6 72 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 013 788 080 5 # peam&lipe* pH8.5 /^^Jv^v^tlf^^ l " V U V^-^i E 672 .R64 Copy 2 LIEUT.-GENEBAL U. S. GEANT, Services and Characteristics, AS SKETCHED AND DELIVERED BY MAJOR-GEN. B. S. ROBERTS, BEFORE THE FACULTY AND STUDENTS OF YALE COLLEGE, BY INVITATION, OCTOBER, 1805, AND AGAIN READ TO THE LEGISLATURE OP CONNECTICUT, BY SPECIAL INVITATION, IN 1866, AT ITS SESSION AT NEW HAVEN, CONN. NEW HAVEN : PRINTED BY THOMAS J. STAFFORD. 1869. LIEUT.-GENERAL U. S. GKANT, HIS Services and Characteristics, AS SKETCHED AND DELIVERED BY MAJOR-GEN. B. S. ROBERTS, BEFORE THE FACULTY AND STUDENTS OF YALE COLLEGE, BY INVITATION, OCTOBER, 1865* AND AGAIN READ TO THE LEGISLATURE OF CONNECTICUT, BY SPECIAL INVITATION, IN 1866, AT ITS SESSION AT NEW HAVEN, CONN. NEW HAVEN : PRINTED BY THOMAS J. STAFFORD. 1869. T** *, - 672 New Haven, Conn., December 1, 1869. The services of General Graht, and his characteristics, as I understood and drew them in 1865, before the Faculty and Students of Yale College, and afterwards before the Legislature of Connecticut, I am urged by many of my friends to publish in this form. Heretofore I have refused to accede to solicitations to put forth this pamphlet, for reasons that may suggest themselves readily to persons appreciating the relations of officers of the army to their commanding General. Such reasons no longer exist ; and now, with reluctance, however, I consent to deliver to the public, as common property, my views of the qualities of the great Captain that mastered the rebellion and saved the Union. His life and public services the past four years are the best com- mentaries that can be offered to show that I rightly judged the man, and did not exaggerate the substantive qualities that constitute his genuine greatness. B. S. ROBERTS, Brevet Brigadier-General JJ. 8. A. ADDRESS. The fact that five years ago the name of Ulysses S. Grant was not known outside of the corporate limits of the village of Galena, Illinois, and is now prominent among the conspic- uous names that till the world with their fame, is conclusive proof of extraordinary traits and characteristics in the Lieu- tenant-General, who in that short period of time has been ele- vated to the command of the armies of the United States. The proof is still stronger, if we consider that this sudden promotion to so dazzling an attitude, has occurred in a country famous for its remarkable men and its great transitions in po- litical and social systems, precipitating the slow progression of past centuries and hastening the civilization of the world. Remarkable times produce remarkable men. The progress that culminates in revolution is slow, but revolution takes re- sistless power, and speed forges and forms greatness of charac- ter, and brings into prominence genuine manhood. The ener- gies and strength of men reach more sudden maturity in the struggle, though they were born with the infant, slept through adolescence, and only burst the mind's swaddlings when the occasion that magnetized their growth, vitalized their action, and magnified their power, bursts upon them. Grant would doubtless, at this day, have been selling his father's leather in Galena, if John C. Calhoun and Jefferson Davis had never been born. A six hundred dollar salary would still have satisfied the real wants of the clerk, whose transition has passed him, in the brief period of four years, to the metropolis of the country, where his thronged levees require a regal exchequer to meet the current expenses of a single fashionable season. Mrs. Grant, who then spread a fru- gal dinner, cooked and laid by her willing and helping hands, was content to appear in matronly calicoes and dimities, im- maculate and fresh from the laundry. Now the vexation and worry of her life are, to find appropriate point lace from Brus- sels' looms and satins from Lyons' mills to grace the table where twenty courses are spread, where contrabands in pure white kids, and Biddys in starch and Marseilles, attend in the state- liness of royal livery, to pour Burgundy and to change courses for Ambassadors and Plenipotentiaries, whose arms are quar- tered with kingly crests. Archdukes and Crown Princes take seats of honor on Mrs. Grant's right, and exchange salutations over iced wines and sparkling Rheims. Three years ago this tanner's clerk sat alone with Mrs. Grant, and gratified thirst with nature's unadulterated beverage, without the refreshing coolness of ice, even in dog days. Noblemen from all coun- tries, statesmen, men of letters, doctors and professors of di- vinity and science, the aristocrat and the plebeian, the man of fashion and the millionaire, who three years ago had never heard pronounced the name of U. S. Grant, now crowd the avenues of Washington to do honor to the General who fought it out on that line, though it took him more than all summer, and smote with fire and sword through and through the rebel- lion. Instances