Adam Badeau, Grant in peace: from Appomattox to Mount McGregor, a personal memoir

[105]

I feel that your relief from command of the Fifth District is a heavy blow to Reconstruction. Not that Griffin will not carry out the law faithfully, and Hancock too when he gets there, but that the act of Government will be interrupted as an effort to defeat the law and will encourage opposition to it. So again in the Second District, I do not know what to make of present movements in this capital, but they fill me with alarm. In your own personal welfare you will not suffer from these changes, except as one of the thirty-five millions of inhabitants of this republic, but may be the gainer as far as personal comfort is concerned. I felt it my duty, however, to do all I could to keep you where you were until the laws you were executing so faithfully were carried through, and your district restored to the Union. All I can say now is that I have sustained your course, publicly, privately, and officially, not from personal feeling or partiality, but because you were right. You are entitled to a little rest, and I know such a welcome awaits you as will convince you that republics are not always ungrateful.

Thus Sheridan also was taken from the duty in which he had hitherto supported Grant. Deprived now of his two coadjutors, without either Stanton as a friendly superior or Sheridan as a loyal subordinate, Grant was left to bear the whole brunt of the battle with the President, which had been committed to him by Congress and the people whom Congress represented. The prospect was arduous, and he felt the loss of his faithful allies; but he girded himself for the task.