was no desire to retain him. Reverent sorrow and sympathy had long ascended from every quarter of the land toward the cottage on that mountain-top, but there were no prayers uttered for protracted days.
The final crisis was neither long nor painful.
On the 21st of July the country was informed that he was failing again.
For two days his symptoms indicated increasing depression and exhaustion, and on the 23d came the end. There was no renewed struggle, no distinct consciousness on his part that his feet were wet with the waters of that river which we all must cross; he made no formal parting again with his family; he endured no pangs of dissolution, but passed away quietly without a groan or a shudder, with no one but his wife and children and his medical attendants by his side.
He had done most of the great things of his life with calmness and composure, and in the same way he entered the long procession in which Alexander and Caesar and Wellington and Napoleon had preceded him.
uite as sacred as any that I have revealed.
I believe that, with the portraiture which this volume affords the subject himself would be satisfied, could he know its character and its effect upon his fame.
Letter no.
One.
This note explains itself.
It shows the interest Grant took in the great question of Reconstruction which so affected his own action and career, and betrays the democratic simplicity of the General-in-Chief and virtual dictator over the conquered territory; for this Caesar traveled in a street-car.
headquarters armies of the United States, Jan'y 17th, 1866.
Col.,—I am going to the Senate Chamber to hear the speeches on reconstruction this afternoon and will not be back to the office again.
Please tell the orderly that brings my horse to return with him, as I will go home in the cars.
Yours, &c., U. S. Grant.
Letter no.
Two.
This is the letter already printed in Chapter XVII, on Grant as a Presidential Candidate.
It requires no further
city.]
A sufficient time has elapsed since the fall of Vicksburg for the excitement caused by that event to have somewhat subsided.
The judgment of the community was passed while this excitement was at its height, and when the public was comparatively unacquainted with the facts in the case.
It would seem at least fair that this judgment should withhold its fiat until the friends of Lieutenant-General John C. Pemberton can be heard in his defence.
The Roman citizen could appeal unto Caesar, should justice not be meted out to him. The friends of General Pemberton appeal to the public, and only desire that a man be not condemned unheard.
In passing judgment upon Lieutenant-General Pemberton the people seem to have considered, not what he has done, but what he has not done.
They say, Why did he not provision Vicksburg, and not Did he do everything that could be done towards that object?
The army of Lieutenant-General Pemberton, numbering some forty thousand effectives, had t
Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 14. (ed. Reverend J. William Jones), Address of honorableB.H.Hill before the Georgia branch of the Southern Historical Society at Atlanta, February18th, 1874. (search)
r without cruelty; a victor without oppression, and a victim without murmuring.
He was a public officer without vices; a private citizen without wrong; a neighbor without reproach; a Christian without hypocrisy, and a man without guile.
He was Caesar, without his ambition; Frederick, without his tyranny; Napoleon, without his selfishness, and Washington, without his reward.
He was obedient to authority as a servant, and royal in authority as a true king.
He was gentle as a woman in life; mo man can qualify himself to perform.
I shall not do the people the injustice to accept high civil office, with whose questions it has not been my business to become familiar.
Well, but General, I insisted, history does not sustain your view.
Caesar, and Frederick of Prussia, and Bonaparte, were all great statesmen, as well as great generals.
And all great tyrants, he promptly rejoined.
I speak of the proper rule in republics, where, I think, we should have neither military statesmen, no
echo among those he fought against and by whom he was conquered.
Ah, yes, say some who admit his greatness as a soldier and leader, if it were not for his ambition that stopped not at the ruin of his country!
Such is the fatal accusation: Caesar was ambitious: If it were so, it was a grievous fault, And grievously hath Caesar answered it.
But was that ambition in him which was patriotism in us?
How is it that we, who were upborne for four years by a passion for our country that stoppCaesar answered it.
But was that ambition in him which was patriotism in us?
How is it that we, who were upborne for four years by a passion for our country that stopped at no sacrifices, cannot understand that other men of the same race and blood could be inspired with the same passion for what they looked upon as their country, and fight for it with the same heroic devotion that we fought for ours?
They, as well as we, were fighting for an idea—we for union, and they for independence—a cause which was as sacred to them as ours to us. Is it that what was patriotism on the one side was only ambition on the other?
