 bed, had sent Bosecrans assistance. On 
 October 10 he received a summons to 
 Cairo, and hobbled off on the same day. 
 From Cairo on the 17th he was ordered 
 to Louisville, and on the way met the 
 Secretary of War, who placed him in 
 command of the newly created Military 
 Division of the Mississippi. Matters 
 were desperate at Chattanooga. Bains 
 had melted the country to mire, and ten 
 thousand horses and mules were dead of 
 hunger. October 19, Bosecrans started 
 with Smith down the river to view the 
 best place for the intended bridge to 
 open a better avenue of supplies. Bose 
 crans stopped at the hospital. When 
 Smith reported from his inspection of 
 the shore down the river, he found the 
 general relieved by Grant, and Thomas 
 in his place. Next day Grant, still very 
 lame, began his journey from Louisville 
 to Chattanooga. By train, on horseback 
 through the washed-out mountains, and 
 
ULYSSES S. GBANT 85 
 
 carried in dangerous places because of 
 his injury, lie reached Chattanooga the 
 night of the 23d, "wet, dirty, and well/ 
 as Dana s literary pen wrote Stanton. 
 And forthwith order began to shape it 
 self from formlessness. Grant s enemies 
 say he had nothing to do with it, that it 
 would have come without him. To this 
 there is a sufficient answer : it did come 
 with him. Guessing what might have 
 been helps history no better than the 
 post mortem cures the patient. And, in 
 truth, these critics are preposterous. 
 Earth has not anything more childish 
 than a military man airing a grievance. 
 That night Grant listened, and asked 
 questions of the officers. These felt that 
 somebody had come among them. He 
 was delighted with the scheme for the 
 new avenue of supplies which General 
 Smith explained to him, and his mind 
 was also filled with plans for aggression. 
 After all these days of passive defence, 
 he must have seemed to Thomas and the 
 
86 ULYSSES S. GKANT 
 
 rest of that company like the flood-tide 
 after the ebb. Next day he went to see 
 where Smith was going to open the road. 
 That night he wrote leaf after leaf 
 of despatches, brief, forcible, unambig 
 uous, and with scarcely a change of a 
 word or a pause to choose one ; for such 
 was his great power in this matter of 
 writing what he had to say. He ordered 
 up Sherman from Corinth where Hal- 
 leek s railroad-building was delaying 
 that general. He sent reassuring mes 
 sages to Halleck about Burnside, who 
 was threatened in East Tennessee. As 
 we think of him during these days, reel 
 ing off orders and pulling the scattered 
 shreds of mismanagement together, he 
 seems like a quietly spinning dynamo 
 which, silent and unnoticed, in a small 
 house, supplies the current that drives a 
 great system of moving wheels. At mid 
 night on the 27th General Smith began, 
 and at ten next morning brilliantly 
 finished, his opening of the new road. 
 
ULYSSES S. GKAtfT 87 
 
 It was the first stroke of salvation for 
 Chattanooga. That night the enemy 
 under Longstreet fought Hooker on 
 Lookout Mountain to retrieve this loss, 
 but failed. The dynamo continued 
 steadily spinning destruction for Bragg, 
 who now did a foolish thing. He sent 
 twenty thousand men away under Long- 
 street to attack Burnside. At this, 
 Grant nearly did a foolish thing himself. 
 He ordered an assault. But Thomas 
 saved him from this error. All the 
 while Sherman with his army was com 
 ing nearer. Swollen waters and deep 
 walking clogged their struggling march, 
 and the battle was put off for them. At 
 length Bragg from his heights saw them 
 prowling in the heavy country across 
 the river, thorght they were going to 
 help Burnside, and forthwith despatched 
 more help to Longstreet. 
 
 And now the reader must see the shape 
 of the country. Let him think of a 
 theatre, and stand on the stage, and look 
 
88 ULYSSES S. GEANT 
 
 at the house. On the stage he is in 
 Chattanooga, with the river and moun 
 tains behind him, and Sherman creeping 
 behind them. In the house sits Bragg 
 all around the balcony. A valley cuts 
 the balcony in the middle, but Bragg 
 from both sides commands it as if the 
 horseshoe were not split. At the right 
 end of the balcony is Lookout Mountain, 
 like a stage box. The box opposite is 
 the north end of Missionary Eidge ; and 
 the whole left side of the balcony is part 
 of the same ridge. Bragg holds them 
 all. His centre is up on the left side of 
 the balcony : his two wings are the two 
 stage boxes that look at each other across 
 the valley. He also holds a position in 
 the middle of the parquet, called Or 
 chard Knob. The par-uet is Chatta 
 nooga valley. To attack Bragg, there 
 is a choice. Go at the centre, cut him 
 in two, and beat the stage boxes sepa 
 rately, or get round behind the boxes, 
 and attack both, so that one cannot go 
 
ULYSSES S. GEANT 89 
 
 to help the other. But the centre was a 
 straight climb up into the face of the 
 enemy, and Grant determined upon the 
 boxes. The left-hand box, the north 
 end of Missionary Eidge, was to be the 
 main affair ; and Sherman was to con 
 duct it. He was to creep round and 
 there turn Bragg s flank, while Hooker 
 was to turn the other flank on Lookout 
 Mountain. Thus Sherman might cut 
 Bragg from his base, which lay less than 
 a mile behind that part of Missionary 
 Eidge. Bragg never suspected this could 
 happen. Sherman had crept out of 
 sight, gone to Burnside, he supposed ; 
 and the Union troops seemed to him 
 from his balcony to be thinking of his 
 centre and of Lookout Mountain oppo 
 site. So he did not much fortify the 
 precious north end of Missionary Eidge. 
 He was doing precisely what Grant 
 manoeuvred for. But Chattanooga is 
 one of the great battles that melt to a 
 new shape in the very hands of their 
 sculptors. 
 
90 ULYSSES S. GBAET 
 
 On Friday, November 20, a day of 
 heavy falling rain, Bragg sent word to 
 Grant, "As there may still be some non- 
 combatants in Chattanooga, I deem it 
 proper to notify you that prudence would 
 dictate their early withdrawal. 7 "I 
 did not know what the intended decep 
 tion was," says Grant. Meanwhile no 
 battle could begin until Sherman had 
 wholly crept round behind that left- 
 hand box a direful work in the mud, 
 with a bridge thirteen hundred and fifty 
 feet long to build, and build noiselessly. 
 On Sunday a deserter reported that 
 Bragg was falling back. Perhaps he 
 was going against Burnside himself. If 
 so, he should not get away without some 
 little trouble at least. Therefore on 
 Monday the little trouble occurred. Up 
 in his balcony, Bragg saw going on down 
 in the parquet what he supposed to be a 
 dress parade of the Union troops. Sud 
 denly they rushed : the parade blossomed 
 into a sharp encounter, and before the 
 
ULYSSES S. GEANT 91 
 
 Southern troops well knew what it 
 meant they had lost Orchard Knob. 
 So the Union was a mile nearer to the 
 rising land at the foot of Missionary 
 Eidge. Bragg showed his strength on 
 top, and then Grant knew that he was 
 not retreating. Orchard Knob was now 
 strengthened with artillery. Bragg was 
 frightened, and took troops away from 
 Lookout Mountain across to the other 
 side, where the unseen Sherman was 
 approaching. Through that night Sher 
 man came out from the concealing hills 
 upon the river, dropped silently down 
 the rivor on the bridge-boats, caught all 
 the rebel river pickets but one, and by 
 dawn began his noiseless bridge of thir 
 teen hundred feet, which General Smith 
 finished by noon. By one, he was 
 marching to the foot of the ridge in a 
 drizzling rain, hidden by clouds from 
 the enemy s watch across the theatre on 
 Lookout Mountain. By this Tuesday 
 night he was upon his end of Missionary 
 
92 ULYSSES S. GBANT 
 
 Kidge, and for the first time saw a gap 
 splitting him from the rest of the ridge. 
 That retarding gap greatly changed the 
 battle s intended shape. So much for 
 Sherman on Tuesday, on the left. 
 
