Illinois. Abe’s step-sisters were now married, so there was a big family
going west in a lumbering wagon drawn by two yoke of oxen. One of the
step-sisters took with her a pet dog. It was in the midst of winter, and
some of the rivers they had to cross were covered with ice. One day the
little dog strayed away from the wagon and failed to come back until the
Lincoln party had forded a shallow stream. After crossing, Abe, who was
then driving the oxen, saw the poor little fellow jumping about and
whining, afraid of being left behind. It was growing dark and they had
to make their camp for the night. All the others were for leaving the
“troublesome cur” to its fate. Mr. Lincoln, in telling of their moving
to Illinois, said of this:
“But I could not endure the idea of abandoning even a dog. Pulling
off shoes and socks, I waded across the stream and triumphantly
returned with the shivering animal under my arm. His frantic leaps
of joy and other evidences of a dog’s gratitude amply repaid me for
all the exposure I had undergone.”
Many other stories are told of Abraham Lincoln’s kindness of heart. When
he was a country lawyer he had to ride from one county seat to another,
attending court. The judge and several attorneys rode from place to
place where court was to be held. Lawyer Lincoln was the most popular
man of them all, because of his good nature and his ready fund of funny
stories.
The Illinois roads were then nearly always very dusty or very muddy. One
day their party saw a hog stuck in a deep mudhole, squealing loudly. The
party rode by and laughed at the pig’s plight, but no one took the
trouble to help it out. But those despairing squeals touched the heart
of Abraham Lincoln.
He soon fell behind and galloped back to rescue the animal. Taking
several rails from the roadside fence, he used one to pry over, and
another to lift the pig out. By taking care and plenty of time, he
managed to place the end of a rail under the hog without hurting it. The
animal was now so weak that this took a long time, and Lawyer Lincoln’s
clothes were badly smeared with mud.
At last, when the pig realized that it was free, it started off toward
the farmhouse where it belonged, flopping its big ears and grunting
gratefully. Mr. Lincoln did not catch up with his friends until they had
arrived at the tavern in the next town.
When they saw his mud-plastered clothes, they all began to laugh, for
Lawyer Lincoln did not often have a new suit of clothes. When they
stopped chaffing him about helping his “dear brother” in distress,
Lincoln said soberly,
“That farmer’s children might have to go barefoot next winter if he lost
his hog.”
Another day Lincoln was missing. One of the party explained,
“I saw him an hour ago over the fence in a grove with a young bird
screaming in each hand, while he was going around hunting for their
nest.”
It took a long time to find it. Lawyer Lincoln had to let one bird go
while he climbed the tree to put the other in its nest. Then he had to
climb up again to put the other bird in. So it was after dark when he
rejoined his friends at the tavern table. It seemed so absurd for a big
man like Lincoln to waste hours on two birds that had fallen out of
their nest, that even the judge scolded him. Mr. Lincoln replied with
deep feeling,
“Gentlemen, you may laugh, but I could not have slept well to-night if I
had not saved those birds. Their cries would have rung in my ears.”
The spring after he was twenty-one, Abraham Lincoln helped to build a
flatboat and went on it to New Orleans to buy stock for a store in the
village. While in the southern city with two companions, he witnessed
the sale of a mulatto girl in a slave market. The sight filled his
righteous soul with wrath. Clenching his fists, he exclaimed:
“Boys, let’s get away from this. If I ever get a chance to _hit that
thing_ (slavery) _I’ll hit it hard_!”
So Lawyer Lincoln became the champion of the negro and lifted his voice
against slavery. “This country cannot exist half slave and half free,”
he exclaimed. His ringing words in the famous debates with Senator
Douglas pleased the people of the north so much that Lincoln was elected
President next time. Within six weeks after he went to live in the White
House, the Civil War broke out.
The tender heart of President Lincoln was often hurt when the news of a
battle came to Washington with its list of killed and wounded. He tried
to keep up his own spirits and the heart of the nation by his constant
flow of stories which made the people smile through their tears. To him
it was an awful thing for his brothers in the north to be fighting and
slaying their brothers down south.
When Abraham Lincoln saw that the time was right, he gave out the
Emancipation Proclamation--his order to free four million slaves. He now
had “a chance to hit that thing,” and he did “hit it hard.”
