L'<*J 
 
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 '^ 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030925410 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 GENERAL GRANT 
 
 AN ESTIMATE ^ 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 CUPPLES, UPHAM & CO 
 
 ©It CarnCT Bootetote ; \/ :^ 
 
 1887 
 
GENERAL GRANT. 
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 GENERAL GRANT 
 
 AN ESTIMATE 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 CUPPLES, UPHAM & CO 
 1887 
 
 \ 
 
me ^gtiz Parfe ^regg. 
 
 71 
 5 
 
GENERAL GRANT. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 I HAVE heard it said, I know not with what 
 degree of truth, that while the sale in America 
 of General Grant's Personal Memoirs has pro- 
 duced three hundred thousand dollars for the 
 benefit of his widow and family, there have not 
 in England been sold of the book three hundred 
 copies. Certainly the book has had no wide 
 circulation here, it has not been much read or 
 much discussed. There are obvious reasons for 
 this. The book relates in great detail the mili- 
 tary history of the American Civil War, so far 
 as Grant bore part in it ; such a history cannot 
 possibly have for other nations the interest 
 which it has for the United States themselves. 
 For the general reader outside of America, it 
 certainly cannot ; as to the value and importance 
 of the history to the military specialist, that is 
 a question on which I hear very conflicting opin- 
 ions expressed, and one on which I myself can 
 
4 General Grant. 
 
 have, of course, no opiilion to offer. So far as 
 the general European reader might still be at- 
 tracted to such a history, in spite of its military 
 details, for the sake of the importance of the 
 issues at stake and of the personages engaged, we 
 in Europe have, it cannot be denied, in approach- 
 ing an American recital of the deeds of " the 
 greatest nation upon earth," some apprehension 
 and mistrust to get over. We may be pardoned 
 for doubting whether we shall in the recital find 
 measure, whether we shall find sobriety. Then, 
 too. General Grant, the central figure of these 
 Memoirs, is not to the English imagination the 
 hero of the American Civil War ; the hero is 
 Lee, and of Lee the Memoirs tell us little. 
 Moreover General Grant, when he was in Eng- 
 land, did not himself personally interest people 
 much. Later he fell in America into the hands 
 of financing speculators, and his embarrass- 
 ments, though they excited sorrow and compas- 
 sion, did not at all present themselves to us as 
 those of "a good man struggling with adversity." 
 For all these reasons, then, the Personal Memoirs 
 have in England been received with coldness and 
 indifference. 
 
 I, too, had seen General Grant in England, and 
 did not find him interesting. If I said the truth, 
 I should say that I thought him ordinary-looking, 
 
General Grant. 5 
 
 dull and silent. An expression of gentleness 
 and even sweetness in the eyes, which the por- 
 traits in the Memoirs show, escaped me. A 
 strong, resolute, business-like man, who by pos- 
 session of unlimited resources in men and 
 money, and by the unsparing use of them, had 
 been enabled to wear down and exhaust the 
 strength of the South, this was what I supposed 
 Grant to be, this and little more. 
 
 Some documents published by General Badeau 
 in the American newspapers first attracted my 
 serious attention to Grant. Among those docu- 
 ments was a letter from him which showed quali- 
 ties for which, in the rapid and uncharitable view 
 which our cursory judgments of men so often 
 take, I had by no means given him credit. It 
 was the letter of a man with the virtue, rare 
 everywhere, but more rare in America, perhaps, 
 than anywhere else, the virtue of being able to 
 confront and resist popular clamour, the civium 
 ardor prava jubentuun. Public opinion seemed 
 in favour of a hard and insolent course, the au- 
 thorities seemed putting pressure upon Grant to 
 make him follow it. He resisted with firmness 
 and dignity. After reading that letter I turned 
 to General Grant's Personal Memoirs, then just 
 published. This man, I said to myself, deserves 
 respect and attention ; and I read the two bulky 
 volumes through. 
 
6 General Grant. 
 
 I found shown in them a man, strong, resolute, 
 and business-like, as Grant had appeared to me 
 when I first saw him ; a man with no magical 
 personality, touched by no divine light and giv- 
 ing out none. I found a language all astray in 
 its use of will and shall, should and would, an 
 English employing the verb to conscript and the 
 participle conscripting, and speaking in a de- 
 spatch to the Secretary of War of having badly 
 whipped the enemy ; an English without charm 
 and without high breeding. But at the same 
 time I found a man of sterling good-sense as well 
 as of the firmest resolution ; a man, withal, hu- 
 mane, simple, modest ; from all restless self-con- 
 sciousness and desire for display perfectly free ; 
 never boastful where he himself was concerned, 
 and where his nation was concerned seldom 
 boastful, boastful only in circumstances where 
 nothing but high genius or high training, I sup- 
 pose, can save an American from being boastful. 
 I found a language straightforward, nervous, 
 firm, possessing in general the high merit of say- 
 ing clearly in the fewest possible words what had 
 to be said, and saying it, frequently, with shrewd 
 and unexpected turns of expression. The Me- 
 moirs renewed and completed the expression 
 which the letter given by General Badeau had 
 made upon me. And now I want to enable 
 
General Grant. 7 
 
 Grant and his Memoirs as far as possible to 
 speak for themselves to the English public, 
 which knows them, I believe, as imperfectly as 
 a few months ago I myself did. 
 
 General Grant was born at Point Pleasant, in 
 the State of Ohio, on the 27th of April, 1822. 
 His name, Ulysses, makes one think of Tristram- 
 Shandy ; but how often do American names 
 make one think of Tristram Shandy ! The 
 father of the little Ulysses followed the trade of 
 a tanner ; he was a constant reader both of 
 books and newspapers, and " before he was 
 twenty years of age was a constant contributor," 
 his son tells us, "to Western newspapers, and 
 was also, from that time, until he was fifty years 
 old, an able debater in the societies for this 
 purpose, which were then common in the 
 West." Of many and many an American 
 farmer and tradesman this is the history. 
 General Grant, however, never shared the 
 paternal and national love for public speaking. 
 As to his schooling, he never, he tells us, missed 
 a quarter from school, from the time he was old 
 enough to attend till the time when he left 
 home, at the age of seventeen, for the Military 
 Academy at West Point. But the instruction 
 in the country schools at that time was very 
 poor : — 
 
8 General Grant. 
 
 "A single teacher — who was often a man or a 
 woman incapable of teaching much, even if they 
 imparted all they knew — would have thirty or 
 forty scholars, male and female, from the infant 
 learning the A B C, up to the young lady of 
 eighteen and the boy of twenty studying the 
 highest branches taught — the three R's. I 
 never saw an algebra, or other mathematical 
 work higher than the arithmetic, until after I 
 was appointed to West Point. I then bought a 
 work on algebra in Cincinnati ; but, having no 
 teacher, it was Greek to me." 
 
 This schooling is unlike that of our young 
 gentlemen preparing for Sandhurst or Woolwich, 
 but still more unlike theirs is Grant's life out of 
 school-hours. He has told us how regularly 
 he attended his school, such as it was. 'He 
 proceeds : 
 
 " This did not exempt me from labour. In 
 my early days, every one laboured more or less 
 in the region where my youth was spent, and 
 more in proportion to their private means. It 
 was only the very poor who were exempt. While 
 my father carried on the manufacture of leather 
 and worked at the trade himself, he owned and 
 tilled considerable land. I detested the trade, 
 preferring almost any other labour ; but I was 
 fond of agriculture and of all employments in 
 
General Grant. 9 
 
 which horses were used. We had, among other 
 lands, fifty acres of forest within a mile of the 
 village. In the fall of the year choppers were 
 employed to cut enough wood to last a twelve- 
 month. When I was seven or eight years of age 
 I began hauling all the wood used in the house 
 and shops. I could not load it on the wagons, 
 of course, at that time, but I could drive, and 
 the choppers would load, and some one at the 
 house unload. When al^out eleven years old, I 
 was strong enough to hold a plough. From that 
 age until seventeen I did all the work done with 
 horses, such as breaking up the land, furrowing, 
 ploughing corn and potatoes, bringing in the 
 crops when harvested, hauling all the wood, be- 
 sides tending two or three horses, a cow or two, 
 and sawing wood for stoves, &c., while still at- 
 tending school. For this I was compensated by 
 the fact that there never was any scolding or 
 punishing by my parents : no objection to ra- 
 tional enjoyments, such as fishing, going to the 
 creek a mile away to swim in summer ; taking a 
 horse and visiting my grandparents in the ad- 
 joining county, fifteen miles off ; skating on the 
 ice in winter, or taking a horse and sleigh when 
 there was snow on the ground." 
 
 The bringing up of Abraham Lincoln was 
 also, I suppose, much on this wise ; and meagre, 
 
lo General Grant. 
 
 too meagre, as may have been the schooling, I 
 confess I am inclined on the whole to exclaim : 
 "What a wholesome bringing up it was 1 " 
 
 I must find room for one story of Grant's boy- 
 hood, a story which he tells against himself : — 
 
 " There was a Mr. Ralston living within a few 
 miles of the village, who owned a colt that I 
 very much wanted. My father had offered 
 twenty dollars for it, but Ralston wanted twenty- 
 five. I was so anxious to have the colt, that, 
 after the owner left, I begged to be allowed to 
 take him at the price demanded. My father 
 yielded, but .said twenty dollars was all the horse 
 was worth, and told mc to offer that price; if it 
 was not accepted, I might offer twenty-two and 
 a half, and if that would not get him, might give 
 the twenty-five. I at once mounted a horse and 
 went for the colt. When I got to Mr. Ralston'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.' 
 It would not require a Connecticut man to guess 
 the price finally af,^rcc(l upon. I could not have 
 been over eight years old at the time. This 
 transaction caused me great heart-burning. The 
 story got amonf,^st the boys of the village, and it 
 was a long time before I heard the last of it. " 
 
General Grant. ii 
 
 The boys of the village may well have been 
 amused. How astounding to find an American 
 boy so little "'cute," so little "smart." But 
 how delightful also, and how refreshing ; how 
 full of promise for the boy's future character ! 
 Grant came in later life to see straight and 
 to see clear, more than most men, more than 
 even most Americans, whose virtue it is that in 
 matters within their range they see straight and 
 see clear; but he never was in the least "smart," 
 and it is one of his merits. 
 