 On the right, Hooker was unex 
 pectedly strengthened by a part of Sher 
 man s force which the breaking of a 
 bridge had prevented from following 
 Sherman. Therefore, Grant turned 
 Lookout Mountain into a more serious 
 matter than he had planned. At the 
 mountain s front, Hooker displayed him 
 self; and, while he thus occupied the 
 enemy s attention on top, from behind 
 them a part of his force came somewhat 
 upon their rear through the drifting fog. 
 Their picket was taken. From his post 
 of observation on Orchard Knob, Grant 
 saw the enemy coming down the moun 
 tain to oppose the advance there. But, 
 further round, the other force that had 
 taken the picket was pressing on and up; 
 and suddenly the Confederates saw this 
 
ULYSSES S. GKANT 93 
 
 meeting invasion. They fired down use 
 lessly. Though men fell in this steep 
 scramble, the force came on through 
 stones and thickets, and, joining with 
 the force in front, ascended out of sight 
 into the mist, until Grant could often 
 only hear the noise of the invisible guns 
 nearer and nearer the top of the moun 
 tain. By night Hooker was established 
 there. 
 
 The Wednesday morning was cold 
 and fine. The battle s change of shape 
 from its original design was clear to see. 
 Over on Sherman s side many troops 
 were now massed against him. Nor on 
 account of that unexpected gap between 
 the end of the ridge and its continuation 
 could he achieve his assault with the 
 necessary celerity. Bragg had taken his 
 troops from Lookout Mountain to oppose 
 Sherman ; and Bragg, should he see fit, 
 might really get away without further 
 harm to himself. So Hooker was or 
 dered across from Lookout Mountain to 
 
94 ULYSSES S. GBASTT 
 
 interrupt his possible retreat. As Sher 
 man came fighting along Missionary 
 Eidge from the left, Bragg removed 
 more and more troops from the centre of 
 the balcony to oppose him, so that up 
 there the enemy s force was visibly grow 
 ing thinner in the centre as it grew 
 thicker on the left. The shape of 
 the battle was steadily changing. 
 Something must be done to divert the 
 enemy s increasing blows from Sherman. 
 Hooker, coming behind them from 
 Lookout Mountain, could do it ; but no 
 Hooker was to be seen. His speed had 
 been checked by a destroyed bridge. 
 He was on his way, but not at hand for 
 this urgent hour. As we easily follow 
 a boat race or a game on land from our 
 arranged benches, so Grant and his staff 
 from Orchard Knob saw, as it has only 
 once or twice been seen before, the whole 
 thunderous pageant, flashing upon the 
 hills of Chattanooga. And up there, 
 inaccessible to help, Sherman was fight- 
 
ULYSSES S. GBANT 95 
 
 ing the current of a gathering tide. 
 Bragg s attention must be distracted 
 from him down here, somehow. And 
 so this battle takes its final unexpected 
 splendid shape, and passes like a great 
 song into our history. Four of our 
 greatest Thomas, Sherman, Sheridan, 
 Grant stand together in it, the only 
 time they ever did so, a gathering of 
 chiefs, indeed ; and with them in their 
 splendour, as is fit, inspired by them to 
 share their own renown, stands the 
 American volunteer, reckless at the 
 right time, suddenly immortal with wild 
 courageous wisdom. He is told, by way 
 of experiment, to advance to the base of 
 the hill that centre which Bragg had 
 been thinning and there take Bragg s 
 lowest line of works. Again he goes 
 steadily, as if on parade, with flags 
 flying and music playing. Then he 
 swiftly charges, and next finds himself 
 master of the rifle-pits, with prisoners 
 captured he has not time to know how. 
 
96 ULYSSES S. GEANT 
 
 Here he has been ordered to stop. But 
 down on his head from the top pours 
 such a stream of fire that staying is 
 death, while going back is failure. 
 Twenty thousand of him crouch there, 
 twenty thousand bodies, but one white- 
 hot spirit, transfigured and resistless. 
 Without orders, he rises, he climbs, he 
 goes on his hands, he mounts the broken 
 steep slant of hill, leading his captains 
 as much as they lead him; and the 
 astonished Grant from Orchard Knob 
 sees him storm the crest and turn the 
 enemy s guns upon themselves. It is 
 done. Bragg is split in flying pieces. 
 The stars and stripes wave upon Mis 
 sionary Eidge. 
 
 When Grant rode up among this 
 seething triumph, the men quickly found 
 him out, and swarmed upon him by 
 hundreds, embracing his feet and calling 
 his name. And, among all the gifts and 
 tokens that presently showered upon 
 him for this great November 25, even 
 
ULYSSES S. GKANT 97 
 
 brighter than the gold medal voted by 
 Congress is the memory of that brier- 
 wood cigar-case given him by a poor 
 soldier who made it with his pocket- 
 knife. 
 
 Now he sat in the centre of his nation s 
 bright day. Donelson, Vicksburg, Chat 
 tanooga, melted together in his fame. 
 Thanksgiving spread from his deed in 
 widening circles. His message to the 
 government, the pith of modesty, "I 
 believe I am not premature in announc 
 ing a complete victory over Bragg/ 7 is 
 enough and better than if it had been 
 more. And Lincoln answered, "God 
 bless you all! " And what did Sherman 
 with his men do now? Having "with 
 out a moment s rest after a march of over 
 four hundred miles, without sleep for 
 three successive nights," crossed the 
 Tennessee and fought their share of 
 Chattanooga and pursued the enemy out 
 of Tennessee, they "turned more than a 
 hundred and twenty miles north, and 
 
98 ULYSSES S. GKANT 
 
 compelled Longstreet to raise the siege 
 of Knoxville" where Burnside was. 
 When in a few months Grant was ap 
 pointed full lieutenant general, under 
 special act of Congress (he was the first 
 since Washington, Winfield Scott being 
 only brevet), he wrote to Sherman : 
 " What I want is to express my thanks 
 to you and McPherson as the men to 
 whom above all others I feel indebted 
 for whatever I have had of success. 
 How far your execution of whatever has 
 been given you to do entitles you to the 
 reward I am receiving, you cannot 
 know as well as I do." And Sherman 
 answered in a spirit equally noble, 
 "You do yourself injustice and us too 
 much honour." In these letters the two 
 men lay bare their best selves. And 
 how well Sherman knew his friend ! 
 "Now as to the future," he says, "do 
 not stay in Washington. Halleck is 
 better qualified than you to stand the 
 buffets of intrigue and policy. For 
 
ULYSSES S. GKANT 9 
 
 God s sake and your country s sake, 
 come out of Washington ! 
 
 That is why Grant did come out 
 when he was general-in-chief. Better, 
 far better, had he never gone back as 
 president. Assuredly, Sherman knew 
 him very well. 
 
