E 672 .P848 Copy 1 THE PROVIDENCE AND THE MAN ; OR, Ulysses S. Grant, IN THE War of the Rebellion. A COMPENDIUM By T. W. PORTER. BOSTON: Wles & Co., 1 8 Arch Street, ' 1 888. THE PROVIDENCE AND THE MAN ; OR, Ulysses S. Grant, IN THE War of the Rebellion. j^ (^ ^1^ X A COMPENDIUM. II ( AUG20 188[ BOSTON : OF L. E. CowLES & Co., 1 8 Arch Street, r^^ Copyright, iSSS, by Thomas W. Porter. All rights reserved. The Providence and the Man. In the world's history, every great war has not only developed great leaders, but has developed new means and methods of conducting campaigns, both in a strategic and tactical sense ; and the man who has most clearly comprehended the needed means and methods, and has been most prompt and vigorous in putting the same in force, has borne away the honors, which the world ever has and ever will cheerfully and liberally bestow upon those men who, in great crises, when nations struggle for existence, exhibit that highest type of moral courage and intellectual force, which enables them to successfully command and direct the accumulated human force, on which the weighty struggle hinges. In the days of primal warfare, when the bludgeon was the sole weapon, we may well believe that physical size and prowess would most often confer leadership ; and only those mental qualities were needed which confer power to exercise authority and command over the weaker and more impressible natures, who made up the uncouth rabble constituting the followers. When progress and invention had slightly refined the weapons of war, and the war-club had given place to 4 the spear, or in other words, when killing by external blows and bruises had been exchanged for penetrating wounds, an increase of skill on the part of war chiefs, in handling their followers, became necessary, and was exercised. As another advance was made in the mode of warfare, by the introduction of the earlier and rude projectiles, such as the sling, the javelin, and the arrow, with rude shields, that antedated and fore- shadowed armor, a marked increase in the skill and mental resources of leaders became requisite and was supplied ; formation and method of movement, of bodies of men, was adopted, and to a material extent became an operative substitute for mere brute force, expended in more brutish blows and thrusts. Another stride in the art of war consisted in substi- tuting a short sword or dagger for the war-club, and combining therewith a weapon that was both a projec- tile and a spear, while the bearer of these arms further defended himself with a shield. The Romans furnish a marked example of this stage in warfare, and it has been said by a great historian (Montesquien) that the Roman "pilum," their combined spear and javelin, subjugated the world; and certain it is, that with the introduction of these improved weapons, came the entrenched camp, the formation in line of battle, the order of battle, reserves, and mounted and foot soldiers, as also plans of campaigns and bases of supply; all which shows that as mechanical skill had improved and diversified implements of war, the skill, genius, and ability of leaders had taught them the advantage to be 5 derived from strategy, tactics, fortifications and system in war, and hence the moral forces to the same extent supplanted mere brute force ; and at each stage of progress in the art and weapons of war the relative death rate in battle was sensibly diminished. Thus showing that the mental qualities and moral forces, to a large extent, were equivalents or substitutes for the mere physical force, wherein and whereby war had its inception and early contests. Upon the weapons and methods of warfare of the Romans, and the nations who contended against them, no material change or progress was made, save perhaps improvements in defensive armor, until the invention of gunpowder, that most humane and refining of all the agencies of war, if not of civilization ; for by its magic and influence, brute force largely ceased to be a con- trolling agency in war ; while true mental and moral courage and the higher emotions of man were, by this new element, rendered the absolute controlling agencies in the arbitrament of war and consequent fate of governments. During the centuries of development of the means and methods of the warlike use of gunpowder, and in the increase in its effectiveness, or in the pre- cision and so-called deadliness of the weapons in which it was utilized, the death ratio of combatants has decreased in the inverse ratio of such improvements in arms ; thus showing that skill and ability in leadership have more and more become the essential elements in deciding battles and campaigns, and the consequent decision of the issues involved. At the breaking out of the rebellion in this country, practically all supposable improvements in firearms had been affected ; but during the entire war the armies were mainly devoid of two of the chief of these, the breech loading rifle and the magazine rifle ; but with these exceptions, we employed all of the modern appliances of war, which by use in European campaigns had established their reputation for effectiveness and utility. But although we had the benefit of the experience of divers modern wars, in regard to rapid concentration by use of railroads, of hastily constructed earthworks, the arm of precision (the rifle), by means of the " minie ball," the French tactics of celerity, the methods of clothing and subsisting armies, yet the war of the rebellion was so far unlike any that preceded it, in many of the main controlling conditions, that the genius and ability of