are not rare in the world's history of the elevation of men from places of obscurity to thrones and empires. But they have been the creatures of chance, and the tools that for- tune, ignorance or fanaticism have played with. Time and circumstances forbid any contrasts of the cases ; for in no pre- vious age have thirty millions of people of enlightened and exalted intelligence united in doing honor and making homage to a man of mere circumstance and chance. Grant is not a man of destiny. He was not cast upon the tide at flood and borne on to fortune. He planned the house he now lives in, and built it himself. No man has ever lived of whom it may be more truthfully said, he was the architect of his own for- tune. He entered the war, in 1861, without the patronage of any party, without the influence of partisan friends, without the prestige of wealth, without the power of military or family friends. When he first marched his Illinois regiment of vol- unteers into Kentucky, his only reliance was the "blade" he knew so well how to use, and the determined loyalty of his men, who knew their leader. Few, if any one Colonel of over three thousand, that drew their blades in their loyal resolves to vindicate their country, went forth with less promise than Grant. Not one returned who claimed to be his peer. He carved his own way to fame — " a fame that is not of tavern song," and that will endure while time and history perpetuate the memorials of great and undying names. The type of Grant's mind received its impress in the vast- ness of the great West. He was no exception among most men of broad views and comprehensive understanding, and matured by progressive development, without the exacting strain of hard study, and its wear and tear on immature intel- lect, destroying the nervous equilibrium that gives stability of thought and depth of penetration. At West Point he was not distinguished as a student, and made no efforts to lead his class. Yet he easily mastered the highest practical science taught there, without the hard labor of many cadets, whose academic eminence gave them precedence over him on the graduating list. In fact, none of the notable traits of his char- acter were developed there, and, in his habits and life as a student, nothing that could illustrate the future great Captain was foreshadowed ; although it is beyond peradventure, that the broad basis of his military fame was laid there. In this there is nothing singular. The student of men does not look to the boy in the seminary for the character of the finished man. It is not the school, but the events of life, that energize the brain and expand its powers. Institutes lay the founda- tion for the growth and proportions of man's capabilities ; but in the contest of life these capabilities take their strength, and its great struggles try and determine their value and mag- nitude. The brain may be great and good, and yet never be electrified into activity. Physical organization and abuse of nature may vitiate all its powers and so degrade its divinity, that ennobling thoughts find no self-acting principle, and they degenerate into idiotic coma. But the active brain of Grant, restless, but well balanced, growing, but not in enfeebling and wasting haste, has been forged and hammered out under a welding process of hard blows, adding, by incremental and cumulative strength, symmetry and shape, until, in its status of maturity, its texture is without flaw, constituting unerring reasoning powers and logical accuracy of judgment. Its en- durance is a marvel. It is one of those peculiar minds that never tires, and thinks while others sleep. His physical con- stitution, not less remarkable, enables him to toil and plan, when, with others, exhaustion requires forgetfulness and repose. He lies down to think, and rises to execute, when others wake to plan. This harmony of physique and brain in Grant is one of the most striking characteristics of his greatness. Without it no General can ever accomplish great achievements. If the endurance and strength of the body are in conflict with the phrenol constitution, and are in preponderance, the mind must give way and its will enfeebled by anxiety, responsibility, care and fatigue, bends under their weight, and the scepter of com- mand must pass to another. The power of command is the magnetism of strong brain and unyielding will. Yet few wills are of that unbending strength, that enfeebled and decaying physique will not, in its waste and wear, sooner or later subju- gate them. But in the automony of Grant's constitution, the self-working cooperation of brain and muscle furnish the key to all his successes, and resolve the secret of his greatness. They were the especial gift of God, who created him for the accomplishment of the great purposes of saving to man the civilization born in a stable in Bethlehem. There is nothing in his nature that academicians would style "genius" — nothing, in fact, that