The American people are no man-worshippers; I say it advisedly and confidently. They are generous in their regard, and no earnest patriot can ever want encouragement; but they judge men by the quality of their services. They praise and applaud, perhaps extravagantly, when a man does a noble deed; but they worship the deed rather than the man. General McClellan was for a time the idol of the soldiers and the idol of the people. They cheered and shouted for him, and hailed him as their young Napoleon; but when he failed to answer their reasonable expectations, they dropped him, and buried him forever and forever. So would they have done with Grant, and Sherman, and Thomas, and Sheridan, if they had failed them in the hour of trial; and so will they yet do, if they are recreant to their high estate, or false to the principles to which the people hold them.
No man has been more honored or praised in his sphere than Andrew Johnson; and none has been more thoroughly detested, despised, and cast out. It was not the man they worshipped; it was the principle of which he was the representative. No man in all the country has a personal influence which can save him from obloquy when he deserts his colors or fails in his duty. Glory and honor to the people who faithfully cling to their heroes and statesmen while they are true to their principles! Glory and honor, also, to the people who sternly pull down and cast out their heroes and statesmen, whatever high eminence they may have gained, when they are recreant to the trust imposed in them! Thus do our republican institutions operate, that no amount of personal popularity can save the great man from his doom when he is guilty of treachery or unjustifiable failure. They do not worship the man; if they did, they would cling to him through his shame and infidelity.
Neither the soldiers nor the people blindly worship Grant. It always has been, and still is, possible for him to fall. If he should prove false to the principles of which an overwhelming majority of the people hold him up as the representative, both soldiers and citizens would remorselessly trample him under their feet, and forget that he had ever been their idol. I say, then, that his remarkable popularity, its steady blaze in the past, and its constant brightening, are the best evidences of his solid abilities, of his unflinching devotion to principle, of the purity of his patriotism.
I know what the people would do with him if he should fail them; but in the light of his glorious record through a period of seven of the most eventful years in the history of the country, I feel that it is as impossible for him to be recreant in thought or in deed as it is for the sun to cease shining. I dwell fondly on the early days of his military career in the Rebellion, for then, before Fame had twined his laurel, or success had inspired him, we find that every act he performed, every order he issued, every movement he made, is fit to be recorded in the temple of his fame. Those who are looking up to him, on the dazzling height to which his genius and his high principle have borne him, may be instructed by a review of his relations with the Twenty-first Illinois Regiment. They may see the man there, as well as at Vicksburg and Appomattox Court House.
Colonel Grant was drilling his men at Caseyville, when there was a rumor that Quincy, on the Mississippi River, was in danger from the guerrilla rebels of Missouri. He was ordered to the exposed point, and, in the absence of transportation, marched his regiment one hundred and twenty miles of the distance. From Quincy he was ordered over the river into Missouri, for the protection of the Hannibal and St. Joseph's Railroad; and Brigadier General Pope, then in command of the forces in that section, stationed him at Mexico, forty miles north of the Missouri River.
On the march to this place, the Twenty-first passed through a small village whose principal establishment was a grocery, at which the principal article on sale was whiskey. It was a melancholy fact that many of the citizens now transformed into soldiers had acquired a villanous habit of imbibing this fiery fluid, so destructive to good discipline. Some of the troops stole out of the line, and filled their canteens with the liquor at this shop, and, lacking discretion as well as correct personal habits, were soon reeling from the effects of their frequent potations. Without any violent demonstrations of indignation, which many men would have deemed necessary on such an occasion, Colonel Grant halted his regiment, as if to afford the men a brief rest. Without giving any one an opportunity to suspect that anything was the matter, he passed along the lines, and examined each canteen. Whenever he detected the odor of whiskey, he coolly emptied the contents on the ground, "without note or comment." The intoxicated ones he ordered to be tied behind the wagons, and kept there till they were animated by higher views of military discipline. Whiskey and all intoxicating liquors were rigidly excluded from his camp.
Grant was always on time himself, and required promptness and punctuality in all his officers. He never blustered, or seemed to be in a hurry. He insisted that everything should be done at the appointed time. One morning the colonel was walking about the camp, smoking his pipe, when he discovered a company drawn up at roll call. It was half an hour after the required time, and Grant quietly informed the officer that it was no time to call the roll, and ordered him to send his men immediately to their quarters. He was promptly obeyed, and the delinquent was punished for his want of punctuality. The colonel resumed his pipe and his walk, as though nothing had happened. This quiet, undemonstrative way was effective, and the offence was not again repeated.
Careful and particular in the minor details of duty, his regiment was brought up to the highest degree of discipline; but it was quite as much the manner as the substance which attracts attention.