Ulysses S. Grant; his life and character
Garland, Hamlin, 1860-1940
•cp & P*+. o C, vP ,0 ^•t"« o C ^ v <* «-> A ^ ■. • ^ vv « ^ ». ^ ^ • b, ^> (> <D 'o . , * O ^0 > V o <y • l ' * •<• o C . r o '.- A A <*, » * CT 4> c • " « ♦ ^* V ^ **^A * **0« k^ o °* -A v. .C < *.,,- y o ..... oJ <**_, ^ A° *b^ :* ^o* *bv* ^o* ^ ^ f *.■ ^ ^ * ,o** ' A* *< #>** V'-* < A. .« — V 0^ t.1"* ^o ,AV ^ A V\ I V A* _A c° A0 V A^ ^ %<, at * SPi « ^r. A (\ s; ,o No ^ ,^J ^ ■ay d* *. v5 *o . » * .A ' <$• A 0V Ac0"0-. ^ 0^ . • L ' ° * O 4? ^0X "oK .^ -'a A -7* r /l, o <^. ' . . s * 0 v 0 . " * °» % ULYSSES S. GRANT HIS LIFE AND CHARACTER THE MACMILLAN COMPANY HEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO ■ DALLAS ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO jjjglj J<»jiMjlLJ»t jgjgg ii ■— n"i'~L PBTWiir fe iH U. S. Grant, age 60 years. From a photograph by Fredricks. _J ULYSSES S. GRANT HIS LIFE AND CHARACTER BY HAMLIN GARLAND ii AUTHOR OF "MAIN-TRAVELED ROADS," "PRAIRIE SONGS,' "ROSE OF DUTCHER'S COOLLY," ETC. NEW YORK THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1920 W\ Copyright, 1898, by Hamlin Garland .G-SL3& INTRODUCTION THIS book is not to be taken as a military history of General Grant. It is not, perhaps, everything that is understood by the word " biography," but it tells the story of Ulysses Grant from his birth to his death. It is an at- tempt at characterization. It has not been my intention to set down all the significant words and deeds of General Grant, nor to analyze all the official acts of President Grant, but to present the man Grant as he stands to-day before unbiased critics. If I succeed in making the reader a little better acquainted with his great and singular character, I shall feel that my larger purpose has been carried out. In order that I might secure the fullest understanding of my subject, I have visited every town wherein Ulysses Grant lived long enough to leave a distinct impression upon its citizens. This search for first-hand material took me at the start to southern Ohio, to Georgetown, his boy- hood home, and to Ripley, and to Maysville, Kentucky, where he attended school in his youth. I also studied the records on file in the adjutant's office at West Point, and the newspaper files in Washington, St. Louis, New York, Cincinnati, Detroit, Louisville, Chicago, Springfield, Ga- lena, Cairo, Memphis, Vicksburg, New Orleans, Richmond, Monterey, and Mexico City. In all of these cities I sought for and obtained interviews from those who had known Ulysses Grant personally and had some significant message to impart. In order to realize the Mexican battle-fields, I visited Monterey, Vera Cruz, Jalapa, Perote, Puebla, Contreras, Churubusco, El Molino del Rey, and San Cosme. I stud- VI INTRODUCTION ied also the topography of Vicksburg and Milliken's Bend, the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Richmond, and Petersburg. The plan of the volume, in brief, is this : The first chap- ters take up the development of Ulysses Grant from his birth to his appointment at West Point, presenting what- ever seems significant of his life at the Military Academy ; then passes to his experiences in the Mexican War, which formed his postgraduate course, and was his first intro- duction to national questions and to military intrigues. I then study his period of failure in civil life, presenting him as nearly as possible as he appeared at that time to his family and to his friends, after it seemed that his career as a soldier had ended. I purposely exclude all forecast and all prophecy. The section which deals with his command is not a his- tory of the war with the South, nor even a history of General Grant's campaigns, but the story of his growing command, and his marvelous development during those four epic years. His motives for action, rather than his action, are the chief matters of these chapters. In precisely the same way, the delineation of the reconstruction period is intended to satisfy the reader who asks, " What did Ulysses Grant think during that period, and what were his motives? " The chapters on the Grant administrations attempt to show what I believe to be the fact — that through all the complications of this period, through the weltering chaos of political knaveries and double-dealings, President Grant pursued a simple, straightforward course. He had in him small capacities for deceit or dishonesty. Throughout his whole life, it seems to me, he remained practically the same simple-minded and sincere man. The volume does not hesitate to present the deep shadows of the picture as well as the high lights, for they are correlative. To leave them out would not only falsify a human life, but would render the picture flat and cheap. Ulysses Grant had his defeats and his sorrows. He had his weaknesses as well as his great qualities, and they are frankly stated. He died right. No public life— not even that of Lincoln INTRODUCTION vii — closed more attractively for the biographer. At the end he discovered in himself new tendencies and still deeper reserves of will-power than he had hitherto shown. He had the great happiness, also, of seeing the love and ad- miration of the whole people, North and South, come back to him, in higher degree than he had ever before enjoyed. He lived long enough to understand that the people of his native land began to perceive through all his mistakes the steady progression of his simple purpose, which was to rebuild the nation on a basis of perfect love and confidence between the States. Unquestionably, the fame of Ulysses Grant as " the great warrior of peace " is secure. Hamlin Garland. Washington, March, 1898. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS IN beginning my research in Georgetown, I received most valuable assistance from the Hon. C. A. White, a lifelong acquaintance of Ulysses Grant ; Mrs. Lucinda B. Powers, daughter of Dr. Bailey, Mr. Grant's near neigh- bor; Mr. U. S. Grant White, son of Carr B. White, Grant's most intimate boy friend; Judge James Marshall, Ulysses' cousin; Mr. W. H.Wilson; the late Judge Low- den; and Mr. Henry J. Hanna. From Admiral Daniel Ammen I obtained many anecdotes covering a long period of Grant's life, from his boyhood to his presidency. Cap- tain Albert Kautz and Captain U. S. Grant White of the navy also aided me in my work. I wish publicly to acknowledge also the valuable and painstaking assistance of Mr. Chambers Baird of Ripley, Ohio, who secured for me interviews with Mr. W. B. Campbell, Mr. Morgan Murphy, Mr. W. S. Galbreath, ex- Mayor Edwards, and others who knew Grant as a student in Ripley and Maysville. With regard to Grant's life at West Point, I am especially indebted to General W. B. Franklin, General James Long- street, General Simon B. Buckner, General D. M. Frost, and Father Dehon, all his classmates. Through the courtesy of the commandant, I was able to examine all the records of Grant's conduct while a cadet ; and Mr. William Ward, clerk in the adjutant's office at the academy, cheerfully aided me in my search of the records. Through the cour- tesy of Mr. J. W. Lowe of Chicago and Mr. Joseph C. Hardie of Washington, I am able to present matter hitherto unpublished concerning Grant's life at West Point and in ix X ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Mexico. In Mexico City, through the kindness of Mr. Frank R. Guernsey, I was able to secure witnesses and valuable hints giving me the point of view of the Mexican authorities. I received most valuable information concerning Grant's life in Detroit from General Friend Palmer, Mr. Silas Farmer, and J. E. Elderkin, drum-major in Grant's regi- ment. At Sackett's Harbor I had the assistance of Mr. Walter Camp, a local historian, who remembered Grant very well. Very early in my study I found that Albert D. Richardson, author of " The Personal Life of U. S. Grant," had been most painstaking in his search for material. At Detroit, as at St. Louis, I interviewed some of the very men with whom he had talked nearly thirty years before. I here acknowledge an indebtedness to his book second only to the " Personal Memoirs." With regard to Captain Grant's life on the coast, I am especially obliged to Colonel Thomas M. Anderson, the present commandant of Van- couver Barracks, and Major Theodore Eckerson, now of Portland. With regard to Grant's return to Bethel and to St. Louis, I am indebted for valuable information to Mr. George B. Johnson of Cincinnati, to Mr. George W. Fish- back and Mr. James E. Yateman of St. Louis, to Colonel Henry Clay Wright of Carondelet, Mr. Jefferson Sapping- ton, Esq., Mrs. John F. Long, and other of the old neigh- bors and friends in and about St. Louis. Also to Mrs. Louisa M. Boggs, the wife of Grant's partner in the real- estate business, and to many others. I wish publicly to thank General Augustus L. Chetlain, Mr. R. H. McClellan, Mr. Lewis A. Rowley (son of Gen- eral Rowley), Mr. Richard Barrett, Esq., Mr. M. T. Burke (now of La Crosse, Wisconsin), Mr. A. H. Haines, Mr. Carson Scott, Mr. O. B. Upson, Mr. H. B. Chetlain, and Mr. Leigh Leslie, for assistance rendered in Galena. In Springfield, Illinois, I had the aid of General John M. Palmer, Mr. John W. Bunn, Mr. Lincoln Dubois, the Hon. J. C. Conkling, and Mr. John McCann Davis. Also Cap- tain Harrison Black, Lieutenant Joseph W. Vance, Captain S. C. Burroughs, and S. S. Boggs, all of the original mus- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi ter of the Twenty- first Illinois Volunteers. General J. E. Smith and J. Russell Jones of Chicago also contributed valuable interviews. At Cairo I had the assistance of Mr. W. N. Butler, Esq., Lieutenant Frank Parker, Colonel J. S. Reardon, and other veterans of the early Illinois regiments. Also valuable material, both in interviews and writing, was obtained from General John M. Thayre of Nebraska, Colonel L. B. Eaton of Memphis, Major J. W. Powell of Washington, and many others. Mr. J. W. Kirkley and Captain Leslie Perry of the War Records Office have been most hearty in their coopera- tion. Mr. Kirkley has been for twenty years in the War Records Department. Mr. George C. Gorham, for many years clerk of the Senate, and a student of the recon- struction era, aided me by suggestion and criticism. In dealing with Grant's later days I am permitted to use information obtained from Mr. John Russell Young, Mr. W. A. Purrington, Mr. Walter S. Johnston, Mr. George Spencer, Captain N. E. Dawson, Dr. George H. Shrady, and General Simon B. Buckner. Among the principal commanders under Grant whose personal testimony was of great value to me are Generals H. G. Wright, J. J. Reynolds, W. B. Franklin, J. E. Smith,* A. J. Smith,* J. H. Wilson, Robert McFeely, T. Van Vliet, A. L. Chetlain, Colonel Amos Webster, and Colonel C. B. Comstock. Colonel Marshall of General Lee's staff, General Marcus Wright, and General Heth of the Confederate service were most kind in granting the use of testimony. In addition to all these, I wish also to thank Mrs. U. S. Grant and her sons Frederick, Ulysses, and Jesse for their instant assistance when called upon either by " McClure's Magazine " or myself. * Since deceased. CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I The Childhood of Ulysses Grant .... i II Boy Life in Georgetown 8 III Ulysses Goes to Boarding-School .... 