 The United States Senator for Ohio procured 
 for young Grant, when he was seventeen years 
 old, a nomination to West Point. He was not 
 himself eager for it. His father one day said to 
 him : "Ulysses, I believe you are going to receive 
 the appointment." "What appointment.'" I 
 enquired. "To West Point ; I have applied for 
 it." "But I won't go," I said. He said he 
 thought I would, and I thought so too, if he did. 
 I really had no objection to going to West 
 Point, except that I had a very exalted idea of 
 the acquirements necessary to get through. I 
 did not believe I possessed them, and could not 
 bear the idea of failing." 
 
 He did go. Although he had no military 
 ardour he desired to see the world. Already he 
 had seen more of it than most of the boys of his 
 
12 General Grant. 
 
 village ; he had visited Cincinnati, the principal 
 city of his native State, and Louisville, the 
 principal city of the adjoining State of Ken- 
 tucky ; he had also been out as far as Wheeling 
 in Virginia, and now, if he went to West Point, 
 he would have the opportunity of seeing Phila- 
 delphia and New York. "When these places 
 were visited," he says, "I would have been glad 
 to have had a steamboat or railroad collision, or 
 any other accident happen, by which I might 
 have received a temporary injury sufificient to 
 make me ineligible for awhile to enter the Acad- 
 emy." He took his time on the road, and hav- 
 ing left home in the middle of May, did not 
 arrive at West Point until the end of the month. 
 Two weeks later he passed his examination for 
 admission, very much, he tells us, to his surprise. 
 But none of his professional studies interested 
 him, though he did well in mathematics, which 
 he found, he says, very easy to him. Through- 
 out his first year he found the life tedious, read 
 novels, and had no intention of remaining in 
 the army, even if he should succeed in gradu- 
 ating at the end of his four years' course, a 
 success which he did not expect to attain. 
 When in 1839 a Bill was discussed in Congress 
 for abolishing the Military Academy, he hoped 
 the Bill might pass, and so set him free. But 
 
General Grant. 13 
 
 it did not pass, and a year later he would have 
 been sorry, he says, if it had passed, although 
 he still found his life at West Point dull. His 
 last two years went quicker than his first two ; 
 but they still seemed to him " about five times 
 as long as Ohio years." At last all his exam- 
 inations were passed, he was appointed to an 
 infantry regiment, and, before joining, went 
 home on leave with a desperate cough and a 
 stature which had run up too fast for his 
 strength. 
 
 In September, 1843, he joined his regiment, 
 the 4th United States infantry, at Jefferson 
 Barracks, St. Louis. No doubt his training at 
 West Point, an establishment with a public and 
 high standing, and with serious studies, had 
 been invaluable to him. But still he had no 
 desire to remain in the army. At St. Louis he 
 met and became attached to a young lady whom 
 he afterwards married, Miss Dent, and his hope 
 was to become an assistant professor of mathe- 
 matics at West Point. With this hope he re- 
 read at Jefferson Barracks his West Point 
 mathematics, and pursued a course of historical 
 study also. But the Mexican war came on and 
 kept him in the army. 
 
 With the annexation of Texas in prospect. 
 Grant's regiment was moved to Fort Jessup, on 
 
14 General Grant. 
 
 the western border of Louisiana. Ostensibly 
 the American troops were to prevent filibuster- 
 ing into Texas ; really they were sent as a 
 menace to Mexico in case she appeared to con- 
 template war. Grant's life in Louisiana was 
 pleasant. He had plenty of professional duty, 
 many of his brother officers having been de- 
 tailed on special duty away from the regiment. 
 He gave up the thought of becoming a teacher 
 of mathematics, and read only for his own 
 amusement, " and not very much for that ; " he 
 kept a horse and rode, visited the planters on 
 the Red River ; and was out of doors the whole 
 day nearly ; and so he quite recovered from the 
 cough, and the threatenings of consumption, 
 which he had carried with him from West 
 Point. "I have often thought," he adds, "that 
 my life was saved, and my health restored, by 
 exercise and exposure enforced by an adminis- 
 trative act and a war, both of which I dis- 
 approved." 
 
 For disapprove the menace to Mexico, and 
 the subsequent war, he did. One lingers over 
 a distinguished man's days of growth and for- 
 mation, so important for all which is to come 
 after. And already, under young Grant's plain 
 exterior and air of indifference, there had grown 
 up in him an independent and sound judgment. 
 
General Grant. 15 
 
 " Generally the officers of the army were indif- 
 ferent whether the annexation was consum- 
 mated or not ; but not so all of them. For my- 
 self, I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and 
 to this day regard the war which resulted as one 
 of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger 
 against a weaker nation." 
 
 Texas was annexed, a territory larger than 
 the Austrian Empire ; and after taking military 
 possession of Texas, the American army of 
 occupation, under General Taylor, went on and 
 occupied some more disputed territory beyond. 
 Even here they did not stop, but went further 
 on still, meaning apparently to force the Mexi- 
 cans to attack them and begin war. " We were 
 sent to provoke war, but it was essential that 
 Mexico should commence it. It was very doubt- 
 ful whether Congress would declare war ; but if 
 Mexico should attack our troops, the Executive 
 could announce: 'Whereas war exists by the 
 acts of, etc.,' and prosecute the contest with 
 vigour. Once initiated, there were few public 
 men who would have the courage to oppose it." 
 
 Incensed at the Americans fortifying them- 
 selves on the Rio Grande, opposite Matamoras, 
 the Mexicans at last fired the necessary shot, 
 and the war was commenced. This was in 
 March 1846. In September 1847 the American 
 
1 6 General Grant. 
 
 army entered the city of Mexico. Vera Cruz, 
 Puebla, and other principal cities of the country, 
 were already in their possession. In February 
 1848 was signed the treaty which gave to the 
 United States Texas with the Rio Grande for 
 its boundary, and the whole territory then in- 
 cluded in New Mexico and Upper California. 
 For New Mexico and California, however, the 
 Americans paid a sum of fifteen millions of dol- 
 lars. 
 
 Grant marks with sagacity and justness the 
 causes and effects of the Mexican war. As the 
 North grew in numbers and population, the South 
 required more territory to counterbalance it ; to 
 maintain through this wide territory the institu- 
 tion of slavery, it required to have control of the 
 national Government. With great energy and 
 ability, it obtained this control ; it acquired 
 Texas and other large regions for slavery ; it 
 proceeded to use the powers of Government, in 
 the North as well as in the South, for the pur- 
 pose of securing and maintaining its hold upon 
 its slaves. But the wider the territory over 
 which slavery was spread, and the more numer- 
 ous the slaves, the greater became the difficulty 
 of making this hold quite secure, and the 
 stronger grew the irritation of the North to see 
 the powers and laws of the whole nation used 
 
General Grant. 17 
 
 for the purpose. The Fugitive Slave Law 
 brought this irritation to its heiglit, made it 
 uncontrollable, and the War of Secession was 
 the result. "The Southern rebellion," says 
 Grant, " was largely the outgrowth of the Mexi- 
 can war. Nations, like individuals, are punished 
 for their transgressions. We got our punish- 
 ment in the most sanguinary and expensive war 
 of modern times." 
 
 The part of Grant in the Mexican war was of 
 course that of a young subaltern only, and is 
 described by him with characteristic modesty. 
 He showed, however, of what good stuff he was 
 made, and his performances with a certain how- 
 itzer in a church-steeple so pleased his general 
 that he sent for Grant, commended him, and 
 ordered a second howitzer to be placed at his 
 disposal.^ A captain of voltigeurs came with 
 the gun in charge. " I could not tell the gen- 
 eral," says Grant, "that there 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 lieu- 
 tenant. I took the captain with me, but did 
 not use his gun." 
 
 When the evacuation of Mexico was com- 
 pleted, Grant married, in August 1848, Miss 
 Julia Dent, to whom he had been engaged more 
 
1 8 General Grant. 
 
 than four years. For two years the young cou- 
 ple lived at Detroit in Michigan, where Grant 
 was now stationed ; he was then ordered to the 
 Pacific coast. It was settled that Mrs. Grant 
 should, during his absence, live with her own 
 family in St. Louis. The regiment went first 
 to Aspinwall, then to California and Oregon. 
 In 1853 Grant became captain, but he had now 
 two children, and saw no chance of supporting 
 his family on his pay as an army officer. He 
 determined to resign, and in the following year 
 he did so. He left the Pacific coast, he tells 
 us, very much attached to it, and with the full 
 intention of one day making his home there, an 
 intention which he did not abandon until, in the 
 winter of 1863-4, Congress passed the Act ap- 
 pointing him Lieutenant-Gen eral of the armies 
 of the United States. 
 