is "kith or kin " to such weakness. The very idea of genius is suggestive of imperfec- tion of character. The man of genius may possess the most brilliant and dazzling characteristics, and receive, as he de- serves, unbounded adulation and applause. But his automony is imperfect, and he can never become truly great. He is a machine of beautifully-finished parts, highly burnished and polished. But a "screw is loose" in the mechanical combina- tion, and when the strain of work tries every joint, beam, bolt, pinion and piston, constituting unfailing manhood, he fails to accomplish the more mighty purposes of human agencies, when relative homogeneity of powers succeed. Grant's compo- sition is made up of sterner stuff. Strong warp and woof in- grain every fibre of his nature, and the raw material that stitch the parts is not weakened by coloring and sizing that eat a single thread. He is wool-dyed. No stamped and ex- ternal coloring give false luster to the man. He wears like the mosaics and frescoes of the ancient masters, and the wear and friction of time bring out in brighter and bolder relief the polish and harmony of nature's composition and colors. At Belmont, at Fort Donelson, at Shiloh, at Vicksburg, at Chat- tanooga, and in the more gigantic struggles on the Rappahan- nock, through the Wilderness, and around to the Appomatox apple tree, illustrations of these unyielding elements in Grant's character are clearly and unmistakably established. The un- relaxing grasp he laid upon Lee at Richmond and Petersburg, increasing daily the torsion of the hold that there girdled the throat of the rebellion, and by slow degrees strangled it, show the inevitable consequences of resolves well matured and pur- sued with inflexible determination, as clearly as they illustrate the great qualities of the stubborn General, who had calculated their cost. Grant did not blindly precipitate his army upon the slaugh- ter-pens between the Rapidan and James Rivers. He knew that his road to Richmond would make an Appian way, by whatever route he moved ; for he knew the desperation of Lee's frenzied army and the determination of its Generals. These slaughter-pens had all been laid and prepared before Grant came to supreme command, and their strength, Lee's unweakened army, and the obstacles to be overcome in the pe- culiar geography of the country, had all been calculated by Grant. He had counted their cost of life with the precision of his estimates for ordnance and subsistence. The great moral struggle was in the undertaking, and few men have been cre- ated whose morale would not have been shaken in view of the sacrifice. But Grant had been called to the execution of a problem, that was to determine the life or death of his govern- ment. Duty and loyalty take deep root in strong natures, and with Grant these ideas are in the depth of his moral na- ture, and mingle with his religion and his God. His unalloyed manhood did not permit him to make dalliance with events or reason with consequences, without comparison in their propor- tions with any undertaking ever before planned by man, when 8 his loyal nature was convinced by suggestions of duty, that the work was to be done. He girded himself for the work, and went straight at it. He had no struggles of conscience, no remorses, no unmanly weaknesses, as from day to day, through that wilderness of lire and slaughter, ninety thousand of his devoted aimy, slain and wounded, were left in his rear. Conscience made no accusations against the man that knew the sacrifice was demanded. Grant was called to avenge his country. The blood of that vengeance was not his shedding. He slept as quietly among the slain and dying at Spotsylvania, as on any night in his quiet village of Galena, with a mind only disturbed by the fluctuations of rates in the leather mar- kets, two years before. The physiological fact is admitted, that the countries in which men are born and live, materially give impression to their character, and mould, in a great degree, their notable peculiarities. The sternest types of men would naturally be formed where great obstacles are to be surmounted, where vast enterprises and pursuits call forth the energies, and where boundless resources call into play the activities of the people. Extent of territory, vastness of rivers, grand old mountains that range continents and gather eternal snows and clouds, illimitable prairies and plains, all have their effect and photo- graph impressions of greatness. It is, therefore, difficult and inconclusive to compare the characteristics of eminent men of different countries, as in the nature of things the measure of their greatness must vary with nature's panorama, physical constitution, and civilization. The achievements they accom- plish go down in history with the memorials and monuments that make their names immortal, and are, therefore, no tests or standards to adjudge their genuine grandeur of character. Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, Persia and the old empires that rose to greatness, and whose kings have perished and are for- gotten, stamped their characteristics on the monuments that remain to indicate their civilization and power. The pen of inspiration has traced the proportion of their crimes, their effeminacy and their follies. The granite of their pyramids and sphynxes suggests a pomp and show of power and great- ness, based on false and unreal civilization, and the vicious ambition of personal aggrandizement and posthumous fame. The character formed by such tide-! of time, cannot be com- pared with the character that stamps men of this day. G >d has winn >wed the earth of the dust of their composition hi the birth of Christ a new divinity was impregnated, and quickened into life character of higher and more exalted humanity. In the progress of this birth, the human family has recreated itself, and the hardier Anglo-American has sprung into life. We must therefore take the measure of men of modern times aad contrast the proporti >ns of their greatness with the magnitude of Grant's achievements, in order to compare their strength, and the texture of the material that constitutes character in this age and civilization. Europe, during the empire of the first Napoleon, furnishes the most appropriate illustrations. Bonaparte and Wellington, in the conflict of arms that shook every throne on that continent, rose highest in military reputation, and gained renown that filled the world with the noise of their fame. Wellington's lines at Torres- Ve- dras may be compared with Grant's lines that covered Wash- ington and Chatanooga. But no military man can doubt that Wellington, had he commanded Grant's Potomac army, would have fallen back on Washington, after the battles through the Wilderness and at Spotsylvania, and lost the cam- paign. Neither can there be any d>ubt that Grant, with the army Wellington commanded in Portugal, would have moved directly upon Spain, and never have fallen behind the Torres- Yedras hills, having once crossed them. Grant would have extemporized an invincible army of Spaniards and Portuguese, as he advanced, and from the resources of the country supplied it. His magnetism would have aroused the fiery ardor of the people whose throne was usurped by a French Emperor, and whose ancient crown, yet radiant with the jewels of Ferdinand and Isabella, was intended to be dwarfed to fit the small brain of the first Napoleon's brother Joseph ; and though patriotism had nearly bruised out in a degenerate race, he would have electrified its ember fires and inflamed 20,000,000 of Spaniards and Portuguese with unconquerable patriotism. Grant would never have raised the first siege of Badajos on the demonstra- 10 tions on "Wellington's communications, and Wellington, beyond peradventure, would have abandoned the siege of Vicksburg on the movements of Johnson on Grant's rear ; and the Mis- sissippi river would yet have remained closed in the face of such leadership as protracted the Peninsular war seven years. Grant would have hurled, with the suddenness of thunderbolts, the combined Prussian, Austrian, Russian and English armies against Napoleon's scattered columns at Qu at re-bras and Jennappe, and crushed them in detail, so that the carnage of Waterloo would have been spared, had he been in Welling- ton's saddle. The allied armies and Generals had no concep- tion of the smashing, untiring energies of Grant's armies, nor, in fact, had the genius of the first Napoleon magnetized his troops and marshals with the ideas of invincibility, impressed by Grant on every army he commanded. If Grant had fought the battle of Borodina and entered Moscow, he would have wintered there, and Russia would have been at his feet, in an early spring campaign. His cavalry would have swept the Cossack horse from their steppes, and their cattle and wheat would have been gathered by his ""bummers" in such abundance, that he could have doubled his rations of beef and bread to 100,000 soldiers, during the long continued Moscow winter. His army would have re- built the Kremlin before spring, and had pastime in theatricals and operas. His camp followers would have opened profitable trade and commerce with the "mujiks," so that Christmas holidays and the church carnival would have been celebrated by Greek Patriarchs in canonicals in procession with Yankee Generals in uniform. The loss of such a base of supplies as Aboukir would never have caused Grant to abandon an army in Egypt and to return to France in a Mediterranean yacht, leaving his captains and a demoralized army to the disasters of a retreat before the keen edges of Damascus blades, wielded by the skill of Mameluke cavalry. His army would have rioted on the flesh pots of Pharaoh's successors, and brought under contribution the granaries of the Potiphars to subsist his soldiers. Grant, however, would not have despoiled the country of its obelisks, sphynxes, sarcophagi, or