 Ceremonies and crowds attended him 
 after his arrival in Washington to re 
 ceive his new rank. His actual arrival 
 with his little boy was according to his 
 own inveterate modesty. Unheralded 
 from the train in the early morning, he 
 waited his turn behind the more pushing 
 travellers, and reached the hotel book 
 last. Chittenden has told us how the 
 transfixed hotel clerk changed his man 
 ner on reading, "U. S. Grant and son, 
 Galena, 111." Horace Porter records 
 Lincoln s cry of welcome that evening. 
 John Sherman writes to his brother of 
 the adulations in Washington, and his 
 fear that Grant will be spoiled. And 
 Grant s remark to Lincoln, "Beally, 
 
100 ULYSSES S. GBANT 
 Mr. President, I have had enough of the 
 show business/ completes the picture. 
 No, not quite. One week later, when 
 he was in Nashville arranging with Sher 
 man the vast concluding process of the 
 Eebellion, the "show business/ in the 
 shape of the mayor with a rosewood box 
 and a sword, caught him again. Sher 
 man s incomparably brisk pen has drawn 
 the scene: "The mayor rose and in 
 a most dignified way read a finished 
 speech to General Grant, who stood as 
 usual very awkwardly ; and the mayor 
 closed his speech by handing him the 
 resolutions of the city council, engrossed 
 on parchment, with a broad ribbon and 
 large seal attached. After the mayor 
 had fulfilled his office so well, General 
 Grant said, Mr. Mayor, as I knew that 
 this ceremony was to occur, and as I am 
 not used to speaking, I have written 
 something in reply. He then began to 
 fumble in his pockets, first his breast- 
 coat pocket, then his pants, vest, etc., 
 
ULYSSES S. GEANT 101 
 and after a considerable delay he pulled 
 out a crumpled piece of common yellow 
 cartridge paper, which he handed to the 
 mayor. When read, his answer was 
 most excellent, short, concise, and, if 
 delivered, would have been all that the 
 occasion required. I could not help 
 laughing at a scene so characteristic of 
 the man to whom all had turned as the 
 only one to guide the nation in a war 
 that had become painfully critical. 77 
 
 So now he faced the conclusion. From 
 Cairo in 1861 to Chattanooga in 1863 he 
 had marched forward, narrowing the 
 Confederacy blow after blow. Here, 
 between "Washington and Eichmond 
 only a hundred miles blow after blow 
 had narrowed nothing. In April, 1864, 
 they stood as they had started in April, 
 1861. Eichmond was still to be taken, 
 Lee still to be crushed. Three years, 
 six generals, and a loss of one hundred 
 and forty -four thousand men had failed 
 to do this. From such failure Grant re- 
 
102 ULYSSES S. GKANT 
 ceived two great inheritances, and with 
 them succeeded. His inheritances were 
 to have his own way unhampered and 
 the control of a perfect instrument, the 
 army of the Potomac under General 
 Meade. Grant 7 s detractors lay too much 
 stress on the first inheritance. He had 
 his own way, not only because Lincoln 
 had at length learned how disastrous 
 meddling was, but also because Lincoln 
 felt in his marrow that here was a man 
 who would go on and do the thing. He 
 had met no such man till now. He had 
 been looking for one ceaselessly. Upon 
 the Army of the Potomac and General 
 Meade too much stress cannot be laid. 
 Without that engine and pilot the cap 
 tain would have wrecked his vessel sev 
 eral times. During forty-eight hours 
 around Spottsylvania he essayed direc 
 tion of the tactics himself, and wrought 
 such havoc that thereafter he allowed 
 the pilot Meade full charge of this. 
 We may feel sure that Grant under- 
 
ULYSSES S. GKANT 103 
 rated Lee at the beginning. He had 
 encountered no such genius in the West. 
 His remark that the Army of the Poto 
 mac had never been " fought up its full 
 capacity" indicates that he expected 
 quicker results than he got. And the 
 famous sentence from his letter near 
 Spottsylvania on May 11, "I propose to 
 fight it out on this line if it takes all 
 summer," plainly shows brief anticipa 
 tions. It took until the following April. 
 And in his own report one reads be 
 tween the lines something like an apol 
 ogy for these terrible battles. He says : 
 "Whether they might have been better 
 in conception and execution is for the 
 people who mourn the loss of friends 
 fallen, and who have to pay the pecun 
 iary cost, to say. All I can say is that 
 what I have done has been done con 
 scientiously, to the best of my ability, 
 and in what I conceived to be for the 
 best interests of the whole country." 
 His conception was ( to hammer contin- 
 
104 ULYSSES S. GEANT 
 uously . . . until by mere attrition" 
 there should be nothing left of the en 
 emy. He reduced the problem, not to 
 tl Who can win the greatest victories?" 
 but to "Who can stand the heaviest 
 losses ?" To state it thus was to solve 
 it. It was not military, but it was 
 deeply sagacious. It was like Columbus 
 and the egg. It was also a confession 
 of Lee s superiority. The fact that Lee 
 had the interior lines is not sufficient 
 counterbalance. These awful battles add 
 not to Grant s, but to Lee s reputation. 
 
 On his side, Lee evidently underrated 
 Grant. He, too, had been used to other 
 generals generals who struck a blow 
 and then sat down. But it was never 
 to be like that any more. 
 
 There were two ways for Grant to 
 move from the Potomac on land to Eieh- 
 mond : by the right flank, westward and 
 inland an easier country to fight in, 
 a harder line of communications to 
 cover j by the left flank, south-eastward, 
 
ULYSSES S. GEAKT 105 
 nearer the water a harder country, 
 easier communications. 
 
 To move immediately south of Rich 
 mond by water and from there cut its 
 supporting railroads was well enough, 
 provided Lee would keep himself inside 
 Bichmond s fortifications while this was 
 going on. But it was unlikely he would 
 do now what he had never done before. 
 On the contrary, he could be expected 
 so to enlarge his circumference of pro 
 tection that to envelop him would 
 spread the army out too thin, and bare 
 its extended flanks to disadvantageous 
 attack while fighting for possession of 
 the radiating railroads. Moreover, since 
 Lee had to be bitterly encountered some 
 where, it was better to meet him further 
 from his home and nearer our own sup 
 plies. This, too, for a while screened 
 "Washington. 
 
 Grant moved by the left flank May 3, 
 choosing a midnight start. But Lee saw 
 him before he could get beyond the un- 
 
106 ULYSSES S. GKANT 
 propitious country, and compelled a 
 battle May 5. 
 
 On that beginning day the two crossed 
 weapons, both of perfect steel. Lee 
 handled his like a great swordsman : 
 Grant handled his like a great black 
 smith. Lee had some seventy thousand 
 men : Grant, some one hundred and 
 twenty thousand. Day, and often night, 
 the weapons struck fire at some point ; 
 day and night, during not weeks, but 
 months. Some of these clashes have 
 names forever reddened with slaughter, 
 the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, North 
 Anna, Cold Harbor ; but in between 
 them flow nameless streams of blood 
 continuously. More sublimely shines 
 the American volunteer at Cold Har 
 bor than at Chattanooga, more sub 
 lime in walking calmly to visible death 
 than in tumultuously rushing to victory. 
 He stood in the centre with the enemy 
 in a great half- wheel around him, and, 
 knowing that some one had blundered, 
 
ULYSSES S. GEANT 107 
 walked into this. First he wrote his 
 name and home, and fastened the ad 
 dress to his clothes. Thus they would 
 know whose body it was. Then, at the 
 word, he went. Six thousand Union 
 soldiers were killed at Cold Harbor in 
 one hour. In the book of noble deeds 
 from Thermopylae down, is there a more 
 heroic page than this I 
 
 By November 1 Grant had lost eighty 
 thousand men more than Lee began 
 with. The army of the Potomac, the 
 weapon of fine temper, was hacked into 
 a saw by the usage it had received. 
 JSTor was Lee crushed yet, nor Eichmond 
 yet taken. In Grant s pictures the story 
 is plain; the saddened eyes, the worn 
 face, the mouth shut down tight all 
 around. The heavy strain heavier 
 these months than Lincoln s with dis 
 tant campaigns to plan, near battles to 
 fight, disloyal politics in the North, and 
 the usual popular imbecile clamour for 
 a change or a cessation, bore Grant down 
 