leaders, in adapting their methods to existing conditions, was destined, as in so many earlier wars, to constitute the determining element of the great contest. A glance at the principal conditions under which the rebellion was to be subdued, shows the vast dissimilarity between the same and those dominating any previous war. The railroad, as a means of military transportation, was not new, but the vast comparative scale on which it was to be here employed, by both parties, rendered it almost entirely new for such purpose. The extent of the theatre of war, when considered in connection with 7 the difficulties attending both land and water transit, was unparalleled. The natural defensive strength of the rebellious territory had never before existed in an invaded civilized country ; this resulted both from the configuration of the face of the country, the dense and almost impenetrable character of its extensive forests, the interminable net work of its water courses, and largely to periodical overflow of a large portion, within which were situated many of the most important strategic points. The combatants of both sides, judged as a whole, were, in point of intelligence and mental vigor, far in advance of any bodies of men who had ever before met in mortal combat ; and the rank and file of each was inspired by high and patriotic motives and principles (when judged from their respective stand-points) ; one seeking to found a new nation, the other to preserve the integrity of a nation already established. While in point of trained military scholars, who aspired to become leaders, the odds were with neither side, as the graduates of the national military school arranged themselves with judicious, or rather injudicious, impartiality on the respective sides of the contest, as their earlier associations mainly prompted them. Of all our military officers, none had received the ben- efit of practical experience in a large contest, but only in a puny war, with a puny nation, Mexico. Hence all our leaders were to be ultimately selected upon the Darwinian system, " the survival of the fittest," or more properly speaking, the fightest. Gen. Scott, who, in 8 experience as a commander, outranked all others, was so far enfeebled by age and infirmity as to be forced to abandon even the nominal command of the Federal army after Bull-Run, that first rude awakening of the Federal government to the possibilities of disaster and defeat; and that to preserve the union they must employ that only known and universal remedy for diseased nations, to wit. : liberal doses of death, judiciously and persistently administered. When Gen. Scott retired and it became necessary to select his successor, the choice fell upon Gen. Mc- Clellan ; not because there was any actual valid reason therefor, but, first, because there was no special reason for selecting any one else ; and, second, because he had during all his military life been a " headquarters favorite ; " and for that reason had been selected by the War Department as one of the officers to visit the Crimea and witness the military operations there ; his report thereon, elaborately illustrated, having been published by the Government. Upon his advent, as commander-in-chief, all the fulsome adulation of the press and the laudatory productions of army corres- pondents were called into active play to give eclat and prestige to the " Young American Napoleon," as he was then styled, (but significantly, which Napoleon, was not stated). The army of the Potomac was by him forthwith put upon a first-class dress-parade footing; foreign princes glittered upon the staff, with all their inherited and easily earned decorations, and parades and reviews vied with each other in putting down the 9 rebellion, at a safe distance, and in the most pacific and amicable manner. Having frittered away the time from August, 1861, till the spring of 1862, McClellan led the army of the Potomac forth on the campaign to Richmond, en- countering at Manassas Junction a line of deserted earthworks and a heavy array of quaker guns. Pur- suing his way, he was confronted by the fortifications of Yorktown, defended by the slight-of-hand manoeuvr- ing of a small force of men commanded by Gen. Beauregard ; and instead of " feeling " this force with sufficient vigor to demonstrate its diminutiveness, he sat leisurely down before the place and sent his despatch to Washington for the transfer of the heavy siege guns, of its forts, to Yorktown, that he might invest and reduce it by regular siege operations. Before this military farce had made material headway, the path towards Richmond was opened to McClellan by Beauregard's withdrawal to the Chickahominy, where, from the actual opening of the fighting, by the abortive rebel attack on McClellan's extreme right, at " Beaver Dam Creek," until the practical close of the campaign at the mis- judged rebel assault of " Malvern Hill," it may be described briefly as a series of desperate rebel attacks, bravely resisted, and succeeded by the retreat of the union army, regardless of the immediate success or repulse and slaughter of the attacking force. In the language of Gen. Lee's order to his army, " the siege of Richmond had been raised ; " but it had been achieved at a fearful loss of life to the Confederates, lO whose reckless methods of attack and assault were described by a foreign prince on McClellan's staff, as "glorious but not war; " the waste and destruction of life on the part of the assailants violated all known rules of war. The loss of life on the part of the Union army was, in respect to results, greater