American citizen. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 1864-1890, 1881-06-18
The "Grcat Captains" Last Disgrace.

Ii tnero was ever one man IN 'LQlS
country who contrived to belle his own
reputation more unblushingly and in
decently than another. it is Ulysses S.
Grant We say it without particle of
partisan malice or personal feeling. 1t
is fact in which no American can take
either pleasure or pride.
General Grant came out of the civil
war with q record which any man of
honorable instincts or lofty self-re-
spect would have cared for as the apple
of his eye.
Whether he was fully entitled to all
the glory that was accorded him, is for
future and more impartial historians to
decide. That is not now q question.
He had the reputation, and it lowered
far above that of any military COM
mander in any age.
1t was reputation that procured for
him an almost idolatrous worship. II
gave him worldwide renown. 1t was
a card to palaces and courts where
many better men might knock without
answer.
1t made him once and again the
President of the United States, and
rallied .phalanx of Three Hundred
and Six at Chicago, furiously demand
ing that he be given third term more.
But it is not in the nature Of Grant s
venal and groveling ambition to be
contentad with the trimming cup of
honors which his people had awarded
him. He was not the man to seek a
dignifed retirement, nor even to enter
into respectable business connections.
He preferred a tawdry ostentation; and
as consequence descended from his
"high cstate' with far more rapidity
than, by a strange succession of circum-
stances, he reached it.
His vanity was tlattered at every
turn by men who knew his weaknesses
and wanted to use him. He suffered
himself to be cajoled into all sorts of
equivocal situations that worthier men
would have Stunned. He became as
thoroughly the victim of low associa-
tons, in spite of all his laurels, as when
he was nothing but an obscure PEN
sioner upon the bounty of friendly
leather-dealer at Galena.
And now, to cap the climax of his
effrontery, he sits down and writes a
letter calling President Garfield to ac-
count for failing to adapt his New York
of Roscoe Conkling. No one questions
his privilege as an individual to criti-
else the public acts of the President as
he pleases, but. occupying the position
that no claims to occupy, with a record
behind him that is the property of the
Nation, he has no right to compromise
the dignity of the country and betray
the confidence that has been placed in
him as a patriot. by descending into a
partisan squabble to aid and abet the
schemes OF a rancOrous and quarrel
some intriguer.
There was a time in the history of
both his own Administrations when it
was all the American people could do
to hold their patience with the corrup-
tions that surrounded and well-nigh
swallowed him up. Even if he
has. then, no regard for the COM
mon proprieties of life, no apprecia-
ton of the department which an ex-
General of the Army and an ex-Presi-
dent of the Republic should bear to-
ward his fellow citizens, he should at
any rate be the last man in the country
to utter sentiment of disloyalty to-
ward the Administration now in power.
1t was chosen by the same party that
twice elected him. He should at least
refrain from open participation in a con-
sPiracy to undermine its hold upon the