The Sun.
London, England, 1866-05-26 00:00:00

Honours to General Grant.

In the United States House of Representatives, on the
3d instant, a resolution was introduced conferring upon
Ulysses S. Grant the rank of General of the Armies of
the United States, instead of that of Lieutenant-General.
The bill was passed by a vote of 116 yeas to 11 nays. In
the course of the proceedings, the Honourable Henry C.
Deming, member of Congress from Connecticut, made a
brilliant speech, in which the claims of General Grant
upon the gratitude of his country were advocated. After
alluding to the honours which were conferred by Great
Britain upon Nelson, Wellington, and other national
heroes, Mr. Deming continued :
" Our institutions, it is said, are popular, and that these
regal benefactions are hostile to their genius and spirit ;
and yet the American people have not in the past been
insensible to the claims of great military service to solid
and substantial rewards, and have constantly solicited ex-
pressions of gratitude in harmony with the simplicity and
frugality of our system. They rewarded General Wash-
ington for his military services in the Revolution by twice
electing him to the Presidency. They rewarded General
Jackson for his military services in the War of 1812 by
twice electing him to the Presidency. It was his services
in the same war which contributed vastly to the elevation
of General Harrison to the same office, and but for his
Mexican victories General Taylor never would have been
President of the United States. The heroism of General
Scott in two wars directed the attention of a great
party to him as their candidate for the Presidency,
and all parties united 'in conferring upon him the
rank of Lieutenant-General as the only reward they
could bestow upon his life-long devotion to the
defence and renown of our flag. Now, I could safely chal-
lenge each one of this long line of heroes to come forth and
present a claim upon national gratitude which cannot be
met and overmatched by the claims upon us of that modest
and reticent soldier who scattered the armies and destroyed
the military power of a rebellion whose success would have
buried the Great Republic of the world beyond the hope of
resurrection. Tried by the criterion of success, who of
them can present a brighter, fairer, more unsullied record ?
Tried by the interests at stake, upon which of their swords
did interests so momentous hang ? Tried by the valour of
the adversary, who of them ever encountered a foe so
worthy of his steel ? If in the sad and disheartening
summer of 1863 it had been asked you, what rank will you
confer upon the General who silences the batteries at Vicks-
burg, that the Mississippi, through the bisected rebellion,
might course unobstructed from the prairies to the Gulf ;
if it had been asked us at the close of the last session, what
will you do for him who breaks the lines of Richmond and
receives the sword of Lee, what soul in this house could
have placed any limit or qualification upon its obligations ?
Find a single martial enterprise in the whole history of
mankind more serious in the obstacles to be overcome, more
luminous as an example of heroism and endurance, more
fatal to an enemy, more magnificent in its results,
than the single enterprise of opening the Mississippi
River; search the tide of time for a nation which was
ever delivered from such depths and exalted to
such a pinnacle of exaltation by one single blow
as by that struck at Richmond in April last,
which at the same time broke the head and paralysed the
extremities of the rebellion. War has been defined to be
contention by force for the purpose of crippling or over-
whelming an enemy ; and in glancing at the history of our
war it seems to me that we had made but little progress
even in crippling our enemy until the inflexible will and
martial energies of General Grant entered as an animating
and directing soul into the armies of the Republic. Prior
to his conspicuous appearance upon the grand arena we
had met with many reverses and a few successes, but
the reverses were most depressing to the national spirit,
and the successes had hardly penetrated the hide of the
defiant monster which was confronting us. War had
surged and resurged with alternate triumph and defeat over
the devoted plains of Missouri. We had gained a lodg-
ment on the coast of South Carolina ; we held the sand
spits of Hatteras, and we had dearly purchased a strategical
position on Roanoke Island. But in neither of these affairs
had we succeeded in actually debilitating the enemy, and
from neither of these points had we been able to penetrate
the enemy's country much beyond the range of our can-
non. The first decided success which let in a glimpse of
sunlight, and lifted the cloud of despondency and exhi-
laratal the national heart, were the brilliant operations
upon the Tennessee and the Cumberland. When, follow-
ing hard upon the capture of Fort Henry, the country
learned that Fort Donelson, strongly fortified by nature and
art, had surrendered, with its garrison of 16,000 prisoners,
and that large sections of Kentucky and Tennessee were
redeemed from rebel thraldom, we asked, with all the vehe-
mence of kindling gratitude, to whom we are indebted for
a vigour of operations and an earnestness of purpose which
prove that military enterprise and heroism are not obso-
lete, and that there is still some hope for our drooping flag,
and we were told that he who could say to a rebel general,
"No other terms than an unconditional surrender can be
accepted ; I propose to move immediately upon your works,"
was one of those worthy beneficiaries whom the nation had
educated at the great military school; that he had won his
spurs in the earliest battles of the Mexican war ; that he
had participated in that series of hard-fought engagements
which carried triumphantly the flag of the Bepublic from

