fighting, he was not the man to take advantage of the fact. The lively
battle at Monterey bears witness of this. After a hard encounter on
the outskirts of the city, the Americans stormed it from the north and
east, and began to drive the Mexicans out, street by street. But when
the citadel was in sight, the commanding officer, Colonel Garland,
found to his dismay that they were short of ammunition.
"We must have ammunition at once," he announced to his men. "Who will
volunteer to ride back with the message? I do not wish to detail any
one, as it is extra hazardous."
At once, Lieutenant Grant stepped forward and saluted.
"I will go, Colonel," he said.
"You are just the man. If anybody can ride through, you can. But
hurry."
And Grant did. Crouching low on his mustang like an Indian, he dashed
down the bullet-swept streets, made the open, and delivered his message
to General Twigg.
The Mexican War was marked by the political rivalry of two American
Generals, one of whom was destined to win the highest honors in the
gift of his country--General Zachary Taylor, old "Rough and Ready," and
General Winfield Scott, "Fuss and Feathers." Both were able leaders,
though totally unlike in their methods. Taylor cared nothing for
personal appearance or etiquette. He worked in close contact with his
men. Scott, on the contrary, was fond of display, and issued his
orders through his staff officers.
Scott was now given supreme command of the Mexican campaign, and
summoned all the regular troops for an invasion by way of Vera
Cruz--the scene of a later landing, in very recent years. Taylor was
left with only the volunteers, but he utilized them at Buena Vista to
such good effect that at the next election old "Rough and Ready" became
President of the United States--the very thing that his political foes
at Washington had tried to prevent, by giving Scott the supreme command.
Grant's company, with other regulars to the number of eight thousand
men, landed at Vera Cruz, and early in April began its perilous march
into the interior. Roads had to be built and bridges constructed, and
the army engineers toiled night and day. Among them were two young
West Pointers, George B. McClellan and Robert E. Lee. Thus it was that
Grant and Lee first came to know each other, in the wilds of Mexico.
By the middle of May they had reached Puebla, which they captured
easily. But the army needed supplies, and Quartermaster Grant was sent
out with an escort of one thousand men to forage the surrounding
country. They filled their wagons and returned safely. This jaunt
delighted Grant's soul. It was far better than bringing up the rear on
a dusty line of march. In one of his letters home he writes:
"I have been delighted with the Mexican birds. Their plumage is
superlatively splendid. They beat ours in show, but to my mind do not
equal them in harmony. I have written this letter with my sword
fastened to my side, my pistols within reach, not knowing but that the
next moment I may be called into battle."
It is an odd coincidence, that at a later day we find another
soldier--destined to lead his country's armies to victory in a far
mightier conflict--using the soil of Mexico as a training ground. That
soldier was John J. Pershing.
One other exploit of Grant's in the Mexican campaign must be mentioned,
as it was not only daring, but it also revealed his resourcefulness.
During the attack upon Chapultepec, Grant noticed that one of the two
main routes, the San Cosme road, was flanked by a small mission church
surmounted by a belfry. He reasoned that if they could mount a
howitzer in the belfry, that section would be made mighty uncomfortable
for the Mexicans. He went at once to his superior officer, explained
his plan, and secured a detail of men with one gun. The gun had to be
taken to pieces, but with it in hand they compelled the priest to open
the church doors to them, mounted the steps to the belfry, reassembled
the gun, and it was soon beating a lively tattoo down upon the backs of
the astonished Mexicans.
For this "gallant conduct at Chapultepec," as the official citation
read, Grant won his brevet of captain.
With the signing of the treaty of peace, Grant came home on furlough,
and in August, 1848, was married to Julia Dent. He took his wife to
his father's home, and was made much of by his admiring townsmen. His
father was inordinately proud of "my Ulysses," now a captain and cited
for gallantry in action. In the darker days that were to follow, he
looked back to this time as the very pinnacle of his son's greatness.
