_Wherein Captain Galligasken delineates the early History of the
illustrious Soldier, and deduces therefrom the Presages of Future
Greatness._
I respectfully subscribe myself a cosmopolitan, not in the sense that I
am a citizen of the world--God forbid! for I am too proud of my title
as an American citizen to share my nationality with any other realm
under the sun. I am cosmopolitan in the "everywhere" significance of
the term; and it has been a cause of sincere regret to me that I could
only be in one place at one time; but I ought to be content, since I
always happened to be in sight or hearing of the illustrious subject of
my feeble admiration.
Point Pleasant is a village on the Ohio, twenty-five miles above
Cincinnati, celebrated for nothing in particular, except being the
birthplace of General Grant, which, however, is glory enough for any
town; and passengers up and down the beautiful river, for generations
to come, will gaze with wondering interest at its spires, because there
first drew the breath of life the immortal man who has been and still
is Our Standard-Bearer.
Many people have a fanatical veneration for blood as such. I confess I
yield no allegiance to this sentiment, for I expect to be what I make
myself, rather than what I am made by my distinguished ancestor, Sir
Bernard Galligasken. But those who attach any weight to pedigree may
be reasonably gratified in the solid character of the progenitors of
General Grant. He came from the Grants of Aberdeenshire, in Scotland,
whose heraldic motto was, "_Stand fast, stand firm, stand sure!_"
which, by an astonishing prescience of the seers of the clan, seems
to have been invented expressly to describe the moral and mental
attributes of the illustrious soldier of our day.
Matthew Grant was a passenger in the Mary and John, and settled in
Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1630. The American citizen, whose pride
tempts him to look beyond the Pilgrim Fathers for glorious ancestors,
ought to have been born in England, where pride of birth bears its
legitimate fruit. Grant came in a direct line from one of these
worthies; but I never heard him congratulate himself even on this
fortunate and happy origin. Noah Grant, a descendant of the stout
Puritan, emigrated to Connecticut, and was a captain in the Old French
War. He was killed in battle, in 1756, having attained the rank of
captain. His son, also taking the patriarchal name, was belligerent
enough to have been killed in battle, for he was a soldier in the
revolutionary war from Lexington--where he served as a lieutenant--to
Yorktown, the last engagement of that seven years' strife. This
faithful soldier was the general's grandfather. He had a son named for
Mr. Chief Justice Jesse Root, of Connecticut, who was the father of Our
Standard-Bearer.
Jesse Root Grant was born in Pennsylvania, but when he was ten years
of age his parents removed to the Western Reserve of Ohio. He was
apprenticed to a tanner at Maysville, Kentucky, when he was sixteen,
and set up in business for himself at Ravenna, Ohio, when he was of
age; but severe illness compelled him to relinquish it for a time. In
1820 he settled at Point Pleasant, and married Miss Hannah Simpson.
Here, in a little one-story house, still in existence, was born the
subject of our story.
The house in which Peter the Great lived at Sardam while he worked at
ship-building is still preserved, enclosed within another, tableted
with inscriptions, and protected from the ravages of time for the
inspection of future ages. I wonder that some ardent patriot has not
already done a similar service to the little structure in which was
born a greater than Czar Peter, and one whose memory will be cherished
when the autocrat of the Russias is forgotten.
The house is a mere shanty, which was comfortable enough in its day,
with an extension in the rear, and with the chimney on the outside
of one end. It was a good enough house even for so great a man to be
born in, and compares very favorably with that in which Lincoln, his
co-laborer in the war, first drew the breath of life. It has become
historic now, and the people will always regard it with glowing
interest.
Grant's mother was a very pretty, but not pretentious, girl; a very
worthy, but not austere, matron. She was a member of the Methodist
church, with high views of Christian duty, especially in regard to her
children, whom she carefully trained and earnestly watched over in
their early years. Her influence as a noble Christian woman has had,
and is still to have, through her illustrious son, more weight and
broader expansion than she ever dreamed of in the days of her poverty
and toil.