than that of the Confederates, for the latter had succeeded, while the former, from the first shock of collision, had been handled by McClellan solely with the object of " saving " it ; and he assumed and acted constantly upon the assumption, that only by persistent retreat from before Richmond and its defenders could his army be saved. During this Richmond campaign, McClellan not only commanded the army of the Potomac, but he also discharged the fourfold duty of Ordinance Officer, Quartermaster, and Commissary General, and Medical Purveyor, to Lee's army ; for it is a fact, vouched for by the ablest of Lee's generals, that for months after that campaign, various detachments of the Confederate army were on duty exploring the line of retreat of the Union forces, and gathering vast stores of the various material of war, abandoned by McClellan, and which supplied to Lee a want that could have been filled in no other manner. In fact, in no respect is more clearly shown the utter failure by McClellan in adapting means and methods to the then existing conditions of war, than in the needless material carried along by him in this campaign. It more nearly resembled that of Pompey's army of patricians, before the battle of Pharsalia, than II of men campaigning in a rugged, broken, defensible country, where the least possible amount of what the Roman military writers termed ivipedinienta, evinced the best military genius. Next followed Pope's disastrous second Bull Run campaign, and the marching of Stonewall Jackson's " foot cavalry " around the Union army, and the sacking and burning of the Union depot of supplies at Manassas. This abortive struggle of the army of the Potomac was followed by the seemingly reckless invasion of Mary- land by Lee, after excusing from duty a heavy percentage of his forces by reason of their being barefoot. This movement, as also the still more reckless one of dividing his army in order to capture the Union forces at Harper's Ferry, was predicated by Lee upon his knowledge of McClellan, (who had again assumed command of the army of the Potomac), and of his timidity, caution, and dilatoriness of movement. And, although McClellan was, by Lee's famous " lost despatch," put in full possession of the plans of the latter, yet he failed in three material respects, success in either of which, while perfectly feasible, would have ruined Lee. First, he failed to drive his army with sufficient velocity and force between the divided wings of Lee's army to prevent their reunion, and to insure the capture of, at least one wing, with Lee's entire train. In proof of this is the established fact that McClellan consumed forty-eight hours in advancing six miles and developing his line of battle ; all of which could have been easily 12 effected in less than one-fourth the time thus squan- dered. Second, during the battle of Antietam, he allowed heavy columns of attack to be delayed by Confederate skirmish lines ; and, while Fitz John Porter's entire command lay inactive near McClellan's headquarters during the whole battle, the Confederate line at a vital point, in Longstreet's front, was defended for a while, only by two small field pieces worked by staff officers, and the flags of decimated North Carolina regiments held up by a few survivors; this state of affairs, as shown by reliable men on both sides, being fully visible from McClellan's headquarters on the mountain. Third, allowing Lee's reduced and over-fought army to retire unmolested and unattacked, back across the Potomac, among his friends and abettors in Virginia. This closed the military service of Gen. MeClellan, he being succeeded by Burnside, who led the army to the military slaughter-pen of Fredericksburg, where Lee had ample leisure in which to fortify to his heart's content, and where Burnside attacked in the identical manner which Lee himself would have selected had the choice been tendered him. It was the taunt of Napoleon L that, till his time, European military commanders marshalled their forces, waited for a pleasant day, and then, raising their chapeaiix de bras, politely announced to the enemy, " Gentlemen, I am ready, please deliver your fire." But at Fredericks- burg these conditions were exceeded, for every condition tended to insure success to the enemy and defeat to 13 the Federals. In fact, it seems never to have occurred to these Federal commanders that an attack upon Lee could be made except with the Union army directly between his forces and Washington, nor did it appear to be observed as an element in the contest that Lee could not safely allow the Federal army between his forces and Richmond. Next, Hooker led the army to wretched defeat at Chancellorsville ; when Mead assumed command and fought the defensive battle of Gettysburg, escaping defeat by reason of the ill-timed and disjointed attacks by Lee's forces. But, had our entire line been simul- taneously engaged on the second day, when Longstreet hurled his force against Little Round-Top, or had our line been so engaged when Pickett rushed upon our centre, on the third day, if our line had not been carried it would have been due to better fortune than had ever before smiled upon this oft-defeated and wretchedly handled army. As it was, Lee was permitted to retire unmolested with his shattered army, his extended and plunder- laden trains, and his numerous wounded, through the narrow mountain defiles, across the Potomac, and into camp in Virginia ; although his ammunition was ex- hausted and his means of crossing the river but the scantiest. This campaign practically closed the oper- ations of