 His life on leaving the army offers, like his 
 early training, a curious contrast to what usually 
 takes place amongst ourselves. First he tried 
 farming, on a farm belonging to his wife near 
 St. Louis ; but he could not make it answer, 
 though he worked hard. He had insuflficient 
 capital, and more than sufficient fever and ague. 
 After four years he established a partnership 
 with a cousin of his wife named Harry Boggs, 
 in a real estate agency business in St. Louis. He 
 
General Grant. 19 
 
 found that the business was not more than one 
 person could do, and not enough to support two 
 families. So he withdrew from the co-partnership 
 with Boggs, and in May i860 removed to 
 Galena, Illinois, and took a clerkship in a leather 
 shop there belonging to his father. 
 
 Politics now began to interest him, and his 
 reflexions on them at the moment when the 
 War of Secession was approaching I must 
 quote : 
 
 " Up to the Mexican war there were a few out 
 and out abolitionists, men who carried their hos- 
 tility to slavery into all elections, from those for 
 a justice of the peace up to the Presidency of 
 the United States. They were noisy but not 
 numerous. But the great majority of people at 
 the North, where slavery did not exist, were 
 opposed to the institution, and looked upon its 
 existence in any part of the country as unfortu- 
 nate. They did not hold the States where 
 slavery existed responsible for it, and believed 
 that protection should be given to the right of 
 property in slaves until some satisfactory way 
 could be reached to be rid of the institution. 
 Opposition to slavery was a creed of neither 
 political party. But with the inauguration of 
 the Mexican war, in fact with the annexation of 
 Texas, the inevitable conflict commenced. As 
 
20 General Grant. 
 
 the time for the Presidental election of 1856 — 
 the first at which I had the opportunity of voting 
 — approached, party feeling began to run high." 
 
 Grant himself voted in 1856 for Buchanan, 
 the candidate of the Slave States, because he 
 saw clearly, he says, that in the exasperation of 
 feeling at that time, the election of a Republican 
 President meant the secession of all the Slave 
 States, and the plunging of the country into a 
 war of which no man could foretell the issue. 
 He hoped that in the course of the next four 
 years — the Slave States having got a President 
 of their own choice, and being without a pretext 
 for secession — men's passions would quiet 
 down, and the catastrophe be averted. Even if 
 it was not, he thought the country would by 
 that time be better prepared to receive the 
 shock and to resist it. 
 
 I am not concerned to discuss Grant's reasons 
 for his vote, but I wish to remark how com- 
 pletely his reflexions dispose of the reproaches 
 addressed so often by Americans to England 
 for not .sympathising with the North attacking 
 slavery, in a war with the South upholding it. 
 From what he says it is evident how very far 
 the North was, when the war began, from at- 
 tacking slavery. Grant himself was not for 
 attacking it ; Lincoln was not. They, and the 
 
General Grant. 21 
 
 North in general, wished " that protection should 
 be given to the right of property in slaves, until 
 some satisfactory way could be reached to be 
 rid of the institution." England took the North 
 at its word, and regarded its struggle as one for 
 preserving the Union, and the force and great- 
 ness which accrue from the Union, not for 
 abolishing slavery. True, far-sighted people 
 here might perceive that the war must probably 
 issue, if the North prevailed, in the abolition of 
 slavery, and might wish well to the North on 
 that account. They did so ; coldly, it is true, 
 for the attitude of the North was not such as to 
 call forth enthusiasm, but sincerely. A great 
 number of people in England, on the other hand, 
 looking at the surface of things merely, clearly 
 seeing that the North was not meaning to at- 
 tack slavery but to uphold the power and grand- 
 eur of the United States, thought themselves 
 quite free to wish well to the South, the weaker 
 side which was making a gallant fight, and to 
 favour the breaking up of the Union. 
 
 Here was the real offence. The Americans 
 of the North, admiring and valuing their great 
 Republic above all things, could not forgive 
 disfavour or coldness to it ; could only im- 
 pute them to envy and jealousy. Far-sighted 
 people in England might perceive that the main- 
 
22 General Grant. 
 
 tenance of the Union was not only likely to 
 bring about the emancipation of the slave, but 
 was also on other grounds to be desired for the 
 good of the world. Our artisans might be in 
 sympathy with the popular and unaristocratic 
 institutions of the United States, and be there- 
 fore averse to any weakening of the great Re- 
 public. And these feelings prevailed here, as 
 is well known, so as to govern the course taken 
 by this country during the War of Secession. 
 Still, there was much disfavour and more cold- 
 ness. Americans were, and are, indignant that 
 the upholding of their great Republic should 
 have had in England such cold friends, and so 
 many actual enemies. It is like the indignant 
 astonishment of George Sand during the Ger- 
 man war, "to see Europe looking on with indif- 
 ference to the danger of such a civilization as 
 that of France." But admiration and favour 
 are uncompellable ; we admire and favour only 
 an object which delights us, helps us, elevates 
 us, and does us good. The thing is to make us 
 feel that the object does this. Self-admiration 
 and self-laudation will not convince us ; on the 
 contrary, they indispose us. France would be 
 more attractive to us if she were less prone to 
 call herself the head of ^civilization and the pride 
 of the world ; the United States, if they were 
 
General Grant. 23 
 
 more backward in proclaiming themselves " the 
 greatest nation upon earth." 
 
 In i860 Lincoln was elected President, and 
 the catastrophe, which Grant hoped might have 
 been averted, arrived. He had in i860 no vote, 
 but things were now come to that pass that 
 he felt compelled to make his choice be- 
 tween minority rule and rule by the majority, 
 and he was glad, therefore, to see Lincoln 
 elected. Secession was imminent, and with 
 secession, war ; but Grant confesses that his 
 own views at that time were those officially ex- 
 pressed later on by Mr. Sev/ard, that " the war 
 would be over in ninety days." He retained 
 these views, he tells us, until after the battle of 
 Shiloh. 
 
 Lincoln was not to come into office until the 
 spring of 1861. The South was confident and 
 defiant, and in the North there were prominent 
 men and newspapers declaring that the gov- 
 ernment had no legal right to coerce the South. 
 It was unsafe for Mr. Lincoln, when he went to 
 be sworn into office in March 1861, to travel as 
 President-elect ; he had to be smuggled into 
 Washington. When he took on the 4th of 
 March his oath of office to maintain the Union, 
 eleven States had gone out of it. On the nth 
 of April, Fort Sumter in Charleston harbour 
 
24 General Grant. 
 
 was fired upon, and a few days after was captured. 
 Then the President issued a call for 75,000 men. 
 " There was not a State in the North of a mil- 
 lion inhabitants," says Grant, "that would not 
 have furnished the entire number faster than 
 arms could have been supplied to them, if it 
 had been necessary." 
 
 As soon as news of the call for volunteers 
 reached Galena, where Grant lived, the citizens 
 were summoned to meet at the Court House in 
 the evening. The Court House was crammed. 
 Grant, though a comparative stranger, was called 
 upon to preside, because he had been in the 
 army, and had seen service. " With much em- 
 barrassment and some prompting, I made out 
 to announce the object of the meeting." 
 Speeches followed ; then volunteers were called 
 for to form the company which Galena had 
 to furnish. The company was raised, and the 
 ofificers and non-commissioned officers were 
 elected, before the meeting adjourned. Grant 
 declined the captaincy before the balloting, but 
 promised to help them all he could, and to be 
 found in the service, in some position, if there 
 should actually be war. "I never," he adds, 
 " went into our leather store after that meeting, 
 to put up a package or do other business." 
 • After seeing the company mustered at Spring- 
 
General Grant. 25 
 
 field, the capital of Illinois, Grant was asked by 
 the Governor of the State to give some help in 
 the military office, where his old army experi- 
 ence enabled him to be of great use. But on 
 the 24th of May he wrote to the Adjutant-Gen- 
 eral of the Army, saying that, "having been 
 fifteen years in the regular army, including four 
 at West Point, and feeling it the duty of every 
 one who has been educated at the Government 
 expense to offer their services for the support 
 of the Government," he wished to tender his 
 services until the close of the war, "in such 
 capacity as may be offered." He got no answer. 
 He then thought of getting appointed on the 
 staff of General McClellan, whom he had known 
 at West Point, and went to seek the General at 
 Cincinnati. He called twice, but failed to see 
 him. While he was at Cincinnati, however, the 
 President issued his second call for troops, this 
 time for 300,000 men ; and the Governor of 
 Illinois, mindful of Grant's recent help, ap- 
 pointed him colonel of the 21st Illinois regi- 
 ment of infantry. In a month he had brought 
 his regiment into a good state of drill and dis- 
 cipline, and was then ordered to a point on a 
 railroad in Missouri, where an Illinois regiment 
 was surrounded by "rebels." His own account 
 of his first experience as a Commander is very 
 characteristic of him : 
 
26 General Grant. 
 
 " My sensations as we approached what I sup- 
 posed might be a ' field of battle,' were anything 
 but agreeable. I had been in all the engage- 
 ments in Mexico that it was possible for one 
 person to be in ; but not in command. If some 
 one else had been colonel, and I had been lieu- 
 tenant-colonel, I do not think I would have felt 
 any trepidation. Before we were prepared to 
 cross the Mississippi River at Quincy, my anx- 
 iety was relieved ; for the men of the besieged 
 regiment came straggling into the town. I am 
 inclined to think both sides got frightened and 
 ran away." 
 