17 IV Ulysses Enters West Point Academy ... 24 V The Trials of a Plebe 35 VI Vacation-Time 47 VII Last Days at West Point 5° VIII Grant's First Command 54 IX Grant's Courtship 57 X Call to War 6l XI Grant's First Battle 69 XII Quartermaster's Duties fall to Grant . . 74 XIII Grant Joins General Scott 82 XIV The Wonderful Inland March 91 XV Grant at Molino del Rey 97 XVI Close of the War io5 XVII Grant's Marriage io9 XVIII Lieutenant Grant is Ordered to the Coast . 117 XIX Grant is Promoted, but Resigns 121 XX Captain Grant Turns Farmer 13 1 XXI Grant Tries to Make a Living in St. Louis • 14I XXII Captain Grant Goes North 148 XXIII The First War Meetings in Galena ... 154 XXIV Captain Grant and the Political Colonels . 161 xiii xiv CONTENTS CHAPTER PACK XXV Grant's Growing Command 177 XXVI Grant Captures National Fame .... 187 XXVII Grant put under Arrest by General Halleck ^ 194 XXVIII The Battle of Shiloh Church 201 XXIX From Shiloh to Milliken's Bend . . . 208 XXX Grant Captures Vicksburg 221 XXXI Grant Rescues Chattanooga 239 XXXII Grant Meets Lincoln and is Made Com- mander-in-Chief 253 XXXIII Going into the Wilderness 268 XXXIV The Sullen Siege of Petersburg . . . 283 XXXV The Beginning of the End 297 XXXVI The Assassination of Lincoln, the Surren- der of Johnston, and the Grand Re- view 315 XXXVII Grant Protects his Conquered Foes . 325 XXXVIII The General Takes a Summer Vaca- tion 334 XXXIX Grant and Reconstruction 344 XL Grant as Secretary of War 365 XLI Grant Saves the Union Party 376 XLII General Grant Lays Down the Sword . 385 XLIII Grant in the White House 396 XLIV Grant's Reelection to the Presidency . 406 XLV Grant's Second Term 424 XLVI Days of Great Trials 433 XLVII Grant as a Private Citizen Goes Abroad 450 XLVIII The Third Campaign Opens 469 XLIX The Grant & Ward Failure 486 L The Final Year of Life 504 Conclusion The Death- Watch in the Wall . . . 517 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS U. S. Grant, Age 60 Years Frontispiece From a photograph by Fredricks. Pacing Pa&e Stairway in the Grant Homestead at Georgetown, Ohio i° From a photograph taken especially for "McClure's Magazine," and now first published. Building used by Jesse R. Grant as the Finishing- House of his Tannery at Georgetown, Ohio io It still stands, opposite the old Grant homestead. Facsimile Showing Grant's Autograph in the Adju- tant's Record, West Point 32 This signature, "Ulysses Hiram Grant," was written the same day as the one, "U. H. Grant," in the register at Roe's Hotel, May 29, 1839. Facsimile of Grant's Certificate of Enlistment . 32 This certificate was signed by Grant, September 14, 1839, after he had passed his examinations. It bears what is, so far as known, Grant's earliest autograph as U. " S. " Grant. By this time the mistake of Congressman Hamer in so naming him to the War Department had fixed that as his official designation. View up Hudson River from Mortar- and Siege- Battery, West Point 38 From a photograph by Pach Brothers, New York. A "Plebe" Boat-Race, West Point 38 From a photograph loaned by Lieutenant S. C Hazzard, West Point. A Sketch made by Grant about the Time He was at West Point 4& Reproduced by permission from the original drawing, owned by C F. Gunther, Chicago, and now first published. XV xvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Facing page A Water-Color Sketch made by Grant about the Time He was at West Point 48 Reproduced by permission from the original, owned by Mrs. Rotherey, Newark, New Jersey, and now first published. U. S. Grant as Brevet Second Lieutenant, Age 21 Years • • • • 54 Taken in Cincinnati in 1843, just after graduation from West Point. U. S. Grant as Captain, while Stationed at Sacketts Harbor, New York 1849, Age 27 Years ... 54 From a very small miniature. The House in Which Grant Went to School at Georgetown, Ohio 58 "White-Haven," the Dent Homestead near St. Louis, Missouri 58 Redrawn from an old drawing owned by Mrs. U. S. Grant. Lieutenant U. S. Grant and Lieutenant Alexander Hays in 1845, when They were Starting for the Mexican War 66 The original picture, owned by Mrs. Agnes M. Hays Gormly, was taken at Camp Salubrity, Louisiana, in 1845. Beside Grant (the figure in the background) is his racing pony Dandy, and beside Lieutenant Hays is his pony Sunshine. The two men had been fellow-cadets at West Point, and served in the same regiment in the Mexican War. Afterward Hays, like Grant, retired from the army, to reenter it at the breaking out of the Civil War as a colonel of volunteers. He became a brigadier-general, and was killed in the battle of the Wilderness. Grant, on learning of his death, said : "I am not surprised that he met his death at the head of his troops ; it was just like him. He was a man who would never follow, but would always lead, in battle." Grant at Chapultepec ico The battle of Chapultepec, showing Grant's regiment, the Fourth Infantry, in the foreground on the right. House in which General Grant was Married, St. Louis, Missouri IIQ From a recent photograph taken expressly for " McClure's Magazine." West Front of Fortification and Barracks, Fort Wayne, Detroit ir4 From a photograph loaned by Captain E. D. Smith of the Fifteenth Infantry. The building shown was erected in 1848, the year Grant first went to Detroit, and is the only one now standing at Fort Wayne that could have been in existence when Grant was stationed there. