forecast in a letter to General Sherman dated the

4th day of April, 1864.

Next, his topographical faculty was only less
In a military sense, his cam-

than real genius.

paigns were in an unknown country. The region south of the Ohio and Potomac was, in a large part, destitute of good roads. It was covered by forests miles in extent and traversed by ranges of mountains in some sections and by rivers and bayous in others. No just comparison can be instituted between military operations in Europe, where well-built roads are described in books and laid down on maps, and kindred operations in the bottom-lands of the Mississippi, or in the wildernesses and swamps of Virginia, or the mountainregions of Tennessee and Alabama.

The results indicate that General Grant could estimate with a reasonable degree of accuracy the value of a given number of men for defensive or offensive war. Very rarely was it true that his force at any given point was inadequate, and not often was there an excess. At the close of a day, whether his forces had been hard pressed or were victorious, his judgment was accurate, usually, as to the condition of the opposing army. Added to these high qualities, and in addition to a power, quality, or faculty, which can not be described nor specified, he had faith in the justice of

the national cause and faith in its ultimate tri

umph.

His experience in Mexico had enlarged, and, without exaggeration, we may say that it had perfected, his training at West Point. He served under General Taylor and then under General Scott. In his own language, he was in as many battles in Mexico as it was possible for any one man to be in. On several occasions he distinguished himself by his courage, and by manifestations of that tact for which he became conspicuous in the war of the rebellion. He left Mexico with an exalted opinion of the military abilities of Taylor and Scott, and that opinion he retained to the end of his life. He has left, however, one criticism upon the conduct of the war in Mexico. General Scott moved his army from Vera Cruz in four divisions, a day apart, and upon the same line. This order General Grant criticises; but he also criticises all his own campaigns, and says, finally, that the campaign against Vicksburg is the only one which in his opinion could not have been improved. General Grant

made mistakes, but it may not be judicious for a civilian who never saw a battle, or for an officer who never won a battle, to marshal the mistakes of a general who never lost a battle.

When the blood of the men of Middlesex and Essex was shed in the streets of Baltimore, General

Grant was eight days less than thirty-nine years of age. President Lincoln had already issued his call for seventy-five thousand men. General Grant responded to that call, and by his neighbors and townsmen, although he was not a voter, he was chosen to preside at a public meeting. By the aid of a prompter, but with a stammering tongue, he was able to state the purpose for which the people had convened. That was his first great day. Not distinguished by anything that he said or did. Not distinguished by his tender of service to the country. Tens on tens of thousands were then tendering their services and crowding forward for duty. To him and to the country it was a great day in the circumstance that it made possible his future career of usefulness and glory. In a military sense he was already a veteran. He had had fifteen years of training and service. But he made no demand for place; none for consideration on that account. No claim-no pretension. neighbors and the authorities were left to form their own estimate of the value of his experience. But that day he gained a place to stand, and from it he moved the world.

His

He declined the captaincy of the company raised at Galena, but he went with it to Spring. field, where he was employed first in instructing a clerk in the army methods of keeping accounts,

and then in mustering and drilling the Illinois regiments for duty. Toward the end of May he made a tender of his services to the country through Lorenzo Thomas, then Adjutant-General of the Army of the United States. The letter was neither answered nor filed, and only recently was it rescued from the rubbish of the War Department! General Pope offered his aid, but General Grant declined, saying that he would not receive indorsements for the privilege of fighting for his country. Upon the second call for three hundred thousand men, Governor Yates commissioned Grant as colonel of the Twenty-first Illinois Regiment.

For the purposes of discipline the colonel marched his regiment from Springfield to Quincy. From thence it was moved to Mexico, Missouri, where Grant came to the command of three regiments. Just then, and upon an inspiration and without General Grant's knowledge, and in violation of the civil-service rules, the Illinois delegation in Congress recommended his promotion to the rank of brigadier-general.

His career had now commenced. He was assigned to a military district and to the command of an army larger than that of General Scott when he entered the city of Mexico-an army of brave men, but of men not yet disciplined to the hardships and duties of military life.

The battle of Belmont was fought the 7th day of November. That was Grant's second great day. Then his qualities as a commander were for the first time tested. His army was composed of raw recruits-brave men, stimulated to the verge of insubordination, by an anxious resolve to engage the enemy. General Grant had two purposes in view: First, to destroy the encampment at Belmont as a means of preventing the re-enforcement of Sterling Price, the Confederate commander in Missouri; and, second, to discipline his troops by actual experience in war. The battle of Belmont was bravely won; but, when won, the discipline of the army was lost, and only the genius of the commander saved it from a disgraceful defeat that would have ended in its dispersion or capture. General Grant was the last man to leave the field, and he escaped capture by running his horse from the bank of the river to the boat across a single gangway-plank.

Grant's winter-quarters were in Cairo, at the junction of the Ohio and the Mississippi Rivers. The Confederate troops still occupied Columbus, Kentucky, a few miles below Cairo. There were expeditions during the winter, and in the month of January General Grant reached the conclusion that the true line of operations was up the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, on which were situated Forts Henry and Donelson. That he might ob