 Now, however, he was started ; and from this 
 time until he received Lee's surrender at Appo- 
 mattox Court House, four years later, he was 
 always the same strong man, showing the same 
 valuable qualities. He had not the pathos and 
 dignity of Lee, his power of captivating the 
 admiring interest, almost the admiring affec- 
 tion, of his profession and of the world. He 
 had not the fire, the celerity, the genial cordial- 
 ity of Sherman, whose person and manner emit- 
 ted a ray (to adopt, with a very slight change, 
 Lamb's well-known lines) — 
 
 " a ray 
 Which struck a cheer upon the day, 
 A cheer which would not go away — " 
 
Gefieral Grant. 27 
 
 Grant had not these. But he certainly had a 
 good deal of the character and qualities which 
 we so justly respect in the Duke of Wellington. 
 Wholly free from show, parade, and pomposity ; 
 sensible and sagacious ; scanning closely the 
 situation, seeing things as they actually were, 
 then making up his mind as to the right thing 
 to be done under the circumstances, and doing 
 it ; never flurried, never vacillating, but also not 
 stubborn, able to reconsider and change his 
 plans, a man of resource ; when, however, he 
 had really fixed on the best course to take, the 
 right nail to drive, resolutely and tenaciously 
 persevering, driving the nail hard home — Grant 
 was all this, and surely in all this he resembles 
 the Duke of Wellington. 
 
 The eyes of Europe, during the War of Seces- 
 sion, were chiefly fixed on the conflict in the 
 East. Grant, however, as we have seen, began 
 his career, not on the great and conspicuous 
 stage of the East, but in the West. He did 
 not come to the East until, by taking Vicks- 
 burg, he had attracted all eyes to the West, and 
 to the course of events there. 
 
 We have seen how Grant's first expedition in 
 command ended. The second ended in much 
 the same way, and is related by him with the 
 same humour. He was ordered to move against 
 
28 General Grant. 
 
 a Colonel Thomas Harris, encamped on the Salt 
 River. As Grant and his men approached the 
 place where they expected to find Harris, "my 
 heart," he says, "kept getting higher and higher, 
 until it felt to me as if it was in my throat." 
 But when they reached the point from which 
 they looked down into the valley where they 
 supposed Harris to be, behold, Harris was gone! 
 " My heart resumed its place. It occurred to 
 me at once that Harris had been as much afraid 
 of me as I had been of him. This was a view 
 of the question I had never taken before, but I 
 never forgot it afterwards. I never forgot that 
 an enemy had as much reason to fear my forces 
 as I had his. The lesson was valuable." 
 
 But already he inspired confidence. Shortly 
 after his return from the Salt River, the Presi- 
 dent asked the Congressmen from Illinois to 
 recommend seven citizens of that State for the 
 rank of brigadier-general, and the Congressmen 
 unanimously recommended Grant first on the 
 list. In August he was appointed to the com- 
 mand of a district, and on the 4th of Septem- 
 ber assumed command at Cairo, where the Ohio 
 River joins the Mississippi. His first important 
 success was to seize and fortify Paducah, an 
 important post at the mouth of the Tennessee 
 River, about fifty miles from Cairo. By the ist 
 
General Grant. 29 
 
 of November he had 20,000 well-drilled men 
 under his command. In November he fought a 
 smart action at Belmont, on the western bank 
 of the Mississippi, with the object of prevent- 
 ing the Confederates who were in strong force 
 at Columbus in Kentucky, on the eastern bank, 
 from detaching troops to the West. He suc- 
 ceeded in his object, and his troops, who came 
 under fire for the first time, behaved well. 
 Grant himself had a horse shot under him. 
 
 Very important posts to the Confederates 
 were Fort Henry on the Tennessee and Fort 
 Donelson on the Cumberland River. Grant 
 thought he could capture Fort Henry. He 
 went to St. Louis to see General Halleck, 
 whose subordinate he was, and to state his 
 plan. " I was received with so little cordial- 
 ity that I perhaps stated the object of my visit 
 with less clearness than I might have done, and 
 I had not uttered many sentences before I was 
 cut short as if my plan was preposterous. I 
 returned to Cairo very much crest-fallen. 
 
 He persevered, however, and after consulting 
 with the officer commanding the gunboats at 
 Cairo, he renewed, by telegraph, the suggestion 
 that, if permitted, he "could take and hold 
 Fort Henry on the Tennessee." This time he 
 was backed by the officer in command of the 
 
30 General Grant. 
 
 gunboats. Next day, he wrote fully to explain 
 his plan. In two clays he received instructions 
 from headquarters to move upon Fort Henry, 
 and on the 2nd of February, 1862, the expedi- 
 tion started. 
 
 He took Fort Henry on the 6th of February, 
 and announcing his success to General Halleck, 
 informed him that he would now take Fort Don- 
 elson. On the i6th, Fort Donelson surrendered, 
 and Grant made nearly 1 5,000 prisoners. There 
 was delight in the North, depression at Rich- 
 mond. Grant was at once promoted to be 
 major-general of volunteers. He thought, both 
 then and ever after, that by the fall of Fort 
 Donelson the way was opened to the forces of 
 the North all over the south-west without 
 much resistance, that a vigorous commander, 
 disposing of all the troops west of the Alle- 
 ghanies, might have at once marched to Chat- 
 tanooga, Corinth, Memphis, and Vicksburg, and 
 broken down every resistance. There was no 
 such commander, and time was given to the 
 enemy to collect armies and fortify new posi- 
 tions. 
 
 The next point for attack was Corinth, at the 
 junction of the two most important railroads in 
 the Mississippi Valley. After Grant had, after 
 a hard and bloody struggle of two days, won 
 
General Grant. 31 
 
 the battle of Shiloah, in which a ball cut in 
 two the scabbard of his sword, and more than 
 10,000 men were killed and wounded on the 
 side of the North, General Halleck, who did 
 not love Grant, arrived on the scene of action 
 and assumed the command. "Although next 
 to him in rank," says Grant, "and nominally in 
 command of my old district and army, I was 
 ignored as much as if I had been at the most 
 distant point of territory within my jurisdic- 
 tion." On the advance to Corinth, "I was little 
 more than an observer. Orders were sent direct 
 to the right wing or reserve, ignoring me, and 
 advances were made from one line of intrench- 
 ments to another without notifying me. My 
 position was so embarrassing, in fact, that I 
 made several applications to be relieved." When 
 he suggested a movement, he was silenced. 
 Presently the Confederate troops evacuated 
 Corinth in safety, carrying with them all pub- 
 lic property. On the side of the North, there 
 was much disappointment at the slackness with 
 which the enemy had been pressed, and at his 
 success in saving his entire army. 
 
 But Corinth was evacuated ; the naval forces 
 of the North took Memjahis, and now held 
 the Mississippi River from its source to that 
 point ; New Orleans and Baton Rouge had 
 
32 General Grant. 
 
 fallen into their possession. The Confederates 
 at the West were now narrowed down, for all 
 communication with Richmond, to the single 
 line of road running east from Vicksburg. To 
 dispossess them of Vicksburg, therefore, was of 
 the highest importance. At this point I must 
 stop for the present. Public attention was not 
 yet fixed upon Grant, as it became after his suc- 
 cess at Vicksburg ; and with his success there 
 a second chapter of his life opens. But already 
 he had shown his talent for succeeding. Car- 
 dinal Mazarin used to ask concerning a man 
 before employing him, Est-il henreux ? Grant 
 was hetireux. 
 
Part II. 
 
 We left Grant projecting his attack upon 
 Vicksburg. In the autumn of 1862, the second 
 year of the war, the prospect for the North ap- 
 peared gloomy. The Confederates were further 
 advanced than at the beginning of the struggle. 
 Many loyal people, says Grant, despaired at 
 that time of ever saving the Union ; President 
 Lincoln never himself lost faith in the final tri- 
 umph of the Northern cause, but the adminis- 
 tration at Washington was uneasy and anxious. 
 The elections of 1862 had gone against the 
 party which was for prosecuting the war at all 
 costs and at all risks until the Union was- saved. 
 Voluntary enlistments had ceased ; to fill the 
 ranks of the Northern armies the draft had been 
 resorted to. Unless a great success came to 
 restore the spirit of the North, it seemed pro- 
 bable that the draft would be resisted, that men 
 would begin to desert, and that the power to 
 capture and punish deserters would be lost. It 
 was Grant's conviction that there was nothing 
 left to be done but "to go forward to a decisive 
 victory." 
 
34 Gejteral Grant. 
 
 At first, however, after the battle of Shiloh 
 and the taking of Corinth, he could accomplish 
 little. General Halleck, his chief, appears to 
 have been at this time ill-disposed to him, and 
 to have treated him with coldness and incivility: 
 In July 1862, General Halleck was appointed 
 general-in-chief of all the armies of the North, 
 with his headquarters in Washington, and Grant 
 remained in Tennessee in chief command. But 
 his army suffered such depletion by detaching 
 men to defend long lines of communication, to 
 repair ruined railroads, to reinforce generals in 
 need of succour, that he found himself entirely 
 on the defensive in a hostile territory. Never- 
 theless in a battle fought to protect Corinth he 
 repulsed the enemy with great slaughter, and 
 being no longer anxious for the safety of the 
 territory within his command, and having been 
 reinforced, he resolved on a forward movement 
 against Vicksburg. 
 
