Dodgeville chronicle. [volume] (Dodgeville, Wis.) 1862-current, 1868-05-15
GENERAL GRANT.

tacltly, our government is DaSed upon the
idea that the people can do no wrong and,
consciously or unconsciously the office OF
the Chief Magistrate among us mas Deen
simplified to intelligence and obedience
the ability to understand the popular mind,
and the will to rule by it. We want no
leader in the White House, but we never
theless want great man there, for 1t is
only great man who can comply with
these conditions Mr.. johnson early showed
himself helpless to discern and to ac-
quiesce, blinded as he was with original
conceit, and narrowed by the provincial
life OF minor slave State. lie conceived
ofus from the first as a nation OF emancl-
pated tailors, and he never could see that
the eagle differed essentially from the
goose. 1t required a sagacious humility,
which he never possessed, to act upon pub
lie feeling, to keep even with 1t, to confess
practically, that unless our democracy is
feigned and our existence a sham, we can
scarcely be worse misgoverned than when
we are forced Alright by an executive. Il
don't believe" says Mr.. Wade, in a recent
conversation attributed to him, that a
President ought to be setting himself up
as a policy maker When l was asked
what my policy will be in case | have to
discharge the Presidential duties, | gener-
ally answer that | won't have any policy.
It's the duty of Congress to adopt policy,
and the duty ofthe President to execute it.
We've had trouble. enough from the efforts
of Presidents to set up policy for them
selves, and force Congress into its adoption
by the use of the Government patronage,
and otherwise" TO some such clear idea
ofthe business of Presidency General Grant
has shown himself to have attained; and
| whether he has reached it through the eX-
perience Of a.lifetime, or through the events
of the two instructive years of Mr.. john
sons administration, we need not very dill
gently inquire.
1t is certain that Grants whole life has
been one to teach him America, if not
Americanism and he has had even wider
opportunities to know his countrymen than
that great President who understood them
better than any other, and with whom he
had in common backwoodS origin and a
youth of hard work In order to believe
that these opportunities were not lost to a
man of his shrewd and Independent temper,
we need not be at the trouble to suppose
that he made an ambitious study of the peo-
pie with whom he was brought so various
ly acquainted, or that he was not always
chiefly interested in advancing his fortunes
by the paths plainest before him. The
destiny which took him from his rude
early life, and placed him in contact with
discipline, science, and culture at
West Point, was not of kind to inspire
trust in it's infalibility, since it concerned
itself so little with Grant personally that
it even blundered in his name, and put
fame and the family bible forever at vari-
ance about him nor is it probable that he
| was led in any very confident or prophetic
spirit from West Point to active service in
| Mexico, and thence to garrison-life in
New York and ON the Canadian frontier,
and, yet later, on military duty to Cali
fornia and Oregon, with their gold-mining
| tumults and Indian wars. Nevertheless,
he thus came to know Americans of every
class and section; and when, having mar
ried, he resigned his place in the army,
and tried farming, and, in small way,
slaveholding, in Missouri, and still later
devoted himself to the leather business at
Galena, he completed his own experience
of all the prominent phases of American
life-the backwoods, the school, arms,
agriculture and commerce. When the
war overlook him with the rest of us, in
1861, he was selling leather in Galena.
We dare say he did not then, in his thirty
ninth year, regard himself as a very sue
| cessful man, and no effert of the magma
ton could depict him as great one. He
was widely experienced, undiscoura ged
| American, who was doing the work that
| lay next his hand, with no reason to eXult
in his past, nor any disposition to make
| less of himself in the future. He must
have seemed to everybody plain man of
average ability but his taciturn habit no
doubt did him injustice, and made him
pass for man of less weight than he
really was. Considering his whole char
acter and career, it is probable that he
valued his neighbors more justly than
they valued him and it is pretty certain
that since that time he has had the advan-
tage of his countrymen in approaching
the reciprocal understanding which has
been finally reached,
| We are all Abolitionists since the email
| cipation of the slaves; and if we find it
hard to forgive Grant, that, up to the be-
ginning of the war, he had failed to SYM
| pathize with the popular resolution to
| limit and annul the political influence of
| slavery, we can remember it merely as we
recall the political history Of say, General
| Butler up to about the same period
Grants thorough knowledge of Americans
as men was the foundation on which he
| built the victories of Fort Donelson
| Vicksburg and Richmond, and in the
meantime his political education has pro-
ceeded with the greatest rapidity. At the
outset he saw that the end of slavery had
come, and the "three likely negroes
whom his wife owned in Missouri were
then freed by private proclamation; nor
| did he ever propose to subdue the Rebels
with one hand and crush the slaves with
! the other, upon the plan of our more mag
NATIVE Generals. He felt that the work
| before him was more serious than this,
| and that the people behind him were ear
| nest to extremity He put his silent faith
| in their resolution, and beat out the Re-
bellion with their memorable numbers,
| which he knew could not fail him so long
as there was need of them; but, the work
| done, he respected their supremacy as if
he had been the least of his victorious sol
diers, and had never had power over one
American citizen
Yet how thoroughly events had edu-
Gated him in our political character and
the most advanced ideas of self-govern-
ment few of us understood till, two years
later we read those words in protest
against the removal of General Sheridan:
Il earnestly urge, in the name of patri-
otto people, who have sacrificed hundreds
of thousands of lives, and thousands of
millions of treasure, to preserve the lnteg-
rity and union of this country, that this
order be not insisted on. 1t is, unmistaka-
bly,, the expressed wish of the country
that General Sheridan should not be re-
moved from his command. This is a Re-
MI he, of 1c