Homer makes his hero, like Saul, a head and shoulders taller
than the soldiers around him. And Egyptian artists paint their
conquering monarch twenty times as tall as the pigmy enemy whom
he is destroying at a single blow.
True greatness is more than stature.
(1301)
* * * * *
Upon his return to Washington, Grant made preparations to leave
immediately for the West, but at the close of a consultation
with the President and the Secretary of War, he was informed
that Mrs. Lincoln expected his presence the same evening at
a military dinner to be given in his honor, at which twelve
distinguished officers, then in the city, were to be present.
Frank B. Carpenter, who was then at the White House, working on
his celebrated painting, “Lincoln and His Cabinet,” says Grant
turned to the President and said that it would be impossible
for him to remain over as he must be in Tennessee at a given
time. The President insisted that he could not be excused, and
here we have another manifestation of Grant’s independence and
willpower. He said to Lincoln: “But the time is very precious
just now, and really, Mr. President, I believe I have had enough
of this show business.”
So, while the man of deeds--indifferent to blandishments and
caring nothing for receptions--was speeding on his way to
Nashville to meet Sherman and talk over the momentous business
of trying to end the war, the twelve “distinguished” officers
were banqueted without a guest of honor. But perhaps in the
feasting and the merrymaking of the night, they could not but
ponder over the strange things which had come to pass that
day--a general so devoted to his duties in the field as to have
no time or desire to be received by Congress or banqueted by
the wife of a President; a man who had been out of the position
of a common store-clerk hardly three years, given command of
all the Union forces on land and sea; a great load lifted from
the long-burdened heart of Lincoln; the bells of time ringing
in a better day for the cause of the Union.--Col. NICHOLAS
SMITH, “Grant, the Man of Mystery.”
(1302)