Ulysses S. Grant

“ Though dead, Ulysses Grant still lives on; the attributes of his personal nobility as a man, his patriotism as a citizen of the Republic, his ability and clear perspective as a statesman, his genius as a warrior, his magnanimity and kindness to a chivalrous, heroic but fallen foe, will ever typify his greatness in civic virtues and valiant deeds. ”

“ Ulysses S. Grant proves to the world that he is not above being a man because he has been elected President, and that he has no objection to going out to dinner, provided the viands be substantial and all the beverages pure. ”

“ He was born in a humble dwelling at Point Pleasant, Ohio, in April, 1822. The year following his birth the family removed to Georgetown, Ohio, where they lived many years.
The father of Ulysses was a farmer and manufacturer of leather. The boy did not like the leather business, but he did like work on the farm. When only seven years old, he hauled all the wood which was needed in the home and at the leather factory from the forest, a mile from the village.
Ulysses S. Grant. ”

“ This willingness to take risks was a keynote of Grant’s character, and many of his after-successes were due to it.
Schooldays over, Ulysses served for a while in his father’s tanyard; but he took a violent aversion to the business, and an equally strong craving for ‘an education.’ It was probably this desire for education, rather than any keen thirst for military life or glory, that caused him to seek admission to West Point—the Sandhurst of the United States—where a good general education was added to the necessary military course at little or no cost to the student. ”

“ Meade's hesitation after Gettysburg and Grant's achievement at Vicksburg between them decided him. Grant was now appointed to supreme command of all the armies of the Union.
Ulysses S. Grant stands out in history as one of those men to whom a uniform seems to be salvation. As a young man he had fought with credit in the Mexican war; later he had left the army, and seemingly gone to the dogs. ”

“ Another one who will ever be shining bright in the hearts and minds of the whole negro race, and what shall I say of him who led us to the greatest victory the world has ever known—Ulysses S. Grant, the loved of all nations and the pride of all lands; he whom the world admires, to call the blessed, who mourned for this land to see the end, and God did help him in ways that man knew not, save himself and his God. ”

“ I have no hobby of my own with regard to the negro, either to effect his freedom or to continue his bondage. If Congress pass any law and the President approves, I am willing to execute it. Laws are certainly as binding on the minority as the majority. I do not believe even in the discussion of the propriety of laws and official orders by the army. One enemy at a time is enough and when he is subdued it will be time enough to settle personal differences.
I do not want to command a department because I believe I can do better service in the field. ”

“ They were in a deplorable condition and must have starved but for the support the government gave them. They had generally made their escape with a team or two, sometimes a yoke of oxen with a mule or a horse in the lead. A little bedding besides their clothing and some food had been thrown into the wagon. All else of their worldly goods were abandoned and appropriated by their former neighbors; for the Union man in Missouri who staid at home during the rebellion, if he was not immediately under the protection of the National troops, was at perpetual war with his neighbors. ”

“ I was next in rank, and he telegraphed me the same day to report at department headquarters at Corinth. I was not informed by the dispatch that my chief had been ordered to a different field and did not know whether to move my headquarters or not. I telegraphed asking if I was to take my staff with me, and received word in reply: "This place will be your headquarters. You can judge for yourself." I left Memphis for my new field without delay, and reached Corinth on the 15th of the month. General Halleck remained until the 17th of July ”

“ Orders of the government prohibited the expulsion of the negroes from the protection of the army, when they came in voluntarily. Humanity forbade allowing them to starve. With such an army of them, of all ages and both sexes, as had congregated about Grand Junction, amounting to many thousands, it was impossible to advance. There was no special authority for feeding them unless they were employed as teamsters, cooks and pioneers with the army; but only able-bodied young men were suitable for such work. ”

“ As we approached the brow of the hill from which it was expected we could see Harris' camp, and possibly find his men ready formed to meet us, my heart kept getting higher and higher until it felt to me as though it was in my throat. I would have given anything then to have been back in Illinois, but I had not the moral courage to halt and consider what to do; I kept right on. When we reached a point from which the valley below was in full view I halted. ”

“ Nothing can be imagined more unacceptable to General Grant's native disposition than the narration for the public of his own life story. But in his circumstances, the question was not one of sentiment, but only of duty to those who were dependent upon him. The task was undertaken resolutely, and, in spite of physical weakness and suffering, was carried on with as high and faithful energy as he had shown in any campaign of the war. On March 3, 1885, he was restored to the army with the rank of general on the retired list with full pay. ”

“ Jefferson Davis said in a speech, delivered at La Grange, Mississippi, before the secession of that State, that he would agree to drink all the blood spilled south of Mason and Dixon's line if there should be a war. The young men who would have the fighting to do in case of war, believed all these statements, both in regard to the aggressiveness of the North and its cowardice. They, too, cried out for a separation from such people. The great bulk of the legal voters of the South were men who owned no slaves ”

“ While I was in pursuit of General Lee, the President went to Richmond in company with Admiral Porter, and on board his flagship. He found the people of that city in great consternation. The leading citizens among the people who had remained at home surrounded him, anxious that something should be done to relieve them from suspense. General Weitzel was not then in the city, having taken offices in one of the neighboring villages after his troops had succeeded in subduing the conflagration which they had found in progress on entering the Confederate capital. ”

