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GRANT MONUMENT 
 ASSOCIATION- 
 
 Grants 
 Banquet 
 
 Thursday Evening 
 April 27th, J899« 
 
 gPEECHES OF.,.. 
 
 Hon. J. P. DOLLIVER and 
 Mr. AUGUSTUS THOMAS 
 
PRESENTED TO THE 
 
 Long Island Historical Society 
 
 BY 
 
\ M J* 
 
 OPEECHES OF Hon. J, P. DOLLIVER 
 AND Mr. AUGUSTUS THOMAS 
 AT THE BANQUET GIVEN IN 
 CELEBRATION OF THE SEVENTY- 
 SEVENTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE 
 BIRTH OF GENERAL U. S. GRANT, 
 AT "THE ASTORIA" ON THURSDAY, 
 APRIL TWENTY-SEVENTH, *899 
 
 I 
 
i 
 
 GRANT'S BIRTHDAY.- 
 
 April Twenty-seventh, J 899. 
 
Gen. Wager Swayne Presided at the Banquet* 
 
 The banqicet being finished General Swayne 
 called the guests to order and said: 
 
 Gentlemen : On the banks of the Hudson, within 
 the City limits, the people of this City, with the approval 
 of the State and Nation have erected a mausoleum as a 
 monument to personal character, to magnificent achieve- 
 ment, and to patriotism ! The Committee under whose 
 auspices that monument was erected, and by whose care 
 it is preserved, also each year on the birthday of the hero 
 invite us, by an assemblage such as this, to further com- 
 memorate his virtues, inculcate his example and immor- 
 talize his memory by stimulating in ourselves those things 
 which were in him, which we are here to celebrate, that 
 he to that extent may live again in us. The man, the 
 motives and the cause which have thus brought us here, 
 could not well have been more exalted, nor could the 
 situation of our country well be happier or more glorious 
 than at present, nor the circumstances under which we 
 meet be more enjoyable. To all of these, gentlemen, I 
 bid you welcome, in the name of the Committee, and 
 rejoice with you that we may so enjoy them together. 
 
 And as the first to give expression to those thoughts 
 which are appropriate, I have the pleasure of introducing 
 to you the Honorable Jonathan P. Dolliver, now and for 
 years past a distinguished and valuable member of the 
 Congress of the United States. 
 
seen the Canon of "Westminster open the 
 doors of that venerable monument to admit 
 the silent American soldier into the house- 
 hold of English spoken fame. (Applause*) 
 The unchallenged place of General Grant 
 in history expresses the value of his service to 
 his own nation and to his own age and to all 
 nations and all ages. Without a trace of selfish 
 ambition in his entire career, he was in a high 
 sense from his youth up guided by an inward 
 monition that he was to play a supreme part 
 in the arena of National affairs. Twice in 
 his life, by his own modest statement, he 
 distinctly felt within himself an intimation of 
 the future: once on the day he graduated 
 at West Point and again after Vicksburg fell. 
 It may be an idle fancy, but it is not hard to 
 believe, that every step he took— from the 
 farm to the Academy, from the Academy 
 to the frontier, from the frontier through the 
 Mexican campaign, and thence to private 
 life, a life of toil and self suppression, from 
 which, with a timid and hesitating request 
 for a small command, he emerged into the 
 Union Army — was part of the preparation, 
 the post-graduate course for the full equip- 
 ment of this mysterious man. The greatest 
 
of his lieutenants said, "To me he is a 
 mystery, and I believe he is a mystery to 
 himself." If he had said to his classmates, 44 1 
 will one day take Scott's place on Review," 
 he would have been laughed out of the Army. 
 If, at Vicksburg, he had announced that he 
 was the one general in the service able to 
 bring the Rebellion to an end, he would have 
 gone the way of all the others. Yet both 
 these ideas were in his head, and we cannot 
 regret that in the shadow of the end, when 
 in pain and anguish he was writing the story 
 of his public life, he was moved to throw 
 this light upon the hidden life he lived within 
 himself. There are those who impeach the 
 whole social fabric because it imposes upon 
 all a strenuous struggle for existence, and 
 we have often heard that opportunity alone 
 makes the difference between failure and 
 success. That is the philosophy of a little 
 world ; for we know that without burdens 
 there is no strength, and that in exposed 
 places, where the storms of all skies beat 
 upon it, there grows a rugged fibre of man- 
 hood which is the master of opportunity, a 
 victor over circumstances, a crowned athlete 
 in the games of fortune and achievement. 
 