the army of the Potomac till the final advance on Richmond. Having thus traced the operations of the main Union forces east of the Alleghanies, let us turn to those in the west. During the year 1861 a few minor battles or affairs had occurred, and, at the opening of 1862, Gen. Halleck was in command, with headquarters at St. Louis, and was busily engaged in doing nothing. Among Halleck's subordinates was Ulysses S. Grant, who, at the opening of the war, was a private citizen, and who possessed so little influence, notwithstanding his experience and commended service in Mexico, as a subaltern, that it was only by the most fortuitous circumstances that he was first placed in command of a regiment of volunteers, and afterwards commissioned as a brigadier-general. This man comprehended from the first the radical departures necessary, under the anomalous conditions of the war, in order to insure success, and which may be stated in three words, — promptness, directness, and persistence, — and he urged upon Halleck the necessity of prompt and heavy movements against the rebel forces. These sugges- tions, at first treated by Halleck with contemptuous disregard or rebuff, at length (upon the same theory that a father allows a reckless boy to ride a wild colt, as he will no doubt be thrown, and learn better, by half breaking his neck) elicited an unwilling and ungracious assent for Grant to move against Fort Henry, the prompt fall of which enabled Grant to strike across to Fort Donelson, and, by a series of masterly movements, compel an unconditional surrender thereof. And for these services Gen. Grant was rewarded, by Halleck, by being ignored in the reports to the war department, by being put out of command, and by the recommendation 15 of the promotion, over him, of Gen. C. F. Smith, one of his subordinates at Donelson. Gen. Smith assumed command of this army by order of Halleck, and marched it to Pittsburg Landing (Shiloh), where it went into camp, and, by the fatal sickness of Gen. Smith, was again commanded by Gen. Grant, who fought the crucial battle at that point, which, as Gen. Grant has said, forever established the superior "staying power" of the Western men, when arrayed against those of the South, a fact of incalculable benefit in all the subsequent operations of the Western army. For this service. Gen. Grant was again promptly dispossessed of all command, and Halleck, with one hundred thousand men, crawled timorously up to Corinth, fortifying, on an average, at every half mile, thus allowing Beauregard ample time in which to remove all men and munitions of war, so that, when Halleck at last drew up his army before Corinth, in order of battle, and announced his readiness for and expectation of, being at once attacked, the last Confed- erate was "twenty miles away," in full retreat; and Halleck's victory consisted in the capture of a few broken-down army wagons and decrepit contrabands. Gen. Halleck, having now fully established his repu- tation as a first-class national military nuisance, was removed to Washington ; probably upon the theory that if his mischievous interference was divided equally all around the armies it would not materially interfere with any, and so would be neutralized. i6 The command of the Western forces now drifted back to Grant, not because the powers that were, had the sense of justice, or the common sense, to confer it upon him, but because there was no one else to assume and exercise it. And, after various lesser operations, including the battle of Corinth, he turned the whole force of his energy and genius to the capture of Vicksburg, which he effected by disregard of long established and supposed fundamental rules of con- ducting offensive campaigns, and by adapting his methods to the anomalous conditions and circumstances with which he was confronted. Suffice it to say, that he inverted the old and established method and direction of approach, cutting adrift from every base, and advancing to the rear of Vicksburg, by first passing its front, with no material of war, and no source of supply, save an improvised, and well-filled, ammunition train, and the gleanings of the enemy's country ; and with no source of assistance, save the favor of God, the ground under his feet, the fleet of Admiral Porter, and the confident and invincible men whom he had trained to successful war. Having stolen, like a thief in the night, into this campaign, — for fear that Halleck, or the secretary of war, or the administration, or perhaps all combined, should forbid the move, — and having o refused to comply when peremptorily ordered by Halleck to retreat, he was rewarded at the brilliant termination of the struggle, by a censorious despatch, from Washington, for having permitted the parole of Pemberton's men in the manner that he did ; and, as in 17 case of each of his earlier successes, his army was broken up and scattered, notwithstanding his earnest and repeated requests to be allowed to move against Mobile, (which, if permitted, would have compelled Bragg to move to its defence, thus relieving. Rosecrans and averting the disastrous battle of Chickamauga ; and, after the inevitable fall of Mobile, Grant would have swept up the coast, capturing every seaport of the Confederacy, and would have terminated the war by taking Richmond in the identical manner that he had taken Vicksburg), and it requires no great degree of " hind-sight " prophecy, to assert, that, but for the inexorable stress of subsequent events, he would not again (after Vicksburg) have been allowed to exercise command. His reputation was even then too well