Grant at COLD HARBOR, VIRGINIA, JUNE 14, 1864 166 Photograph by Brady Showing also Col. John A. Rawlins, Col. Theodore S. Bowers, Col. William L. Duff, Gen. John G. Barnard, and others. GRANT AS LIEUTENANT-GENERAL (standing) 200 Photograph taken about 1865, furnished by Mr. Charles GRANT IN HIS SECOND TERM AS PRESIDENT Photograph by Brady, taken in Washington GRANT AT SIXTY 438 552 Photograph by Fredricks, New York, 1882 GRANT WRITING HIS MEMOIRS AT MOUNT MCGREGOR 564 With the single exception noted, the illustrations are from photographs in the collection of Mr. Frederick ULYSSES S. GRANT CHAPTER I THE MAN No man who ever gained enduring fame was more the sport of chance than Grant. No character in history has achieved supreme success in war or the supreme reward of politics who owed less to his own ambition or design. A still and simple citizen, accustomed mostly to the ways of unkempt Western towns, ungifted with imagination, indifferent to the general stir of things, and barely equal to the task of furnishing his family such modest comforts as the neighbors had, he was untouched even by evanescent liking for a military life up to the moment when he flashed across the vision of the world the greatest captain of his time. And when with war in retrospect he would have been content to live in quiet contemplation of his strange career, unskilled in politics, innocent of the arts of government, he was compelled by force of circumstance for eight eventful years to occupy the highest civil place his countrymen could give. He was the child of splendid opportunities which came to him unsought, for which he never seemed to care, and which he met with calm assurance of his own capacity. He rode upon the turmoil which had tossed him to its top serenely confident in his ability to guide gigantic forces thrust into his hands. He saw his country reunited, well advanced upon a clearly marked and broadening road; then willingly went back to private life, rich only in the opulence of fame, unspoiled, unfretted by regrets, and undisturbed by dreams. When he was made Lieutenant-General and wrote to Sherman, acknowledging that soldier's aid in his advancement, Sherman with equal magnanimity replied: "I believe you are as brave, patriotic, and just as the great prototype Washington, as unselfish, kind-hearted, and honest as a man should be; but the chief characteristic is the simple faith in success you have always manifested which I can liken to nothing else than the faith a Christian has in a Saviour." So he seemed to one who saw him near at hand in war; thus looking back we all can now perceive his childlike trust in time of peace. That this shy, silent man, after a humdrum life till middle age, should have beheld the span of his remaining years studded with triumphs and with tragedies presents a riddle to the student of his time. His mind was not attuned to notions of retreat, of indirection, or diplomacy. He thought straightforward and was free from artificerare qualities which served him well in war and in most great executive emergencies, but were not fitted to the sinuous ways of peace, the strategy of politics, the mysteries of finance, the subtle schemes of courtiers and dishonest satellites; and so it came about that both as President and as private citizen the record of his truly great accomplishments is soiled with pages which we would tear out if we could. Yet we should hate to lose the last heroic chapter, even though its sordid prelude is indispensable to the complete disclosure of unstained nobility of soul. a I. EARLY INFLUENCES Straggling along the northern bank of the Ohio, hundred years ago, there was a broken line of settlements which served as landings for the lazy river craft. One of them, twenty-five miles southeast of Cincinnati, perched on a river bend, was called Point Pleasant. Most of its dozen families had drifted in there from the South. A few other settlers were scattered within a radius of twenty miles. Here in a two-room cottage, near the river front, Grant was born on April 27, 1822. His father was Jesse Root Grant, a recent comer from the northeast corner of the State, who was |