General Grant belongs to the new 
 departure, which dates from I860* Though 
 a man of mature years, he can scarcely he 
 said to have lived before that time* He 
 did not take enough interest in the Army 
 to retain his commission, nor in his Missouri 
 farm to make a living out of it, nor in 
 the leather business in Galena to go back 
 to lock up the store after he heard of the 
 fall of Fort Sumpter. He had only voted 
 once and his politics were so ambiguous, 
 that, with the inheritance of a Whig, he 
 joined a Know Nothing lodge, and while 
 his sympathies v/ere with Douglas, he drilled 
 the Lincoln Wideawakes* It almost looks 
 as if Providence needing him for the new 
 age, kept him clear and free from the con- 
 fusion of many tongues that preceded it* It 
 is well nigh impossible for us to make our 
 way through the political wilderness of fifty 
 years ago* The most pathetic thing in the 
 history of the Nation is the picture of our 
 fathers poring for generations over the 
 musty volumes of the old debates— wearing 
 the Federalist and Madison papers to the 
 covers — in their vain and hopeless search for 
 the foundation of the faith* Washington 
 
grandly comprehended the Constitution he 
 had helped to make, but this did not keep 
 the legislature of Virginia from disowning 
 its authority while he yet lived in honored 
 retirement at Mt. Vernon. "Webster, supreme 
 among the giants of those days, vindicated 
 the National Institutions in speeches that 
 have become classic in the literature of our 
 tongue* But nobody can read them without 
 a sense of humiliation that his antagonists 
 were able to dog the steps of that lofty 
 argument with the minutes of the Hartford 
 Convention, showing Massachusetts on the 
 very precipice of treason before she had 
 finished building Bunker Hill Monument 
 ( laughter ) . Jackson quit the game of 
 politics long enough to swear his mighty 
 oath, "By the Eternal, the Union must be 
 and shall be preserved," but that did not 
 prevent the State in which he was born 
 from organizing her people against the 
 Federal Government, while old soldiers of 
 the Revolution still survived among them* 
 Little by little the Nation had shrivelled 
 and diminished, and the important States 
 increased until, as older men among us can 
 remember, the money lenders of Europe 
 
refused to take the Bonds of the United 
 States unless they were endorsed by the 
 State of Virginia ( laughter ). They coolly 
 anticipated that they would be able to locate 
 the State of Virginia after the United States 
 of America had disappeared from the map 
 of the earth. 
 
 I would not heedlessly disparage the 
 statesmen of that period. If they were 
 called to deal with, a situation to which they 
 were not equal, it was one for which they 
 were not responsible. James Buchanan was 
 not in any sense an ordinary man. He 
 was all his life a leader among men, though 
 left at the end of his generation impotently 
 trying to answer elemental and volcanic 
 questions with the dead phrases of an obsolete 
 vocabulary. The conclusion had come. The 
 time for rewriting the Constitution was at 
 hand. The joint debate of lawyers had 
 become an offence to heaven as well as a 
 nuisance among men. The shadows upon 
 the path of the Republic had grown too 
 dense to walk in. Yet the truth was never 
 altogether without witnesses. There were 
 always some eyes that could see and some 
 ears that could hear. But the mobs that 
 
dragged Anthony Burns through the streets 
 of Boston, what did they care for the testi- 
 mony of John Quincy Adams, still eloquent 
 in the grave ? And the champions of free- 
 dom worn out with their long vigil in the 
 night of slavery, frantically denouncing the 
 Constitution as a Covenant with Hell, what 
 had they learned from the chosen son of 
 New England, who, in the debate with 
 Hayne had filled the old Senate Chamber, 
 (where the Supreme Court now sits), with 
 an intellectual splendor which lights up its 
 narrow walls until this day? (Applause.) 
 
