“I am ten fold more loved than Calhoun,” responded the General. “Calhoun, as I've said, has no gift to be popular. He talks to folk; I talk with them. Sir, between those words, with and to, dwells the whole art of popularity.”
“Your popularity is growth of your work in the field.”
“My being a soldier, had much to do with its beginning. Man is a fighting animal and loves a fighter. Particularly if he win. Now, were I to advise one to a short cut for public favor, I would say, 'Be a soldier and win.'”
“Especially 'win,'” I returned.
“By all means add the 'win' and emphasize it. That is my rede: Be sure to win. No one is made to explain a victory, no one tries a conqueror; the error of all errors is the black error of defeat.”
“And yet a good man may lose.”
“Sir, the best man may lose. But you are to consider: When he loses, the public owes him nothing. A farmer toils like a slave; a drought kills his crops; is he paid for the corn he does not raise? The public owes the successful soldier for that profit it takes from his sword; and the public pays its debts. I won at the Horseshoe, at Pensacola, at New Orleans; and the public pays me with a White House. Had I lost my battles, I would have been cashiered a score of times. Calhoun would have succeeded with his scheme to court-martial me in the Seminole days, save that I was armored of my victories. I would never agree to less than victory, and that stubbornness for triumph has even defeated enemies I did not know I had.”
“You have had vast success,” said I, judgmatically, “when one remembers the blindness of your prejudices, and how you will help this one or hurt that one for a no better reason than love or hate. There is your defect; I have often wished that to your honesty and ardor you added the just fairness of Jefferson.”
“Jefferson!” This with a snort: “I am a fairer—a more just man than was Jefferson! He was just to his enemies and unjust to his friends. Now, I am strong enough to do justice by a friend. It hurts no man with me that he has been the friend of Andrew Jackson.”
“But you can not do justice by a foe. You are all for a foe's destruction.”