JOHN SHERMAN.
Secretary of State under
President McKinley; resigned 1898.
There have been many attempts made to analyze the character of this remarkable man. Some of his most intimate friends failed to understand him. Among the best of these analyses is that of Lieutenant-General John M. Schofield. In this our last reference to General Grant, the words of his trusted confidant deserve record:
"General Sherman wrote that he could not understand Grant, and doubted if Grant understood himself. A very distinguished statesman, whose name I need not mention, said to me that, in his opinion, there was nothing special in Grant to understand. Others have varied widely in their estimates of that extraordinary character. Yet I believe its most extraordinary quality was its extreme simplicity, so extreme that many have entirely overlooked it in their search for some deeply hidden secret to account for so great a character, unmindful of the general fact that simplicity is one of the most prominent attributes of greatness.
"The greatest of all the traits of Grant's character was that which lay always on the surface, visible to all who had eyes to see it. That was his moral and intellectual honesty, integrity, sincerity, veracity, and justice. He was incapable of any attempt to deceive anybody, except for a legitimate purpose, as in military strategy; and, above all, he was incapable of deceiving himself. He possessed that rarest of all human faculties, the power of a perfectly accurate estimate of himself, uninfluenced by vanity, pride, ambition, flattery, or self-interest. Grant was very far from being a modest man, as the word is generally understood. His just self-esteem was as far above it as it was above flattery. The highest enconiums were accepted for what he believed them to be worth. They did not disturb his equilibrium in the slightest degree. Confiding, just, and generous to everybody else, he treated with silent contempt any suggestion that he had been unfaithful to any obligation. He was too proud to explain where his honor had been questioned.
"While Grant knew his own merits as well as anybody did, he also knew his own imperfections and estimated them at their real value. For example, his inability to speak in public, which produced the impression of extreme modesty or diffidence, he accepted simply as a fact in his nature which was of little or no consequence, and which he did not even care to conceal. He would not, for many years, even take the trouble to jot down a few words in advance, so as to be able to say something when called upon. Indeed, I believe he would have regarded it as an unworthy attempt to appear in a false light if he had made preparations in advance for an 'extemporaneous' speech. Even when he did in later years write some notes on the back of a dinner-card, he would take care to let everybody see that he had done so by holding the card in plain view while he read his little speech. After telling a story, in which the facts had been modified somewhat to give the greater effect, which no one could enjoy more than he did, Grant would take care to explain exactly in what respects he had altered the facts for the purpose of increasing the interest in his story, so that he might not leave any wrong impression.
"When Grant's attention was called to any mistake he had committed, he would see and admit it as quickly and unreservedly as if it had been made by anybody else, and with a smile which expressed the exact opposite of that feeling which most men are apt to show under like circumstances. His love of truth and justice was so far above all personal considerations that he showed unmistakable evidence of gratification when any error into which he might have fallen was corrected. The fact that he had made a mistake and that it was plainly pointed out to him did not produce the slightest unpleasant impression; while the further fact, that no harm had resulted from his mistake, gave him real pleasure. In Grant's judgment, no case in which any wrong had been done could possibly be regarded as finally settled until that wrong was righted, and if he himself had been, in any sense, a party to that wrong, he was the more earnest in his desire to see justice done. While he thus showed a total absence of any false pride of opinion or of knowledge, no man could be firmer than he in adherence to his mature judgment, nor more earnest in his determination, on proper occasions, to make it understood that his opinion was his own and not borrowed from anybody else. His pride in his own mature opinion was very great; in that he was as far as possible from being a modest man. This absolute confidence in his own judgment upon any subject which he had mastered, and the moral courage to take upon himself alone the highest responsibility, and to demand full authority and freedom to act according to his own judgment, without interference from anybody, added to his accurate estimate of his own ability and clear perception of the necessity for undivided authority and responsibility in the conduct of military operations, and in all that concerns the efficiency of armies in time of war, constituted the foundation of that very great character.
"When summoned to Washington to take command of all the armies, with the rank of lieutenant-general, he determined, before he reached the capital, that he would not accept the command under any conditions than those above stated. His sense of honor and of loyalty to the country would not permit him to consent to be placed in a false position, one in which he could not perform the service which the country had been led to expect from him, and he had the courage to say so in unqualified terms.
"These traits of Grant's character must now be perfectly familiar to all who have studied his history, as well as to those who enjoyed familiar intercourse with him during his life. They are the traits of character which made him, as it seems to me, a very great man, the only man of our time, so far as we know, who possessed both the character and the military ability which were, under the circumstances, indispensable in the commander of the armies which were to suppress the great rebellion.
"It has been said that Grant, like Lincoln, was a typical American, and for that reason was most beloved and respected by the people. That is true of the statesman and the soldier, as well as of the people, if it is meant that they were the highest type, that ideal which commands the respect and admiration of the highest and best in a man's nature, however far he may know it to be above himself. The soldiers and the people saw in Grant or in Lincoln, not one of themselves, not a plain man of the people, nor yet some superior being whom they could not understand, but the personification of their highest ideal of a citizen, soldier, or statesman, a man whose greatness they could see and understand as plainly as they could anything else under the sun. And there was no more mystery about it all, in fact, than there was in the popular mind."