As I yield the tribute of admiring homage to Washington that he put the Satan of sovereign power behind him when he was tempted with the glittering bait, I am amazed that Grant, the very idol of a million veteran soldiers, permitted his sword to rest in its scabbard while his recreant superior, by the accident of the assassin's bullet, dared to thwart the will of the people whose ballots had elevated him to power. I can almost worship him for his forbearance under the keenest insults to which the sensitive soul of a true soldier can be subjected, that he did not smite his cunning traducer, and did not even appeal to the people.
Who am I? If I am seen at all in this true narrative of a sublime life, I beg to be regarded as the most humble and least deserving of Columbia's chosen sons, but standing, for the moment, on a pedestal, and blushingly pointing to the historic canvas, whereon is delineated the triumphal career of the Great Man of the nineteenth century; the successful General, towering in lofty preëminence above every other man, who in the days of darkness struck a blow for the redemption of the nation; the fledged Statesman, who, without being a politician, apprehended and vitalized the chosen policy of the sovereign people. I am nothing; he is everything.
I am an enthusiast!
Is there nothing in The Man, sublimated by glorious deeds, elevated by a conquering will far above his fellows, almost deified by the highest development of godlike faculties,—is there nothing in The Man to quicken the lazy flow in the veins of the beholder? Can I, who marched from Belmont to Appomattox Court House, by the way of Donelson, Vicksburg, Chattanooga, Spottsylvania, Petersburg, and Five Forks, who have, since the collapse of the rebellion, gazed, in common with the Senators and Representatives in Congress, the Governors of the states, the President, and the heads of the departments of state, the sovereign people, with friends and with foes of the regenerated country,—can I, who have gazed with the most intense interest at the little two-story brick building in the nation's capital, where smoked and labored the genius of the war, to see what that one man would do, to hear what that one man would say,—can I gaze and listen without realizing the throb which heaves the mighty heart of the nation? I felt as they felt, that there was only one man in the land. It mattered little what senators and representatives enacted in the halls of Congress, if he did not indorse it. It mattered little what the Nation's Accident vetoed, if he but approved it. It was of little consequence what rebels north or rebels south planned and plotted, if only this one man frowned upon it. Reconstruction could flourish only in his smile. If a department commander ambitiously or stupidly belied his war record, and attempted to bolster up with this diplomacy the treason which he had put down with his sword, the howl of the loyal millions was changed into a shout of exultation, if the one man in the little two-story brick building in Washington only nodded his disapproval of the course of the recreant. That man has been the soul of the people's policy of reconstruction. Conscious that he was its friend, it mattered not who was its enemy; for foes could delay, but not defeat it.
Can I be unmoved while I look at The Man? When I behold a huge steamship, the giant of the deep, threading its way through night and storm over the pathless ocean, from continent to continent, herself a miracle to the eye, I wonder. When I see the electric telegraph, flashing a living thought from farthest east to farthest west, and even along its buried channel in the depths of the storm-tossed ocean, I wonder. Can I gaze unmoved upon the Man, the Fulton, the Morse, from whose busy brain, lighted up by an inspiration from the Infinite, which common men cannot even understand, came forth the grand conception of these miracles of science?
I am an enthusiast. I cannot gaze at the spectacle of a nation rent and shattered by the most stupendous treason that ever fouled historic annals, restored to peace and unity, without a thrill of emotion. I cannot follow our gallant armies in imagination now, as I did in reality then, in their triumphal march from the gloom of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville to the glorious light and sunshine of Vicksburg and Five Forks, from death at Bull Run, to life at Fort Donelson, without having my heart leap with grateful enthusiasm.
In the ghastly midnight of disaster, when the nation's pulse almost ceased to beat in dread and anxiety for the fearful issue, we had men—hundreds of thousands, millions of men, the bravest and truest soldiers that ever bore a musket. Thousands and tens of thousands of them sleep beneath the bloody sod of Antietam, in the miry swamps of the Chickahominy, and under the parching soil of the southern savannas, where they sank to their rest with the field unconquered above them. There they slumber, each of them a willing sacrifice, if his death brought the nation but one hair's breadth nearer to the final redemption, or could add one ray to the flood of light which the peace they prayed for would shed upon the land beloved.
There was no lack of men, and pure patriots prayed for a leader. They sighed for a Washington, a Napoleon, a Wellington, to guide their swelling masses of ardent warriors from the gloom of disaster to the brightness of victory. Chiefs, mighty in battle, pure in purpose, skilful in device and execution, reared their banners successively at the head of the valiant hosts, then drooped and fell, as the hot blast of jealousy swept over them, or they became entangled in the silken meshes of adulation. In none of these did the soldiers find their true leader, though they fought fiercely and fell in horrid slaughter under all of them.
It was only when the soul of the mustered hosts was fired by the sublime fact of a worthy leader, and their muscles nerved by the will of a mighty champion, that the thundering march of victory commenced, and the triumphal car of the conqueror swept like a whirlwind through the war-stricken South. Then treason trembled, tottered, few. Then the infatuated leaders of rebellion wailed in terror, and fled from the halter that dangled over their heads. Then the one man of the war towered like a giant above his fellows. Then he stood forth as the nation's savior, and a generous people placed the laurel on his brow.
I am an enthusiast as I review the history of my country from 1862 to the present time. I watched with McClellan in the oozy swamps of Virginia, when he feared to risk his popularity by striking an avenging stroke at the exposed foe, and I joined in singing the pæan of victory with Grant after Five Forks, when the final blow had been given to the rebellion. Therefore am I enthusiastic.