be just to require it to share the honors of victory with any other army. It was ob served that when he bade good-by to his wife at this departure his adieus, always affectionate, were especially tender and lingering, as if presentiment of a crisis in his life oppressed him. Lincoln accompanied him to the train.

"The President," said Grant, after they had parted, "is one of the few who have not attempted to extract from me a knowledge of my movements, although he is the only one who has a right to know them." Long before, Lincoln had written to him: "The particulars of your campaign I neither know nor seek to know. I wish not to intrude any restraints or constraints upon you." Grant's reply to this confidence "Should my success be less than I desire or expect, the least I can say is, the fault is not yours." These two understood each other by a magnanimous sympathy that had no need of particular confidences. That Lincoln respected Grant as one whom it was not becoming for him to presume to question is in itself impressive evidence of Grant's greatness.

was:

son.

CHAPTER XV

IN WASHINGTON AMONG POLITICIANS

WITHIN a few weeks after the surrender of Lee, every army and fragment of an army opposed to the Union was dissolved. But meantime Lincoln had been assassinated, and the executive administration of the nation had devolved upon Andrew JohnThis wrought an immense change in the aspect of national affairs. Lincoln was a strong, wise, conservative, magnanimous soul. Johnson was arrogant, vain, narrow, and contentious. Grant soon established his headquarters at the War Department, and devoted himself with characteristic energy to the work of discharging from the military service the great armies of volunteers no longer needed. Their work as soldiers was gloriously complete. Within a few months they were once more simple citizens of the Republic, following the ways of

industry and peace. The suddenness of the transformation by which at the outbreak of hostilities hundreds of thousands of citizens left their homes and their occupations of peace to become willing soldiers of the Union and liberty, was paralleled by the alacrity of their return, the moment the danger was passed, to the stations and the manner of life they had abandoned.

The de

But he

General Grant was the central figure in the national rejoicing and pride. sire to do him honor was universal. bore himself through all with dignity and modesty, avoiding as much as he could, without seeming inappreciation and disdain, the lavish popular applause that greeted him on every possible occasion. In July, 1866, Congress created the grade of general, to which he was at once promoted, thus attaining a rank never before granted to a soldier of the United States. His great lieutenant, Sherman, succeeded him in this office, which was then permitted to lapse, though it was revived later as a special honor for General Sheridan. In further token of gratitude,

some of the wealthier citizens purchased and presented to Grant a house in Washington. Resolutions of gratitude, honorary degrees, presents of value and significance, came to him in abundance. Through it all, he maintained his reputation as a man of few words, devoid of ostentation, and with no ambition to court public favor by any act of dema goguism.

But a great and bitter trial confronted him. He had never been a politician. Now he was caught in a maelstrom of ungenerous and malignant politics. All his influence and effort had been addressed to promote the calming of the passions of the war, and a reunion in fact as well as in form. The President, professing an intention of carrying out the policy of his predecessor, began a method of reconstructing civil governments in the States that had seceded which produced great dissatisfaction. Upon his own initiative, without authority of Congress, he proceeded to encourage and abet those who were lately in arms against the Union to make new constitutions for their States, and

institute civil governments therein, as if they alone were to be considered. The freedmen, who had been of so great service to our armies, whom by every requirement of honor and gratitude we were bound to protect, were left to the hardly restricted guardianship of their former masters, who, having no faith in their manhood or their development, devised for them a condition with few rights or hopes, and little removed from the slavery out of which they had been delivered.

This policy found little favor with those in the North who had borne the heat and burden of the war. In the elections of 1866 the people repudiated President Johnson's policy by emphatic majorities. When the hostile Congress met, the governments Johnson had instituted were declared to be provisional only, and it set about the work of reconstruction in its own way, imbedding the changed conditions, the fruits of the war, in proposed amendments of the Constitution of the United States, which were ultimately ratified by a sufficient number of States to make them part of the organic frame of government of the Republic.