 Vicksburg occupies the first high ground on 
 the Mississippi below Memphis. Communica- 
 tion between the parts of the Confederacy divid- 
 ed by the Mississippi was through Vicksburg. 
 So long as the Confederates held Vicksburg, 
 and Port Hudson lower down, the free naviga- 
 tion of the river was prevented. The fall of 
 Vicksburg, as the event proved, was sure to 
 
General Grant. 35 
 
 bring with it the fall of Port Hudson also. 
 Grant saw nearly his whole force absorbed in 
 holding the railway lines north of Vicksburg ; 
 he considered that if he moved forward, driving 
 the enemy before him into Southern territory 
 not as yet subdued, those lines in his rear would 
 almost hold themselves, and _most of his force 
 would be free for field operations. But in mov- 
 ing forward he moved further from his bases of 
 supplies. One of these was at Holly Springs, 
 in the north of the state of Mississippi ; the 
 enemy appeared there, captured the garrison, 
 and destroyed all the stores of food, forage, and 
 munitions of war. This loss taught Grant a 
 lesson by which he, and Sherman after him, 
 profited greatly : the lesson that in a wide and 
 productive country, such as that in which he 
 was operating, to cling to a distant base of 
 supply was not necessary ; the country he was 
 in would afford the supplies needed. He was 
 amazed, he says, when he was compelled by the 
 loss of Holly Springs to collect supplies in the 
 country immediately around him, at the abundant 
 quantity which the country afforded. He found 
 that after leaving two months' supplies for the 
 use of the families whose stores were taken, he 
 could, off the region where he was, have sub- 
 sisted his army for a period four times as long 
 
36 General Grant. 
 
 as he had actually to remain there. Later in 
 the campaign he took full advantage of the ex- 
 perience thus gained. 
 
 The fleet under Admiral Porter co-operated 
 with him, but all endeavours to capture Vicks- 
 burg from the north were unavailing. The 
 Mississippi winds and winds through its rich 
 alluvial valley ; the country is intersected by 
 bayous or water-courses filled from the river, 
 with overhanging trees and with narrow and 
 tortuous channels, where the bends could not 
 be turned by a vessel of any length. To cross 
 this country in the face of an enemy was impos- 
 sible. The problem was to get in rear of the 
 object of attack, and to secure a footing upon 
 dry ground on the high or eastern side of the 
 Mississippi — -the side on which Vicksburg 
 stands — for operating against the place. On 
 the 30th of January, 1863, Grant having left 
 Memphis, took the command at Young's Point 
 in Louisiana, on the western bank of Mississippi, 
 not far above Vicksburg, bent on solving the 
 problem. 
 
 It was a wet country and a wet winter, with 
 high water in the Mississippi and its tributaries. 
 The troops encamped on the river bank had, in 
 order to be out of the water, to occupy the 
 levees, or dykes, along the river edge, and the 
 
General Grant. 37 
 
 ground immediately behind. This gave so limited 
 a space, that one corps of Grant's army, when 
 he assumed the command at Young's Point, 
 was at Lake Providence, seventy miles above 
 Vicksburg. The troops suffered much from 
 malarial fevers and other sickness, but the 
 hospital arrangements were excellent. 
 
 Four ineffectual attempts were in the course 
 of the winter made to get at the object of attack 
 by various routes. Grant, meanwhile, was 
 maturing his plan. His plan was to traverse 
 the peninsula where he lay encamped, then to 
 cross the Mississippi, and thus to be able to 
 attack Vicksburg from the south and east. 
 Above Young's Point, at Milliken's Bend, be- 
 gins a series of bayous, forming, as it were, the 
 chord of an immense bend of the Mississippi, 
 and falling into the river some fifty miles below 
 Vicksburg. Behind the levees bordering these 
 bayous were tolerable roads, by which, as soon 
 as they emerged from the waters, Grant's troops 
 and waggon-trains could cross the peninsula. 
 The difficulties were indeed great : four bridges 
 had to be built across wide bayous, and the rapid 
 fall of the waters increased the current, and 
 made bridge-building troublesome ; but at work 
 of this kind the " Yankee soldier " is in his ele- 
 ment. By the 24th of April Grant had his 
 
38 General Grant. 
 
 headquarters at the southern extremity of the 
 bend. The navy under Admiral Porter, escort- 
 ing steamers and barges to serve as ferries and 
 for the transport of supplies, had run fourteen 
 miles of batteries, passed Vicksburg, and come 
 down the river to join Grant. A further march 
 of twenty-two miles was still necessary in order 
 to reach the first high ground, where the army 
 might land and establish itself on the eastern 
 shore. This first high land is at Grand Gulf, a 
 place strongly held at that time by the Con- 
 federates, and as unattackable from the river as 
 Vicksburg itself. Porter ran the batteries of 
 Grand Gulf as he had run those of Vicksburg » 
 the army descended the river a few miles, and on 
 the 30th of April was landed at Bruinsburg, on 
 the eastern shore, without meeting an enemy- 
 Grant's plan had succeeded. He was estab- 
 lished on the eastern bank, below and in rear 
 of Vicksburg. Though Vicksburg was not yet 
 taken, and though he was in the enemy's 
 country, with a vast -river and the stronghold of 
 Vicksburg between him and his base of supplies, 
 yet he "felt a degree of relief scarcely ever 
 equalled, since I was on dry ground on the same 
 side of the river with the enemy." 
 
 And indeed from this moment his success 
 was continuous. The enemy had at Grand 
 
General Grant. 39 
 
 Gulf, at Haines Bluff north of Vicksburg, and 
 at Jackson, the capital of the State of Missis- 
 sippi, in which State all these places are, about 
 60,000 men. After fighting and losing an 
 action to cover Grand Gulf, the Confederates 
 evacuated that place, and Grant occupied it on 
 the 3rd of May. By the 7th of May Sherman 
 joined him at Grand Gulf, and he found him- 
 self with a force of 33,000 men. He then 
 determined at once to attack the enemy's 
 forces in the rear of Vicksburg, and then to 
 move on the stronghold itself. In order to use 
 Grand Gulf as his base of supplies for these 
 operations, he must have constructed addi- 
 tional roads, and this would have been a work 
 of time. He determined therefore merely to 
 bring up by the single road available from 
 Grand Gulf, what rations of biscuit, coffee, 
 and salt he could, and to make the country he 
 traversed furnish everything else. Beef, mut- 
 ton, poultry, molasses, and forage were to be 
 found, he knew, in abundance. The cautious 
 Halleck would be sure to disapprove this bold 
 plan of almost abandoning the base of sup- 
 plies, but Grant counted on being able to ob- 
 tain his object before he could be interfered 
 with from Washington. 
 
 The nature of the ground making Vicksburg 
 
40 General Grant. 
 
 easily defensible on the south, Grant deter- 
 mined to get on the railroad running east from 
 Vicksburg to Jackson, the State capital, and to 
 approach the stronghold from that side. At 
 Jackson was a strong Confederate force, the 
 city was an important railway centre, and all 
 supplies of men and stores for Vicksburg came 
 thence ; this source of aid had to be stopped. 
 But in order to reach Jackson, Grant had to 
 abandon even that one road by which he had 
 partially supplied his army hitherto, to cut 
 loose from his base of supplies altogether. He 
 did so without hesitation.. After a successful 
 action he entered Jackson on the 14th of May, 
 driving out of it the Confederates' under Gen- 
 eral Johnston, and destroyed the' place in so 
 far as it was a railroad centre and a manufac- 
 tory of military supplies. Then he turned 
 westward, and after a severe battle shut up 
 Pemberton in Vicksburg. An assault on Pem- 
 berton's defences was unsuccessful, but Vicks- 
 burg was closely invested. Pemberton's stores 
 began to run short. Johnston was unable to 
 come to his relief, and on the 4th of July, Inde- 
 pendence Day, he surrendered Vicksburg, 
 with its garrison of nearly thirty-two thousand 
 men, ordnance and stores. As Grant had fore- 
 seen. Port Hudson surrendered as soon as the 
 
General Grant. 41 
 
 fall of Vicksburg became known, and the great 
 river was once more open from St. Louis to the 
 sea. 
 
 In the north the victory of Gettysburg was 
 won on the same day on which Vicksburg sur- 
 rendered. A load of anxiety was lifted from 
 the minds of the President and his ministers ; 
 the North took heart again, and resolved to con- 
 tinue the war with energy, in the hope of soon 
 bringing it to a triumphant issue. The great 
 and decisive event bringing about this change 
 was the fall of Vicksburg, and the merit of that 
 important success was due to Grant. 
 
 He had been successful, and in his success 
 he still retained his freedom from "bounce" 
 and- from personal vanity; his steadfast concern 
 for the public good ; his moderation. Let us 
 hear his account of being under fire during a 
 fruitless attack by Admiral Porter's gunboats 
 on the batteries of Grand Gulf : 
 
 " I occupied a tug, from which I could see the 
 effect of the battle on both sides, within range 
 of the enemy's guns ; but a small tug, without 
 armament, was not caladated to attract the fire 
 of batteries while they were being assailed them- 
 selves." 
 
 He has to mention a risk incurred by himself; 
 but mentioning it, he is at pains to minimise it, 
 
42 General Grant. 
 
 When he assumed command in person at 
 Young's Point, General McClernand, from 
 whom the command now passed to Grant, his 
 senior and superior, showed temper and remon- 
 strated : 
 
 " His correspondence with me on the subject 
 was more in the nature of a reprimand than a 
 protest. It was highly insubordinate, but J 
 dverlooked it, as I believed, for the good of the 
 service. General McClernand was a member 
 of Congress when the Secession War broke 
 out ; he belonged to that party which furnished 
 all the opposition there was to a vigorous prose- 
 cution of the war for saving the Union ; but 
 there was no delay in his declaring himself for 
 the Union at all hazards, and there was no un- 
 certain sound in his declaration of where he 
 stood in the contest before the country." 
 