established, as one of those men who are all the time doing something, to permit him to be popular at army headquarters. Such men were always in very great disfavor with the erudite Halleck. But providence had a strategy of its own, even though it employed imbeciles in developing it, and, while yet Gen. Grant lay disabled, from the falling of his horse, the disastrous battle of Chickamauga had been fought, by Rosecrans, with a loss of sixteen thousand men, leaving the administration and war department, in the language of Gen. Grant, " nearly frantic," and then it was that they remembered that there was a man named Grant, somewhere out West or South, and, while the telegraph was kept busy urging him North, the war department, in the person of Secretary i8 Stanton, was hastily mounted on trucks and went careering over the country in search of this man, who was now its last and only hope. Of the results, it need only be said that Gen. Grant assumed command of this shattered, starving army ; that, by the force of his judgment and skill, he quickly changed its sixty-mile starvation base of supplies to one perfectly feasible ; that, from the condition of being practically prisoners of war, he assumed the aggressive, and, upon the arrival of Sherman, whose army Hallcck had been employing in building a worthless and useless railroad, he fought the battle of Chattanooga, scattering Bragg's army like chaff, and thereby also raising the siege of Knoxville. For this brilliant achievement Congress voted him a medal, which must have cost the nation as much as one or two hundred dollars, and I make special mention of it, because, with the possible excep- tion of a sword which they may at some time have " thrown in," this medal and a month or two of pay, as a retired officer, paid grudgingly and meanly, just before his death, (after being once refused by Congress), were all that the government he served so successfully and well, ever conferred upon him, over and above the regular pay which it would have given to the most imbecile blunderer, of equal rank, who might have led our armies to useless slaughter and the nation's ruin. But it should not be omitted, that, by reason of the shameful and shameless neglect of Gen. Grant, and his consequent necessary struggle to earn his daily bread, this trophy, like all his others, conferred by an admiring 19 world, fell into the hands of a man who sought to acquire celebrity by conferring them upon the govern- ment, and thus linking his name with a truly great man; so that, in this case, the generosity {!) of the government returned to it again. The Chattanooga campaign put at rest all doubts, if, in fact, any then existed in the minds of competent judges, as to who was the proper person to lead the Federal army to victory ; Gen. Grant being promoted to lieutenant-general and invested with full nouiinal command, but subject, in fact, to the constant meddling and blundering of Halleck and Stanton, which even the President himself could not entirely prevent. (See Vol. II of Grant's Memoirs.) Having made full dispo- sitions of all the Federal forces, and issued ample instructions to the various commanders, he prepared to move the army of the Potomac on its first victorious campaign ; that army then lying, for all practical military purposes, in the same relative position to the capital that it did in 1 86 1, before crossing arms with the Confederates. The desperate and prolonged struggle from the Rapidan river to Appomattox is too well known to be recited here. The sublime courage of Grant is best shown in the fact that he fully realized and believed, as he has left upon record, that he was taking the last chance, for, as he himself says, he did not believe the country could stand another year of the war, and another chance meant another campaign, and another campaign meant another year. 20 In view of relative numbers in the contending armies, the natural strength of the country to be traversed, the scries of fortifications already prepared for Lee's retiring army, the difficulties of transportation, and guarding of supplies, the two armies were as nearly matched as they ever had been, as is clearly shown by Gen. Grant in his memoirs. Hence the best general was bound to win. And that Lee fully realized that he was to meet a new kind of man was most clearl}' shown by the fact that during his long struggle with Grant, with the single exception of his attack upon and hurling back the sixth corps, at the beginning of the campaign, he always fought on the defensive. He indulged in no more such methods, as so placing his army that the Federals were between it and Richmond, as in 1862, on the Chickahominy ; or dividing his force in the face of the enemy, as in the Antietam campaign. On the contrary, Lee kept his army at all times in hand to repel the dreaded blows of Grant, who steadily forced Lee towards and finally inside his defences at Peters- burg and Richmond, never to leave them till forced out, to be compelled to surrender both his army and the Confederacy's last hope. In the meantime, Sherman, Grant's chosen first lieutenant, had fought his way, first to Atlanta, and then, adopting Grant's Vicksburg tactics, had cut adrift from his base and mowed a broad swath to the sea, whence he turned north towards Richmond, till halted by Grant, that the army of the Potomac might not have its pride wounded in not alone conquering 21 Richmond and Lee. Sheridan, another of Grant's military disciples, had swept the Shenandoah valley with a besom of destruction, and had wiped out Early's army. Thomas, in his slow manner, had