That there _were_ darker days, and many of them, must be chronicled in
any true sketch of Ulysses S. Grant. He was to taste the very dregs of
humiliation and despair. He was to see these same admiring friends
turn from him one by one, with a sneer, or reproachful shake of the
head.
For days of peace were at hand--long days of barrack routine and
enforced idleness. To Captain Grant these days coming after the
excitement of Mexico were at first welcome, then speedily grew tedious.
He had always hated the humdrum life of the drill ground. Now he was
shifted, after a few months, to a camp at San Francisco. The distance
was so great, travelling as they did by way of the Isthmus of Panama
(this was long before the railroads), that he could not take his wife
with him. His slender pay also would not admit of it.
Life in all the army camps was free and easy. Liquor flowed freely,
and drunkenness was unfortunately common. Grant like others, drank,
but not to excess. With him, however, one glass was sufficient to
flush his face and render his walk unsteady. It was not long before
the life at this far-removed western camp began to tell upon him. He
quarreled with his commanding officer, and finally resigned from the
service.
He had to borrow money in order to return home, a long and painful
journey by way of New York, and it was a discouraged, broken-looking
man who greeted his wife and his parents. This was the summer of 1854.
Captain Grant was then only thirty-two, but it already seemed as though
the best and only valuable part of his life was behind him. The recent
conquering hero, with his dashing uniform and epaulets, had become a
somewhat seedy-looking individual with shoulders prematurely stooped,
and shuffling gait.
The word speedily went round the village, with many a nod and wink:
"Told you so! Went up like a rocket; came down like a stick."
His wife, however, had not lost her confidence in him. Through all the
trying days that were to follow, she remained staunch and loyal. She
persuaded her father to let her have a sixty-acre tract of land, near
St. Louis. There she brought Ulysses and their children, and there he
began life anew, as a plain farmer.
He built with his own hands a log house of four rooms, with chimneys at
each end, and wide fireplaces. With grim humor he called the place,
"Hard-scrabble." But he liked the place. He liked the freedom of it,
with his horses and other live stock. Despite its hardships he
welcomed it as an escape from the petty exactions of military life.
Nevertheless, he could not make it pay. He did not have sufficient
capital or bodily strength to succeed. An attack of chills and fever,
in 1858, put the finishing touch to this episode, and he sold his stock
and farm the following spring.
During the ensuing few months he moved from pillar to post, trying
various ventures and succeeding with none. The fates seemed against
him. In St. Louis, whither he had drifted, he was regarded with open
scorn as, what we would now designate, a "down-and-out." One reason
for his poor success lay in the fact that he was a Northerner, and the
city was seething with talk of secession. The clouds of Civil War were
already gathering, and men began to distrust each his neighbor.
At this juncture his father, who seems rather to have turned against
him also, came to his relief. He offered Ulysses a position in his
leather business, now in charge of the younger boys. Ulysses
thankfully accepted, although the pay was only fifty dollars a month.
He brought his wife and boys to Galena, where at any rate he was sure
of having a roof over his head.
"The brothers found him of no earthly account at driving bargains, or
tending store," says General Charles King. "He could keep books after
a fashion and do some of the heavy work in handling the miscellaneous
stock."
Another soldier, who became his devoted follower in the later days, had
his first sight of Grant at this down-at-the-heels period. "I went
round to the store," he says; "it was a sharp winter morning, and there
wasn't a sign of a soldier or one that looked like a soldier about the
shop. But pretty soon a farmer drove up with a lot of hides on his
sleigh, and went inside to dicker, and presently a stoop-shouldered,
brownish-bearded fellow, with a slouch hat pulled down over his eyes,
who had been sitting whittling at the stove when I was inside, came
out, pulling on an old light-blue soldier's overcoat. He flung open
the doors leading down into the cellar, laid hold of the top hide,
frozen stiff it was, tugged it loose, towed it over, and slung it down
the chute. Then one by one, all by himself, he heaved off the rest of
them, a ten minutes' tough job in that weather, until he had got the
last of them down the cellar; then slouched back into the store again,
shed the blue coat, got some hot water off the stove and went and
washed his hands, using a cake of brown soap, then came back and went
to whittling again, and all without a word to anybody. That was my
first look at Grant, and look at him now!"