 To such a man Grant wished to be forbear- 
 ing when he could say to himself that, after all, 
 it was only his own dignity which was con- 
 cerned. But later, when an irregularity of the 
 same General was injurious to good feeling and 
 unity in the army. Grant was prompt and 
 severe : 
 
 " 1 received a letter trom General Sherman, 
 and one from General MePherson, saying that 
 their respective commands had complained to 
 
General Grant. 43 
 
 them of a fulsome congratulatory order pub- 
 lished by General McClernand to the 13th 
 Corps, which did great injustice to the other 
 troops engaged in the campaign. This, order 
 had been sent north and published, and now 
 papers containing it had reached our camps. 
 The order had not been heard of by me ; I at 
 once wrote to McClernand, directing him to 
 send me a copy of this order. He did so, and I 
 at once relieved him from the command of the 
 13th Army Corps. The publication of his order 
 in the press was in violation of War Department 
 orders, and also of mine." 
 
 The newspaper press is apt to appear to an 
 American, even more than to an Englishman, 
 as part of the order of nature, and contending 
 with it seems like contending with destiny. 
 Grant had governing instincts. " I always ad- 
 mired the South, as bad as I thought their 
 cause, for the boldness with which they silenced 
 all opposition and all croaking by press or by 
 individuals within their control." His instincts 
 would have led him to follow this example. 
 But since he could do nothing against the news- 
 paper nuisance, and was himself the chief suf- 
 ferer by it, he bore it with his native phil- 
 osophy : 
 
 " Visitors to the camps went home with dismal 
 
44 General Grant. 
 
 stories. Northern papers came back to the sol- 
 diers with these stories exaggerated. Because 
 I would not divulge my ultimate plans to visi- 
 tors they pronounced me idle, incompetent, and 
 unfit to command men in an emergency, and 
 clamoured for my removal. They were not 
 to be satisfied, many of them, with my simple 
 removal, but named who my successor should 
 be. I took no steps to answer these complaints, 
 but continued to do my duty, as I understood 
 it, to the best of my ability.'' 
 
 Surely the Duke of Wellington would have 
 read these Memoirs with pleasure. He might 
 himself have issued, too, this order respecting 
 behaviour to prisoners : " Instruct the com- 
 mands to be quiet and orderly as these prisoners 
 pass, and to make no offensive remark." And 
 this other, respecting behaviour in a conquered 
 enemy's country : " Impress upon the men the 
 importance of going through the State in an 
 orderly manner, abstaining from taking any- 
 thing not absolutely necessary for their sub- 
 sistence while travelling. They should try to 
 create as favourable an impression as possible 
 upon the people." 
 
 But what even at this stage of the war is very 
 striking, and of good augury for the re-union 
 which followed, is the absence, in general, of 
 
General Grant. 45 
 
 bitter hatred between the combatants. There 
 is nothing of internicene, inextinguishable, irre- 
 concilable enmity, or of the temper, acts, and 
 words which beget this. Often we find the 
 vanquished Southerner showing a good-hum- 
 oured audacity, the victorious Northerner a 
 good-humoured forbearance. Let us remember 
 Carrier at Nantes, or Davoust at Hamburg, and 
 then look at Grant's picture of himself and 
 Sherman at Jackson, when their troops had just 
 driven the enemy out of this capital of a 
 " rebel " State, and were destroying the stores 
 and war-materials there : 
 
 " Sherman and I went together into a manu- 
 factory which had not ceased work on account 
 of the battle, nor for the entrance of Yankee 
 troops. Our entrance did not seem to attract 
 the attention of either the manager or the ope- 
 ratives, most of whom were girls. We looked 
 on for a while to see the tent cloth which they 
 were making roll out of the looms, with"C.S. 
 A."* woven in each bolt. Finally I told Sher- 
 man I thought they had done work enough. 
 The operatives were told they could leave, and 
 take with them what cloth they could carry. In 
 a few minutes the factory was in a blaze. The 
 proprietor visited Washington, while I was Presi- 
 * Confederate States Army. 
 
46 General Grant. 
 
 dent, to get his pay for this property, claiming 
 that it was private." 
 
 The American girls coolly continuing to make 
 the Confederate tents under the eye of the hos- 
 tile generals, and the proprietor claiming after- 
 wards to be paid by Congress for them as private 
 property, are charming. 
 
 It was one of Grant's superstitions, he tells 
 us, never to apply for a post, or to use personal 
 or political influence for obtaining it. He be- 
 lieved that if he had got it in this way he would 
 have feared to undertake any plan of his own 
 conception for fear of involving his patrons in 
 responsibility for his possible failure. If he 
 were selected for a post, his responsibility ended, 
 he said, with " his doing the best he knew how." 
 
 " Every one has his superstitions. One of 
 mine is that in positions of great responsibility 
 every one should do his duty to the best of his 
 ability, where assigned by competent authority, 
 without application or the use of influence to 
 change his position. While at Cairo I had 
 watched with very great interest the operations 
 of the Army of the Potomac, looking upon that 
 as the main field of the war. I had no idea, my- 
 self, of ever having any large command, nor did I 
 suppose that I was equal to one ; but I had the 
 vanity to think that, as a cavalry officer, I might 
 
General Grant. 47 
 
 succeed very well in the command of a brigade. 
 On one occasion, in talking about this to my 
 staff officers, I said that I would give anything 
 if I were commanding a brigade of cavalry in 
 the Army of the Potomac, and I believed I could 
 do some good. Captain Hellyer suggested that 
 I should make application to be transferred 
 there to command the cavalry. I then told him 
 that I would cut my right arm off first, and 
 mentioned this superstition." 
 
 But now he was to be transferred, without any 
 solicitation on his own part, to "the main field 
 of the war." At first, however, he was ap- 
 pointed to the command of the " Military Divis- 
 ion of the Mississippi," and after fighting a severe 
 and successful battle at Chattanooga in Novem- 
 ber (1863), relieved that place and Knoxville, 
 which the Confederates were threatening. 
 President Lincoln, who had daily, almost hourly, 
 been telegraphing to him to "remember Burn- 
 side," to "do something for Burnside," be- 
 sieged in Knoxville, was overjoyed. " I wish," 
 he wrote to Grant, "to tender you, and all under 
 your command, my more than thanks, my pro- 
 foundest gratitude, for the skill, courage and 
 perseverance with which you and they, over so 
 great difficulties, have effected this important 
 object. God bless you all ! " Congress voted 
 
48 General Grant. 
 
 him thanks and a gold medal for his achieve- 
 ments at Vicksburg and Chattanooga. 
 
 In the dead of the winter, with the ther- 
 mometer below zero, he made an excursion into 
 Kentucky, and had the pleasure of finding the 
 people along his route, both in Tennessee and 
 Kentucky, in general intensely loyal to the 
 Union : 
 
 " They would collect in little places where we 
 would stop of evenings, to see me. The people 
 naturally expected to see the commanding gen- 
 eral the oldest person in the party. I was then 
 forty-one years of age, while my medical director 
 was grey-haired, and probably twelve or more 
 years my senior. The crowds would generally 
 swarm around him, and thus give me an oppor- 
 tunity of quietly dismounting and getting into 
 the house." 
 
 At the beginning of the next year, 1864, a 
 Bill was passed through Congress for restoring 
 the grade of Lieutenant-General in the army. 
 Grant was nominated to that rank, and having 
 been summoned to Washington he received his 
 commission from the President on the 9th of 
 March, in the presence of the Ministers. Before 
 he came to Washington, he had meant to return 
 to his command in the West even after being 
 made lieutenant-general ; but at Washington he 
 
General Grant. 49 
 
 saw reason to change his mind. The important 
 struggle was now between the Army of the 
 Potomac and Lee. From what he saw, Grant 
 was convinced that in that struggle no one ex- 
 cept himself, with the superior rank he now 
 bore, could, probably, "resist the pressure that 
 would be brought to bear upon him to desist 
 from his own plans and pursue others.'' He 
 obtained, therefore, the nomination of Sherman 
 to succeed him in command of the Military 
 Division of the Mississippi. On the 12th of 
 March orders were published by the War De- 
 partment, placing Grant in chief command of 
 all the armies. 
 
 The position of General Meade, who was at 
 that time in command of the Army of the Poto- 
 mac, and who had won the important battle of 
 Gettysburg in the previous summer, underwent 
 a grave change through Grant's promotion. 
 Both Meade and Grant behaved very well. 
 Meade suggested to Grant that he might wish 
 to have immediately under him Sherman, who 
 had been serving with Grant in the West. He 
 begged him not to hesitate in making the 
 change if he thought it for the good of the ser- 
 vice. The work in hand, he said, was of such 
 vast importance, that the feelings and wishes of 
 no one person should stand in the way of select- 
 
50 General Grant. 
 
 ing the right men. He was willing himself to 
 serve to the best of his ability wherever placed. 
 Grant assured him that he had no thought of 
 moving him, and in his Memoirs, after relating 
 what had passed, he adds : " This incident gave 
 me even a more favorable opinion of Meade than 
 did his great victory at Gettysburg the July 
 before. It is men who wait to be selected, 
 and not those who seek, from whom we may 
 always expect the most efficient service." He 
 tried to make Meade's position as nearly as pos- 
 sible what it would have been had he himself 
 been away in Washington or elsewhere ; he 
 gave all orders for the movements of the Army 
 of the Potomac to Meade for execution, and to 
 avoid the necessity of having to give direct 
 orders himself, he established his headquarters 
 close to Meade's whenever he could. Meade's 
 position, however, was undoubtedly a somewhat 
 embarrassing one ; but its embarrassment was 
 not increased by soreness on his part, or by 
 want of delicacy on Grant's. 
 