 Statesmen and people were in the dark 
 together, and while few could decern the 
 signs of the times, and none dare to look 
 the future in the face, the dawn was nearer 
 than any thought or hoped; for within 
 two years from the day the militia of 
 Virginia paraded about the scaffold of John 
 Brown, the soul of that poor old immortal 
 mad man was marching before the mightest 
 armed host the world ever saw, upon whose 
 banners were written the sublime promises 
 of Public Liberty. 
 
 That was our heroic age, and out of 
 it came forth our ideal heroes: Lincoln and 
 
But, "Such a criticism of military skill," if 
 you will allow me to use the words of Mr. 
 Blaine, "is idle chatter in the face of an 
 unbroken career of victory." When he was 
 appointed Lieutenant General and placed in 
 command of all the Armies of the Union 
 he exercised military control over a greater 
 number of men than any General since the 
 invention of fire-arms. In the campaigns of 
 J 864 and J 865 the Armies of the Union 
 contained in the aggregate not less than a 
 million men. The movements of all these 
 vast forces were kept in harmony by his 
 comprehensive mind and in the grand con- 
 summation which insured Union and Liberty, 
 his name became inseparably associated with 
 the true glory of his country. 
 
 I care nothing for Alexander or Caesor 
 or Napoleon. So far as I can make out 
 not one of them is entitled to the respect 
 of civilized men. Not one of them stood 
 for an idea worth fighting for, much less 
 worth dying for. The Duke of Weimar 
 used to tell his friends when they talked to 
 him of Napoleon, to be of good courage — 
 "This Napoleonism is unjust, a falsehood, 
 and cannot last." It did not last, and to- 
 
day there is hardly a trace of the Little 
 Corsican in Europe except his grave* There 
 can be no great soldier without a great 
 cause, and no cause is great that is not 
 right* It was the sublime fortune of 
 Ulysses S* Grant to rise to the Chief Com- 
 mand of an Army, whose line of march 
 was upon the highway of human progress; 
 which carried with its muskets the future 
 of civilization and in its heart the sovereign 
 will of God. (Applause*) 
 
 The French essayist to whose grotesque 
 commentary on General Grant as a soldier 
 I have before alluded, discerned at least one 
 thing in him for a gtudgmg eulogy* He 
 says that he was "A good citizen*" "With- 
 out intending it he has touched the secret 
 of this unique career* both in the field and 
 in the Capitol — the secret of all real service 
 of mankind — the thing that is making kings 
 ridiculous and thrones unnecessary* which 
 has abolished the aristocracy of the sword and 
 made that awkward and absurd weapon no 
 longer the master but the obedient servant of 
 the State* The feature of our Gvil "War least 
 comprehended by foreign critics* and only 
 partially comprehended by ourselves* was the 
 
fact that as soon as a conflict was over all 
 sides were willing to put an end to strife 
 and to take up the broken relations of civil 
 life in harmony and good will* From a 
 human standpoint the advice of General 
 Scott to Mr* Seward to "Let the erring 
 sisters go in peace," contained a measure of 
 wisdom; for it must have made men sick 
 at heart to think of Gvil War with its 
 awful ministry of blood and its legacy still 
 more terrible of fued and passion and sullen 
 malice left over to plague the Nation long 
 after the victory of arms was won* A 
 mere statesman in the place of Lincoln and 
 a mere soldier in the place of Grant might 
 indeed have maintained the Government at 
 Washington and overthrown the Rebellion 
 in the field* But the world was entitled to 
 a larger outcome of these four tempestuous 
 years — the new birth of freedom* the new 
 National unity, the new outlook of the Re- 
 public in the midst of the ages* There were 
 voices heard that lifted the Gvil War above 
 all bloodshed of history ; one at the beginning 
 saying with tender eloquence, "We are not 
 enemies, but friends n ; the other at the end, 
 in words that transfigured the face of victory 
 