pulverized Hood and his army, just in time to escape supercedure by Logan, whom Grant had sent for that purpose ; and Canby had in a dilatory manner reduced Mobile. These and other operations, all parts of Grant's comprehensive and masterly plan, brought the war to a more decided and successful termination than was ever any other great and well fought war where the parties were so evenly divided and the theatre of war of even approximate extent. And these operations had been, throughout, so conducted and so concluded, that Gen. Grant was held in even greater actual esteem by the vanquished, than by the victorious portion of the country ; for, during the stormy subsequent years of his life, when he, as chief magistrate, so wisely guided the country which his military ability had saved, almost the entire torrent of inevitable, malicious abuse, poured out against him by a partizan press and its abettors, came from the North, and the most northern of metropolitan cities, " cultured Boston," has the ignominious distinction of having furnished the only man who inaugurated and engineered a public meeting called to denounce Gen. Grant, where, in the old-time manner, the ineffable and exclusive coterie fraternized with the reeking and howling denizens of the purlieus of the city in denounc- ing a man whom all the rest of the world has gladly 22 honored, and for whom the entire body, rank and file of the armies which he conquered ever exhibited and expressed the most heartfelt respect and gratitude. In conclusion ; when we reflect, that from the opening of the war to the campaign of Donelson, the Union forces had achieved no material success anywhere ; that from Donelson to Chattanooga Grant had never led his men except to decisive and triumphant victory, that from Sumpter to Chattanooga no other general had achieved a decided success of important magnitude, the bare holding of positions, or averting defeat, being the nearest approach, by others, to great victories ; that, as already stated, Lee's army, for all strategic or tactical purposes, lay in the spring of 1864 where it did in 1 86 1, and that Richmond reposed within its cordon of defences as securely as when McClellan retreated in 1862, without even (like Moses) " viewing- the promised land." That, as clearly shown by Gen. Grant, the armies before Washington were, in the spring of 1864, as evenly balanced, considering numbers and conditions, as in 1862. That the army of the Potomac, hard fighters as they were, had from their constant reverses become so imbued with a belief in the invincibility of Gen. Lee that, as Gen. Grant relates, it was their common remark to Grant's staff officers, when he first assumed command, that " Gen. Grant had not met Bobby Lee yet." That, from the first movement of the army under Grant towards Richmond, till the final surrender, no retrograde step was ever taken ; it was always " Hold what you have and gain what you 23 can." As, in fact, in his whole military career he was never once forced to retreat. That the system and methods of his advance towards Richmond, although it has been severely criticized by amateur soldiers, who have learned the whole art of war, by skilfully manoeuvring puppet soldiers, on velvet- mounted tables, in luxuriously appointed libraries, was so unlike all previous efforts made for the same purpose as to then seem to routine theorists, reckless and unwarrantable, yet was no doubt the only plan that could have succeeded, as certainly it was the only plan that ever began to succeed, and has long since received the admiring endorsement of the best military ability of the age. That at the close of the war, no Union officer stood out, as a great and successful commander, who had not served under Grant, and thus had the direct and practical benefit of his example, the inspir- ation of his genius, and been imbued with that indomitable, aggressive, and ever persistent courage and purpose, which, when coupled with a good degree of ability, always insured success. That, as viewed in the calmer light of receding years, no other man gave evidence of the possession of the rare and great qualities by aid of which he could in so gigantic a contest perfectly command himself and all others, and thus ultimately command full and complete success. And, lastly, when war had ceased and the contending armies had fallen back into the repose of peace, but, by the stupid bargaining and catering of the political force of the country, and the brutal act of the assassin, the 24 legislative and executive branches of the government were waging more bitter and quite as dangerous war upon each other, as that which he had hushed in the field, and when a vacillating and suddenly elevated president sought to dishonor the nation, by violating its plighted faith, given to a paroled army, and when these bitter dissensions threatened further disaster, and were hopelessly and forever frittering away in large degree the most important legitimate results of the war, the whole nation rested safely upon the strong arm and in the calm and balanced will and judgment of this silent man, around whom all loyal men would have rallied, by force of habit and instinct, well knowing that what he might do, or advise to be done, would be for the best interest of the whole people, who, by his genius, had, after so long and desperate a struggle, been delivered from national disruption and ruin. In view of all which, well may we devoutly and thankfully exclaim — Behold the Providence and the Man ! T. W. PORTER, Late Colonel \\th Regiment, Maine Infantry. ,mS^.^ "'^ CONOrJEbb 013 788 046 5