Grand as it was to write that great paper and free all the slaves, it
was even greater to show the people of the United States and of the
whole world how to look on the bright side of the hardest trials, and
even to laugh in the face of trouble.
President Lincoln had the supreme joy of seeing the purpose of the war
accomplished. His Gettysburg Address--which every boy and girl should
know by heart--and the words from the Second Inaugural, “With malice
toward none; with charity for all,” are ever-living witnesses of the
kind heart and unselfish spirit of Abraham Lincoln.
William Cullen Bryant, one of the first of American poets, wrote these
lines for the Martyr President’s funeral:
“O, slow to smite and swift to spare,
Gentle and merciful and just!
Who in the fear of God didst bear
The sword of power, a nation’s trust.
Pure was thy life; its bloody close
Has placed thee with the Sons of Light,
Among the noble hearts of those
Who perished in the cause of Right.”
ULYSSES S. GRANT, THE GENERAL WHO HATED WAR
“This poor little boy has no name!” exclaimed Miss Simpson, the aunt who
was visiting the Grant family at Point Pleasant, overlooking the Ohio
River, about twenty miles east of Cincinnati.
The rest of the family agreed that it would be a shame to let the baby
go a day longer without a name.
“Let’s name him now,” said the aunt; “let’s vote on it.”
The others consented, and each wrote a preferred name on a bit of paper.
Then a hat was passed and all put their
[Illustration: GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT.]
slips in it. The aunt took out a ballot which read, “Ulysses.” This name
was on several slips, because Grandfather Grant had just been reading
the story of the siege of Troy. “Hiram” and “Albert” were on two other
ballots. At last they decided to call the baby Hiram Ulysses Grant.
When “Baby Lysses,” as the family called him, was about a year old, the
Grants moved to Georgetown, a village about ten miles farther from
Cincinnati, and ten miles back from the Ohio. Here little Ulysses grew
and began to go to school, and some of the boys called him “Hug,” from
his initials, H. U. G. Other boys, just to be funny, called him
“Useless.”
Ulysses’ father was a tanner and leather worker. The boy did not like
tanning hides because it was dirty, bad-smelling work; but he did like
horses. Besides his tannery, Mr. Grant owned a small farm. So Ulysses,
while he was a boy, learned to plow and harrow, and to haul logs to the
creek near by, where they were floated to the sawmill to be cut up into
boards and timber. The lad found a good way to make a horse do the heavy
work of lifting or rolling logs on to the sled, so that he and the horse
could do that better than two or three men.
A visitor in Georgetown was astonished one day to see a boy dash by,
standing on the back of a horse on the run.
“Circus rider?” the stranger asked.
“No--only ‘Useless’ Grant,” was the reply.
When a circus did come to Georgetown, the Grant boy was there to see the
trained horses and the fancy riding. There was a trick pony that had
been trained not to allow a man or even a boy to stay on its back. The
manager came to the side of the ring and called out that a prize of five
dollars in gold would be given to any one who could ride the pony five
times around the ring. Some of the men and boys in the crowd shouted,
“Lyss Grant can do it. Try it! Oh, go ahead, Lyss!”
Although Ulysses was a bashful lad and hated to make a show of himself,
the prize and his desire to see what he could do were too tempting to
resist. So he went to the ringside and began to pat the pony. Then he
sprang lightly upon its back. The vicious little beast began to rear and
tear around to shake or rub the rider off, but Ulysses hung on in spite
of all its frantic efforts. He won the prize, but that five dollars was
of small value compared with the lesson he learned of trying hard and
not giving up anything he attempted.
The Grant boy’s mastery of horses and his way of finishing whatever he
started out to do made his services valuable to the neighbors. He rode
hundreds of miles on important business errands. One time he was driving
two young ladies and their baggage on a long journey where they had to
ford a swollen stream. The ladies, seeing the horses were swimming and
that the wagon was full of water, began to scream and take hold of his
arms.
“Keep quiet, please,” said Ulysses calmly. “I’ll take you through safe.”
And the Grant lad was as good as his word.
Sometimes he was asked to break a horse to trot or to pace. The wildest
animal would soon become tame and gentle and would do whatever he
wished. People thought he would be a horse-trainer or jockey, or keep a
racing stable, but Ulysses Grant, much as he enjoyed training horses,
had a mind above doing that all his life.