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xvii Facing page Officers' Barracks, Sacketts Harbor, New York . 114 From a photograph owned by Colonel Walter B. Camp. The House in which Grant Lived at Fort Van- couver in 1852 and 1853 122 Redrawn from a photograph loaned by Colonel Thomas M. Anderson, present com- mandant of Fort Vancouver. Fort Vancouver 122 Redrawn from a painting by Dr. Covington, now owned by Captain James A. Buchanan of the Eleventh Infantry. Mrs. U. S. Grant and her Two Eldest Children, Frederick D. and Ulysses S., Jr., about 1854 . 133 From a daguerreotype taken at St. Louis, now owned by Mr. U. S.' Grant, Jr., and reproduced here with his permission. Grant's Letter Offering his Services to the Government 162 In the original letter the last three lines and the signature are on a second page. U. S. Grant, Age 41 Years 228 Taken in 1863, before Vicksburg. From a defective negative. Distinguished Generals who were Fellow-Cadets of Grant at West Point 240 From the Civil War collection of Mr. Robert Coster. U. S. Grant Early in 1865, Near the Close of the War, Age 43 Years 308 From a spoiled negative. U. S. Grant not Long before his First Election as President, Age 46 Years 386 U. S. Grant Soon after his First Inauguration as Presldent, Age 47 Years 386 Hannah Simpson Grant, Mother of General Grant 396 From an original photograph owned by Helen M. Burke, La Crosse, Wisconsin. Jesse Root Grant, Father of General Grant, Age 69 Years 424 From an original photograph owned by Helen M. Burke of La Crosse, Wisconsin. XVlll LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Facing page U. S. Grant at the Beginning of his Second Term As President, Age 51 Years 426 From a photograph by Brady. U. S. Grant, Age 54 Years 446 Grant with Li Hung Chang 466 U. S. Grant when He Took up his Residence in New York, Age 59 Years 488 From a photograph by W. Kurtz. General Grant and his Family at Mount McGregor est the Closing Days of his Life 518 ULYSSES GRANT; SECOND PREFACE SINCE this book was written (in 1896) nearly all of the contemporaries of Ulysses Grant have passed to the silent majority. Hardly one of all those who were most valuable witnesses to his deeds and his character are now alive. Within ten years after I secured the testi- mony of Generals Buckner, Franklin, Wright, and Long- street, they, like others of his classmates, comrades, and antagonists, had passed away. My work was hardly com- pleted before some of them were no longer able to give their testimony. To see General Longstreet I journeyed all the way from New York City to Gainesville, Georgia, but the story to which I listened was amply worth the journey. All the afternoon and evening I listened and watched while the heroic shadows of the past filed through the old man's mind. His tall, stooping figure and his dim eyes were already touched with the coming mist of evening, but his spirit was that of a gallant chieftain. He had no equivocal words concerning Grant. He loved him and honored Mm. From Jefferson Sapington, Grant's neighbor on the Gra- vois, and from the wife of Grant's partner, Mrs. Henry Boggs, as well as from Burke who worked as a clerk in the Galena store, I gathered invaluable personal material, knowing well that their terms of life were each year^ more uncertain. Most of my witnesses are gone, but their rec- ords help to form this book. Others are in my files to be used in case of need, interlined with corrections by the witnesses themselves. All of them were used in making up the judgments in this volume. With Grant's friends have also departed his enemies. I sat one evening in an obscure Chicago tenement beside the bed of MacDonald, one of the Whisky Ring leaders, TTX\ XXll ULYSSES S. GRANT; SECOND PREFACE patiently enduring his long and tedious tale, which had very- little to do with Grant and a great deal to do with him- self. In an eastern country house, I took notes while one of Grant's military critics paced up and down the room, thundering out his argument to prove that Ulysses Grant was a vastly overrated man and that he (a subordinate) was the real author of the Vicksburg Campaign. Time has its terrible revenges ! Who now cares whether this man or that man considered himself a bigger man than Grant? Into the night they go, one and all, while the man who called for " Unconditional Surrender," and who said, "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer," holds his place beside Abraham Lincoln as the man who saved the Union in 1865. If I were writing this story to-day, I should lay greater stress on the