“ CHAPTER XIV FROM SPOTTSYLVANIA TO RICHMOND
The story of this campaign is too long to be narrated in particular. On both sides it is a record of magnificent valor, endurance, and resolution, to which the world affords no parallel, when it is remembered that the armies were recruited from the free citizenship of the nation. As the weeks and months wore on, General's Grant's visage, it is said, settled into an unrelaxing expression of grim resolve. He carried the nation on his shoulders in those days. ”

“ There was not a state in the North of a million of inhabitants 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 the news of the call for volunteers reached Galena, posters were stuck up calling for a meeting of the citizens at the court-house in the evening. Business ceased entirely; all was excitement; for a time there were no party distinctions; all were Union men, determined to avenge the insult to the national flag. ”

“ That expectation and that hope remained uppermost in my mind until the Lieutenant-Generalcy bill was introduced into Congress in the winter of 1863-4. The passage of that bill, and my promotion, blasted my last hope of ever becoming a citizen of the further West.
In the late summer of 1854 I rejoined my family, to find in it a son whom I had never seen, born while I was on the Isthmus of Panama. I was now to commence, at the age of thirty-two, a new struggle for our support. My wife had a farm near St. Louis, to which we went, but I had no means to stock it. A house had to be built also. ”

“ The administration at Washington was much concerned for the safety of the cause it held so dear. But I believe there was never a day when the President did not think that, in some way or other, a cause so just as ours would come out triumphant.
Up to the 11th of September Rosecrans still had troops on the railroad east of Corinth, but they had all been ordered in. By the 12th all were in except a small force under Colonel Murphy of the 8th Wisconsin. He had been detained to guard the remainder of the stores which had not yet been brought in to Corinth. ”

“ Grant commanded the military district of San Juan until April, 1899, when he was transferred to the Philippines, serving under Gens. Lawton and McArthur, and later with independent command. In February, 1901, he was appointed brigadier-general in the regular army, and on his return to the United States in the following year was given command of the department of Texas and later the department of the Lakes. After September, 1904, he was in command of the department of the East, with headquarters on Governor's Island. He became major-general in 1906, and died in New York city April 12, 1912. ”

“ The story wild-fired through Washington, it crossed the Potomac long before sunset, reached Miss Townsend in her rose-and-magnolia-bound fastness, and gave her more pleasure than she often had known. Ulysses Grant may live longer and stronger in history than Grover Cleveland. But Grant was a Republican, had fought Lee, and had presumed to defeat him. Julia Townsend chuckled wickedly, and drank wine, quite a small glassful of a priceless vintage, at her solitary supper that night. ”

“ This reduces my active force to a comparatively small army. We cannot remain here on the defensive. With the twenty-five thousand men, and the bold cavalry he has, he can constantly break my roads. I would infinitely prefer to make a wreck of the road, and of the country from Chattanooga to Atlanta including the latter city send back all my wounded and worthless, and with my effective army, move through Georgia, smashing things, to the sea. Hood may turn into Tennessee and Kentucky, but I believe he will be forced to follow me. Instead of my being on the defensive, I would be on the offensive ”

“ He is a different man entirely from what I had supposed. He is slender, not tall, wiry, and looks as if he could endure any amount of physical exercise. He is able, and thoroughly honest and truthful. There were probably but few men in the South who could have commanded successfully a separate detachment in the rear of an opposing army, and so near the border of hostilities, as long as he did without losing his entire command.
On this same visit to Washington I had my last interview with the President before reaching the James River. ”

“ As the United States is the freest of all nations, so, too, its people sympathize with all people struggling for liberty and self-government; but while so sympathizing it is due to our honor that we should abstain from enforcing our views upon unwilling nations and from taking an interested part, without invitation, in the quarrels between different nations or between governments and their subjects. Our course should always be in conformity with strict justice and law, international and local. ”

“ He appealed to the people of the South-west for new regiments, and received a few. A. S. Johnston had made efforts to reinforce in the same quarter, before the battle of Shiloh, but in a different way. He had negroes sent out to him to take the place of teamsters, company cooks and laborers in every capacity, so as to put all his white men into the ranks. The people, while willing to send their sons to the field, were not willing to part with their negroes. It is only fair to state that they probably wanted their blacks to raise supplies for the army and for the families left at home. ”

“ It was his own fault that he did not have more men present. He had sent Longstreet away with his corps swelled by reinforcements up to over twenty thousand men, thus reducing his own force more than one-third and depriving himself of the presence of the ablest general of his command. He did this, too, after our troops had opened a line of communication by way of Brown's and Kelly's ferries with Bridgeport, thus securing full rations and supplies of every kind; and also when he knew reinforcements were coming to me. Knoxville was of no earthly use to him while Chattanooga was in our hands. ”

“ Upton brought his prisoners with him, but the guns he had captured he was obliged to abandon. Upton had gained an important advantage, but a lack in others of the spirit and dash possessed by him lost it to us. Before leaving Washington I had been authorized to promote officers on the field for special acts of gallantry. By this authority I conferred the rank of brigadier-general upon Upton on the spot, and this act was confirmed by the President. Upton had been badly wounded in this fight. ”

“ They could not forget that he was conqueror, but they acknowledged his greatness of heart. He had no petty revenges. [Pg 6598]
Nothing in human history exceeds the contrasts in the life of Ulysses Grant. When Lee surrendered to him, he controlled a battle line from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, composed of a million men. His lightest command had almost inconceivable power; and yet he was the same man who had hauled wood in St. Louis and sold awls and shoe-pegs in Galena,—he had been developed by opportunity. ”