The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-04-02
General Grant as Military and as a
Political Leader.

Hfon The ". Y. Herald.
The commencement of General Grants mil-
tary career was not brilliant. Almost under
any other circumstances il would have been
pronounced failure. His first affair at Bel
mont, which was intended as part OF grano
movement for the protection OF ST. Louis anu
the suppression of the Rebel sentitnenc ~ III III MIS-
souri, although comparatively lnsiBhlnosnI III
itself, did the Union cause out h.tie 8ooo 4nu
the enemy no harm. He was mistrusted by
the commanding general, and even his sub5e-
onent suooesses, the capture OF Forts Henry
and Donelson, could not help a shadow being
thrown upon his military reputation by the
disastrous first days fighting at Shiloh and
Pittsburg Landing. He had to encounter the
animosity of his superior and the jealousy OF
his rival officers from that time even to the fall
of Vicksburg. He refused to fight according
to the prescribed rules of war as laid down by
the red tape martinets in Washington, and
worked out problems of his own, sometimes
with partial and at others with complete sue
cess He discarded the old rules and tactics
ofEuropean as well as our own regular armies,
az being entirely unadapted to the habits and
nature of the newly developed American SOL
dier: and having the instinct to discern the
ability of his officers and the disposition of his
troops, he had the sagacity to use them to ad-
vantage and the genius to reap therefron
legitimate fruits. Being an even-tempsred
and unambitious man, he reconciled differences
which otherwise might have led to serious
embarrassments and ripened into national
disasters. All this time he was, for obvious
reasons, enoountering hostility in high official
quarters, and II was not until his triumphant
banners entered Richmond and the Rebellion
was pronounced extinct that this hostility
ceased.
As General Grant commenced his military
so has he commenced his political career. 1t
is not brilliant. His first movement like that
at Belmont, was comparative failure. His
Cabinet hitched. Here was bother, il not
blunder. He had to make a retrograde move
ment and reform his lines. He finally sue
ceeded in reorganiziDg his staff of official
counsellors, and began the work of his politi-
cal campaign. Here he was met by the odi-
ous Tenure e-of- Office act and he finds that, as
in his military career he had to encounter the
opposition of officials in high quarters in the
War Department at Washington, he has now
to be embarrassen with similar hostility,
through the ambitious, designs of the oligar-
chy in the United States Senate. The old
politicians, too, are annoying him
by their endeavors to circumvent his
plans, and to make him believe that
party is superior to country, and that public
plunder Is the proper reward of those trading
partisans who helped to elevate him to the
Presidency. We believe he has harder fight
now than he ever had in the field, and that he
would any day rather face the blaze of an
enemy's battery than undergo the daily ordeal
Of meeting the battalions of otfice-seekers that
invest the White House. But his day is COM
ing just as surely as his standard rose above
the capital city of the foe. He is abused now
as he was on his partial successrs during the
war, and the abuse that is now bestowed upon
him will in the end, as it was at the end of the
war, be turned to peans of praise. He will
overcome obstacles that the envious, the
fanatical, the ambitious or the treacherous
may cast in his path. He will have political
Vicksburg as he had military one he will
have political successes similar to those mill
tary successes which followed in regular train
on the peninsula of Virginia, eliminating in a
grand and final political Appomattox. The
vote on the Tenure-of-Ofice act shows that he
has the House with him, and the temper of the
Senate is exhibited in its action Wednesday.
He cannot be impeached because the House
would not originate the proceeding. There
fore he might as we'll 60 on, make his ap-
pointments, let the Senate slide, and, after
demoraliziDg the radical party by magnif-
cent strategic movement, erect party of his
own that will rally around him in any emer-
gency. Thus will his political mssion-begin-
ming, like his military career, in somewhat
bungling manner-end as that did, in an efful-
gent ray of glory, imparting alike union and
harmony, confidence and prosperity all over
the country.