estrangement which came between Ulysses Grant and his father after his resignation from the army, for the reason that it accounts in large measure for his apparent failure as a civilian. No man, no matter how great he may be, can escape these domestic complications, and Grant was no exception. Any history of him which leaves out the antagonisms of The Dents and The Grants will be a false picture — or at least a faulty picture, for old Jesse Grant was not only deeply disappointed in his son's marriage into a slave-owning family, he refused to aid him so long as he continued to live in the South. He is reported to have said, "Ulysses, when you are ready to come North I will give you a start, but so long as you make your home among a tribe of slave-owners I will do nothing." Grant was a loyal and tender husband, hence he stayed on in St. Louis, trying, for his wife's sake, to make a living in a region where he was at once an alien and a suspect. Concerning this time Mrs. Boggs, the wife of Captain Grant's partner in the real estate business, is a com- petent witness, and I have in hand careful notes of her testimony. The picture which she draws of Grant at this time is sad but admirable. "When he came to live at our house he was in despair," she says in her letter to me. "He was gentle and dignified and uncomplaining, but it ULYSSES S. GRANT; SECOND PREFACE XX111 was pitiful to see him sitting silently in the cold, bare little room which he rented of us. He was sober and willing to work and he did work, but in those disturbed times he found it difficult to find employment. He had no trade, no profession, and he was a Northerner. That must never be left out of the account." It is all fought out and swiftly receding now, and we can speak of it without heat as a powerful factor in the life of one of the world's great figures. A cannonball tosser cannot exercise with feathers, and this great military genius, in times of peace and in a community where every- body was politically opposed to him, was helpless. It was not a matter of dissipation. I have gone into all that with the greatest care, and I can report once again that Grant, even in that dark hour, was a gentleman. Mrs. Boggs said, "I liked him and respected him even while I felt sorry for him." The use of slaves on the farm at Gravois was a source of irritation and shame to Grant. Jefferson Sapington told me that he and Grant used to work in the fields with the blacks. He said with glee, " Grant was helpless when it came to making slaves work," and Mrs. Boggs corrobo- rated this. "He was no hand to manage negroes," she said. "He couldn't force them to do anything. He wouldn't whip them. He was too gentle and good tem- pered — and besides he was not a slavery man. I can see him now as he used to sit so humbly at my fireside. He had no exalted opinion of himself at any time, but in those days he was almost in despair. He walked the streets looking for something to do. He was actually the most obscure man in St. Louis. Nobody took any notice oi him. He tried in every possible way to get his capabilities before the people, and failed. It was never in him to push himself forward. St. Louis was very hot politically that year, and I remember well the time came when my hus- band refused to shake hands with him for taking the 'wrong side,' as we called it then. The Dents were all Southern and so were we. "It was a hard situation for Captain Grant. He was a Northern man married into a Southern, slave-owning XXiv ULYSSES S. GRANT; SECOND PREFACE family and Dent openly despised him. We all said 'Poor Julia!' when we spoke of her marriage. Grant's habits were good while he lived with us. I recall hearing Mr. Boggs say to Richardson, the historian, 'I never saw Grant under the influence of liquor in my life.' Grant was not a man to frequent saloons. He was not that kind of a man. "He was a sad man. I never heard him laugh out loud. He would smile and he was not what you would call a gloomy man, but he was a sad man. He was a gentle, kind man with no special powers for getting along. I don't think he saw any light ahead — not a particle. I don't think he had any ambition further than to feed and clothe his little family. "His mind was almost always somewhere else. He said very little unless some war topic came up. If you men- tioned Napoleon's battles or the Mexican War he was fluent enough. He was a domestic man, extremely home- loving in his ways, and his wife had a very great influence over him. I have no doubt she kept him in St. Louis longer than he otherwise would have stayed. The Dents took pride in their Southern birth, while the Grants were hard-working, economical folks. The two families never fused. Old Jesse Grant was very outspoken about it. I recall his saying to me, 'Are you related to that Dent tribe?' He used just that word tribe, and it meant a great deal as he spoke it. After Grant took the Northern side Colonel Dent was furious, swore he'd shoot Grant if he ever set foot on his farm. Of course this was in the wild days of sixty-one and two. Mrs. Dent always liked Captain Grant and believed in his ability." These family antagonisms explain many curious facts. There is no record that Grant's mother ever saw the White House, but there is positive testimony that old Jesse never slept there — the Dents were