He was studious at school and excelled in games and sports. One day,
while playing with a neighbor boy, he batted the ball through the
window of a neighboring house. Instead of running away or pretending
that another boy had done it, Ulysses went at once and knocked at the
door of the house, and said to the lady when she came out, “I have
broken your window, but I’m going to get a pane of glass and have it put
right in.”
The woman, who had seen how it happened, told the Grant boy to go back
and play, and she would attend to the glass. In telling about the
accident, she said Ulysses was no more to blame than the other boy, and
ended her story with, “I like Lyss Grant; he’s such a square, manly
little fellow.”
The school at Georgetown was not advanced enough to suit Ulysses’
father; so the lad was sent away to a private school at Marysville. When
he came home, though he did not like the tannery, he worked faithfully
there. He told his father plainly that he would work at tanning hides
until he was twenty-one--“but not one day after that!”
“What _would_ you like to do?” his father asked.
“I’d like to be a planter, or a river merchant, or--or--get an
education,” stammered the boy.
Father Grant smiled and sent his son off to another school. He knew it
would be very wrong to expect a real man to work all his life at
something he did not like. While Ulysses was away this time, his father
obtained an appointment for his son to go to West Point. Ulysses himself
has written about this:
“I was attending school at Ripley, only ten miles distant from
Georgetown, but spent the Christmas holidays at home. During this
vacation my father received a letter from the United States Senator
from Ohio. When he read it he said to me, ‘Ulysses, I believe you
are going to receive the appointment.’
“‘What appointment?’ I inquired.
“‘To West Point. I have applied for it.’
“‘But I won’t go,’ I said.
“He said _he_ thought I _would, and I thought so too, if he did_!”
Young Grant had such a high idea of the requirements at West Point that
he was sure he could never pass the entrance examinations. He began to
study algebra and other branches to fit him better, but he said he never
gave up hoping something would happen--even that the Military Academy
might burn down!--so he would not have to go. He was afraid he would
fail. The neighbors also thought his father was making a mistake to send
the boy to West Point when he seemed so little fitted for a soldier.
But, soon after his seventeenth birthday, the neighbors bade Ulysses
good-bye, expecting him to come home because he could not pass.
Ulysses found the West Point buildings still standing when he arrived.
He registered, and, to his surprise, was permitted to enter as a cadet.
They made a mistake in recording his name, writing it Ulysses _S_.,
instead of H. Ulysses Grant. He was tired of being called “Hug,” and, as
it seemed too much trouble to correct the error, he let it go, accepting
the S. for his middle initial. As his mother’s maiden name was Simpson,
he let them name him Ulysses Simpson Grant, in honor of the U. S.
government and his little mother. But even then the boys made fun of his
initials, “U. S.,” calling him “United States” and “Uncle Sam” Grant.
From this he was nicknamed “Sam.”
Cadet Ulysses did well enough in his studies, and developed a taste for
drawing and painting. He thought he would rather be a water-color artist
than a soldier. The idea of shooting at men was shocking to him. The
sight of blood made him sick--“Just like a girl!” the fellows said. But
there were horses at the Academy, so the young cadet managed to be quite
happy. He learned to ride like an Indian and to leap from one horse to
the back of another as he met it running in the opposite direction. The
one thing for which he was remembered by the other cadets was the great
feat of jumping York, a huge horse, over a bar. Every one was afraid the
vicious horse, if forced to clear such a height, might kill his rider.
“I can’t die but once,” remarked Cadet Grant coolly, and made the horse
jump over the bar without the least harm to horse or rider. The record
of “Grant on York,” then made, has never been beaten since.
The people of Ulysses’ home town had changed their minds about him when
he came home after two years, in his mid-course furlough, as a cadet in
full uniform with gold lace and gilt buttons. After he had been
President of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant said this summer
vacation was the happiest time in his whole life, because every one was
so kind, and his family were so proud of him.
When he finished his course at the Military Academy and was graduated,
it was said of him: “There is ‘Sam’ Grant. He is a splendid fellow; a
good, honest man against whom nothing can be said, and from whom
everything may be expected.”