But in all likelihood there would not have been another chance to
"look" at him, had not the great Civil War broken out. It was to prove
in his case that what seemed failure was merely lack of opportunity.
When South Carolina seceded and the call for troops came, the
stoop-shouldered clerk in the hide store began to straighten up. The
call to arms put new life in his blood. He felt his old confidence
returning. He refused a local captaincy, after he had demonstrated
what he could do in drilling recruits, saying: "I have been in the
military service fourteen years, and think I am competent to command a
regiment."
He went to Springfield, Illinois, and offered his services, and after
some delay was given a desk in the adjutant-general's office. It was
not long before he proved his efficiency, and his advice was sought
more and more by the Governor, in organizing the State Guards. When
the 21st regiment was mustered into service, he was made its colonel.
He had put his foot on the first rung of the ladder of success.
The 21st, like other bodies of volunteers, was a loosely-knit, unruly
set of men. They took military life as a huge picnic, but speedily got
over that attitude--under Grant. On their first long hike, it is said
that their canteens were filled with whiskey, instead of water--until
Grant went through on a personal tour of inspection, and ordered every
canteen emptied out on the ground. The way he took hold of that
regiment and licked it into shape opened the eyes of Governor Yates and
his staff. In two months it was the best drilled regiment in the
State; and when President Lincoln wrote to the Governor asking
suggestions for promotions, Grant's name headed the list. He was made
a Brigadier-General.
The story of the Civil War and Grant's great part therein belong to a
longer chronicle than this. Step by step this stern, quiet soldier
fought his way up, winning his country's battles and his own as well.
In the full tide of war he found himself--and better still his country
discovered him. He was never after to prove recreant to his trust.
"We will fight it out along this line if it takes all summer," is one
of his typical remarks, and one most often quoted. It was toward the
last of the hard-fought war, when the Southern forces under Lee were
doing their utmost to fend off the inevitable. Grant, now the
commanding General of the Union forces, was still putting into practise
the quiet, bull-dog qualities that had led his armies to victory.
Then came the final dramatic scene at the historic surrender at
Appomattox. Lee had come to discuss terms with him, and now stood
awaiting his arrival, erect, courtly, handsome--the typical Southern
gentleman that he was. Down the road came riding a gaunt-looking man,
with the familiar stoop-shoulders, and mud-bespattered trousers and
boots. It was the general-in-chief on his way to greet his beaten foe!
The two men looked each other in the eye, then clasped hands like old
friends. Grant recalled the days of the Mexican campaign, and was
surprised that Lee knew so much about him in those days. He wanted to
talk old times, and Lee himself brought up the subject of surrender.
Grant took his seat at a table and wrote out the simple and generous
terms which allowed officers and men to return to their homes, on
giving their word not to take up arms against the United States
government again.
Lee's fine, dignified features softened as he read the terms--so much
more magnanimous than he had dared to hope.
"My men are nearly starving," he began--
"What do you need?" interrupted Grant; and gave instant orders that the
defeated army should be supplied with rations.
"Tell the boys to go home and go to work," he said.
That was Grant.
IMPORTANT DATES IN GRANT'S LIFE
1822. April 27. Ulysses Simpson Grant born.
1839. Received appointment to U. S. Military Academy, West Point.
1843. Graduated.
1845. Went as second-lieutenant to join Taylor's forces in Mexico.
1848. Brevetted captain for gallantry.
1848. Married Julia T. Dent.
1854. Resigned his army commission.
1861. Re-entered army at outbreak of Civil War. Commissioned
colonel, then brigadier-general.
1863. Made major-general.
1864. Given supreme command of the Union forces, with rank
of lieutenant-general.
1866. The grade of general created for first time, and
conferred on him.
1868. Elected President.
1885. July 23. Died at Mt. McGregor, New York.
LEE
THE LEADER OF A LOST CAUSE
A gray-haired college president sat talking kindly with a young
sophomore who had fallen behind in his studies.