No; it was not disappointed ambition that cu
h mine and handed it to me. From its perusal I found he based his refusal to Ould on the same ground he did to me. A gentleman—at whose house, in Powhatan county, Va., General Lee stopped while returning from the surrender in Appomattox—told me Lee said to him that many would wonder why he did not make his escape before the surrender, when it was practicable, and gave as a reason why he did not that he was unwilling to separate his fate from men who had fought under him so long.
When I recall my old commander, I think not in connection with him of ambitious Caesar, of avaricious Marlborough, of selfish Bonaparte, but rather of the English Hampden and the American Washington, who resembled him in his rare moderation and in exalted virtue.
The recent installation of a monument to Lee in Richmond city gives him just now special prominence.
I therefore hope that these details, illustrative of particular phases of his character, may not be without interest to many. David S. G. Cab
was darkened with the black pall of despair and that grand cause crushed to earth by the weight of a host in arms well-nigh a million strong, he returned that sword to its scabbard as pure and stainless as when it first flashed in the face of the foe.
This is neither the time nor the occasion, were I competent for the task, by close analysis of his character and deeds, to approximate the place of Lee in the Pantheon of the great.
As a soldier he must yield precedence to Alexander, and Caesar, and Frederick, and Napoleon; but he was nevertheless a great captain, and as an accomplished English critic has written, In strategy mighty, in battle terrible, in adversity, as in prosperity, a hero, indeed.
The bloody battles before Richmond, when, like a lion springing from his lair, he took the offensive, and hurling his army like a thunder-bolt on the legion of McClellan, he defeated him at Cold Harbor and drove him to refuge at Harrison's Landing, proves the truth of this.
Sharps
, and converted the ravishing anguish of defeat, of deaths, of losses infinite, into submission to the inevitable.
We would not make those hearts bleed afresh by recounting the incidents which clothed our people with the weeds of mourning.
In Caesar's account of the battle of Pharsalia, he says that Crastinus, a centurion of the Tenth legion, already distinguished for his gallantry, called out:
Follow me, my comrades, and strike home for your general.
This one battle remains to be fought and he will have his rights and we our liberty.
General, he said, looking to Caesar, I shall earn your thanks to-day, dead or alive.
We have seen a ragged Southern soldier, all unknown to fame, amid the angry shouting of hosts, touch the poverty of his uniform, and with a gentle farewell, uttered as he essayed some doubly perilous feat, go out into the eternal beyond.
We await with the anguish of patience the coming historian who will do justice to these untitled dead.
With the world
e throne of Justinian trembled under the tread of revolting soldiers his wife rallied his irresolution with these words: If flight were the only means of safety, yet I should disdain to fly. Death is the condition of our birth, but they who have reigned should never survive the loss of dignity and dominion.
I implore heaven that I may never be seen a day without my diadem and purple.
That I may no longer behold the light when I cease to be saluted with the name of Queen.
If you resolve, O Caesar to fly—you have treasures—behold the sea, you have ships—but tremble lest the desire of life should expose you to wretched exile and ignominious death.
For my own part I adhere to the maxim of antiquity: That the throne is a glorious sepulchre.
While the two armies were struggling in the awful shadow of the horse-shoe in General Lee's line, about 2 o'clock in the afternoon of May 12th, 1864, word came down the line from our side, We are out of ammunition; send us cartridges.
We cannot h<
sublimest word of his language.
But Colonel Lee's capacity was not generally known because the opportunity had not come.
Had it never come he would only have been known as Colonel Lee, a distinguished engineer of the United States army.
When it did come, he showed the self-command of Washington and Wellington, and will live with them their equals in history.
He showed the power of quick combination and dash of Napoleon without his ambition, the steady endurance and personal popularity of Caesar without the suspicion of turning ambitious arms against his country and his home.
He showed the genius of Alexander without his desire of conquest, for he fought only to defend the right.
He showed all the piety of Havelock, while like the patriot Cincinnatus, he at length sheathed his sword and went back to the plow-handle of private life to teach the sons of his old soldiers lessons of peace.
With rapid strategic movements after defeating the army of one hundred thousand men under McCl