in possession ! No doubt this friction was a sorrow to Grant, but it was not a con- dition which military genius could alter. He bore with it patiently and nobly. No one ever heard him complain of it, but it must be reckoned with in any estimate of his otherwise incomprehensible stay in Missouri. In looking back upon Grant's marvellous career from the ULYSSES S. GRANT; SECOND PREFACE XXV standpoint of the World War we naturally ask ourselves, "Has he suffered diminishment ? " In my judgment he has not. His armies have been reduced by comparison with the millions in command of Foch, but the amazing military skill and the invincible soul of the silent com- mander remain. Indeed his personality looms ever larger in our history. No other figure save that of Lincoln disputes that far horizon with him. He fought the Civil War to a victorious end, and in his terms of peace he showed a spirit which is in sharp contrast with the ruthless cam- paigns of the German generals. He fought like a gallant and chivalrous soldier, expressing neither hatred nor revenge. He battled with grim, invincible resolution, but always without heat or exultation. No great soldier ever lived with a kindlier, saner spirit. In the matter of trench warfare he was a pioneer. When his armies sank into the ground before Vicksburg, they forecast the long line from Belgium to the Alps. The precision of his campaigns in Tennessee and Virginia has not been surpassed by any modern general, and his skill in handling an army is reflected in the concise, clear, and masterly phrases in which his orders are expressed. War with him was not an adventure, but a duty. He loathed strife. The pomp and glory of an army were re- pellent to him, and he took no part in any parade where his presence was not necessary. His modesty in the midst of military display makes him one of the strangest com- manders in the annals of war. He had the genius which is unaccountable — the abilitv to do the unforeseen. Without doubt he would have been a supreme commander in France, adequate and imperturbable. With regard to his place as President he gains rather than loses by the passage of time. As the men who were his bitter political enemies pass away and the issues for which he really stood grow clearer, it is evident that he was adequate in the White House. His mistakes were after all in minor matters. He stood for the Union, for justice, for clemency all the time. As he had no hate in battle, so he had no vindictiveness in reconstruction. He kept the peace and he executed the laws. XXVI ULYSSES S. GRANT; SECOND PREFACE He was not a law-maker. His conception of the presi- dency was not like that held by later occupants of the White House. He was in no sense a dictator, he was care- ful not to usurp any of the functions of the legislative or judicial branches of the government. Ludicrous as it now seems, this ''Man on Horseback" was accused of desiring to be a Czar, and yet he never asked for any power which did not belong to the Executive Branch of the government. No man ever sat in the chair who was more scrupulous about this point. It is true he exercised his powers in the manner of a soldier, but it was at a time when he was needed. He was the one man whom the people entirely trusted. His former opponents depended upon him and were not betrayed. Washington, Lincoln, Grant — this is the way the names of our great men run. Washington who established the Republic, Lincoln who freed the slaves, and Grant who saved the Union with the force of arms. This sequence cannot be broken. All other names, glorious as they may be, will be counted after these. So long as this Union is an inspiration and a power, so long as the United States shall last as an entity, these names will be emblazoned at the head of the long roll of our most illustrious dead. Hamlin Garland. New York, 1920. GARLAND'S LIFE OF GRANT CHAPTER I THE CHILDHOOD OF ULYSSES GRANT T TLYSSES GRANT was born in a cabin home standing LJ in a little village on the north bank of the Ohio River, at a point about twenty-five miles east of Cincin- nati. This cabin stood comparatively unchanged up to the year 1885, when it was taken down and removed to Columbus as a relic. It was a one-story building of two very small rooms, with an outside chimney at one end, in the manner of Southern cottages. In one room the family lived in the daytime, cooking at the big fireplace, and eating at a pine table. In the other room they slept. It was almost as humble in appearance as the home in which Abraham Lincoln first saw the light. The village was called Point Pleasant, and it was indeed a beautiful place. Below the door the Ohio River curved away into blue distance, and behind it rose hills covered with tall woods of oak and walnut and ash. At that time the river was the great highway, and over its steel-bright surface the stern-wheel steamers Daniel Boone and Simon Ken- ton plied amid many flatboats, like immense swans sur- rounded by awkward water-bugs. 2 LIFE OF GRANT At this time Point Pleasant had hopes of being a metropolis. It was deceived. It is to-day a very small village, at whose wharf only an occasional steamer conde- scends to stop. In 1820 it contained, among other indus- tries, a tannery ; and the foreman of this tannery was an ambitious, stalwart young fellow named Jesse