the shores of •the Gulf to the lake-encircled citadel of the
ancient Aztecs; that he had won his full grade of first
lieutenant in those bloody hours when Molino del Rey suc-
cumbed to the impetuosity of our soldiery, and his brevet
of captain on that day, ever memorable in our agnals, when
the steep and frowning heights of Chepultepec were car-
ried, and the trembling city below implored the mercy of
our artillery. We are told that when the war was over,
disgusted with the ennui which haunts a soldier on the
peace establishment, he had resigned his commission as
captain, but that when the rebellion struck the first tocsin
he rushed to the defence of the flag under which he was
trained and nurtured, and offered his services to Governor
Yates, of Illinois ; that ho had organised the Illinois
quota under the first call for troops ; that, as colonel
of the twenty-first regiment of that State, he had
quelled the guerillas in North Missouri; that he had
risen rapidly to the grade of brigadier-general ; that
he had destroyed a rebel magazine at Paducah; that
he bad wiped out Jeff. Thompson at Frederickton; that he
had severely chastised a superior force of the enemy at Bel-
mont; that he was a General who seemed to understand

what war meant and what it did not mean; that in his
judgment it did not mean lying in camp and garrison,
drilling and organising for ever and ever, but seeking the
enemy, moving on his works, pushing and pounding until
he gave way; and that when he did that you were not to
wait for weeks and months for horses, shoes, transporta-
tion, but that you were to push on with such resources as
you had, hang on his flanks like grim death, and if one ex-
pedient failed, try another and another until he was utterly
routed and dissolved. In short, we are told that he was a
positive man, of pluck and. purpose and self-reliance, who
did not believe, as some did, that Robert E. Lee was en-
dued by the supernatural powers, with supernatural resources
and strategy and übiquity, or who did not fear, as some
did, that he, with the entire army of Northern Virginia,
could suddenly throw a summersault over intervening
mountains and forests into our lines, but that, by butting
and hammering away with mere human caution and skill
and perseverance, the mightiest Paladin of treason could
be outflanked or whipped. Much criticism was expended
at the time upon the battle of Shiloh; and that part of it
which applies to the gaps and disconnections in our dis-
jointed line of battle may be just. It was a vast melee
between separate regiments, brigade and divisions,
each fighting on his own hook and for its own posi-

tion, with but little concert of action and with but
slight mutual support. So far as the criticism applies to the
violation of true principles of war by fighting that battle
with his back to the Tennessee River, General Grant has
broken his austere silence and condescended in charac-
teristic strain to speak for himself. After the battle of
Pittsburg Landing General Buell began criticising in a
friendly way the impolicy of his having fought the battle
with the Tennessee behind his men. " Where," if beaten,
could you have retreated, General ?" asked Buell. "I did
not mean to be beaten," was Grant's sententious reply.
‘• But suppose you had been defeated in spite of your exer-
tions ?" " Well, there were all the transports to carry the
remains of the army across the river." "But General,"
urged Buell, "your whole transports could not contain
even ten thousand men, and it would have been impossible
for them to make more than one trip in the face of the
enemy." Well, if I had been beaten," said General
Grant, quietly lighting
acigar as he spoke, "transportation
for ten thousand men would have been abundant, for that
would have been more than would have been left." And
yet in one important respect it contributed more to the
eventual success of our arms than any action in the war.
It was the experimentura crucis which first tested the re-
spective stamina and manliness of the two belligerents.
It was the first hurling together of the two peoples upon a
largo scale in a hand-to-hand fight, and when the enemy
retreated from that broken and gory field, he retreatedwith
his arrogancy tamed and his dream of invincibility dis-
pelled for ever. No Southern soldier from that terrible
day presumed to despise again the courage, the per-
sistence, or the marksmanship of the adversary,
for there was
Weeping and lamentation in every
Southern home. I have already adverted to the
vast importance to the national cause of the capture of
Vicksburgh. In those protracted operations, a war by
itself, which culminated in the overthrow of that almost
impregnable stronghold, it is difficult to discover what
element or quality of a consummate commander General
Grant failed to exhibit. Strategy ? Why
the conception
of the new enterprise, after every conceivable plan had been
tried and failed, was either an inspiration of strategical
genius or the result of the most laborious stragetical study,
labour, and perseverance. Why, the reconnoissances of the
different bays,
creeks, passes, and rivers which' he made
in that amphibious region, the dredging which he executed.
the canals which he dug to open a safe water passage be-
low the city, are without parallel in resistance to natural
obstacles, unless the parallel is found in the memorable
expedition of Xerxes into the Peloponnesus, which chan-
nelled Mount Athos and bridged the Hellespont. Fore-
thought ?
venture was prearranged in his mind, and every contin-
Whn every step of a seemingly desperate ad-
geney which could be anticipated provided for in advance.
Presence of mind? Contingencies that could not to fore-