 In the West, the great objects to be attained 
 by Sherman were the defeat of Johnston and 
 his army, and the occupation of Atlanta. These 
 objects he accomplished, proceeding afterwards 
 to execute his brilliant and famous march to 
 Savannah and the sea, sweeping the whole^ 
 
General Grant. 51 
 
 State of Georgia. In the East, the opposing 
 forces stood between the Federal and Confed- 
 erate capitals, and substantially in the same 
 relations to each other as when the war began 
 three years before. President Lincoln told 
 Grant, when he first saw him in private, that 
 although he had never professed to know how 
 campaigns should be conducted, and never 
 wanted to interfere in them, yet "procrasti- 
 nation on the part of commanders, and the 
 pressure from the people at the North and 
 Congress, which was always with him, forced 
 him into issuing his series of Military Orders. 
 He did not know but they were all wrong, and 
 did know that some of them were. What he 
 wanted," he continued, "was a general who 
 would take the responsibility and act ; he would 
 support him with all the power of the Govern- 
 ment." He added that he did not even ask to 
 know what Grant's plans were. But such is 
 human nature, that the next moment he 
 brought out a map of Virginia, showed Grant 
 two streams running into the Potomac, and 
 suggested a plan of his own for landing the 
 army between the mouths of these streams, 
 which would protect its flanks while it moved 
 out. " I listened respectfully," says Grant, 
 with dry humour, "but did not suggest that the 
 
52 General Grant. 
 
 same streams would protect Lee's flanks while 
 he was shutting us up." 
 
 In Grant the President had certainly found 
 a general who would take the responsibility, 
 would act, and would keep his plans to him- 
 self. To beat Lee and get possession of his 
 army, was the object. If Lee was beaten and 
 his army captured, the fall of Richmond must 
 necessarily follow. If Richmond were taken 
 by moving the army thither on transports up 
 the James River, but meanwhile Lee's army 
 were to remain whole and unimpaired, the end 
 of the war was not brought any nearer. But 
 the end of the war must be reached soon, or 
 the North might grow weary of continuing the 
 struggle. For three years the war had raged, 
 with immense losses on either side, and no de- 
 cisive consummation reached by either. If the 
 South could succeed in prolonging an indeci- 
 sive struggle- year after year still, the North 
 might probably grow tired of the contest, and 
 agree to a separation. Persuaded of this. Grant, 
 at the beginning of May 1864, crossed the Rap- 
 idan with the Army of the Potomac, and com- 
 menced the forty-three days' Campaign of the 
 Wilderness. 
 
 The Wilderness is a tract north of Richmond 
 between the Rapidan and the James River 
 
Genej-al Grant. 53 
 
 much cut up with streams and morasses, full 
 of broken ground, densely clothed with wood, 
 and thinly inhabited. The principal streams 
 between the Rapidan and the James River are 
 the branches of the Anna, uniting in the 
 Pamunkey, and the Chickahominy. The coun- 
 try was favoi'able for defence, and Lee was a 
 general to make the most of its advantages. 
 Grant was in an enemy's country, but, moving 
 by his left flank, was in connection with the 
 sea, of which the Northerners were masters, 
 and was abundantly supplied with everything. 
 Of artillery, in particular, he had so much that 
 he was embarrassed by it, and had to send some 
 of it away. Overwhelmingly superior in num- 
 bers and resources, he pressed steadily forward, 
 failing and repulsed sometimes, but coolly per- 
 severing. This campaign, of which the stages 
 are the battles of Chancellorsville, Spottsyl- 
 vania. North Anna and Cold Harbour, was 
 watched at the time in Europe with keen at- 
 tention, and is much better known than the 
 operations in the West. I shall not attempt 
 any account of it ; for its severity let the losses 
 of Grant's successful army speak. When he 
 crossed the Rapidan the Army of the Potomac 
 numbered 11 5,000 men; during the forty-three 
 days' campaign reinforcements were received 
 
54 General Grant. 
 
 amounting to 40,000 men more. When the 
 army crossed the James River, it was 116,000 
 strong, almost exactly the same strength as 
 at the beginning of the campaign. Thirty- 
 nine thousand men had been lost in forty- 
 three days. 
 
 A yet greater loss must have been incurred 
 had Grant attacked Lee's lines in front of Rich- 
 mond ; and therefore crossing the James River, 
 he invested, after failing to carry it by assault, 
 Petersburg, the enemy's important stronghold 
 south of Richmond. Winter came and passed. 
 Lee's army was safe in its lines, and Richmond 
 had not yet fallen ; but the Confederates' re- 
 sources were failing, their foes gathering, and 
 the end came visibly near. After sweeping 
 Georgia and taking Savannah in December, 
 Sherman turned north and swept the Caro- 
 linas, ready to join with Grant in moving upon 
 Lee in the spring. Sheridan made himself 
 master of the Shenandoah Valley, and closed 
 to the Confederates that great source of sup- 
 ply. Finally Grant, resuming operations in 
 March 1865, possessed himself of the outer 
 works of Petersburg, and of the railroad- by 
 which the place was supplied from the south- 
 west, and on the 3rd of April Petersburg was 
 evacuated. Then Grant proceeded to possess 
 
General Grant. 55 
 
 himself of the railroad by which Lee's army 
 and Richmond itself now drew their supplies. 
 Lee had already informed his government that 
 he could hold out no longer. The Confederate 
 President was at church when the despatch 
 arrived, the congregation were told that there 
 would be no evening service, and the authori- 
 ties abandoned Richmond that afternoon. In 
 the field there was some sharp fighting for a 
 day or two still ; but Lee's army was crumb- 
 ling away, and on the 9th of April he wrote to 
 Grant, requesting an interview with him for the 
 purpose of surrendering his army. Grant was 
 suffering from sick headache when the ofificer 
 bearing Lee's note reached him, "but the in- 
 stant I saw," he says, "the contents of the 
 note, I was cured." 
 
 Then followed, in the afternoon of that same 
 day, the famous interview at Appomattox Court 
 House. Grant shall himself describe the meet- 
 ing : 
 
 "When I had left camp that morning I had 
 not expected so soon the result that was then 
 taking place, and consequently was in rough 
 garb. I was without a sword, as I usually was 
 when on horseback in the field, and wore a sol- 
 dier's blouse for a coat, with the shoulder-straps 
 of my rank to indicate to the army who I was. 
 
56 General Grant. 
 
 When I went into the house I found General 
 Lee. We greeted each other, and, after shak- 
 ing hands, took our seats. 
 
 "What General Lee's feelings were I do not 
 know. As he was a man of much dignity, with 
 an impassible face, it was impossible to say 
 whether he felt inwardly glad that the end had 
 finally come, or felt sad over the result and was 
 too manly to show it. Whatever his feelings, 
 they were entirely concealed from my observa- 
 tion ; but my own feelings, 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 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. 
 
 " General Lee was dressed in a full uniform 
 which was entirely new, and was wearing a 
 sword of considerable value, very likely the 
 sword which had been presented by the State 
 of Virginia. In my rough travelling suit, the 
 uniform of a private with the straps of a lieu- 
 tenant-general, I must have contrasted very 
 strangely with a man so handsomely dressed, 
 six feet high and of faultless form. But this 
 was not a matter that I thought of until after- 
 wards. 
 
Genera I Grant. 57 
 
 " We soon fell into a conversation about old 
 army times. He remarked that he remembered 
 me well in the old army (of Mexico) ; and I told 
 him that as a matter of course I remembered him 
 perfectly, but from the difference in our rank 
 and years (there being about sixteen years' dif- 
 ference in our ages) I had thought it likely that 
 I had not attracted his attention sufficiently to 
 be remembered by him after such a long in- 
 terval. Our conversation grew so pleasant that 
 I almost forgot the object of our meeting. 
 After the conversation had run on in this style 
 for some time, General Lee called my atten- 
 tion to the object of our meeting, and said that 
 he had asked for this interview for the purpose 
 of getting from me the terms I proposed to 
 give his army. I said that I meant merely 
 that his army should lay down their arms, not 
 to take them up again during the continuance 
 of the war unless duly and properly ex- 
 changed." 
 
 Lee acquiesced, and Grant, who throughout 
 the interview seems to have behaved with true 
 delicacy and kindness, proceeded to write out 
 the terms of surrender. It occurred to him, as 
 he was writing, that it would be an unnecessary 
 humiliation to the officers to call upon them to 
 surrender their side-arms, and also that they 
 
58 General Grant. 
 
 would be glad to retain their private horses and 
 ejffects, and accordingly he inserted in the 
 terms that the surrender of arms and prop- 
 erty was not to include the side-arms, horses 
 and property of the officers. Lee remarked 
 that this would have a happy effect on the 
 army. Grant then said that most of the men 
 in Lee's ranks were, he supposed, small farm- 
 ers ; that the country had been so raided by 
 either army that it was doubtful whether they 
 would be able to put in a crop to carry them- 
 selves and their families through the next win- 
 ter without the aid of the horses they were then 
 riding ; that the United States did not want 
 them, and he would therefore give instructions 
 to let every man of the Confederate army, who 
 claimed to own a horse or mule, take the ani- 
 mal to his home. Again Lee remarked that 
 this would have a happy effect. 
 
 At half-past four Grant could telegraph to 
 the Secretary of War at Washington : " Gen- 
 eral Lee surrendered the army of Northern 
 Virginia this afternoon." As soon as the news 
 of the surrender became known. Grant's army 
 began to fire a salute of a hundred guns. Grant 
 instantly stopped it. 
 