with a divine illumination, saying, "Let us 
 have peace*" Is it any wonder that within 
 a single generation every evil passion of the 
 strife is dead, every bitter memory of the 
 past forgotten? Is it any wonder that the 
 boys who cheered the defenders of Vicksburg 
 as they stacked their arms; who divided 
 their rations with the army of Northern 
 Virginia while Grant and Lee sat down to 
 talk together as comrades and countrymen, 
 have done their part, with the boys in Gray, 
 to bring in the new era of American patriot- 
 ism? Volumes have been written to explain 
 why the Rebellion came to naught, and dis- 
 pute has followed dispute as to which army 
 was victorious in this engagement or in that, 
 while some have even claimed that the South 
 was never whipped, but only wore itself 
 out whipping us* But here is a victory in 
 which both the old armies have a share — 
 that rich and splendid conquest of the hearts 
 of men: noblier and worthier in the sight 
 of Heaven than captive trophies or the 
 spoils of war* 
 
 It was once in some quarters a fashion to 
 exaggerate the reputation of General Grant as 
 a soldier as a background on which to draw 
 
a mean picture of his figure in civil life* 
 I have no sympathy with any such opinion. 
 It is not credible that God endowed a man 
 with the faculties required to order the 
 steps of a million men in arms and at the 
 same time left his eyes holden that he 
 should not see the needs of his age and the 
 destiny of his country. "What man of his 
 time had a clearer appreciation of the value 
 of the Public Credit or did as mucn he to es- 
 tablish the disordered finances of the Gvil 
 War upon a safe foundation. (Applause.) 
 When he took the oath of office in 1869 
 he found the country filled with clamor 
 about the payment of the public debt, 
 some demanding its settlement in depreciated 
 notes; others calling for new issues of 
 paper promises, the cheap and easy product 
 of the engraver's art, with which to wipe 
 out the bonds which had been issued for 
 the common defense. Into that noisy con- 
 troversy came this calm and immovable 
 man and from the East Portico of the 
 Capitol uttered words that have become part 
 of the National character, "Let it be under- 
 stood that no repudiator of one farthing 
 of the National Debt will be trusted in 
 
any public place/* and from that hour the 
 credit of the great Republic, without limit 
 and without terms, has been as good as 
 shining gold in all the market places of 
 the earth* (Applause*) 
 
 I count it also as a part of General 
 Grant's place in history that he gave the 
 sanction of his office to the most benignant 
 treaty ever drawn between two nations — 
 the treaty by which a deep-seated inter- 
 national difference was submitted to a high 
 tribunal instead of being made a cause of 
 War between two kindred peoples, which in 
 the order of Providence are to stand side 
 by side for the freedom of the world* 
 (Applause*) Thus the man of war becomes 
 the advocate of the world's peace, and 
 turning to his own countrymen in his second 
 appearance to take the oath as President, he 
 makes a confession of his faith in the 
 future of our race, so serene and devout 
 that it reflects the inspired visions of old, 
 and gives reality to the rapt aspirations of 
 the poets and prophets of all centuries* 
 
 In his last annual message General 
 Grant laments the fact that he was 
 "Called to the office of chief executive 
 
without any previous political training/* 
 He was too busy in the years that inter- 
 vened between his auction of stock and 
 farm machinery on the little Missouri home- 
 stead and his entrance into the White House 
 to learn much about politics, either as a 
 science or an art* But whatever he lacked 
 in the experience that makes the seasoned 
 politician, he had at least learned the most 
 essential lesson in the education of an Amer- 
 ican statesman : that the people can be trusted 
 to reach a just conclusion in the settlement 
 of all questions which affect their welfare* It 
 was that steady confidence that enabled him. 
 when the Santo Domingo treaty was rejected 
 by the Senate in a storm of vituperation from 
 which even the President did not escape, to 
 appeal to the people of the United States 
 and in the language of his special message, 
 to seek a decision from 44 That tribunal whose 
 convictions so seldom err and against whose 
 will I have no policy to enforce." (Ap- 
 plause.) Because he believed in his country- 
 men, he had faith in his country; and he 
 expressed the firm conviction that the civil- 
 ized world is tending toward government by 
 the people through their chosen representa- 
 
