would give him the command of all the armies without going into the field unless he chose. In the last days of General Scott it was revived again. After General Grant's remarkable series of successes without a failure, and his wisdom and modesty in his victories, the question of reviving the office was introduced into Congress.

Doolittle said: "General Grant has won seventeen battles, captured one hundred thousand prisoners, taken five hundred pieces of artillery and innumerable thousands of small arms on all these fields. He has organized victory from the beginning, and I want him in a position where he can organize final victory and bring it to our armies, and put an end to this rebellion."

Wilson added that "he had taken more prisoners and more cannon than ever Washington or Scott saw on all their battlefields."

A bill was passed reviving the office, and President Lincoln, who all along had held fast to Grant as the kind of man to lead our armies, appointed him to the office. This was March 9, 1864.

He immediately visited the army of the Potomac, which had so long exhibited a masterly inactivity. He recommended to the government the new policy of conducting the movements of all our armies by one plan, that of striking heavy blows everywhere at once. At once he went about arranging for it, and as soon as ready he crossed the Rapidan, Sherman and Thomas moved south, Sherman being left free to go as far and do what he pleased. Butler moved up the James, Sigel up the Shenandoah, Averill forward in West Virginia, Banks up the Red river and into Texas, McPherson into Mississippi. There was a simultaneous "forward, march." It busied every department of the rebel army at once with the army in its front. No more helping one another. Then the work everywhere went steadily on. Every part of the great army was busy and kept busy till the final victory came.

The great battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor, which cost fifty-four thousand Union lives, followed right on in quick succession; Sheridan swept the valley of the

Shenandoah; Sherman spread consternation in his march to the sea, and others in their spheres were doing like decided work. From the Potomac to the Rio Grande, Grant's spirit was in the army. Every man, from the lieutenant-general to the private, was at his post and at work. In this fearful work of war the fall and winter wore away, all the country seeing that the confederacy must soon collapse. In due time Richmond fell, Petersburg was taken, the country in that part of Virginia which had been the seat of rebel operations was in Grant's possession. The army of General Robert E. Lee, which had so long supported the rebellion, was conquered. Seeing the hopelessness of further resistance, on the ninth of April, 1865, General Lee surrendered to General Grant.

Both armies were now disbanded to go to their homes. The poor misguided Confederates went to desolated homes, to an impoverished country, to a wrecked and shattered state of society. The Union soldiers went home to prosperity, to plenty, even luxury among the people. But each carried home the moral degeneracy, the idleness and vices peculiar to war, to be slowly overcome by christian endeavor.

Terrible past expression, are the calamities of war. The outward destruction of property, the cost in money, life and limb, the immeasurable waste to industry, are not the worst of the evil. The brutality, coarseness, hardness, profanity, drunkenness, moral degeneracy, that it brings to and leaves in vast numbers, is a tremendous weight to be cast upon society. It takes a generation to overcome the moral evils of such a war. Let men engage in devil's work and they will make themselves devils. War is a mighty corrupter of men and morals. It is time the civilized world was done with it. It is a burning disgrace to manhood and christian society that war is yet tolerated as a mode of settling difficulties among men and nations. It is to nations what the duel is to individuals—a relic of barbarism. But it has rid the United States of slavery, it may be said. Yes, so it has, but it was only using one evil to destroy another. It killed a million of white men, made a million widows and sorrowing mothers, desolated the southern states and immensely

indebted the whole country, to give freedom to four millions of slaves.

Then, it may be replied, that the south would never have given up its slaves in any other way. Possibly not.

Yet it was the south to get rid of an evil But it is past now, slavery, war and all the enmity and moral and social We are one country, one people, have If we did have a war among

the dearest possible way for
which was its worst enemy.
and all. Let it be past,
evil that came with it.

one history and one future now. ourselves, it was the greatest one ever had among men, and produced the greatest generalship and soldiership, on both sides, yet known among men on so large a scale.