Grant. He had been in business for himself some years before, and was looking for a chance to begin again. Sickness had broken him up in business at Ravenna, and had swept away his savings — savings which represented the most unremitting toil and the most rigorous self-denial ; but he was once more accumulating a fund, and was nearly ready for a second venture. He married, in 1821, a slender, self-contained young girl named Hannah Simpson — a girl of most excellent quality, handsome, but not vain, and of great steadiness of purpose. In 1822 his first son was born, and in 1823 tanner Grant decided upon Georgetown as the best point to set up a tannery of his own. His keen perception of the commercial changes going on decided this movement. Georgetown was the county-seat of the new county of Brown, and had the further advantage of being situated in a wilderness of tan-bark. By reason of its oaks, Georgetown became the boyhood home of Ulysses Grant. The Grant family made a vivid impression upon the citizens of Georgetown at once. Jesse Grant was a strong man physically and mentally, though possessed of many idiosyncrasies. He was nearly six feet in height, and alive to his finger-tips. His head was large and his face strongly modeled, but his eyes were weak and near- sighted. He looked the transplanted New-Englander he was. He came of a strong family of most admirable record. His father and grandfather had been soldiers in the colo- nial and Revolutionary wars respectively, his grandfather attaining the rank of captain. His father was lieutenant at Lexington, and fought through the entire Revolution- ary War. The Grants had been Connecticut Yankees for several generations, and Jesse brought the vigor, hardi- hood, and shrewd economy of his forebears to the less THE CHILDHOOD OF ULYSSES GRANT 3 thrifty Ohio border. He took a prominent position in the village at once ; for he loved to talk, to make speeches, and to argue, and, besides holding advanced ideas, he wrote rhymes. He had the gentle art of making enemies as well as friends. He was pronouncedly of the North ; his neighbors were mainly of the South. Hannah Simpson, his wife, had no discoverable enemies. She was almost universally beloved as a Christian woman and faithful wife and mother. But it took longer to know her. She was the most reticent of persons. " Ulysses got his reticence, his patience, his equable temper, from his mother," is the verdict of those who knew both father and mother. Others go further and say : " He got his sense from his mother." In truth, the Simpsons were a fine old family. They were quite as martial as the Grants, were as genuinely American in their history, and were possessed apparently of greater self-control. Hannah Simpson was the daugh- ter of John Simpson, a man with the restless heart of a pioneer, who had left his ancestral home in Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, and had settled in Clermont County, Ohio, a few years before. He had built a brick house and opened a large farm, and his position was most hon- orable in his town of Bantam. Hannah Simpson, his daughter, seems to have gathered up and carried forward to her son Ulysses the best qualities of her people. That she was a remarkable woman all her neighbors bear testi- mony. She never complained of any hardship or toil or depression. She seldom laughed, and her son Ulysses once said, " I never saw her shed a tear in my life." She was as proud of her family history as her husband was of his, but she said nothing about it. She never argued, never boasted, and never gossiped of her neighbors. Her husband bore testimony of her character in words well chosen : " Her steadiness and strength of character have been the stay of the family through life." Her old neigh- bors call her " a noble woman." A large part of the criticism of Jesse Grant arose from two sources — his disputatiousness and his Northern pre- judices. In 1823, as now, Georgetown was inhabited by 4 LIFE OF GRANT native families, that is to say, by families at least two re- moves from the old world, as a roster of the names will show. There was scarcely an Italian, Russian, French, or Scandinavian among them ; but many were from Kentucky and Virginia, and the town partook almost equally of South and North in respect of customs, speech, and politi- cal prejudices ; possibly at that time the South predomi- nated. The village was laid out around the court-house square, in Southern fashion. It was a town hewn out of a mighty forest of trees. On every side the lofty walnut and maple and oak and ash trees stood in ranks, and the farmers tilled around the immovably rooted boles of girdled oaks. To this day the fringes and fragments of woods, and especially the stumps, testify of the giants of other days. The town, consisting of a score of houses, possibly, was set just where the broken land, some ten miles back from the Ohio River, levels up into a sort of plateau, with White Oak Creek to the west and Straight Creek to the east. The soil was fat and productive, as the settler could well perceive by measuring the giant oaks which had risen out of it, and he set himself to work like some valorous but inconsiderate and inconsiderable insect to gnaw down the forest and let in the sunlight upon his corn and potatoes. The life which the boy Ulysses