"My boy," he said, "you must study if you would succeed. Only patience
and industry will prevent your failure here and your failure in after
life."
"But, General, you failed," replied the sophomore with an amazing
impertinence.
"I hope that you may be more fortunate than I," was the quiet answer.
Literature contains nothing finer than that by way of the retort
courteous.
The speaker was Robert E. Lee--the time not many months after the
surrender of the Southern army. Many were there to brand him as a
"failure," just as this thoughtless sophomore had done, and to all such
critics his reply was silence. In the seclusion of a small Virginia
college he lived and worked, keeping sedulously out of public affairs,
writing and saying nothing about his campaigns. He left to history the
final verdict, which has found him, not a failure, but one of the most
brilliant soldiers of this or any land.
In Lee's early life and ancestry his nearest parallel is Washington.
These two greatest Virginians were born within a few miles of each
other, in Westmoreland County. Lee was born just seventy-five years
after Washington, (January 19, 1807) and like him was descended of
famous lineage. His father, Light Horse Harry Lee, fought by the side
of Washington in the Revolutionary War; and it was he who in a memorial
address on the great leader coined the immortal phrase: "First in war,
first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."
Still another ancestor, Richard Henry Lee, had been born many years
earlier in the same old mansion where Robert Edward Lee first saw the
light of day. Richard Lee it was, who was a boyhood friend and
confidant of George Washington; and who later became one of the signers
of the Declaration of Independence.
It is not strange, therefore, to find that the career of the first
great Virginian profoundly influenced the second. "One familiar with
the life of Lee," says Thomas Nelson Page, "cannot help noting the
strong resemblance of his character in its strength, its poise, its
rounded completeness, to that of Washington; or fail to mark what
influence the life of Washington had on the life of Lee. The stamp
appears upon it from his boyhood, and grows more plain as his years
progress."
The old homestead in which Lee was born deserves some notice on its own
account. It was built by Thomas Lee, a grandson of Richard Lee, the
emigrant who came to Virginia about the time that Charles I was losing
both his crown and his head. While Charles II was still in exile, this
same Thomas Lee offered the king a haven in Virginia, which was not
accepted.
The original brick structure was destroyed by fire, but the house was
rebuilt on the same site during the time of Queen Anne, and it is said
that she aided in its reconstruction. This was the ancestral home of
the Lees for several generations.
Robert E. Lee, though naturally proud of his lineage, never showed
great interest in the family tree. He never had the time or the
inclination to study genealogy, and always said that he knew nothing of
it beyond the fact that Colonel Richard Lee had come to America during
the reign of Charles I. Upon having a family seal and crest made, he
apologized for the seeming parade by saying, "I have thought, perhaps
foolishly enough, that it might as well be right as wrong." Later,
however, when approached on the subject of publishing a family history,
he wrote: "I am very much obliged to Mr. ---- for the trouble he has
taken in relation to the Lee genealogy. I have no desire to have it
published, and do not think it would afford sufficient interest beyond
the immediate family to pay for the expense. I think the money had
better be appropriated to relieve the poor."
Harry Lee, Robert's father, was not only a soldier, but also a man of
letters. He loved the classics, and has left memoirs written in
spirited vein. He had reached middle life, however, before Robert was
born, and passed away when the boy was eleven. It was the mother's
influence--and here again we have a parallel with Washington--which was
paramount in the early days. She was a Carter, of an equally old and
distinguished family, and is spoken of as an amiable and gracious lady.
When Robert was still a child, his family moved to Alexandria, and very
shortly his father went away on a trip for his health, from which he
never returned. Between the boy and his mother the ties became very
close. He was devoted to her, and on her part she said, after he went
away to school, "You have been both son and daughter to me."
Long afterward, Lee alludes to this period in a letter to his own son,
by way of counsel: "A young gentleman who has read Virgil must surely
be competent to take care of two ladies; for before I had advanced that
far I was my mother's outdoor agent and confidential messenger."