108 ULYSSES S. GRANT 
 inwardly. He carried the Union on Ms 
 back ; and other generals had failed 
 him, and he had been a disappointment 
 to himself. He gave in to drink, it 
 seems, at times. Discovering this, Ben 
 Butler appears to have blackmailed 
 him. He had requested Butler s re 
 moval for bad conduct at Petersburg. 
 Butler visited him. He backed down. 
 Not from personal fear. The Union 
 cause was trembling in politics. A pub 
 lic tale of drink might remove the gen-, 
 eral, and split the Union forever. Pres 
 ently Sherman s and Sheridan s suc 
 cesses clinched Lincoln s election. Next 
 Butler showed incompetence again. 
 Then Grant dismissed him. Butler 
 could have published as much about 
 drink as he pleased. The Union was 
 safe. Wound up in this, contemporane 
 ously rather than logically, is General 
 W. F. Smith s severe fate. Under first 
 impressions of him received at Chat 
 tanooga, Grant had thought him worthy 
 
ULYSSES S. GKANT 109 
 a high, command, and at this time de 
 signed him for Butler 7 s successor. But 
 in the same twenty-four hours with 
 Butler s blackmail, General Smith criti 
 cised to Grant s face the battle of Cold 
 Harbor. Thinking this over, it struck 
 Grant that General Smith had meant to 
 "whip him over Meade s shoulder," as 
 he phrased it. He relieved his campaign 
 of so captious a subordinate. It was, 
 perhaps, advisable, but seems harsh. 
 
 Yet, if the North was dismayed by 
 Grant s destructive battles, still more 
 so was the South. They felt the end 
 coming. Each bloody crisis saw Grant 
 move on. Such a thing had not been 
 seen before. 
 
 Early s almost successful attempt to 
 take Washington did not frighten Grant 
 from his siege of Petersburg. He merely 
 let Sheridan loose upon Early, and broke 
 him. That also settled the Shenandoah 
 Valley, Secession s fertile incubator and 
 truck garden. Sent there during three 
 
110 ULYSSES S. GRANT 
 years to handle it with gloves, our sol 
 diers had seen it so periodically that they 
 called it Harper s Weekly. At length 
 Sheridan, though inexcusably brutal in 
 his barn-burning, yet, in destroying crops 
 and forage, merely treated the valley as 
 it should have been treated at first. But 
 Secession considered that Union should 
 fight with gloves. When Union began 
 to fight to a finish, Secession cried out. 
 Sheridan is still denounced ; but Seces 
 sion s massacre of Fort Pillow and burn 
 ing of Chambersburg are not mentioned. 
 So the South knew that in Grant 7 s 
 deadly grip and will was something fate 
 ful, never met till now. And that grip 
 was seizing it elsewhere. Besides Sheri 
 dan, Sherman was closing in upon it 
 in Georgia, and Thomas soon struck it 
 heavily at Nashville. These simulta 
 neous strides of disaster had all been set 
 and kept in motion by the single cen 
 tral will. And, no matter what the im 
 patient country said, the president stood 
 
ULYSSES S. GRANT 111 
 Grant s friend through thick and thin. 
 The Secretary of War had made one su 
 preme effort to maintain his dictatorship 
 over the movements of the army. The 
 report of his fall is thus : Hearing from 
 Grant that certain troops were to be dis 
 posed in a certain way, he objected that 
 he had other plans, and could not allow 
 it. Grant said, "But the order has 
 been given. The domineering Stanton 
 then objected much more ; and always, 
 when he paused, Grant imperturbably re 
 plied, "But the order has been given." 
 The Secretary rushed to Lincoln. Lin 
 coln said, "But Congress has made him 
 general of all the armies. " The Secre 
 tary still poured himself out j and still 
 the deprecating Lincoln murmured only, 
 1 1 But Congress has made him general of 
 all the armies. 7 There it stopped per 
 manently. 
 
 And Lincoln s words to Grant through 
 this time, though once he expresses a 
 hope that as few lives as possible may be 
 
112 ULYSSES S. GKANT 
 sacrificed, show his deep faith and his 
 deep satisfaction in his aggressive, in 
 domitable general. In August he writes: 
 "The particulars of your campaign I 
 neither know nor seek to know. I wish 
 not to intrude any restraints or con 
 straints upon you. Grant s reply unites 
 a modesty and a self-reliance that Lincoln 
 had not heard until this general came : 
 " Should my success be less than I desire 
 or expect, the least I can say is the 
 fault is not yours. " No wonder Lincoln 
 liked his new commander ! He writes 
 again, when less firm spirits at Washing 
 ton had been counselling a halt : " I have 
 seen your despatch expressing your un 
 willingness to break your hold where 
 you are. Neither am I willing. Hold 
 on with a bull- dog grip, and chew and 
 choke as much as possible. 7 
 
 The withers of the South were being 
 wrung. Side failures did nothing to ob 
 scure the looming end. The great blows 
 of Sherman, Sheridan, and Thomas sent 
 
ULYSSES S. GEANT 113 
 their shocks to the heart of Secession j 
 and at the heart sat Grant, holding Lee 
 tight in Eichmond. It is recorded of 
 his ceaseless work at this period, that on 
 one day he wrote forty-two important 
 despatches. 
 
 This winter was a time of thought 
 for the weary, disenchanted Southern 
 people and a time of desperation on the 
 part of their political misleaders. In 
 early February some of these had, in 
 good faith, visited Grant to talk of 
 peace, which talk he had tactfully 
 evaded, while showing them all hospi 
 tality at his headquarters. With tact 
 still greater he had persuaded Lincoln 
 to come and see them himself instead of 
 sending Seward as an emissary. But 
 this ended in nothing, save that Grant s 
 character and kindness won the high 
 admiration of the Confederate vice- 
 president, Stephens, who wrote : "He is 
 one of the most remarkable men I ever 
 met. He does not seem to be aware of 
 
114 ULYSSES S. GBANT 
 his powers." Presently again the South 
 asked for a peace talk, this time through 
 General Lee, who addressed Grant in a 
 letter. But Grant explained that terms 
 of peace were not in his province; that 
 his authority allowed him to act only re 
 garding military subjects, such as the 
 exchange of prisoners. And the mat 
 ter stopped there. Lee s actions and 
 spirit must be kept wide apart from 
 those of the Secession politicians at this 
 time and at all times. Under the inspi 
 ration of Jefferson Davis, in the spring 
 a manifesto issued from the Confederate 
 Congress, which struggled to goad the 
 people to further efforts and sacrifices 
 by such prophecies as follow: If the 
 Union won, "not only would the prop 
 erty and estates of vanquished rebels be 
 confiscated, but they would be divided 
 and distributed among our African 
 bondsmen. ? > u Our enemies have threat 
 ened to deport our entire white popu 
 lation, and supplant it with a new 
 
ULYSSES S. GBANT 115 
 population drawn from their own terri 
 tories and from European countries." 
 The manifesto further says: " Failure 
 makes us vassals of an arrogant people. 
 Failure will compel us to drink the cup 
 of humiliation, even to the bitter dregs 
 of having the history of our struggle 
 written by New England historians." 
 But even this excruciating peril seemed 
 to the Southern people, whose sons were 
 dead and whose livelihood was gone, a 
 less calamity than paying a thousand 
 dollars of their money for a barrel of 
 flour, and seeing their white-haired 
 fathers and fifteen-year-old boys now 
 forcibly thrown into the mill of blood. 
 They wanted peace. They began to see 
 in Jefferson Davis and his associates, not 
 a group of patriots, but a heartless, self 
 ish, unscrupulous gang of intriguers. 
 They began to go home from the army. 
 There was no pay and no food for those 
 who devotedly remained faithful to Lee. 
 Grant was closing in. On April 3 Lee 
 
116 ULYSSES S. GEANT 
 had to break cover, and retreat from 
 Eichmond. Davis fled southward ; and, 
 even while flying, and with full knowl 
 edge of the crumbling house, he made 
 another speech, to lure, if possible, more 
 victims to the slaughter. "We have 
 now entered upon a new phase of the 
 struggle, 7 he said. " Eelieved from the 
 necessity of guarding particular points, 
 our army will be free to move from 
 point to point, to strike the enemy in 
 detail far from his base." 
 