touched was therefore primitive, unrefined, and serious. The manners of the vil- lage were almost as rude as those of the farms. The houses were small, unadorned, and overcrowded with children. The women cooked at the open fireplaces with pots and cranes, with " reflectors " and " Dutch ovens " as luxuries. The ceilings were very low, the walls bare, the furniture rude and scanty. The interiors were without a single touch of refining grace, save when at night the fireplace threw a golden glory over the rough plaster, and filled the corners of the room with mystery of shadow-play. The type of house most common was a modification in frame or brick of the woodsman's cabin, with a chimney THE CHILDHOOD OF ULYSSES GRANT $ at each end, and a little lean-to kitchen behind. The Grant home for the first few years was a small, low brick structure with one room, a kitchen, and a garret. This means that the family ate, met their kind, and slept in two rooms. This almost universal poverty of room produced the trun- dle-bed, which shoved under the bed of the parents like a bureau drawer. More ambitious houses were soon built, but in general the two-roomed cabin continued to be the typical home of the villager as well as of the woodsman. Newspapers were few, but they were read with minute care. Life was timed to the slow pulsing to and fro of the clumsy stage, and to the stately languor of the stern- wheel steamers, whose booming roar sounded clamorously in the night from the river mist ten miles away. The fact that Georgetown was an inland town, and that it was a farming community, kept it comparatively free from broil and blood- shed, rude though it was. It had also repose and a cer- tain security of life which found some compensation for its remoteness. Ripley, down on the Ohio River ten miles away, was the principal market, but it seemed likely to be more. It was considered entitled to regular stops on the part of the steamers, which swung to with elaborate and disdainful courtesy in answer to signals from the lesser towns. From Ripley or Higginsport, Georgetown was reached by stage over hill and through deep woods. Ulysses Grant lived for sixteen years in this locality, and upon the boy mind were impressed the faces, the speech, the manners, and the daily habits of these people. He loved the town with the love men have for the things thus clothed upon with childish wonder, and which never lose their halo. The citizens were a plain people of unesthetic tempera- ment, sturdy of arm and resolute of heart, as befitted woodsmen. "■ Nonsense" they could not abide, and they were quick to perceive Jesse Grant's " foolish pride " in his little son Ulysses. They were amused at this name "Ulysses," which they soon parodied into "Useless." " How did you come to saddle such a name on the poor child?" some of them asked. The storv was curious. As related by the father, it 6 LIFE OF GRANT appeared that after the birth of his eldest son the common difficulty of choosing a name arose. Multitudes of sugges- tions only confused the young parents the more, until at last it was proposed to cast the names into a hat. This was done. A romantic aunt suggested " Theodore." The mother favored " Albert," in honor of Albert Gallatin. Grandfather Simpson voted " Hiram," because he con- sidered it a handsome name. The drawing resulted in two names, Hiram and Ulysses. " Ulysses," it is said, was cast into the hat by Grand- mother Simpson, who had been reading a translation of Fenelon's " Telemachus," and had been much impressed by the description given of Ulysses. The boy was named " Hiram Ulysses Grant." But the father always called him Ulysses, and never Hiram. " My Ulysses " was a common expression of his, and the rude jesters of the village mocked his utterance of it. Other children came to the Grants — Simpson (three years younger), Clara, Virginia, Orvil (nearly thirteen years younger), and Mary, the youngest of them all ; but Ulysses remained the father's pride, and upon him he built ah his hopes. Ulysses developed early into a self-reliant child, active and healthy. He came at the age of seven to a share in the work about the house and yard. He be- gan to pick up chips and to carry in the wood for the big fireplaces, quite like the son of a farmer. He was called " Lys," or, in the soft drawl of the South, " Lyssus " ; his playmates had not yet begun to find it worth while to tease him about his name. He had wonderful love for horses, and as soon as he could toddle he delighted to go out across the yard, where, at the hitching-poles before the finishing-room of the tannery, several teams were al- most always to be found on pleasant days. He crawled about between the legs of the dozing horses, and swung by their tails in perfect content, till some timid mother near by rushed in to Mrs. Grant with excited outcry: " Mrs. Grant, do you know where your boy is? He 's out there swinging on the tails of Loudon's horses!" But Mrs. Grant never seemed to worry about Ulysses in the least. She was not of those mothers whose maternal THE CHILDHOOD OF ULYSSES GRANT 7 love casts a correspondingly deep shadow of agonizing fear. " When Ulysses was sick she gave him a dose of castor-oil, put him to bed, and went calmly about her work, trusting in the Lord and the boy's constitution," one neighbor said. 