mummies, as they 11 « could not raoblize his movements, feed his army, or forage his cavalry. Yet England has made apotheosis of its "iron duke," and Westminster Abbey, where the dust of its Kings repose, was only deemed befitting sepulture for its most illustrious Captain. And France has built a mausoleum to receive the ashes of the first Napoleon, surpassing in its gorgeous and regal magnifi- cence, the splendor of the tombs of the Pharaohs of silent, sleeping Egypt. Grant organized and handled larger armies than Bonaparte or Wellington ever commanded. He had more to create and more to destroy, than man had ever before undertaken. He had greater obstacles to overcome than any General of any age ever attempted. His lines of communication were more ex- tended than the lines of Alexandre, when he guarded the coasts of ancient Macedon. and his sentinels trod their beat to the mountains of India. The enemy Grant had to subjugate was unconquerable. Their country offered natural lines of de- fense, more impregnable than Sebastopol was made by the skill of Todleben, and these lines were held by over 800,000 troops of endurance, valor and determination, that made no dalliance with the alternative of victory or death. His vast armies had their supplies to transport hundreds of miles into the non-supplying States held by the rebels, so that his trains of wagons, ambulances and artillery, well closed up, not un- usually occupied forty miles of highway. The most determin- ed cavalry that ever raided on the rear and Hanks of an army, constantly harassed these long columns of supply, and combats were of daily occurrence between his armed employes and organized guerrillas. He had mountains to scale in every direction, the Alleganies of the Appalachian Chain, rising as impassable fortresses from the Potomac to Chatan-.oga. His sappers and miners made and cleared roads, scaling these bar- ri( rs, that made Napoleon's passage of the Alps holiday work, by comparison. Rivers of the largest class and torrent force, and interminable swamps and morasses, had to be corduroyed and bridged in almost every day's march. As a rule the daily marches of his armies were combats, and his long lines of sup- ply and communication, were skirmish lines. Railroads he 12 stracted and covered by his armies as he advanced. His external line of circumvallation extended from the Atlantic " the Pacific coast : his inner cordon from the Potomac to the Rio-Grande. He cooperated with an ocean navy holding 8500 miles of sea- ist, ind closed up ports as strong as Cron- 31 . It, and quite has impregnable as SebastopoL He also acted with an inland river-navy of gun-boats that held the Ohio and Mississppi rivers and their tributaries, requiring cooperation in all interior expeditions. His array transported pontoon trains of unexampled size and proportion. Ambulatory arsenals and machine shops accompanied all his armies, so that on any day's halt his corps of mechanics could build or repair locomotives, make gun-carriages, ambulances and wagons, or railway cars. The States he invaded supplied him little or nothing, his enemy having adopted the muscovite policy of burning and destroying whatever they could not defend. Besides the usual means of destrnctiveness justified by the usages of war in the desperation and inhumanity of the rebels. they resorted to means of defense and destruction, never before used by any people. The progress of arms and projectiles had made civilized war destructive of life beyond any example : but a system of torpedoes and self acting magazines had been planned and adopted by Grant's enemies, tor the surer annihi- lation of ships entering harbors, and troops taking possession I forts surrendered. Nevertheless Grant proceeded straight against all these gigantic difficulties and appalling dangers, without failure or defeat in any single campaign. He suffered reverses and met temporary checks. But in this great _ . liatoriaJ straggle for the life of his government, though often brought to his knee*, giant-like in muscle, he rose and threw his adversary. lie had no dalliance with Southern Delilas, and was never shorne of his Samson strength. When he rent the pillars of the foundation of the Southern Confederacy, he was not crushed in irs fall ; but he took care that treason and traitors should perish beneath its ruin. The !»rain that magnetized the vast coil of hnman muscle in all the Union armies, and intensified its strength as he drew in - extended circumference, was Grant's. He was the princi- pal operator at the.main battery, calculated the strain it would bear, and regulated the consuming lightning | z at all ranches. Men, after all. must be measured by the magnitude of their achievements. If this just and only infallible rule is applied • Grant, his propor:: ns of g -ral have never been surpassed, if attained, sir ~d man. HI- ilts. penetrating into de of polities in war. government, and the e.