Expostulated with by Speaker Colfax on the apparent rashness, for he had completed "the foolhardy act" by occupying President Jefferson Davis' vacated house, he replied with the calm of a man of destiny:
"I should have been alarmed myself if any other person had been President and gone there; but I did not feel in any danger whatever."
(NOTE.--Mark the analogy in great men. General Grant says of his first emotions in war--the Mexican--"If some one else had been colonel, and I had been lieutenant-colonel, I do not think I would have felt any trepidation.")
THE CLEAR FORESIGHT.
On the 2d of April, 1865, the President was at City Point, Grant's headquarters, until he started forth for the culminating series of ceaseless strokes. That morning, attack along the whole line had been commanded, and the President telegraphed to his wife, at the capital, during the raging battle. He knew that already the hostile lines had been pierced in one or more places, and that Sheridan's cavalry rush was supported by a division of infantry. He concludes foreseeing that at length "pegging away" was over and slugging begun:
"All is now favorable!"
In truth, on that same day, the rebel government at Richmond faded thence like a mirage, and, within one week, General Lee surrendered his enfeebled relic of a grand army.
DO IT "UNBEKNOWNST."
On April 7, 1865, General Grant had enveloped the enemy so that he could be assured that the rebel government, if it remained in Richmond as the "last ditch," would be trapped. He notified the President close by, at Petersburg, and asked what should be done in the event of the game being bagged. The plan was, it seems, to have slain the ex-President and his Cabinet officers in a rout, and the charge would have been described as massacre abroad. The arbiter on this point of anguish replied in his characteristic manner:
"I will tell you a story. There was once an Irishman, who signed the Father Mathew's temperance pledge. But a few days afterward he became terribly thirsty, and finally went into a familiar resort, where the barkeeper was, at first, startled to hear him call for a 'straight' soda. He related that he had taken the pledge, so he hinted, with an Irishman's broadness of hint, 'you might put in some spirits unbeknownst to me!'"