tives. 44 1 do not share," said he in his second 
 inaugural, 44 in the apprehension held by- 
 many as to the danger of governments 
 being weakened or destroyed by reason of 
 the extension of their territory. Applause*) 
 Commerce, education, rapid transit of thought 
 and matter by telegraph have changed all 
 this." It is not possible to think of him in 
 the midst of such problems as now besets 
 our affairs, deliberately adding to the Na- 
 tional burden by defaming his country in 
 order to exalt the motives of a mob of 
 swift footed barbarians in the Phillipine 
 Islands* At least once in his administration, 
 at a crisis in the Cuban situation, he ordered 
 the Navy to prepare for action, and if the 
 brief conflict with Spain, which the present 
 government was not able to avoid, had come 
 in his time, it would simply have anticipated 
 the grave events of the past year ; leaving 
 us twenty years ago, with vastly less prep- 
 aration, exactly where we are to-day. In 
 that case who can imagine General Grant 
 directing the Navy to throw its victories 
 into the sea, or ordering our brave little 
 armies of occupation to run headlong for 
 their transports, leaving life and property 
 
and the social order in the keeping of half- 
 naked tribes* (Applause*) It requires no 
 fanciful interpretation of the biography of 
 General Grant to hear the voice of the old 
 Commander, the voice of the battle fields on 
 which the flag of the American Republic 
 was sanctified to the service of civilization, 
 bidding his countrymen go forward in the 
 fear of God, strong and patient under the 
 responsibilities of their day and generation. 
 
 You have builded here a stately tomb 
 which shall bear his name and guard his 
 dust till the Heavens be no more. "When 
 the Nation builds to him a monument in its 
 Capitol, as they one day will, it will not 
 bear the inscription of his name, for like 
 the column of Waterloo, proposed for Well- 
 ington in the fiction of Victor Hugo, instead 
 of the figure of a man it will bear on high 
 the statute of a people. (Prolonged Ap- 
 plause.) 
 
SPEECH OF Mr. AUGUSTUS THOMAS. 
 
 General Swayne in introducing Mr Thomas said : 
 
 "We have with us to-night a leading author and 
 playwright, Mi, Augustus H. Thomas* 
 
 .. CHAIRMAN and Gentlemen of the 
 
 troducing me is no greater than the will- 
 ingness with which I waive all claims to 
 the capital H that he so generously placed 
 in my name, (laughter) and, while I am 
 emboldened to take this seeming exception 
 to one utterance of his, I should like, as a 
 man coming from that section of our country 
 lying West of the Mississippi, to say, for 
 its credit, that I saw nothing in the splendid 
 oration of the gentlemen from Iowa (Mr. 
 Dolliver) to indicate that he needed sleep. 
 (Laughter.) The Toastmaster, in introduc- 
 ing him, remarked the astonishing fact that 
 the orator had arrived in the City and had 
 consented to keep his appointment at this 
 
 Association : 
 
 The Toastmaster's pleasure in in- 
 
dinner without the preparation of slumber. 
 We Western folks don't prepare for a ban- 
 quet that way. (Laughter.) We generally 
 observe a rigid preliminary fast. (Laugh- 
 ter.) Nap after the feast, yes, not before. 
 (Laughter.) I am inclined to think that 
 General Swayne was influenced by over- 
 hearing a story that the distinguished at- 
 torney on my left (Mr. Elihu Root) told 
 me during the dinner. A resident of Phil- 
 adelphia went to his doctor to get a rem- 
 edy for imsomnia. The doctor made a 
 minute examination of the man, questioning 
 him closely, and said, "Well, there doesn't 
 seem to be anything the matter with you, 
 sir, certainly nothing organic. I think, if 
 you were to take a glass of beer, some light 
 beer, let us say Lemp's," made in St. Louis 
 (laughter). I am also requested to adver- 
 tise the Jamison whiskey (laughter). The 
 doctor said. "Drink one glass of the beer 
 before retiring, and I think you'll find 
 your insomnia overcome." 
 