Lieutenant Grant went home for a while, and then entered military
service near St. Louis. Here he became acquainted with Miss Julia Dent,
who afterward became Mrs. Grant, wife of the great general and President
of the United States. He had the usual experiences of young army
officers in the southwest, with wild beasts and savage Indians. He tells
of being wakened early one morning by hearing shots near at hand.
Getting up, he learned that two men had been fighting a duel. He
afterward wrote:
“I don’t believe I ever could have the courage to fight a duel. If
I should do another man such a wrong as to justify him in killing
me, I would make any reasonable amends in my power, if convinced of
the wrong done. I place my opposition to dueling on higher grounds.
No doubt, most of the duels have been fought _for want of moral
courage_, on the part of those engaged, to decline.”
Lieutenant Grant’s friends thought it strange for the bravest man they
ever met to say, “I don’t believe I ever could have the courage to fight
a duel.” But some things that seemed heroic to others did not seem so to
Ulysses S. Grant. He spoke almost with scorn of mere physical courage.
It is moral courage that counts--the heroism that will face a sneer and
bravely say, “That is not right and I will not do it.” He had shown this
kind of courage as a boy, when other lads dared him to come out with
them at night and disobey his little mother.
In the Mexican War, while fighting desperately in Monterey, the
Americans ran short of powder. Who would dare to go back through the
streets of the town held by the enemy, and carry the request for more
ammunition and reinforcements? “Sam” Grant volunteered, and rode, Indian
fashion, keeping his horse between him and the Mexicans’ bullets. He
made the dangerous run with both his horse and himself unhurt, relieved
the Americans, and thus helped to save the day at Monterey.
When the Civil War broke out, Captain Grant was in business. He had
withdrawn from the army, and had been mentioned as a “military dead
beat,” working in his father’s leather store at fifty dollars a month.
He at once enlisted as a volunteer, and was sent to command a brigade in
Missouri. Within a year the name of General U. S. Grant was on every
tongue. He had won the battles of Fort Donelson and Fort Henry, and had
made his famous demand of “Unconditional Surrender,” words which meant
that they were to yield without asking any favors. After that, people
said his initials, U. S., stood for “Unconditional Surrender” Grant. He
went from one triumph to another until his enemies in the west were
beaten. Then President Lincoln called him to end the war in the east, a
thing which five northern generals before him had failed to do.
Though he won great victories for his country and became the most
successful general of his day, the greatest thing General Grant ever
said was, “Let us have peace,” When Richmond was captured he refused to
enter the city as its conqueror. When General Lee surrendered, the
northern commander treated the enemy general as a friend and a brother.
A grateful nation elected General Grant twice to the presidency of the
United States. After he left the White House, he and Mrs. Grant made a
trip around the world and became the guests of kings, queens, princes,
prime ministers, and peoples.
Wherever General Grant went, he went as a man of peace. When he visited
Prince Bismarck, “the man of blood and iron” who taught the Germans that
everything they did would be right if they only had the power to do it,
General Grant apologized for his record as a soldier. In this way, the
greatest living general became the foremost man in the world for peace.
He had learned to regard war as a duel between nations. He thought that
was quite as wrong as dueling between men, and that war was due to moral
cowardice rather than to courage.
General Grant gave this as his belief:
“Though I have been trained as a soldier and have taken part in
many battles, there never has been a time when, in my opinion, some
way could not have been found to prevent the drawing of the sword.”
THE NOBLE SOUL OF ROBERT E. LEE
Robert E. Lee’s father, Colonel Henry Lee, was a hero of the
Revolutionary War. He was commander of the famous company known as
“Lee’s Legion.” He was called “Light-Horse Harry” because he was so
ready and alert with his cavalry regiment. He was such a friend of the
commander-in-chief that it was said: “General Washington loves Harry Lee
as if he were his own son.”
Therefore, when the Father of his Country died, Robert E. Lee’s father
was chosen by Congress to deliver the great oration in his memory. It
was in this brilliant address that Colonel Henry Lee used the now
familiar words describing Washington as “First in war, first in peace,
and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”
Like George Washington, Robert Lee was born in Virginia, near the
Potomac River, in a huge brick house which looked like a mansion, a
castle, and a fort, all in one. When Robert was four, his father moved
to Alexandria, near the new city of Washington, to send the boy, with
his brothers and sisters, to school.