But what did the war do for Ulysses S. Grant? It made him. It took him from a low place, from a weak self-respect and self-control, from obscurity, from a possible, and perhaps probable, life-struggle with poverty and bad habits, and put him upon the pinnacle of a world-wide fame-gave him friends, confidence, even adulation, wealth, and the highest honor of the republic. But even this is not the best it did for him. It developed through all the years of the war a better and better manhood, an improving excellence of character. It is difficult for one to study the life of Grant and not see that from the time he entered the army of the Union at Springfield, he began to be a better man-more self-respecting, self-sacrificing-that he had more of the feeling that he was in the world for a purpose, which was to serve his country and his kind, to be a man genuine, large and useful.

Six days after General Lee surrendered, President Lincoln was assassinated. Grant had no better friend than the president. Through all the fault found with Grant, he always believed in him, and defended him.

Now came Andrew Johnson, as president, who objected to, and sought to hinder, the reconstruction measures of Congress, which proposed to give the ballot to the freedmen. A long contest between Congress and the executive followed, in which General Grant sought to stand on neutral ground. The president removed Mr. Stanton, secretary of war, and appointed

General Grant; but Congress objected to the removal, and so General Grant's cabinet position was short-lived. Slowly dragged along the weary length of President Johnson's time, which made the general's neutral position an uncomfortable one.

PRESIDENT GRANT.

On the twentieth of May, 1868, the national republican convention of six hundred and fifty delegates, met in Chicago and voted for a candidate for the next president. Every vote was for General Grant. Every state was represented. The enthusiasm on the occasion was intense and tumultuously expressive. It told of a united country; of reconstructed states; of slavery abolished; of harmony between the coming president and Congress; of a new south in the years to come, and of a country to be, with all the sections prosperous, and at peace with each other. It was one of the greatest occasions in the history of this country, full of great epochs. The great leaders in thought, like Horace Greeley, Charles Sumner, Abraham Lincoln, had done their work in the minds and hearts of the nation. Discussion had been deep and strong for years, all the time winning men more and more to the doctrines of the declaration of independence. Now the time had come when these doctrines could be put into practice, when they were no longer an idle declaration, but a practical reality; and the man who had been one of the most practical and powerful instruments in bringing about this state of things, was nominated for the presidency. It was inevitable that General Grant should be president. The people would have it so. His great work in the war, growing greater with each succeeding year, culminating at last in the destruction of the slave-holder's rebellion; his simplicity of life, modesty, and plain honesty and common sense, had made him the one man whom the people would promote to the highest place of honor and trust. No matter if he had not been a civilian; no matter if he had not voted but once, and then for Buchanan; no matter if he had been a slave-holder, and failed in self-government over his appetite, before the war; nobody else could be thought of for president. It was cruelty to him, but the people

did not mean it so. It was robbing him of his just dues, an unsullied and immortal reputation, to grow brighter through the ages, as one of the world's greatest captains; but this was not the intention. It was a moral impossibility that he should do in the presidency which he knew nothing of, as he had done in the army for which he had been trained, and in which he had seen much service under those great generals, Taylor and Scott. The country was never fuller of great civilians than at that time. The country never needed great civil talent, knowledge and experience, more than then. It was putting a landsman on board of a ship in a storm, to command it. Yes, it was cruelty to the general, who would have lived forever in the hearts of the people as the Wellington of America. So unwise is the love of a good people under such circumstances.

The election went forward as did the convention, to the inevitable result, which made our great and lovable general a commonplace president.

Commonplace he was obliged to be in a place as new to him as a new world.

The place was as difficult as it was new. The conquered but sullen south; the humiliated but not conquered democrats of the north, would both make him all the trouble they could. The republicans anxious to punish the south, and the republicans greedy for places in the north, were neither of them helpful to him. He, like the martyred Lincoln, had only kindness for the south, and kindness for everybody; but he could not have his way in such turbulent times.

He sought at the start to reform the civil service by appointing politically unambitious men to important posts of duty, but in these attempts the political managers soon worsted him and got their own way, so that before his administration was through, he was quite in their hands. By his good nature he was led to accept many presents from men who had personal interests to serve, listen to many counselors who were ambitious of their own promotion, appoint many relatives and intimates to places of trust and profit, to his own discredit, and give credence to schemes of plausible theorists. which did not gain wise confidence for him.