How slow and torturing the waiting was. How many popular heroes were discovered, and worshipped with passionate devotion for a brief time, only to be revealed, at last, as common clay. But through all these dreadful days, the men who were to lead the Nation to complete triumph were making their way, slowly but surely, to their destined places. At Belmont, in November, 1861, a silent, modest man, just promoted to a Brigadier-Generalship, had fought a battle which gave confidence and courage to the troubled country. At Mill Springs, two months later, another quiet, manly soldier, had won a signal victory over a superior force. In Kentucky, still another soldier was winning confidence and respect by the energy and sagacity of his operations; and a fourth, unknown and unnoted, was looking after the commissary wagons of an army in Arkansas.
It is a notable fact that these four men, who were destined, at the close of the war, to be its recognized leaders, began their service in the West, and that they severally represented the cosmopolitan blood of the American people—Grant being of Scotch ancestry, Sherman of Saxon origin, Thomas springing from the Welsh race, and Sheridan coming of Irish stock. Differing widely in characteristics and temperaments, they not only supplemented each other admirably, but each had the firmest confidence in the resources, skill and courage of all the others. Envy or jealousy never distracted them. The same resolute purpose, the same ardent patriotism, the same devotion to duty, animated them all, and each could confidently rely on the support of all the others.
I do not intend, however, to draw comparisons of their several careers, nor of their personal characteristics. I mention their association because it happened that he who was the chief of this group of great soldiers was, perhaps, the first to clearly recognize the greatness of his associates, and to assign them to the positions in which they filled the continent with the splendor of their achievements. For it was Ulysses S. Grant who designated William T. Sherman as commander of the Army of the Tennessee, placed George H. Thomas at the head of the Army of the Cumberland, and selected Philip H. Sheridan as chief of cavalry of the Army of the Potomac.
Two of these great soldiers yet survive; two have answered their last roll-call on earth. And here, as in every city, town and hamlet throughout the land, the people have assembled to honor the memory of the most distinguished of this group—Ulysses S. Grant.
“There are a few characters,” says Macaulay, “which have stood the closest scrutiny and the severest tests; which have been tried in the furnace and have proved pure; which have been weighed in the balance and not found wanting; which have been declared sterling by the general consent of mankind, and which are visibly stamped with the image and superscription of the Most High.” Such a character, it seems to me, was Ulysses S. Grant. From the day he won his first victory at Belmont until he sank to rest at Mt. McGregor, he lived in a light as fierce as that which beats upon a throne. For eight years, he was a soldier; for eight years, the President; and ever since, until the day of his death, the First Citizen of the Republic. What he said or left unsaid, what he did or left undone, during all those years, was noted by busy tongues and pens, many of them envious, many of them hostile, and many more, inspired by that strange perversity of human nature which rejoices to find some weakness, or flaw, or stain in a great man, anxious and eager to catch him doing something mean or unworthy.
And through it all—through the fierce and dangerous fields of war, through the still more perplexing and dangerous fields of politics, and through the trials and temptations of a citizenship so elevated that its very height was dazzling—he moved on, serene, patient, inflexible, unstained. He disarmed partisan malice at last as he had disarmed Pemberton at Vicksburg; he triumphed over the rancor and enmity of civil life as he had routed Bragg at Mission Ridge; and finally, and before his death, all the warring factions of the land, North and South, East and West, surrendered to him their willing allegiance, as did Lee at Appomattox.
The changes in the popular estimate of Grant’s character and abilities were as remarkable as everything else in his wonderful career. It was years before the carping military critics of the world would concede that he was a great soldier. He won his victories by accident, they said; he was a butcher; he was a drunkard; he was a figure-head for Sherman, Thomas, and Sheridan, who planned his campaigns. All this they said, as he swung across the continent from Donelson to Vicksburg, from Vicksburg to Chattanooga, from Chattanooga to Appomattox, conquering, in turn, every great soldier of the Confederacy; leaving behind him, everywhere, campaigns and victories as brilliant and complete as any Napoleon ever planned or won; always equal to the greatest emergencies, always ready for any contingency, and always master of every occasion.
Suddenly, from the army he was transferred to another and an untried field, and became the head of the civil government of the country. The critics derided, the cavilers sneered, the weeping Jeremiahs of politics bewailed. This was monstrous, they said. This “sashed Sphinx” knew nothing of civil affairs; this “man on horseback” was dangerous to the liberties of the country; this “ambitious Cæsar” meditated an empire. But the people trusted Grant in civil life, as his army had trusted him in war. Their faith in his integrity, in his patriotism, in the strong, clean fiber of his sturdy manhood and his sterling honesty, never for one moment hesitated or wavered. And it was never disappointed. He justified their faith by his works. The triumphs he won in the field of political economy were as conspicuous and complete as those he won in war. Upon the civil history of the country he left a record as brilliant and as lasting as was the record of his services as a soldier.
I know that there are some who still insist that he was not a statesman. But statesmanship, I take it, is nothing more or less than the genius of common sense applied in civil government. It is illustrated by what the Americans call “level-headedness” in emergencies; by the judicial quality of seeing both sides, or all sides, of any question, and doing the right and the just thing in dealing with it; by clear comprehension of the ultimate effects of any policy; by courage in withstanding popular clamor, and even in braving public distrust and denunciation, when such clamor, distrust or denunciation is inspired by ill-regulated zeal for a good cause, or unreasoning devotion to a bad one, or by the arts of selfish and ambitious demagogues.
And surely Grant was endowed, in full measure, with these qualities of statesmanship. He was called to the Presidency during one of the stormiest and most perplexing epochs in the history of our government. The honest payment of the public debt; that strange but contagious delusion, the inflation of our paper currency; the settlement of the claims of this country on Great Britain, for damages inflicted by privateers sent out from English ports during the war; the enfranchisement of the Freedmen, and their protection in the enjoyment of the rights conferred upon them by the Constitution; the reorganization of the States lately in the Rebellion; the policy of Indian control and management; the resumption of specie payments—all these great questions, vitally affecting not only the peace and prosperity of the Nation, but the happiness and welfare of all classes of its citizens, Grant was called upon, as the Executive head of the civil government, to discuss and to decide.