The next year the War of 1812, often called the Second War for
Independence, was declared. The father’s rank was raised at once from
Colonel to General Henry Lee. But General Lee was badly hurt while
defending a friend from a mob in Baltimore. It was very hard for a brave
man like “Light-Horse Harry” to be sent away for his health instead of
leading in another fight for his country’s liberties. The general did
not become better and, after five years of absence and longing, he
started home to die. But the end came while he was on his way, and the
Lee children were told, one sad day, that they would never see the dear
father’s face again.
Robert was now eleven, the same age as George Washington when he lost
his father. Mrs. Lee was not left so poor as Washington’s mother, but
she was an invalid.
The oldest Lee son was in Harvard College, and the next was a midshipman
in the Naval Academy at Annapolis. So Robert was left at home to take
care of his mother. He nursed her
“With a hand as gentle as woman’s,”
yet in his strong, manly arms he carried her out to the family coach,
when she was well enough to go for a drive. No mother ever had more
reason to be proud of her tall, handsome son than the widow of Henry
Lee. Feeling that his mother could not afford to send him to college,
young Robert studied hard to enter West Point Military Academy. Because
the country was still new and settlers had to defend their homes and
lives from Indians, and also because the nations were always at war,
such boys as George Washington and Robert Lee said to themselves, “When
I’m a man I’ll be a soldier.”
When Robert was eighteen he became a West Point cadet. After he left
home his brave little mother exclaimed, “How _can_ I do without Robert?
He is both son and daughter to me!”
Cadet Lee’s life was without doubt the bravest any young man ever led at
West Point. Young Jefferson Davis, who was there at the same time, fell
off a cliff and nearly lost his life while breaking the rules of the
Academy. Young Ulysses Grant wrote home ten years later that it was
impossible to get through at West Point without demerits. But Robert E.
Lee went through the whole four years without a single “black mark”!
More than this, he did
[Illustration: LEE’S INVASION OF THE NORTH.
_From the painting by J. Steeple Davis, © 1897, by The Woolfall Co_]
not drink, though young gentlemen of that day thought the serving of
wine necessary in polite society. He did not even smoke.
It was a wonder that the other cadets did not hate a young man who
seemed to feel that he must behave better than the rest of them. What
kept them all from calling him a “goody-goody boy,” a snob or a prig? It
was the love of his kind heart, which they could see shining through his
strange courage. Robert Lee fully realized that he had come to West
Point to learn, at his country’s expense, how to be a soldier, and that
the first duty of a soldier is to obey. If he had left his post and
sneaked off the Academy grounds to drink, or gamble, or break some other
rule, he would have been a deserter who, in real army life, would have
deserved to be shot. But he never acted as if he felt above the rest,
and so his fellow cadets did not sneer at Robert E. Lee. One of them
said of him afterward:
“He was the only one of all the men I have known who could laugh at the
faults and follies of others without losing their affection.”
At graduation, Lieutenant Lee was the most popular man at West Point; he
ranked second in his class, and received the highest military honor in
the course.
The physical courage of Robert E. Lee was put to the supreme test in the
Mexican War. On a dark night he found the way across a dangerous lava
field cracked in all directions by deep crevices--“without light,
without a companion or guide, where scarcely a step could be taken
without fear of death.” General Scott, then chief in command, reported
this act to be “the greatest feat of physical and moral courage
performed by any one in the campaign.” In his official statement about
the whole war, this general stated that the United States’ “success in
Mexico was largely due to the skill, valor, and courage of Robert E.
Lee, the greatest military genius in America.”
Colonel Lee’s high military reputation made it natural for President
Lincoln to offer him the highest command of the United States army when
the Civil War broke out. But Colonel Lee did not accept the honor. He
did not believe in slavery, and did not think it was right for any of
the states to secede, or leave the Union. But he was a Virginian, and he
could not bring himself to lead an army to burn his own home or to kill
or drive out his relatives, friends, and neighbors. He had heard his
father, who was once governor of the state, say with deepest feeling,
“Virginia is my country; her will I obey, no matter how sad my fate may
be.” So, when his native state went out of the Union, Robert E. Lee
resigned as colonel in the United States army and went with her.