Ulysses S. Grant - The Great Soldier Of America The Great Soldier of America

ULYSSES S. GRANT TO GENERAL CHARLES P. SUMMERALL WHOSE QUIET MODESTY IN PEACE AND IRON DETERMINATION IN WAR MADE CLEAR TO ME THE CHARACTER OF GENERAL GRANT THIS HISTORY IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED PREFACE THE leisure hours of a quarter of a century largely spent in reading 1 the history of wars, of the campaigns of great gen erals, of famous battles, have impressed upon me the honor due, but grudgingly withheld from, General Grant for his triumphs, compared to the glory lavished on other victors in measure of their success. This injustice to his memory is due in part to unconscious politi cal sentiment, but also to malicious and deliberate design. The Civil War in America has provoked many emotions, but the partisans may be grouped generally into two camps in one, the people whose sympathy, traditions, and instinct guide them toward everything that may be construed as democratic, liberal, and ideal istic in the other, those whose hopes and feelings exalt whatever points toward royalist and aristocratic conceptions of life. For the liberals, the figure of Lincoln fills the entire horizon. This man, about whom more books have been written than any other except Christ, has blanketed all his democratic contempo raries literary, political, and military. Overshadowed as a democratic hero, Grant had little to offer to the aristocrats, and that little he withheld. He was the son of a poor farmer and tanner, sent to the Military Academy to obtain a free education, disliking the company in which his humble station set him, t disadvantage among the more favored cadets planning for a while the peaceful career of professor emerging for a few months of youthful splendor in the Mexican battles asplendor dimmed by a lame and inadequate recognition by his military superiors given the most undesirable post-war details compelled to resign his commission for an indiscretion after eight years of ill-success in private life he was refused employment at the out break of the Civil War by General McClellan and by the adjutant general of the army, was given a political commission by the Gov ernor of his state, became a brigadier-general as a matter of politi cal patronage, and eventually commander-in-chief of all the armies, not by wish of the military authorities, not even at the desire of vil Viii PKEFACE the President-Commander-in-Chief, but in pursuance of an act of Congress introduced by Ms political sponsor In carriage and in dress he affronted all military codes. James Ford Rhodes, who should have known better, said of him He lacked the external manners, the aloofness of person, the quality of being niggard of his time, the dignity of bearing that should go with the commander of over half a million soldiers to whom the nation looked for its salvation. x He offended the officers of all armies during his voyage around the world by refusing to review their troops, and he deliberately insulted the entire military profession of Germany, the nation which commanded military thought for half a century, by saying to the Crown Prince The truth is I am more of a farmer than a soldier. I take little or no interest in military affairs. I never went into the army without regret and I never retired without pleasure. 2 If such a man should be accepted as great, all the structure of ancestry and of professionalism, as well as the outward manifesta tions of bearing, stride, speech, and tinsel withwhich traditional militarism has built up and maintained its ascendancy, would col lapse. The pretensions of this upstart must be cradle-killed, and whatever laurels must be conceded to champions in this war among republicans awarded to a more conventional soldier. Such a one was easily found. Eobert B. Lee, the son of General Lighthorse Harry Lee Revolutionary hero, member of the Yirginia convention for the ratification of the Constitution, and favorite of General Washington grandson-in-law of Mrs...