 Few could have believed him. But 
 the soldiers, ragged and starved, followed 
 and fought under their beloved Lee 
 across the rainy fields of Virginia. 
 
 No successes now changed a muscle 
 of Grant s impassive face. Nothing but 
 the capture of prisoners wakened visible 
 elation in him. Each prisoner meant 
 one enemy less to fight, one more life 
 saved from fruitless sacrifice. Of his 
 thoughts, only his actions show anything. 
 When leaving headquarters at City Point 
 
ULYSSES S. GEANT 117 
 on March 29 for this last struggle, he 
 bade his wife good-by with more than 
 his daily tenderness, which was always 
 great. He kissed her again and again 
 at the door, as though their next meet 
 ing might never be, or would not be 
 until after much had happened. Then 
 Lincoln walked to the train with him, 
 said, "God bless you all ! " with an un 
 steady voice, and they moved away to 
 begin the taking of Eichmond. "The 
 President," said Grant, "is one of the 
 few who have not attempted to extract 
 from me a knowledge of my movements, 
 although he is the only one who has a 
 right to know them." 
 
 Eain fell the next day and dulled the 
 army s spirits, but weather made no 
 change in the quiet general. And Sheri 
 dan rode in through the rain from his 
 cavalry to headquarters, talked with the 
 staff and with Grant, and departed to 
 his coming battles like a meteor, leaving 
 a trail of fired enthusiasm behind him. 
 
118 ULYSSES S. GKAOT 
 To this star in these final days the great 
 wagon of the army seemed hitched. 
 "Whatever they separately did, and 
 they were doing something during every 
 hour, the fierce white light of Sheri 
 dan s genius beats upon the whole ; and 
 his deeds against the enemy are like 
 strokes of lightning. On the morning 
 of April 3 Lincoln came to Grant in 
 captured Petersburg, and shook his hand 
 and poured out his thanks a long while. 
 He said this was something like his ex 
 pectations, only that he had imagined 
 Sherman would have been brought from 
 the South to share in it. Then he learned 
 more of his general s tact, for Grant told 
 him it was justice that the army which 
 fought Lee from the beginning should 
 fight him at the end and divide the glory 
 with no one. Thus there could be no 
 rancour. The close partisans of Meade, 
 bitter over the great slight which history 
 has so far done his fame, contend that 
 he should have received the final sur- 
 
ULYSSES S. GRANT 119 
 render; but a later generation must 
 think that this belonged to the general- 
 in-chief. Had Grant s brooding mind 
 been occupied with any thoughts save 
 how best to end the matter and how best 
 to be merciful to the vanquished, he 
 could scarcely be excused. But he 
 thought neither of himself nor of any 
 other of the victors. So he and Lincoln 
 talked together awhile at Petersburg, 
 and understood each other well ; for one 
 thought filled them both, leniency. 
 Then Grant went forward, and learned 
 of Richmond s fall. But no wish to 
 enter and gloat over his prize was in the 
 conqueror s heart. As he had asked at 
 Donelson, Why humiliate a brave enemy? 
 and as at Vicksburg, he had forbidden a 
 cheer to be raised over the surrendered, 
 or any taunt made as they passed, so now 
 he avoided Richmond ; and Lee s last 
 march went on. The good deeds and 
 the exploits of Sheridan s cavalry spurred 
 the infantry to a race. The pursuit 
 
120 ULYSSES S. GKANT 
 quickened ; and Sheridan, striking blow 
 on blow at the front, forever called back 
 for greater speed. Lee must not escape 
 to Danville. Lee must be headed off, 
 and compelled to fight again. Newhall, 
 of Sheridan s staff, writes: "All along 
 the road were evidences of the demorali 
 sation of the enemy. Flankers and 
 scouting parties of cavalry were con 
 tinually bringing in scores of prisoners 
 from the woods on either side, pris 
 oners who would throw down their 
 arms at the sight of blue uniforms and 
 request to be captured. The steadfast 
 women who begged them to turn back 
 and face us again had been laughed to 
 scorn." 
 
 At dark on April 5 word came from 
 Sheridan to Grant: " I wish you were 
 here. I see no escape for General Lee." 
 Grant called for his horse, and rode 
 through the night to Sheridan and 
 Meade. And on the next day at Sai 
 lor s Creek the clouds sank lower round 
 
ULYSSES S. GEAXT 121 
 Lee. Again Grant s actions reveal Ms 
 thoughts. On Friday, April 7, he 
 wrote Lee : "The last week must con 
 vince you of the hopelessness of further 
 resistance. I regard it as my duty to 
 shift from myself the responsibility of 
 any further effusion of blood by asking 
 of you the surrender of the arniy of 
 Northern Virginia. The unsuccessful 
 battles, the dwindling regiments, the 
 starvation, the retreat cut off, all this 
 was plainly the end ; and it stared Lee 
 in the face. But on such a sight Lee 
 had not at first the moral strength to 
 open his eyes. The pain was too blind 
 ing. In his youth he had taken an oath 
 to support the government. That gov 
 ernment had educated him to be a sol 
 dier. He had been against Secession. 
 But, when the time came to choose be 
 tween Secession and his oath, he chose 
 (not without reluctance) to break his 
 oath, and turn against the government 
 the teaching it had given him. And 
 
122 ULYSSES S. GHA NT 
 now here he sat, with his lost cause like 
 a broken idol in his hands. For a mo 
 ment he shrank from the final pang of 
 renunciation. "I have received your 
 note," he replied to Grant on that same 
 Friday. u Though not entertaining the 
 opinion you express of the hopelessness 
 of further resistance, I reciprocate your 
 desire to avoid useless effusion of blood, 
 and therefore ask the terms you will 
 offer." And Grant on Saturday re 
 plied, " Peace being my great desire, 
 there is but one condition that the 
 men and officers surrendered shall be 
 disqualified for taking up arms until 
 properly exchanged." And then fol 
 lows a touch of his perfect consideration 
 for the defeated opponent : "I will meet 
 you or will designate officers to meet 
 any officers you may name." So did 
 Washington write to Cornwallis, as 
 Horace Porter reminds us. But Lee 
 would himself go through with whatever 
 had to conie. Only still he pushed the 
 
ULYSSES S. GBANT 123 
 bitter cup away from him. " I cannot 
 meet you with a view to surrender, r he 
 answered ; "but, as far as your proposal 
 may tend to the restoration of peace, I 
 shall be pleased to meet you. 7 And 
 he named Sunday morning, on the old 
 stage-road between the picket lines. 
 