 "Why, bless your doctor," the Phila- 
 delphian answered, "I sleep all right at 
 night, it's the daytime that bothers me." 
 (Laughter.) 
 
I think it was General Horace Porter 
 (applause) who said: "Boston is not a 
 locality, it is a state of mind." (Laughter.) 
 To me, Grant is not a personage* He is an 
 epoch. I was not, as has been suggested, a 
 school boy when Grant was making history. 
 I have no recollection of his deeds. All my 
 inspiration, at that time, was drawn from the 
 bottle, that source of much of our present 
 enthusiasm. I sprang to arms, when the 
 war began, but the arms were my mother's. 
 (Laughter) That tragic period, so full of 
 happening for many of the gentlemen here, 
 was to me a morning and a night. 
 
 My own boy, aged four, said to me yes- 
 terday, "Father, don't you remember that 
 day when we went to the beach? There 
 was a wood fire in the big fireplace at 
 night." He had been to the beach nearly 
 every summer day in his little life, and 
 every winter evening had seen a wood fire 
 in the big fireplace. For him, the water and a 
 blazing fire epitomized his life, and upon his 
 tender memory, the summer and the winter, 
 which the beach and hearth expressed, were 
 a single day. I understood him, because my 
 own earliest recollections are so compressed. 
 
There is a morning, filled with the music 
 of martial bands, and the color of waving 
 banners* I am just tall enough to reach the 
 door knob with my mother's help — A booted 
 trooper at the door asks for Captain Thomas, 
 while in the gutter stand two champing 
 steeds, with saddles of black and brass, deep 
 as the baby's cradle* I see my father ride 
 through the city Park, and note, with won- 
 derment, my mother's tears. The sound of 
 "Grant — Grant — Grant — n is through it all 
 like some infiltrating and saturating echo — 
 that meaningless sound of ' ' Grant," which 
 seems to have some trouble with another 
 called " Henry Donelson," and a third entity, 
 Pittsburg, that is always landing. There are 
 shouts and salvos, and much marching of 
 men. "General Lyon No, 4," and, on a 
 banner, the picture of a slight, and blue-eyed 
 soldier, with, above, the legend, "Thy Radi- 
 calism saved Missouri." Mingling with the 
 cheers that greet these colors, there is the 
 derisive song: 
 
 "It was on the tenth of May, 
 Captain Kelly was away, 
 The Hessians surrounded Camp Jackson." 
 
 Years afterwards, I learned that the 
 "Hessians" were the loyal Germans of St. 
 
Louis, who marched to her defence under 
 Frank P. Blair. (Applause*) The man, 
 whose radicalism had taken the State from 
 her intention to secede, and into the doubtful 
 column, was the hero of Wilson Creek, the 
 same Lyon, who so won the confidence of 
 the Northern adherents, when the national 
 Arsenal was menaced, and when his super- 
 iors, fearing; that some nearby buildings 
 would make it impossible for him to observe 
 an approaching enemy, asked Lyon how he 
 proposed to meet that difficulty. He an- 
 swered, 44 When I hear that Price has started, 
 I shall blow up those buildings with a few 
 kegs of gunpowder/* 
 
 Another happening of that Homeric day, 
 is a Fair, where my mother holds me high 
 in the crowd, that I may see a child, but 
 little older than myself, impersonating the 
 "Old "Woman who lived in a Shoe, and had 
 so many children she didn't know what to 
 do." I am told that the little girl with the 
 cap and spectacles is Nellie Grant, selling her 
 dolls to buy clothes for soldiers; and now 
 there drifts into my ideas vaguely the con- 
 ception that this echo, this Shibboleth, this 
 "Grant" is man, a father, not nearly so 
 
kind, and low-voiced as my own father, not 
 so tender, nor so full of laughter, nor so long 
 away from home as my father, but still a 
 father, tangible and human, and, maybe, 
 good to that little girl, at whom the men 
 and women wave their handkerchiefs. 
 