\ _ :' human ac- tivities, stands in - 'tude and dazzling emin-^ above the da - r; dividual man of an modern times. Hi- hands have been upheld by ca ond to none that have illumined histories of fame, and ma memo- ries imperishable. A people resolved f save the imprescrip- table rights of man, and - endurance, . pluck. ;rces and res entering so larg •1 him. But the y.-b was Grant's. From the besrinnin^ of t. st ke at the Appomatox apple tree, he vr ilcan at the - _ _ Its of war xhc-.~ - dow. - _ traitors .nd treason, and delive _ bs from human bon Grant has never drawn largely from books. He carefullv _ . in homeopath! _ - xall draughts, well dig r than o - _ purgatiTT-. A single volume, irefl impressed and photograph- n the mind, is better than u . library hastily read _ t must be nourishe- ~ the - T ram the stomach beyond its pow _ - - de- structive of - ievelop: .lining tfa bey.:>nd its pc sis ratal to its g - gth. - - - - - I from t; largest intellects. But he has built mainly on the stud men and the w«»r:d, draw _ from them. He has applied the philosophy 5 si la md the trar- ae ::iey are working in the structures of human government. He is a master in the sc :ol of ma' 1 kind, and in : rind the key to his quick perceptions oi true character. E - ration of men is in- 14 structive. He has never been mistaken in the measure of the Generals he has selected for the execution of his chief com- mands. He had sounded the very depths of Sherman's gigantic intellect and knew the unfailing strength of his ner- vous energies, when he took the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night and led his army of deliverance to the sea, Moses- like in faith, relying on the favor of God for manna, deliver- ing; from bondage four millions of " hewers of wood and drawers of water," for the Pharaohs of the nineteenth century. He had not mistaken Thomas, when he trusted to that most solid soldier of the war, who had stood the brunt of twenty of its hardest fought battles, the armies of Kentucky and Tennes- see, and with them added one more page to his brilliant chapter of achievements, by annihilating Hood's army before Nashville. In the tactics, skill and tenacity of purpose of the hero of Gettysburg, he discovered the qualities of a General, who was to lead the veterans of the Army of the Potomac, to its crowning glories before Richmond and Petersburg. He had measured Phil Sheridan with the accuracy of " line and plummit, 1 ' when in the Shenandoah Valley he said to him "go in," and the ride without orderly or escort from Win- chester to Cedar Creek, confirmed the unerring precision of that measurement. Of Grant's moral and religious nature we know little or nothing. He sprang from the loins of good old puritan sires, and if he inherited any of the pious qualities of good old deacon Grant of Saybrook, Connecticut, he has never said anything about them. Judgment of Grant on this point must be formed from the rectitude of his conduct and the purity of his life. He has conformed, as nearly as man can, to the divine rule, " do unto others as you would they should do unto you ;" and in doing this, he illustrates a charity and love of neighbor that fulfills the Christian law of love. In his nature there is not a shred of selfishness, and his justice is exact and God-like. He may have committed errors of judg- ment, and infallibility is not human; but in his heart justice reigns and mingles with its divinity and rules every act of his life. The generous and free acknowledgment of the services of his Lieutenants, finds honorable contrast with the " Ego " 15 that as a rule has characterized at all times the official reports of commanders of armies. His praise was never withheld, where praise was due. The ignobility of larceny of character is as foreign to his ideas of justice, as larceny of another's purse ; and in his judgment a baser crime than highway robbery. His services were not exaggerated by appropriations of others' sacrifices. The dead and the living alike were fully appreciated, and he robbed none by " false balances or measures." His fame borrowed no lustre and reflects no honor won by others. Truth came " mended" from his pen. The remark was current in the army, when he gave little or no promise of eminent usefulness, " Grant never harmed any- body but himself." But he had not then made a covenant with a million of the manhood of his country, and sealed it with their blood, not to betray the trust of the office they rendered up their lives to vest in him. Ulysses S. Grant to- day is not the Ulysses S. Grant of four years ago. His obli- gations now are to the country and the world, wiiose property he has become. The loyal dead, whose ashes repose in conse- crated sepultures from Maine to the Rio Grande, have large liens on this property. This fact has taken deep root in his re- generated nature, and is the unyielding rule of his conduct. If he wrongs himself now, that wrong is not single. He wrongs the dead. This