Year: 1872




load of wood to sell, had within him every
manly quality which will cause the name o.
Lleut.-Gen. Grant to live forever in history
his career is lesson in practical democracy;
IL is quiet satire on the dandyism, puppy
Ism, and the shallow affectation of our fash,
ionable exquistes as well as upon the swaooer
of our plausible, glib-tongued demaeog1es.
Not by any means that great qualities aIe in
consistent with cultivated manners and a flu
ent elocutlon; but that such superficial &C.
complishments are no measure of worth or
ability. -rts- r...r


Gen. Grants last brilliant campaign sets
the final seal upon his reputation. 1t stamps
him as the superior of his able antagonist as
well as OF all the commanders that have sery-
ed with or under him in the great campaigns
of the last year. 1t is not necessary to sacri-
flee any part of their well-earned regulations
to his. Sherman and Sheridan deserve all
that has ever been said in their praise; but
there has never been time since Grant was
made Lieutenant-General,w when anybody but
sherman, on our side, could have been class
ed with him. Since Sheman's bold march
through Georgia, and his capture of Savan-
nah and Charleston, there have been many
who, in their strong admiration of his great
achievements, inclined to rank him as the
greater General of the two. That judgment,
we take it, is now reversed by the court of
final appeal; not by dwarf1ng the reputation
OF Sherman, which suffers no just abatement,
but by the expansion into grander proportions
of that of Grant.


Grant stands pre-eminent among all the
Generals who have served in this war i'm the
completeness of his final results He has
owed nothing to accident; and, both in the
West and the East he has accomplished the
most arduous things that were 10 be done.
The great thing in the West, without which
tho rahal could M. No.
In that vast region, was The reopening OF the
Mississippi; the great thing in the East, the
taking of the rebel capital. Richmond was
the right leg of the rebellion, and the Missis-
sippi River its left. Both were contested by
the rebels with full appreciation of their
value. The resistance was, in both cases,
powerful and obstinate enough to put the
most heroic tenacity of the most indonita lie
mind to proof sufficient to test its quality.
Gen. Grant has exhibited the utmost strength
of will of which the highest type of manhood
is capable. The defences of Vicksburg and
the defenses of Richmond were both deemed
impregnable, and were defended with a pro-
portionable confidence and obstinacy; but
they both yielded, at last, to Grants match
less persistence and unequaled strategy
And, in both cases, he not only took the long
contested positions, but compelled the sur
render of the whole force defending them
Nothing could be more clean and complete,
even in imagination, than Gen. Grants mas
terly execution. He did not merely, in each
case, acquire position which was the key OF
a wide theatre of operations; he did not
merely beat or disable the opposing force;
he left no fragment of it in existence except
as prisoners OF war subject to his disposal.


Ii anybody is so obtuse or so wrong-head-
ed as to see nothing GREAT in Gen. Grant be-
yond his marvellous tenacity of will, let that
doubter explain, if he can, how it has hap
pened that, since Grant rose to high COM
mand, this quality has always been exerted
in conspicuous energy precisely at the point
on which every thing in his whole sphere OF
operations hinged. There has been no dis
play of great qualities on small occasions no
expenditure of herculean effort to accomplish
objects not of the first magnitude. 1t is only
a very clear-sighted and very comprehen-
sive mind that could always thus have laid
the whole emphasis of an indomtable soul so
precisely on the emphatic place. How, if he
be not General of the first order of intellect
as well as of the most heroic 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 untolced, appeared in the
picture except as the central figure? How
ever it may seem during the progress of one
Of his great combined campaigns, it always
turns out at last, when it reaches that COM
pleteness and finish in which he contr.ves to
have his campaigns end, that we see him
standing in the foreground, and that the
grouping is always such that the glory of the
other Generals instead of eclipsing his own
gives it additional lstre. 1t is this sureness
ofjudgment which sees precisely where lies
the turning point; which sees precisely
what are the objects that justify the utmost
sti etch of persistence it is this ability to take
in the whole field of view in just perspective
and due subordination of parts, that is the
mark of superior mind. Gen. Grant has ta-
ken out of the hands of all critics the
question whether it belongs to him.
He has won his greatest triumph
over the most skillful and accomplished
General on the other side; over q General
who foiled him long enough to prove his
great mastery of the art of war; and the COM
pleteness of whose defeat is a testimony to
Grants genius such as a victory over any
other General of the Confederacy, or even an
earlier victory over Lee himself could not
have given. Apply to Gen. Grant what test
you will I; measure him by the magnitude of
the obstacles he has surmounted, by the val
ue of the positions he has gained, by the
fame of the antagonist over whom he has tri-
umphed, by the achievements of his most il
lustrious co-workers, by the sureness with
which he directs his indomitable eageness to
the vital point which is the key of a vast field
of operations, or by that supreme test of con-
summate ability, the absolute completeness
of his results, and he vindicates his claim to
stand next after Napoleon and Wellington,
among the great soldiers of this country, if
not ON a level with the latter.


lit may be thought that the above article is
quoted from some "Grant organ;' but it is
in rea ity copied from Grants most persistent
slanderer, the New York World, of April IL,
1855. The truth ,could force itself out just
then, for all mankind could see what this
country owed to Gen. Grant, and it would
have been useless for the World to have de-
MED the credit due tc the great commander.
What was true on April II, 1866, cannot be
,,ptrua in, T,,Ix, 1910