"I, too, have received important news since I saw you an hour ago."
He held the telegram above his head:
"I'll read it to you without my glasses. I know it by heart. I have just learned that my administration will be indorsed by an overwhelming majority, that the defeat of George B. McClellan and his platform of failure is a certainty. The war to preserve the Union is a success. The sword has been driven into the heart of the Confederacy. Sherman has captured Atlanta—the Union is saved!"
The Committee leaped to their feet with a shout of applause and crowded around him to congratulate and praise the man they came to bury. There was no longer a question of his resignation. The fall of Atlanta would thrill the North. A wave of wild enthusiasm would sweep into the sea the last trace of gloom and despair. They were practical men—else, as rats, they would never have tried to desert their own ship. They knew that the tide was going to turn, but it was a swift tide that could turn before they could!
They wrung the President's hands, they shouted his praise, they had always gloried in his administration, but foolish grumblers hadn't been able to see things as they saw them—hence this hue and cry! They congratulated him on his certain triumph and the President watched them go with a quiet smile. He was too big to cherish resentments. He only pitied small men, he never hated them.
[CHAPTER XL]
[WITH MALICE TOWARD NONE]
General Grant fired a salute in honor of the Atlanta victory with shotted guns from every battery on his siege lines of thirty-seven miles before Richmond and Petersburg. To Sherman he sent a remarkable message—the kind which great men know how to pen:
"You have accomplished the most gigantic undertaking given to any General in this war, with a skill and ability which will be acknowledged in history as unsurpassed if not unequaled."