A year after the birth of the first born, Jesse Grant, then a poor man,
though he afterwards accumulated a handsome property, removed from
Point Pleasant to Georgetown, Ohio, where he carried on his business
as a tanner; and as he tanned with nothing but oak bark, and did his
work in a superior manner, his reputation was excellent. I am hard on
leather myself, but my first pair of shoes was made of leather from the
tannery of J.R. Grant, and they wore like iron. It has been observed
that this leather, made up into thick boots, was more effectual than
any other when applied by the indignant owner to the purpose sometimes
necessary, though always disagreeable, of kicking an unmannerly and
ill-behaved ruffian out of doors. Though I have not had occasion to
test Mr. Grant's leather in this direction, I am a firm believer in its
virtue.
I cannot say that, as a baby, Ulysses had any fore-shadowings of the
brilliant destiny in store for him. It is quite possible that his
fond mother regarded him as a remarkable child, if the neighbors in
Georgetown did not. Certainly, in this instance, she was nearer right
than loving mothers usually are, and is entitled to much credit for
the justness of her view on this interesting subject. I am confident
that the infant Hercules displayed some of the energy of which has
distinguished his manhood--that he declined to be washed, and held
on to dangerous play-things, with greater tenacity than children of
tender years usually do. Still, the sacredness of historic truth does
not permit me to assume that he displayed any of the traits of a great
general, except the embryo of his mighty will, until he had attained
his second year, when the first decided _penchant_ for the roar of
artillery manifested itself on a small scale.
My friend Mr. Pollard alludes to the incident in his valuable work
on The Lost Cause, though, I am pained to observe, in a tone of
disparagement quite unworthy of him, as a "Yankee affectation." As he
seems to have no scruples in telling strange stories about Stonewall
Jackson, Jeb. Stuart, and other Southern worthies, I am compelled to
attribute this incredulity and ridicule to a foolish prejudice. Though
I happened to be present when the event occurred,--a cosmopolitan then,
as now,--I was in the arms of my maternal parent, and being only two
years old at the time, I am unable to vouch for its truth on my own
personal recollection; but the father of General Grant has confirmed it.
"Let me try the effect of a pistol report on the baby," said a young
man to the anxious parent in the street, on the fourth of July, where
great numbers of people were gathered.
"The child has never seen a pistol or a gun in his life," replied Mr.
Grant; "but you may try it."
The hand of the baby was placed on the trigger, and pressed there till
the lock sprang, and the pistol went off with a loud report. The future
commander-in-chief hardly moved or twitched a muscle.
"Fick it again! fick it again!" cried the child, pushing away the
weapon, and desiring to have the experiment repeated.
"That boy will make a general; he neither winked nor dodged," added the
inevitable bystander, a cosmopolitan like myself, who is ever at hand
on momentous occasions.
To me, the trait of character exhibited by the child is not so much the
type of a taste for the rattle of musketry and the odor of gunpowder as
of a higher manifestation of soldier-like qualities. After weary days
and long nights of the thunder of cannon at Donelson, when ordinary
generals would have been disgusted and disheartened by continued
failure, Grant persevered, not knowing that he had been beaten, and
in tones full of grand significance, though in speech more mature, he
repeats his order,--
"Fick it again! fick it again!"
When canal, and squadron, and repeated assaults had failed to reduce
Vicksburg, and friend and foe believed that the place was invulnerable,
Grant seemed to shout,--
"Fick it again! fick it again!"
When, after the terrible onslaught of the Union army at the Wilderness,
no advantage seemed to have been gained, and the time came when Grant's
predecessors had fled to recruit in a three months' respite, the heroic
leader only said, in substance,--
"Fick it again! fick it again!"
At Spottsylvania he hurled his army again at the rebel host, and then
fought battle after battle, never completely succeeding, but never
turning his eye or his thought from the object to be gained: he still
maintained his baby philosophy, and still issued the order of the day,
which was, practically,--
"Fick it again! fick it again!"
That celebrated telegram, sent to Secretary Stanton, which thrilled
the hearts of the waiting people as they listened for the tidings
of battle, and which was a most significant exponent of the man's
character and purpose, "I shall fight it out on this line, if it takes
all summer," was only another rendering of his childish exclamation,--
"Fick it again! fick it again!"
Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, Richmond, the Rebellion itself, were fully
and completely "ficked," in the end, by the carrying out of his policy.
It is an excellent rule, when a plan does not work in one way, to "fick"
it again.
Grant's father was too poor at this time to send him to school
steadily, for the boy was an industrious fellow, and had a degree of
skill and tact in the management of work that rendered him a very
useful assistant. He went to school three months in winter till he
was eleven, when even this meagre privilege was denied him, and his
subsequent means of education were very limited. But his opportunities
were fully improved, and he heartily devoted himself to the cultivation
of his mind. He was the original discoverer of the fact that there is
no such word as "can't" in the dictionary; and it appears never to have
been added to his vocabulary. Grant's dictionary was a capital one for
practical service; and if some of our generals had used this excellent
edition, their own fame and the country's glory would have been
thereby promoted.
It affords me very great pleasure to be able to testify, in the most
decided manner, that Grant was a patriot in his boyhood, as well as
in the later years of his life. As an American youth, he had a just
and proper reverence for the name of Washington, which is the symbol
of patriotism to our countrymen. Grant's cousin from Canada came to
live with his uncle for a time in Georgetown, and went to school
with the juvenile hero. This lad, though born under the shadow of
the Star-spangled Banner, had imbibed some pestilent notions from
the Canadians, and had the audacity to speak ill of the immortal
Washington. This was not the only time that Americans from Canada have
assailed their native land, nor was this the only time that Ulysses had
the honor of fighting the battle directly or indirectly against them.
On the present occasion, in spite of the oft-repeated admonition of his
pious mother to forgive his enemies and not to fight, he pitched into
the renegade and thrashed him soundly, as he deserved to be thrashed. I
never spoke ill of Washington, but I should esteem it a great honor to
have been thrashed by Ulysses S. Grant in such a cause; and doubtless
his cousin, if still living, and not a Canadian, is proud of his
whipping.
Grant appears not to have been a brilliant horse-trader, at least not
after the tactics of jockeys in general, though in this, as in all
other purposes, he carried his point. At the age of twelve his father
sent him to buy a certain horse--and it ought to be remarked that his
worthy sire seems to have had as much confidence in him at that time
as the sovereign people of the present day manifest in him. He was
instructed to offer fifty dollars for the animal; then fifty-five if
the first offer failed, with the limit at sixty. Ralston, the owner
of the horse, wished to know how much the youthful purchaser was
authorized by his father to give for the animal. Ulysses, with a degree
of candor which would have confounded an ordinary jockey, explained his
instructions in full, and of course the owner asked the maximum sum for
him.
Though the youth had "shown his hand," he was not the easy victim he
was supposed to be. He positively refused to give more than fifty
dollars for the horse, after he had seen and examined him. He had made
up his mind, and the horse was purchased for that sum. I think Grant
bought out the Rebellion in about the same way; for while he was ready
to pay "fifty-five," or even "sixty," for the prize of a nation's peace
and unity, the rebels came down at the "fifty."
Grant was a good boy, in the reasonable sense of the term, though
he did not die young. I never heard that he made any extravagant
pretensions to piety himself, or that any one ever made any for him,
though he attended church himself regularly, and had a profound respect
for religious worship. He was a sober, quiet little fellow, indulged
in no long speeches then any more than now. He was a youth of eminent
gravity, rather an old head on young shoulders, and I am only surprised
that neither his parents nor his instructors discovered in him the germ
of greatness. As the child is father to the man, all the records of
his early years concur in showing that he exhibited the same traits of
character then as now.
The phrenologist who examined Ulysses' "bumps," and declared that
"it would not be strange" if he became the President of the United
States, exhibited more intelligence than others within the ring; but I
am provoked with him that he did not state the case stronger; for if
there is anything at all in phrenology, the gentleman ought to have
been confident of this result. Any man _may_ become President, as the
stupendous accident of the present generation has shown, but every
man is not fit for the place. It is vastly better to be qualified
to fill the high position, than it is even to fill it. As Grant was
the providential man of the war, so shall he be the providential man
of the peace that follows it in the highest office within the gift
of the people. No accident can cheat him out of his destiny, which
he willingly accepts, more for the glory of the nation than of the
individual.