Fates Begin to Smile

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Kentucky planter-ran across poor Nancy Hanks, Lincoln's mother, seduced her and begat Abraham Lincoln. Since the war this yarn has been run down to the last raveling of its thread, and there is not the smallest trace of probability in it. But millions believed it during the Civil War, and thousands still believe it.

The attack on Fort Sumter did what the Confederate leaders expected it to do. It unified the South; but it also unified the North.

The lagging states of Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas and North Carolina seceded. Maryland attempted to secede, and would have gone out of the Union forthwith if the Lincoln government had not put the entire state legislature under arrest. Missouri was counted on absolutely by the Confederates, but to their surprise the Union sentiment turned out to be too strong. The Kentuckians tried to play the impossible

rôle of neutrals,

The eleven states that formed the Confederacy made up a solid block of territory that was enormous in size. From the Potomac river it ran southwestward sixteen hundred miles to the Mexican border.

Now the grim Fates are no longer absorbed in casting their malign magic about Ulysses. Their dry whispering has come to an end. They have turned Grant's somber page and are poring over other tortured destinies.

Along the roads of the Future come the shimmering bearers of Good Fortune, with wreaths on their brows and laurel trailing in their hands.

But Grant knows it not; the trumpet of a new day has not yet sounded in his ears. The sunlight touches the hills, and the swift runners are on their way, while he sits fingering the buttons of his threadbare coat.

Grant thought, like nearly everybody else, that the war would be over in three months. The whole affair was so far removed from common sense, so fantastic even to those who were taking part in it, that men could not bring themselves to a realization of its disastrous magnitude. Grant wrote to his father on May 6, 1861: "My own opinion is that this war will be but of short duration .. a few decisive victories in some of the Southern parts will send the secession army howling, and the leaders in the rebellion will flee the country.. Negroes will depreciate so rapidly in value that nobody will want to own them." Then he added this interesting comment:

The negro will never disturb this country again. The worst that is to be apprehended for him is now he may revolt and cause more destruction than any Northern man, except it be the ultra-abolitionist, wants to see. A Northern army may be required in the next ninety days to go South to suppress a negro insurrection.

In a week or two after the fall of Sumter we find Grant drilling the Galena volunteers-a crowd of husky youths who called themselves the Jo Daviess Guards. He drifted into this duty; he was by nature a drifter. He had drifted into West Point, drifted into the army, drifted out of it, drifted in and out of half a dozen hopeless occupations. He drilled the local company because they asked him to . . . and they asked him because there was nobody else to do it. He was the only man in Galena who had the training of a regular army officer. One wonders why he was not made captain of the company, and his own explanation is not very satisfactory. The officers of volunteer companies-at the beginning of the war-were elected by the soldiers. He says in his Memoirs: "I declined the captaincy before the balloting, but announced that I would aid

Home Town Indifference

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the company in every way I could and would be found in the service in some position if there should be a war."

I am sure that he did decline the captaincy before the balloting commenced; and I am equally sure that the reason he declined to be a candidate was because he thought he would not be elected. He was known in Galena as a broken-down man who was loose about money obligations and who drank too much. I do not think that this reputation was justified, for I know how easily bad reputations are acquired in small towns. He was out of luck and poor; he was convicted on his appearance of the unpardonable crime of poverty. Besides, it was known in Galena that he was held in contempt by his up-andcoming brothers of the leather store.

He drilled the company, taught the officers their duties, and showed the patriotic women how to make uniforms for the young men. He was in hourly demand people running

to him to ask how to do this and that.'

But the honor and adulation went to others. When the Jo Daviess Guards departed for Springfield, to be turned over to the state authorities, there was a tremendous stir in Galena -blaring music and nodding plumes. Grant went with the company to Springfield, but the captain whom he had taught was in command. Grant tagged along behind the company unnoticed, in his worn citizen's clothes, a grip-sack in his hand and a pipe in his mouth. †

In the light of history what a dramatic spectacle that was! The pompous captain and his bright company, the men with bouquets in their gun-barrels. . . the clapping of hands and the waving of handkerchiefs . . . the rippling flags and the cheering. And behind this flash of color comes the commonlooking man who is destined to command all the armies, to end the war, to be President of the United States, and to make Galena itself a place that is mentioned in books.

CHAPTER XIII

MEN OF PROMISE

N the anxious days of

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1861 the American nation turned to its Men of Promise. There were many of them. General George B. McClellan, a scientific soldier who was right up to the mark in military scholarship, was a man of promise. The American people hugged him to their breast. The newspapers said that with McClellan in the saddle the back of the rebellion would be broken in a few months. He was more popular than Lincoln-and he possessed all the tech-4nique of war. | People nicknamed him "The Little Napoleon."

The trouble with McClellan was that, although he knew all about soldiering, he was not made by nature to be a soldier. He knew how to organize armies, how to make friends with his men and how to plan campaigns, but he could not win battles. He could do everything else about war except just that. He was like a man who understands everything about an automobile from radiator to differential, yet cannot drive one. To win battles a man must have something of the rowdy at the bottom of his nature. He must be willing to mix things up generally, to have dead men and destruction on every side. McClellan could not bear the sight of dead men, or bloody men, and that put him at a disadvantage.

The most promising of all the men of promise was Colonel Robert E. Lee of Virginia. He was considered the coming soldier of that era. Every one looked upon him as the natural successor to the aged General Scott. His father had been one of George Washington's trusted lieutenants, and Lee himself had married Martha Washington's great-granddaughter.

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