 This disappointing word came to 
 Grant in the heart of the night, where 
 he lay sleepless from many hours of pain 
 in his head. Hunger, fatigue, exposure, 
 and strain had brought on such torments 
 that he had allowed remedies to be tried, 
 but without avail. He lay down again. 
 In the early hours he was found walking 
 up and down outside, holding his head 
 with both hands. He now wrote a third 
 time to Lee that he had no authority to 
 treat of peace, but that peace could be 
 had, and lives and property saved, by 
 the South s laying down their arms. 
 An urgency, almost an appeal, pervades 
 this letter. He then declined advice to 
 take an ambulance for the sake of his 
 
124 ULYSSES S. GBANT 
 severe pain, and, mounting once more, 
 proceeded toward Sheridan s front. It 
 was near noon now ; and, as he went, a 
 despatch overtook him. Time and fur 
 ther mischances had brought Lee to the 
 point. He requested an interview for 
 the purpose of surrender according to 
 the terms offered. As Grant read and 
 understood that here in his hand at last 
 lay peace, all pain left him. He dis 
 mounted, and by the roadside wrote his 
 answer. While he was doing this, 
 and hurrying forward to the meeting, 
 Lee some six miles away lay waiting. 
 Stretched on a blanket under an apple- 
 tree by the road, he contemplated the 
 sunshine that bathed Virginia. Of his 
 thoughts, also, only his actions reveal 
 anything. "When Grant s note reached 
 him, he rose, and had soon ridden into 
 Appomattox Court-house, and in a 
 house there waited for Grant. In a 
 little while Grant reached the grassy 
 village street ; and there, dismounted, 
 
ULYSSES S. GKANT 125 
 stood Sheridan and others. No signifi 
 cant words were spoken in this hour. 
 Silence is the only reference that men 
 make to great events which they are in 
 the midst of. The ordinary greetings 
 of every day were briefly given. The 
 house where General Lee waited was 
 pointed out to Grant j and he went in, 
 leaving most of the others upon the 
 porch. There they sat, while General 
 Lee s grey horse cropped the grass near 
 them. Quietness was over the little 
 village and the armies lying in the 
 country round. The door opened, and 
 two of those on the porch were signed to 
 come in. They entered, it is said, tread 
 ing as those do who steal into a sick- 
 chamber, while the rest still sat on the 
 porch. When the door next opened, 
 they rose. For out of it General Lee 
 came, splendid, tall, grey-bearded, im 
 movable. They looked at him and his 
 sword and spotless grey uniform. He 
 stood absently on the step, gazing away 
 
126 ULYSSES S. GRANT 
 across Virginia j and two or three times 
 he struck one hand against the other. 
 Then, having spoken no word, and no 
 ticing his grey horse that had been 
 brought him, he mounted, and rode 
 away. As he was going, Grant came 
 through the door, saluted him in silence, 
 and in silence also rode away. "When 
 Lee reached his army, the faithful men 
 swarmed around him, cheering not their 
 common misfortune, but the peace that 
 he had made. They mingled their grief 
 with his, grasping his hands ; and then, 
 almost overcome, he spoke: "Men, we 
 have fought through the war together. 
 I have done the best I could for you." 
 
 What Grant s features concealed on 
 that day we know now from him : 
 "What General Lee s feelings were I do 
 not know. But my own, which had 
 been quite jubilant on the receipt of his 
 letter, were sad and depressed. I felt 
 like anything rather than rejoicing at 
 the downfall of a foe who had fought so 
 
ULYSSES S. GBANT 127 
 long and valiantly, and had suffered so 
 much for a cause, though that cause was, 
 I believe, one of the worst for which a 
 people ever fought, and one for which 
 there was the least excuse. " 
 
 But, inside the house, what had gone 
 on between the two chiefs? The wit 
 nesses watched and moved always with 
 the hush of a sick-room. And after the 
 first greeting, when they sat down, it 
 became Grant who shrank from the 
 point. He talked to Lee about Mexico 
 and old times, and how good peace was 
 going to be now ; and twice Lee had to 
 remind him of the business they had to 
 do. Then Grant wrote, as always, simple 
 and clear words. In the middle, his eye 
 fell upon Lee s beautiful sword ; and the 
 chivalric act which it prompted has 
 knighted his own spirit forever. "The 
 surrender/ 7 he instantly wrote, "would 
 not embrace the side-arms of the officers, 
 nor their private horses or baggage." 
 When Lee s eyes reached that sentence, 
 
128 ULYSSES S. GEANT 
 his face changed for the first time j and 
 he said, 1 1 This will have a very happy 
 effect upon my army." He then told 
 what was new to Grant, that the horses 
 ridden by the men were their own. 
 Again the conqueror s tenderness lifted 
 him into a realm diviner than the re 
 nown of victory. He ordered that the 
 men "take the animals home with them 
 to work their little farms." To this 
 nobility Lee s own responded. "This 
 will have the best possible effect upon 
 the men," he said. Moved to greater 
 frankness, he told Grant of his army s 
 hunger ; and for this also Grant at once 
 provided. These are the things which 
 the conqueror had done when he came 
 out of the house with unrelaxed counte 
 nance, and rode away. As he went, he 
 heard firing from his lines. It was in 
 honour of the news, already spreading. 
 He stopped these salutes at once. "The 
 war is over," he said. "The rebels are 
 our countrymen again." 
 
ULYSSES S. GRANT 129 
 
 Thus, when his strength had quelled 
 
 the four years storm, did a rainbow rise 
 
 from his great heart across the heavens 
 
 of our native land. 
 
VI. 
 
 even if space were left, should his 
 after days be told. It is not for them 
 that we remember and bless him. The 
 further we recede from him, the more 
 they sink away and leave him shining 
 in his greatness at Appomattox, a hero 
 in a soldier s dress, with sword not 
 drawn, but sheathed. There his figure 
 stands immortal, and there his real life 
 ends. For living is action up to the 
 soul s highest excellence, and many who 
 eat their three meals a day are dead as 
 door-nails. Grant rose to his full height 
 again only when he came to die. As 
 president, he was no more himself than 
 he had been when tanning leather. Men 
 far less worthy have sat more worthily 
 in the White House. It was foretold 
 silently. Sherman, his dear friend, was 
 set against it, and would not say a word 
 for it. Did he not know the world s 
 great soldiers, and what babies they be- 
 
ULYSSES S. GBAJSTT 131 
 came as statesmen, Wellington latest 
 of all? More still, he knew his friend. 
 But we Americans, the most consist 
 ently inconsistent people on earth, have 
 passed a century in abusing our army, 
 and in electing every military hero 
 we could get for president : Washing 
 ton, Jackson, Harrison, Taylor, Grant. 
 When Lincoln was taken from us, no 
 man was so loved as Grant ; and, there 
 fore, without asking or caring to know 
 how he could have learned statesman 
 ship, in our gratitude we twice gave him 
 the greatest gift we have. 
 
 Before this happened, his straightfor 
 ward goodness and the power that he 
 had did much to heal the scars of war. 
 Andrew Johnson wanted Lee tried for 
 treason, and Grant stopped it by threat 
 ening to resign his commission. In those 
 days the Southern General Taylor writes 
 of him : "He came frequently to see me, 
 was full of kindness, and anxious to pro 
 mote my wishes. His action had en- 
 
132 ULYSSES S. GKAKT 
 deared him to all Southern men. His 
 bearing and conduct at this time were 
 admirable, modest, and generous. He 
 declared his ignorance of and distrust 
 for politics and politicians, with which 
 and whom he intended to have nothing 
 to do." 
 