 The war was at an end. Johnston surren- 
 dered to Sherman in North Carolina. Presi- 
 
General Grant. 59 
 
 dent Lincoln visited Richmond, which had been 
 occupied by the Army of the Potomac the day 
 after the Confederate Government abandoned 
 it. The President on his return to Washington 
 invited Grant, who also had now gone thither, to 
 accompany him to the theatre on the evening 
 of the 14th of April. Grant declined, because 
 he was to go off that evening to visit his chil- 
 dren who were at school in New Jersey ; when 
 he reached Philadelphia, he heard that the 
 President and Mr. Seward had been assassin- 
 ated. He immediately returned to Washington, 
 to find the joy there turned to mourning. With 
 this tragic event, and with the grand review in 
 the following month of Meade's and Sherman's 
 armies by the new President, Mr. Johnson, the 
 Memoirs end. 
 
 Modest for himself, Grant is boastful, as 
 Americans are apt to be, for his nation. He 
 says with perfect truth that troops who have \jr^ 
 
 fought a few battles and won, and followed up 
 their victories, improve upon what they were --,; 
 
 before to an extent that can hardly be counted 
 by percentage ; and that his troops and Sher- 
 man's which had gone through this training, 
 were by the end of the war become very good 
 and seasoned soldiers. But he is fond of add- 
 ing, in what I must call the American vein, 
 
 ^] 
 
6o General Grant 
 
 "better than any Ettropean soldiers." And the 
 reason assigned for this boast is in the Ameri- 
 can vein too : " Because they not only worked 
 hke a machine, but the machine thought. Euro- 
 pean armies know very little what they are 
 fighting for, and care less." Is the German 
 army a machine which does not think .'' Did 
 the French revolutionary armies know very 
 little what they were fighting for, and care 
 less ? Sainte-Beuve says charmingly that he 
 " cannot bear to have it said that he is the first 
 in anything ; it is not a thing that can be ad- 
 mitted, and these ways of classing people 
 give offence." German military men read 
 Grant's boast, and are provoked into replying 
 that the campaigns and battles of the Ameri- 
 can Civil War were mere struggles of militia ; 
 English military men say that Americans have 
 been steady enough behind breastworks and 
 entrenchments against regulars, but never in 
 the open field. Why cannot the Americans, 
 in speaking of their nation, take Sainte-Beuve's 
 happy and wise caution } 
 
 The point is worth insisting on, because to be 
 always seeking to institute comparisons, and 
 comparisons to the advantage of their own coun- 
 try, is with so many Americans a tic, a mania, 
 which every one notices in them, and which 
 
General Grant. 6i 
 
 sometimes drives their friends half to despair. 
 Recent greatness is always apt to be sensitive 
 and self-assertive ; let us remember Dr. Her- 
 mann Grimm on Goethe. German literature, as 
 a power, does not begin before Lessing ; if Ger- 
 many had possessed a great literature for six 
 centuries, with names in it like Dante, Mon- 
 taigne, Shakespeare, probably Dr. Hermann 
 Grimm would not have thought it necessary to 
 call Goethe the greatest poet that has ever 
 lived. But the Americans in the rage for com- 
 parison-making beat the world. Whatever ex- 
 cellence is mentioned, America must, if possible, 
 be brought in to balance or surpass it. That 
 fine and delicate naturalist, Mr. Burroughs, 
 mentions trout, and instantly he adds : " British 
 trout, by the way, are not so beautiful as our 
 own ; they are less brilliantly marked and have 
 much coarser scales, there is no gold or vermil- 
 ion in their colouring." Here superiority is 
 claimed ; if there is not superiority there must 
 be at least balance. Therefore in literature we 
 have "the American Walter Scott," the " Ameri- 
 can Wordsworth " ; nay, I see advertised The 
 Primer of American Literature. Imagine the 
 face of Philip or Alexander at hearing of a 
 Primer of Macedonian Literature ! Are we to 
 have a Primer of Canadian Literature too, and 
 
62 General Grant. 
 
 a Primer of Australian ? We are all contribu- 
 tories to one great literature — English Litera- 
 ture. The contribution of Scotland to this 
 literature is far more serious and important than 
 that of America has yet had time to be ; yet a 
 " Primer of Scotch Literature " would be an 
 absurdity. And these things are not only ab- 
 surd ; they are also retarding. 
 
 My opinion on any military subject is of 
 course worth very little, but I should have 
 thought that in what Napier calls "strength 
 and majesty " as a fighter, the American soldier, 
 if we are to institute these comparisons, had his 
 superiors ; though as brave as any one, he is too 
 ingenious, too mental, to be the perfection of a 
 fighting animal. Where the Yankee soldier has 
 an unrivalled advantage is in his versatility and 
 ingenuity ; dexterous, willing, suggestive, he 
 can turn his hand to anything, and is of twenty 
 trades at the same time with that of soldier. 
 Grant's Memoirs are full of proofs of this faculty, 
 which might perhaps be of no great use in a 
 campaign in the Low Countries, but was invalu- 
 able in such campaigns as those which Grant and 
 Sherman conducted in America. When the bat- 
 teries at Vicksburg were to be run with hired 
 river steamers, there were naturally but very few 
 masters or crews who were willing to accompany 
 
General Grant. 63 
 
 their vessels on this service of clanger. Volun- 
 teers were therefore called for from the army, 
 men who had any experience in river naviga- 
 gation. " Captains, pilots, mates, engineers, and 
 deck-hands, enough presented themselves," says 
 Grant, "to take five times the number of ves- 
 sels we were moving." The resource and 
 rapidity shown by the troops in the repair of 
 railroads wrecked by the enemy were marvellous. 
 In Sherman's Atlanta campaign, the Confeder- 
 ate cavalry lurking in his rear to burn bridges 
 and obstruct his communications had become so 
 disgusted at hearing trains go whistling by, 
 within a few hours after a bridge had been 
 burned, that they proposed to try blowing up 
 some of the tunnels. One of them said on this : 
 "No use, boys; old Sherman carries duplicate 
 tunnels with him, and will replace them as fast 
 as you can blow them up ; better save your 
 powder ! " 
 
 But a leader to use these capable and in- 
 telligent forces, to use all the vast resources of 
 the North, was needed, a leader wise, cool, firm, 
 bold, persevering, and at the same time, as Car- 
 dinal Mazarin says, heureux ; and such a leader 
 the United States found in General Grant. 
 
 He concludes his Memoirs by some advice to 
 his own country and some remarks on ours. 
 
64 General Grant. 
 
 The United States, he says, are going on as if 
 in the greatest security, " when they have not 
 the power to resist an invasion by the fleets of 
 fourth-rate European Powers for a time until we 
 could prepare for them." The United States 
 " should have a good navy, and our sea-coast 
 defences should be put in the finest possible 
 condition. Neither of these cost much when it 
 is considered where the money goes and what 
 we get in return." 
 
 The tone and temper of his remarks on Eng- 
 land, and on her behaviour during the war, are 
 in honourable contrast with the angry acrimony 
 shown by many who should have known better. 
 He regretted, he said, the exasperation. "The 
 hostility of England to the United States, dur- 
 ing our rebellion, was not so much real as it was 
 apparent. It was the hostility of the leaders of 
 one political party. England and the United 
 States are natural allies, and should be the best 
 of friends." 
 
 The Memoirs stop, as I have said, in 1865, 
 and do not embrace Grant's Presidency, his 
 journey to Europe, his financial disaster, his 
 painful illness and death. As to his financial 
 disaster, I will repeat what one of Grant's best 
 friends, a man of great business faculty and of 
 great fortune, remarked to me. I had been 
 
General Grant. 65 
 
 saying, what one says so easily, that it was a 
 pity Grant had suffered himself to be drawn in 
 by speculatorsy "Yes," answered his friend, 
 " it was a pity. But see how it happened, and 
 put yourself in Grant's place. Like Grant, you 
 may have a son to whom you are partial, and 
 like Grant, you have no knowledge of business. 
 Had you been, like Grant, in a position to make 
 it worth while for a leader in business and 
 finance to come to you, saying that your son had 
 a quite exceptional talent for these matters, that 
 it was a thousand pities his talent should be 
 thrown away, ' give him to me and I will make 
 a man of him,' would you not have been flattered 
 in your parental pride, would you not have 
 yielded .>' This is what happened to Grant, and 
 all his financial misfortunes flowed from hence." 
 I listened, and could not deny that most proba- 
 bly I should have been flattered to my ruin, as 
 Grant was. 
 
 Grant's Memoirs are a mine of interesting 
 things; I have but scratched the surface and 
 presented a few samples. When I began, I did 
 not know that the book had been reprinted in 
 England ; I find that it has,* and that its circu- 
 lation here, though trifling indeed compared to 
 that in America, has been larger than I sup- 
 * By Messrs. Sampson Low, Marston & Co., 
 
66 General Grant. 
 
 posed. But certainly the book has not been 
 read here anything like so much as it deserves. 
 It contains a gallen.- of portraits, characters of 
 generals who served in the \\-ar, for which alone 
 the book, if it contained nothing else, would be 
 well worth reading. But after all, its gxeat 
 value is in the character which, quite simplv 
 and unconsciously, it draws of Grant himself. 
 The Americans are too self-laudator)-, too apt to 
 force the tone and thereby, as Sainte-Beuve 
 says, to give offence ; the best way for them to 
 make us forgive and forget this is to pro- 
 duce what is simple and sterling. Instead 
 of Primers of American Literature, let them 
 bring forth more I^Iaxims of Poor Richard ; in- 
 stead of assurances that they are " the greatest 
 nation upon earth," let them give us more 
 Lees, Lincolns, Shermans, and Grants. 
 
 Matthew Arnold.