Our Standard-Bearer; Or, The Life of General Uysses S. Grant

by Oliver Optic

the impatient soldier unbuckled his sword, and laid it aside. The weapon was rusting in its scabbard, and the proud spirit which had worn it honorably through a fierce war, waged upon a foreign soil, chafed under the inaction to which it was condemned in that far-off region. It was not the sphere for a great mind.

It is a notable fact, that when the bugle-blast of stern necessity rallied the soldiers of the Republic around her banners, to save her from destruction, some of the choicest spirits came out from the walks of civil life, whither they had fled from the dulness of an inactive life in the army. Such were Grant, Sherman, Burnside, Hooker, McClellan, and many others.

At the age of thirty-two, after having been devoted exclusively to military pursuits for fifteen years, Grant left the army to engage in new and untried enterprises. This was an important step of his life, but I humbly believe it was as necessary to the perfect development of the man as any other which he had taken. It was an evidence of his characteristic energy, and of the confidence he had in himself, which was displayed in so remarkable a manner in the most trying days of the Rebellion.

I am not disposed to magnify the deeds of the illustrious soldier,—they need no such office at mine or any man's hands,—or to praise his conduct in the glowing light of subsequent events; but I maintain that the act of resigning his commission in the army required no small degree of moral courage. The government had educated him at its own expense, and provided for him during the term of his natural life. If his had been the dull, stupid, inert character, this lot would have satisfied him. He was placed out of the reach of want in the present and the future; and the deaths and resignations in the army would have materially improved his condition if he quietly submitted to his fate.

His total pay as a captain of infantry amounted to nearly a thousand dollars a year; and it was as sure as the rising and setting of the sun. This was the certainty before him; and only a man of energetic purposes, with great confidence in his own abilities, would have turned from it to strike out a new path in the tangled maze of worldly affairs. From his boyhood he had been absorbed in the pursuits of his military career, and their practical application in the field and on the march, with a limited knowledge of business; and I repeat that it required no little moral courage to abandon the certainty and grapple with the uncertainty.

I am aware that a different explanation of Grant's resignation has been rumored through the country, and the vile slander that he had become addicted to intemperate habits has been circulated over the land. It has even been said that his resignation was prompted by a significant warning from the War Department. I am amazed that such an idle story should ever have obtained even a momentary credence. It is as impossible that Grant could ever have been a drunkard as that he could ever have been a coward. "He that ruleth his spirit is mightier than he that taketh a city." Under all circumstances, in the fierce storm of battle, as in the quiet of the social circle, he always maintained the most perfect control of himself. If he ever used the intoxicating cup to excess, he must have known it himself; and to know that he had a dangerous habit was to conquer it.

Look at the inflexible will of the man, as displayed at Donelson and Vicksburg! Look at him, meek and modest, in the midst of the storm of applause that everywhere greeted him after his mission had been accomplished! Look at him, calm and immovable, when, in the intricacies of the Vicksburg campaign, he outsped the thought and the prudence of his military compeers, and the impatient people began to howl even at him! Could such a man be the slave of his own appetite? The man himself is the best evidence of the falsity of the rumor.

I say I am amazed that this silly story should ever have been harbored for a moment by any one, except an enemy of his country; but I am still more amazed when I realize that this is the only blemish which lukewarm friends and over-critical enemies have been able to cast upon the character of the distinguished soldier. It is the prerogative of greatness to be the mark of slander's poisoned arrows. Napoleon was accused of crimes enough to banish him forever from the pale of human sympathy; Wellington and Marlborough escaped not the blast of calumny; Jefferson was charged with the most loathsome immoralities; and even Washington was systematically traduced by over-zealous partisans. It is a miracle, therefore, that Grant has only been held up to obloquy for the one offence of intemperance, and that the most absurd and improbable one which could possibly have been devised.