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

[75] in order to save the State. But Congress believed the President not only hostile to the true interests of the country, but recusant to the expressed will of the people. The era was indeed revolutionary and the circumstances unprecedented. The time was out of joint, and Grant felt that it was his unwelcome task to set it right. It was made his duty both by law and by patriotism to carry out a policy which the Head of the State sought by every means to defeat and destroy; and Grant determined to perform the duty. Nevertheless, he succeeded even yet in maintaining the appearance of amicable relations with the President. He showed him all the deference due his office, and was able to postpone for a while longer the fiercest phases of that hostility which was destined to break out at last between the Executive and Congress.

His equanimity of temper was as important at this juncture as either his steadfastness or unselfishness of purpose. He had no anxiety except to do his duty and save his whole country, North and South, from further peril. He felt that it was as important not to inflame passion as to carry out a policy. He was as careful not to exasperate North or South as to perform any other service to the State. A word from him would have excited Congress beyond its own control; an appeal to the North might have precipitated another war. But he kept to himself, or to the very few in whom he confided, his knowledge of many exasperating words and deeds; he cautioned his subordinates; he strove to hold in check the hot-heads in Congress, so that even yet there were Republicans who doubted him and only used him because he was a necessity. He felt especially–I often heard him declare it—extreme reluctance to the use of arbitrary power at the South. He was republican in principle and democratic in sentiment, if ever a man was either, and he took no arbitrary step, except unwillingly. But he felt that the emancipated millions must be protected, that the recently