 Then there is the illumination, when the 
 night is come* The candles stuck in pota- 
 toes behind the tri-colored tissue paper in 
 the windows, and the tar barrels are crack- 
 ling in the street. Suddenly all is dark. I 
 am frightened with an undefined menace. 
 The young mother, in her night-robe is 
 kneeling with me at the open window, one 
 blanket above us both — the sky filled with 
 the twinkle of the summer stars, and the 
 air heavy with the weedy smell from the 
 bottom lands of Illinois. Yet it is none of 
 these, but rather a tump-tump-tump-like 
 pulse, a rythm, that my mother whispers is 
 the tramp of soldiers. 
 
 It was the heart-beat of a startled nation. 
 
 I can recall it now, with all the mystery 
 and magic of the potent and unseen, and it 
 is moving to some ghost-like place, called 
 "Island No. 10" or " Vicksburg," and 
 Grant is there in whispers. 
 
That is my "Grant," a member of that 
 Apocrypha of the nursery, to which belong 1 
 the Bluebeards, and the Giant-Killers* 
 
 I saw him once, in the Spring of J870 f 
 at "Washington, when the Senate and House 
 had gathered in the Hall of Representatives, 
 at the funeral of General George Thomas* 
 (Applause) The imperial Blaine was in the 
 chair, and in a semicircle of seats in front 
 of his desk, were the Cabinet and a little, 
 high-shouldered, round-headed man with 
 whiskers* Grant! I felt the same shock 
 that a little girl of to-day, full of "Alice in 
 Wonderland" would feel, if she were shown 
 Lewis Carroll, and told "that is your 
 story." 
 
 But that wasn't Grant, any more than 
 those ashes on the banks of the Hudson are 
 Grant* That was only Grant's contact 
 with humanity — the visible point, through 
 which circled and passed, the benign and 
 sympathetic currents of a universe* And 
 when I heard the guns of the Raleigh, the 
 other day, roaring their salute to the white, 
 and silent edifice on Riverside, while the 
 multitudes upon two shores made answer 
 for the nation, I felt that the Grant of my 
 
boyhood, that awesome factor, which had 
 been alarm and lullaby, was here again. 
 
 Alexander was a soldier, impulsively and 
 unevenly personal. He ordered for the wife 
 of Darius the funeral of an Empress, and 
 gave the ransom of a kingdom to a com- 
 mon soldier, who had shared the burden of 
 a mule; but he destroyed the independence 
 of the Grecian States, and enforced the sep- 
 ulture of Democracy for nearly two thousand 
 years* Napoleon was a brilliant Captain, 
 invulnerable in attack, and the incarnation 
 of Empire, but he was so jealous of pref- 
 erence, that he wrestled with the Pope at 
 his coronation, in a scrabble to be the first 
 into his chariot. Grant wore an old coat, 
 that a vanquished commander might not 
 feel the pomp of victory, and when he 
 refused to take the side-arms of the officers, 
 and the horses of the private soldiers, 
 though he ran counter to the rancor and 
 fever of his day he anticipated the gener- 
 osity of a generation yet unborn (Applause.) 
 
 The Chairman — "The capital H which 
 I put into Mr. Thomas' name, was the one 
 he left out of the name of General George 
 K. Thomas." (Laughter.) 
 
 Mr. Thomas — "I dropped the H in def- 
 erence to the Member of Parliament on my 
 right. (Mr. Jamison.) (Laughter.) 
 
) 
 
1 
 
CIA!