 Certainly, Johnson did not better 
 Grant s opinion of politicians nor did 
 those men who now led the South far 
 and wide astray from the noble spirit of 
 Lee at Appomattox. Their continued 
 malignity lost them a great chance, and 
 cost the South dear. Following their 
 manifesto at Eichmond, already quoted, 
 they now met each step of clemency with 
 a temper which is completely heralded 
 in the words of Henry A. Wise when he 
 surrendered: "We won t be forgiven. 
 We hate you, and that is the whole of 
 it ! " They now, with an arrogance 
 which our language has no word to ex 
 press, demanded to return to Congress 
 on the old slave ratio. This gave white 
 
ULYSSES S. GBANT 133 
 owners the benefit of their slaves by add 
 ing three-fifths of the number of the 
 black non- voting population to the sum 
 of the white voting population. Slaves 
 were free now, but this was the arrange 
 ment which the South proposed to con 
 tinue. Let the reader pause, and take it 
 in. Johnson, for personal reasons, en 
 couraged it, and alarmed Congress. 
 Naturally, the North lost patience ; and 
 Grant lost his patience, too. This swept 
 away the Fourteenth Amendment, an 
 admirable device by which any State 
 could deny a vote to a part of its male 
 population on condition that its represen 
 tation in Congress was proportionately re 
 duced. This elastic remedy, which held 
 hope, was destroyed by the precipitate 
 deplorable blunder of the Fifteenth 
 Amendment, the evils of which have 
 stained our soil with increasing blood 
 each year, and developed that barbar 
 ism of which the South has had too 
 great a share from the beginning. But, 
 
134 ULYSSES S. GKANT 
 when leaders came to Grant offering him 
 the presidency, either he forgot his 
 opinion of politics, or (and signs point 
 to this) he thought (as another hero has 
 thought since) that being president was 
 an easy matter. None of us can measure 
 such a temptation without having it. 
 As General Taylor writes, "Perhaps 
 none but a divine being can resist such 
 a temptation. 77 
 
 Strange, very strange, is Grant 7 s con 
 duct after his election. He left the 
 world. He went into a sort of retreat 
 at Galena. He would see no party 
 leaders. He ordered no letter sent to 
 him. He would make no speeches. He 
 disclosed his plans to no one. We can 
 only guess his thoughts during this time 
 by his acts following it. They were 
 honest and helpless. Evidently, he 
 wished to govern without politics, as he 
 had made war without politics. He 
 wished to choose men as he had chosen 
 generals for their fitness as he judged 
 
ULYSSES S. GKANT 135 
 them. He did not perceive the vast 
 difference : that war at once lays bare 
 a soldier s fitness to the bone, while 
 peace may hide incompetence and dis 
 honesty for many years. As an illustra 
 tion of Grant s total blindness to the 
 proprieties of civil government, his 
 choosing Mr. Stewart Secretary of the 
 Treasury will serve. He very naturally 
 thought so great a merchant would fill 
 the place well. He appointed him with 
 out consulting him. The Senate con 
 firmed the appointment. Then a law 
 was discovered forbidding men in for 
 eign trade to hold this position. Grant 
 asked to have the law changed ! 
 
 But we will not dwell upon his many 
 improprieties of administration fa 
 vouritism, too constant acceptance of 
 presents, too great obstinacy in forcing 
 his notions, invincible misunderstanding 
 of the difference between a lieutenant 
 general and a president. It may be said 
 that, when he happened upon good 
 
136 ULYSSES S. GKANT 
 guides, such as Hamilton Fish, his acts 
 were wise, as in the Alabama case, where 
 he was as right as Sumner was wrong, 
 or as in his courageous veto of the infla 
 tion bill in 1874. When he listened to 
 thieves and impostors, as in the San 
 Domingo matter, his acts were mistaken 
 and dangerous. And, alas ! unchanged 
 from his childhood innocence revealed 
 in the horse story, he remained such a 
 mark for thieves and impostors that he 
 came to sit in a sort of centre of corrup 
 tion, credulous to the bitter end. For 
 the end was the bitterest of all. 
 
 After his second term, when he had 
 gone round the world, and met most of 
 the great people in it, and returned man 
 enough of the world to remark humour 
 ously that at Windsor Queen Victoria 
 had been too anxious to put him at his 
 ease, and after his unwilling candidacy 
 for a third term had been frustrated, 
 after all his experience, he fell a dupe to 
 a Wall Street gambler. He became a 
 
ULYSSES S. GRANT 137 
 special partner. His name was used to 
 further a brazen scheme of thievery. 
 Into the business he put a hundred thou 
 sand dollars, and drew two and three 
 thousand a month income without won 
 dering how such returns could be. 
 When the crash came on May 6, 1884, it 
 was inconceivable to the world at first 
 that he was not guilty. Presently by his 
 conduct and statements, by his making 
 over to his creditor, Mr. Yanderbilt, all 
 the property that he owned, and refusing 
 Mr. Vanderbilt s generous attempts to 
 give it back to him, the world recognised 
 his innocence. Help was offered this 
 ex-president who had not now enough 
 money to pay the milkman. Most 
 touchingly, a stranger, Mr. Wood, sent 
 him instantly five hundred dollars, and 
 soon five hundred more, as his share of 
 the nation s debt to him. More elabo 
 rate attempts to assist him were begun, 
 but he rejected them. And under the 
 whole shock his body gave way. But 
 
138 ULYSSES S. GRANT 
 his spirit rose. He was asked to write 
 war articles, and presently was able to 
 pay Mr. Wood with the first-fruits of 
 his pen. Then for weeks, sometimes in 
 such torture from the cancer in his throat 
 that drinking water was like swallowing 
 molten lead to him, he fought death 
 away while he wrote his memoirs. The 
 tribute of the country in making him 
 general once more on March 4, 1885, 
 deeply pleased him ; but he was shaken 
 by it, and grew worse. Eeviving, how 
 ever, his vast will pushed on with the 
 book, in order to leave something for his 
 wife s support. He had no voice any 
 more, but whispered his dictation, and 
 wrote on days when he was strong 
 enough. He held death away until the 
 book was finished, and then gave death 
 leave to come. In June he had been 
 taken up the Hudson Eiver to Mount 
 McGregor, near Saratoga, from his New 
 York house. His eyes followed West 
 Point as the train passed by it. On 
 
ULYSSES S. GBANT 139 
 July 3 his old friend Buckner, of Donel- 
 son, came affectionately to bid him fare 
 well j and he spoke of his happiness in 
 the growing harmony between North 
 and South. On July 9, in a trembling 
 pencil, he wrote to Mr. Wood : "I am 
 glad to say that, while there is much un 
 blushing wickedness in this world, yet 
 there is a compensating generosity and 
 grandeur of soul. In my case I have 
 not found that republics are ungrateful, 
 nor are the people. " On July 23 he 
 died. To pay his debts, he had so 
 utterly stripped himself of all his 
 trophies and possessions that there was 
 not left a uniform to clothe his body or 
 a sword to lay upon his coffin. To-day 
 he rests in his tomb at Eiverside. But 
 his greatest visible monument is the 
 book. Quite apart from its history, 
 which here and there needs amendment, 
 and quite independent of its masterly 
 prose, it is a picture of a noble, modest, 
 great heart. 
 
140 ULYSSES S. GKANT 
 
 As Lincoln asked Grant after Corinth, 
 1 How does it all sum up I ? Let poetry, 
 which is the summing of all substance, 
 reply : 
 
 "My good blade carves the casques of 
 
 men, 
 
 My tough lance thrusteth sure, 
 My strength is as the strength of ten, 
 Because my heart is pure." 
 
BIBLIOGBAPHY. 
 
 Since even the important Grant litera 
 ture offers a pilgrimage of reading such 
 as few have leisure to undertake, those 
 books most directly and compactly au 
 thentic or remunerative have been 
 marked with a star. Works of contro 
 versy are not included. Several vol 
 umes, once conspicuous, are omitted be 
 cause of their present trifling value. It 
 is impracticable to enumerate many 
 documents, Sumner s speeches, for ex 
 ample, essential though they be to the 
 student. 
 
 I. GRANT AND HIS CAMPAIGNS. By 
 Henry Coppe"e. (New York, 1866: 
 Charles B. Eichardson.) By far the 
 best of the early military biographies. 
 
 II. WITH GENERAL SHERIDAN IN 
 LEE S LAST CAMPAIGN. By a staff offi 
 cer [F. C. Newhall]. (Philadelphia, 
 1866 : J. B. Lippincott Company.) The 
 
142 BIBLIOGEAPHY 
 
 most vivid story of the cavalry battles 
 
 yet told. 
 
 III. * PERSONAL HISTORY OF ULYSSES 
 S. GRANT. By Albert D. Bichardson. 
 (Hartford, Conn., 1868 : American Pub 
 lishing Company.) Full of anecdote 
 and interest. On the whole, better than 
 either its contemporaries or its followers. 
 
