Year: 1868

from the N. L. w orlu (Dem) April IL, 1855
Lieutenant-General Grant.
General Grants history should
teach us to discriminate better than
we Americans are apt to do between
glitter and solid worth. Our prone
ness to run after demagogues and
spouters may lend wholesome
corrective In the study of such a
character as his. The qualities
by which great things are accom-
plished, are here seen to have
no necessary connection with
snowy and superficial accomplish
ments. When the mass of men look
upon such character, they may
learn truer respect for themselves
and each other; they are taught by
it that high qualities and great abil-
tiles are consistant with the simplic-
ity of taste, contempt for parade and
plainness of manners with which di-
| rect and earnest men have a strong
natural sympathy. Ulysses Grant
the tanner, Ulysses Grant, the M
successful applicant for the post of
City Surveyor of St. Louis, Ulysses
Grant, the driver into that city of
his two-horse team with load of
wood to sell, had within him every
mainly quality which will cause the
name of Lieutenant General Grant
to live forever in history. His ca
reer is lesson in practical democ-
racy it is a quiet satire on the dan
dyism, the puppyism, and the shall
low affectations of our fashionable
exquisites as well as upon the swag-
ger of our plausible, glib-tongued
demagogues. Not by any means that
great qualities are inconsistent with
cultivated manners and a fluent elo-
cution; but that such superficial ac-
complishments are no measure of
worth OR ability.


| General Grants last brilliant cam
paign sets the final seal upon his
reputation. 1t stamps him as the
superior of his able antagonist, as
well as all the commanders who
have served with or under him in
the great campaigns of the last year.
It is not necessary to sacrifice any
part of their well earned regulations
to his. Sherman and Sheridan de-
serve all that has everbeen said in
their praise; but there has never
been time since Grant was made
Lieutenant General, when any body
but Sherman, on our side, could
have been classed with him. Since
Sherman's bold march through
Georgia and his capture of Savannah
and Charleston there have been
many who, in their strong admira-
ton of his great achievements, are
inclined to rank him as the greater
general Of the two. Thatjudgment
we take it, is now reversed by the
court of final appeal uot by dwarf
ting the reputation of Sherman,
which suffers no just abatement, but
by the expansion into grandure pro-
portions Of that of Grant.


Grant stands pre-eminent among
all the Generals who have led our
armies in the late war, in that he has
exhibited the utmost strength of
will Of which the highest type of
manhood is capable. The defenses
of Vicksburg and the defenses of
Richmond were both deemed i'm
pregnable, and were defended with
a proprotionable confidence and OBJ
stancy but they both yielded, at
last, to Grants matchless persis-
tency, AID unequaled strategy. And
in both cases, he compelled the sur
render of the whole force defending
them. Nothing could be more clean
and complete, even in Imagination,
than General Grants mastery exc
cution. He did not merely, in each
case, acquire a position which was
the key Of a wide theater Of Opera
tions.; he did not merely beat Or dis
APPLE the opposing force, he left no
fragrant of it in existence, except as
prisoners Of war subject to his dis
posal.


If any body is so obtuse Or so
wrong headed as to see nothing great
in General Grant beyond his marve-
lous tenacity Of will, let that man
explain, if he can, how it has hap
pened that since Grant rose to high
command, this quality has always
been exerted, in conspicuous enough
precisely on the point on which ev-
cry thing is his whole sphere of op-
erations hinged. There has been no
display of great qualities on small
occasions; no expenditure ofhereu-
lean effort to accomplish objects not
Of the first magnitude. 1t is only a
very clear-sighted and very com
prehensive mind that could always
thus have laid the whole emphasis
of an indomitable soul SO precisely
on the emphatic place. How, if he
be not General ofthe first order of
intellect, as well as of the most he
roic determination, does it happen
that in assigning great and brilliant
parts to his subordinate command
ers he has never, when the results of
his strategy were fully unfolded, ap-
peared in the picture except as the
central figure? However great COM
bined campaigns, it always turns out
at last, when it reaches that complet-
e. ess and finish in which he cnntri-
yes to have his campaigns end, that
we see him standing in the fore
ground, and that the grouping is al
ways such that the glory of the 9TH
er Generals, instead of eclipsing his
own, gives it additional luster. It
is the sureness Of judgment which
sees precisely where lies the turning
point; which sees precisely what are
the objects that justify the utmost
stretch Of persistence. He has won
his greatest triumph over the most