is his conviction. His convictions of right are inviolable. No mere mortal has ever lived and reached his towering status among, men, so guileless of wrong to his fellows, as Grant. In this is his strength, and in this is a guarantee, as unchanging as the laws of nature, that the con- fidence of the nation in his faith will never be betrayed. His singular reticence and silence deserve brief comment. On social occasions with his friends, he is as free of speech as Jack Falstaff, but in striking antithesis with that notability of Shakespear's, in heroizing himself. He loves a free, outspoken man, as suggestive of a clear conscience, and a good honest heart, that has nothing to conceal. But in official matters plans and designs requiring secrecy, he is as hermetically sealed and as closely corked as Ben. Butler was in Dutch-gap bottom. This peculiarity was facetiously illustrated at one of the most critical periods of his operations before Richmond, 16 when universal anxiety prevailed, and when Grant's real strength was unknown to any one but himself. His brother visited his camp, and sharing, in common with others, fears for his situation, ventured to try the cork by playfully remarking, " Ulyses, this is the largest army I ever saw; how many men have you ?" The Lieutenant-General continued smoking his eherout, apparently absorbed in calculating the numerals that would exactly respond to the honest question, gravely replied, " if the morning reports are correct, I have a good many." This satisfactory reply did not shake the confidence of his staff in his faculty of concealment. This faculty is close of kin to quality in a commander, and in its relation to his universa unconcern and external bearing, perfectly disguises his real thoughts and feelings from penetration or interpretation. Grant is to all appearances as emotionless as death ! Surprises never change the expression of a feature of his fixed face, and danger, however imminent and threatening, cannot quicken a pulse of his heart or shake a nerve in his frame of steel. His habit has never been to expose himself to unnecessar} 7 danger, but in the crisis of battles, where his presence has been neces- sary, he has always appeared, and the composure and uncon- cern of his manner never failed to reassure and moralize his troops, though death was holding high carnival and swathing his ranks, as the swinging scythe swaths the meadows in har- vest season. In Grant's social relations and domestic habits there is a plainness and simplicity that takes a fascinating and fast hold on the affections and confidence of all who are within the circle of intimate associations with him or his family. He permits no ostentatious display or parade of rank and position ; no museum of the trophies of his victories ; no drawing rooms tapestried with captured flags ; no conservatories displaying the medals, swords, valuable gifts and rich testimonials of an appreciative and grateful people surround the plain mansion of the successful Captain of one hundred great battles. His home represents the man, and is an expression of his real character. It is marked by simplicity and republican plain- ness, yet the material furnishing it will burnish and wear with time, descending as heir-looms to the third and fourth genera- 17 tions of his children with brighter lustre from wear and with unimpaired strength. His unaffected manners place all his friends and guests at ease, and his hospitalities are dispensed with a fullness of heart and freedom as unrestraining as wel- come can make them. The presence of the foremost General of the age is forgotten in the ease of approach to his person, and the unostentatious frankness of the reception. He never introduces the subject of his campaigns or battles, and con- strains his friends to respect the inviolability of his modest appreciation of his services, his life and his virtues. In these striking characteristics there is a novelty and charm that wins and strengthens the confidence of men, as they are brought into closer intimacy and relation to Grant. His generosity to his Lieutenants, who shared with him the toils and perils of his campaign, and his forgetfulness of self in acknowledging their services, stamps his nobility of nature with genuine greatness. His words of praise are as imperish- able as his censure is destructive of military character. He sticks as close to his friends as death to mortality ; and yet they must fulfill his ideas of loyalty and duty to gain his offi- cial confidence or public acknowledgment. He is notable for his tenderness of reputation, and never censures where justice and public duty will be justified by silence. But when his condemnation is demanded for the vindication of truth and history, it falls with the fatal destructiveness of the thunder- bolt, and scathes as the lightning, branch and trunk, of sap and life. Such are the notable characteristics of Grant that elevate the true grandeur and