 IV. MILITARY HISTORY OF ULYSSES 
 S. GRANT. By Adam Badeau. (New 
 York, 1868-81 : D. Appleton & Co.) A 
 pompous third-rate production, and un 
 trustworthy. 
 
 V. THE VIRGINIA CAMPAIGN OF 64 
 AND 65. By Andrew A. Humphreys. 
 (New York, 1883 : Charles Scribner s 
 Sons. ) The admirable temper and abil 
 ity of this book place it far above any 
 military narrative thus far written in 
 this country. 
 
 VI. * PERSONAL MEMOIRS OF U. S. 
 GRANT. Two volumes. (New York, 
 
BIBLIOGEAPHY 143 
 
 1885-86 : Charles L. Webster & Co. ; 
 Century Company, 1895.) This great- 
 book has been already spoken of in 
 the text. With it should be read the 
 Memoirs of Sherman and Sheridan. 
 They make a trilogy that will outlast 
 any criticism. 
 
 VII. GRANT IN PEACE. By Adam 
 Badeau. (Hartford, Conn., 1887 : S. S. 
 Scranton & Co. ) Contains much that is 
 trivial, but much that is valuable. 
 
 VIII. HISTORICAL ESSAYS. By Henry 
 Adams. The four last essays. (New 
 York, 1891: Charles Scribner s Sons.) 
 There is no better summary of pertinent 
 political issues. 
 
 IX. MR. FISH AND THE ALABAMA 
 CLAIMS. By J. C. B. Davis. (Boston 
 and New York, 1893 : Houghton, Mifflin 
 & Co.) Another excellent and absorb 
 ing summary. 
 
 X. THE STORY OF THE CIYIL WAR. 
 By John Codman Eopes. (New York, 
 
144 BIBLIOGEAPHY 
 
 1894-98: G. P. Putnam s Sons.) Un 
 finished. The reader may always trust 
 Mr. Eopes s information, but not always 
 his judgment. 
 
 XI. HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 FROM THE COMPROMISE OF 1850. Vol 
 umes III. and IV. By James Ford 
 Ehodes. (New York, 1895-99 : Harper 
 Brothers.) Unfinished. This work is 
 steadily taking the features of a classic. 
 No writer of any period of our his 
 tory combines so many gifts, interest, 
 weight, thoroughness, serenity. 
 
 XII. THE HISTORY OF THE LAST QUAR 
 TER-CENTURY IN THE UNITED STATES 
 (1870-95). Volume I. By Elisha Ben 
 jamin Andrews. (New York, 1896 : 
 Charles Scribner s Sons.) Entertain 
 ing, undigested, readable. A good car 
 toon of the period. 
 
 XIII. * CAMPAIGNING WITH GRANT. 
 By General Horace Porter, LL.D. 
 (New York, 1897 : The Century Com- 
 
BIBLIOGEAPHY 145 
 
 pany. ) An engaging and charming 
 book. Grant s personality is nowhere 
 better drawn. 
 
 XIV. A BIRD S-EYE VIEW OF OUR 
 CIVIL WAR. By Theodore Ayrault 
 Dodge. (Boston and New York, 1897 : 
 Houghton, Mifflin & Co. ) As a book of 
 quick reference, a table of contents, so 
 to speak, the reader will find this of 
 great help as did the writer. 
 
 XV. BATTLES AND LEADERS OF THE 
 CIVIL WAR. Four volumes. (New 
 York, 1897: The Century Company.) 
 This contains almost everything its title 
 indicates, and is of permanent value. 
 
 XVI. *THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY IN 
 THE CIVIL WAR. By John Piske. 
 Boston and New York, 1900 : Hough- 
 ton, Mifflin & Co. ) This is an essential 
 book to read, and as delightful as it is 
 necessary. 
 
THE BEACON BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 M. A. DEWOLFE HOWE, Editor. 
 
 The aim of this series is to furnish brief, read 
 able, and authentic accounts of the lives of those 
 Americans whose personalities have impressed 
 themselves most deeply on the character and 
 history of their country. On account of the 
 length of the more formal lives, often running 
 into large volumes, the average busy man and 
 woman have not the time or hardly the inclina 
 tion to acquaint themselves with American bi 
 ography. In the present series everything that 
 such a reader would ordinarily care to know is 
 given by writers of special competence, who 
 possess in full measure the best contemporary 
 point of view. Each volume is equipped with 
 a frontispiece portrait, a calendar of important 
 dates, and a brief bibliography for further read 
 ing. Finally, the volumes are printed in a form 
 convenient for reading and for carrying handily 
 in the pocket. 
 
 SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY, Publishers. 
 
THE BEACON BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 The following volumes are issued : 
 Louis Agassiz, by ALICE BACHE GOULD. 
 Phillips Brooks, by M. A. DE\VOLFE HOWE. 
 John Brown, by JOSEPH EDGAR CHAMBERLIN. 
 Aaron Burr, by HENRY CHILDS MERWIN. 
 James Fenimore Cooper, by W. B. SHUBRICK CLYMER. 
 Stephen Decatur, by CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY. 
 Frederick Douglass, by CHARLES W. CHESNUTT. 
 David G. Farragut, by JAMES BARNES. 
 Ulysses S. Grant, by OWEN WISTER. 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne, by Mrs. JAMES T. FIELDS. 
 Father Hecker, by HENRY D. SEDGWICK, Jr. 
 Sam Houston, by SARAH BARNWELL ELLIOTT. 
 
 "Stonewall" Jackson, by CARL HOVEY. 
 
 Thomas Jefferson, by THOMAS E. WATSON. 
 
 Robert E. Lee, by WILLIAM P. TRENT. 
 
 James Russell Lowell, by EDWARD EVERETT HALE, Jr. 
 
 Thomas Paine, by ELLERY SEDGWICK. 
 
 Daniel Webster, by NORMAN HAPGOOD. 
 
 John Greenleaf Whittier, by RICHARD BURTON. 
 
 The following are among those in preparation: 
 John James Audubon, by JOHN BURROUGHS. 
 Edwin Booth, by CHARLES TOWNSEND COPELAND. 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson, by FRANK B. SANBORN. 
 Benjamin Franklin, by LINDSAY SWIFT. 
 Alexander Hamilton, by JAMES SCHOULER. 
 Henry W. Longfellow, by GEORGE RICE CARPENTER. 
 Samuel F. B. Morse, by JOHN TROWBRIDGE. 
 
A Companion Series to the Beacon Biographies 
 
 THE WESTMINSTER BIOG 
 RAPHIES of Eminent Englishmen 
 
 The WESTMINSTER BIOGRAPHIES are uniform in plan, 
 size, and general make-up with the BEACON BIOGRAPHIES, 
 the point of important difference lying in the fact that 
 they deal with the lives of eminent Englishmen instead 
 of eminent Americans. They are bound in limp red cloth, 
 are gilt-topped, and have a cover design and a vignette title- 
 page by BERTRAM GROSVENOR GOODHUE. Like the Beacon 
 Biographies, each volume has a frontispiece portrait, a 
 photogravure, a calendar of dates, and a bibliography for 
 further reading. 
 
 The following volumes are issued: 
 Robert Browning, by ARTHUR WAUGH. 
 Daniel Defoe, by WILFRED WHITTEN. 
 Adam Duncan (Lord Camperdown), by H. W. WILSON. 
 George Eliot, by CLARA THOMSON. 
 Cardinal Newman, by A. R. WALLER (in press). 
 John Wesley, by FRANK BANFIELD. 
 
 Many others are in preparation. 
 
 SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY, Publishers, 
 a PIERCE BUILDING, Copley Square, BOSTON. 
 

 ~., 25 CENTS 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 1. 1 4 
 
 1 1