Knoxville daily chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1882, 1872-11-02
GRANT AND THE SOUTH.
Horace Maynard's Defence of Grants Rec
ord, -....,--

From a recent speech of Hon. Horace
Maynard, delivered before the Republic
can State convention of Georgia, we make
these extracts:
Let me ask why you wish to beat Grant,
and that, at every sacrifice, whether of
principle or of honor? What has he done,
or failed to do, to require or justify, or eX-
cuse such effort? This canvass has de-
velOped an amount of personal calumny
without parallel for bitterness and venom.
The accusations themselves are mostly
trivial, and none have withstood scrutiny.
He smokes cigars, cries one; he delights
in fine horses, shouts another; he flies
from the miasmatic air of the White
House and takes refuge from the summer
heats by the seaside, shrieks third, she
is monster of ignorance" says Charles
Sumner; she is drunkard," !" says lead
er in the late COnfederacy, whom L do not
name, as if the Southern Confederacy and
all that appertained to it had gone down
before host led by a drunken fool! Tell
it not i'll Gath Certainly not to the men
of the South
Upon one point, affecting his public
rather than his personal and private rela-
tons, l beg you, to dwell a moment-his
treatment of US, here i'll the South. In
the first place, | remark he has never ut
tered or written an unkind or disparaging
word of us, as a people, or against obnoX-
iOuS citizens, by name; SO unlike his Op-
ponent, who at one time or another, has
assailednearly all our prominent characters
with unceasing abuse of our people in the
mass, not sparing even the women of our
land.
His treatment of the defeated at Vicks-
burg is fresh in your memory. Nor have
you forgotten, how, after the terms of the
flHal surrender had been signed, at the
suggestion of your fallen leader, he per
mitted you to retain your horses, saying
Certainly, the boys will need them in
their cropS.n Some of you will recollect
his Intervention in behalf of General Lee,
to save him from trial for treason and his
report of tine condition of the South in the
fall of 1865, which Mr.. Sumner, character
lied in the Senate as embarrassing re-
port" and which Mr.. Schurz attempted
to neutralize 10y counter-report.
But one Of your eminent fellow-citzens,
the Vice President of the late Confedera-
cy, in his recent work, has given the world
his impressions of Gen. Grant, as he saw
him, during the memorable conference at
Hampton Roads, in the winter of 1S6+5.
He says-vOlume II-page 597. "I'hc JVdy
BettCeep the States ~
| was instantly struck with the great
manners, and the entire absence of every
thing like affectatiOn, show, or even mil
itary air or mein of men in his position.
x There was nothing in his appear
anCe or surroundings. His con-
versation wasy cas- and. fluent, without the
least effort or restraint. In this, nothing
was SO closely noticed as the point and
terseness with which he expressed what
ever he said. He did not seem either to
court or avoid conversation, but whenever
he did speak, what lie said was derectly to
the point, and covered the whole matter
in few words. l saw, before L was with
him long, that he was exceedingly quick
in perception, ana direct in purpose, with
a vast deal more Of brains than tongue, as
ready as that was at his command.
The more | became acquainted with him
the more became thoroughly impressed
with the very extraordinary combination
of rare elements of character which he
exhibited. \ Upon the whole, the
result of this first acquaintance with Gen.
Grant X X was, the conviction in
my mind that, taken all in all, he was one
of the most remarkable men / had ever
met with, and that his career in life, if his
days should be prolonged, was hardly en-
tered upon that he himself was not aware
of his power, and that if he lived, he
would in the future exert controlling in
fiuence in shaping the destinies of this
country, etc.