sublimity of his character, placing him in prominent and singular relief above any Cap- tain of the day in moral excellence and practical usefulness. The adulations and applause of people of whatever taste, pro- fession and station, do not intoxicate his brain, exhilarate or inflame the self-respect and decorum, instinctive and immacu- late in the composition of men of genuine greatness and of Grant's mould. His elevation has been sudden. The height is dizzy. His position is cast all about with difficulties and dangers. If he is true to himself and takes into his confidence men of the right stamp, his fame will be imperishable. Grant's character has been tried in a school of adversity of 18 the keenest tests. His baptism into its fires was very deep when he wielded the axe that cut the wood he himself carted into St. Louis, and sold by the load in open market places for the supply of his daily food and raiment. But if the baser dross of his weaker nature was burned out in the scorching crucible that consumes the grosser composition of man, the stronger metal that no flame can destroy will be purified and refined ; and like the steel of the cementing furnace it will improve in ring and quality as the heat is intensified and the process protracted. The wrestle with adversity is hard. Many strong men, though thrown in it, rise in renewed strength and strangle the adversary. But the contest with prosperity is harder. The gladiators in its lists are better skilled in the dexterous locks and trips that bring down the strongest wrest- lers with fatal shock, irretrievably and incurably straining joint, spine and marrow. Grant's struggle with prosperity has commenced with every guarantee or success. No wrestler has ever been more strongly tempted by the tricks " of the ring " to go in and try the chances. But the tempting baits of flattering words he has parried by a diplomatic silence that would have put the skill of a Nesseelrode or a Metternich to its adroitest shifts in re- fining words and concealing ideas that should draw responses. He will not " go in." So far he has been strong in the wisdom that closes the ear to the siren voice that sings most sweetly when attuned to adulation and praise. Strong natures that can resist the intoxication of this old charmer, have been sifted of the chaff of their composition, and will not be likely to yield to the transports of any fugitive and vain ecstacies. The conqueror whose heart has throbbed with the raptures of a hundred victories, and gone up in the rhapso- dies that rise as grateful incense to the throne of mercy, is un- moved by the unmeaning homage paid to position and power. Grant cannot be cajoled by his enemies. His friends know him too well to approach him by flattery. Gusts and blasts have swayed him to and fro, and he has been bent by and bowed by their fury, but no branch or limb has been torn from the trunk to disfigure the symmetry of the status of his full growth, made stronger by struggles in storms. He stands 19 among the great men of the age, stalwart in his grandeur as the oak in its strength among the trees of the forest. The stream that washes the " placers " of their common earth, does not more thoroughly separate the impurities from their gold, than time has purified the dross of Grant's nature. The unalloyed man is left in the prime and strength of manhood, fulfilling his destiny in the upheavals and convulsions of the nineteenth century, changing civilization and accelerating with electric speed God's purposes in creating man. In all the hours of the gigantic conflict now ended in the throes of the keenest agonies of the government for life ; when the strongest manhood of the land staggered under the shock ; when loyalty to government was dismayed ; when the conti- nent discovered by Columbus vibrated under the strain of war ; when faith in God to vindicate the right was doubted by the good ; when mourners were in all our streets and every household was agonized with woes keener than the woes of Absalom's father and king, Grant, single and alone, never doubted. When Joshua on the hill of Gideon commanded the sun to stand still, his faith was not stronger. Grant was the moral " Atlas " who bore upon his strong shoulders the civilization of the world and saved to man the imprescripta- ble right of self-government. The singularity of this character is its completeness. No incongruous or disturbing elements mingle in its composition. Nothing of ignobility belittles its genuine greatness. It has penetrated every act of a life signalized by devotion to duty and self-sacrifice. It bears scrutiny. It has more than the " guinea stamp " — that can be counterfeited. But the " die " that struck the seal to Grant's patent of nobility cannot be counterfeited. In imperishable letters the title-scroll bears the words, " an honest man " — God was the author of the in- scription and fixed His autograph monogram, " immortal." 013 788 080 pemrulife® pH83