Robert Lee obtained his first schooling at the old academy in
Alexandria, then taught by a Mr. Leary, who remained always his good
friend. Later he attended a better known school, conducted by a strict
Quaker, Benjamin Hallowell--Brimstone Castle, the boys called it,
solely on account of the color of the brick walls. Hallowell himself
was rarely if ever brimstone in character, though he could be stern
enough on occasion. He "thee'd" and "thou'd" in the most orthodox
style, and decried all warfare. Despite his pacifist teaching,
however, young Lee's earliest ambition was to become a soldier. It was
in his blood.
He was fond of outdoor sports, especially hunting and horseback riding.
His lifelong fondness for horses brings to mind the same trait in
Grant, his later antagonist. In his older days Lee would tell with
enthusiasm how as a boy he had followed the hunt, not infrequently on
foot, for hours over hill and valley without tiring. Again he wrote:
"I know the pleasure of training a handsome horse. I enjoy it as much
as any one." His famous steed, "Traveller," was known throughout the
Army of Virginia, during the War, and the sight of him caused many an
eye to grow moist as he followed riderless the remains of his beloved
master to their last resting place.
At the Hallowell school, Lee chiefly excelled in mathematics, a study
which was later to be of great value to him, in the engineers' corps of
the army. Hallowell paid a tribute to his pupil after the latter
became famous, saying: "He was a most exemplary student in every
respect."
One could wish, however, that instead of such idle compliments, the
schoolmaster had really searched his memory and given us some personal
anecdotes of Lee at school. There is actually very little on record
about his early life. He seems to have grown into an attractive and
likeable boy, studious, somewhat reserved, and by no means remarkable.
One kinswoman writes:
"I have often said since he entered on his brilliant career that,
although we all admired him for his remarkable beauty and attractive
manners, I did not see anything in him that prepared me for his so far
outstripping all his compeers."
Lee's older brother, Sydney, had already entered the navy, and Lee
himself decided upon the army, as his choice of profession. At the age
of eighteen he applied for a cadetship at the Military Academy at West
Point, and received it direct from President Andrew Jackson himself.
There is a tradition that when Lee presented himself before the hero of
New Orleans, that doughty Tennessean looked him over from head to foot,
then passed him on with the terse comment, "You'll do!"
And Robert Lee did. In college he made a record that shines to this
day. He was given the coveted cadet adjutancy of his corps. He
graduated second in a class of forty-six. And he did not receive a
single demerit during his entire college career--for rusty gun, or cap
on the floor, or late at drill, or twisted belt,--or any of the hundred
and one things that are the bane and stumbling block of the West
Pointer's existence. Such a record seems almost too good to be true,
and one is tempted to wish for at least one escapade to enliven the
narrative!
Yet Lee was by no means a prig. Even his detractors of later years
never accused him of that. He was popular with his fellows and fond of
the give-and-take of the drill ground. His ability to make and hold
friends was one of the outstanding traits of his whole life. His men
who followed him through the "Lost Cause" fairly idolized him.
General Joseph E. Johnson, another Southern leader, was a classmate of
his at West Point and gives us this description of him there. "We had
the same intimate associates, who thought, as I did, that no other
youth or man so united the qualities that win warm friendship and
command high respect. For he was full of sympathy and kindness, genial
and fond of gay conversation, and even of fun, while his correctness of
demeanor and attention to all duties, personal and official, and a
dignity as much a part of himself as the elegance of his person, gave
him a superiority that every one acknowledged in his heart. He was the
only one of all the men I have known that could laugh at the faults and
follies of his friends in such a manner as to make them ashamed without
touching their affection for him."
Lee graduated from West Point with the Class of '29, and the rank of
second lieutenant of engineers. His first important move after leaving
school was to choose for wife Mary Custis, daughter of George
Washington Parke Custis of Arlington, the last branch of the Washington
family. Here again the fates linked up the names of Washington and
Lee. The two homes at Arlington and Mt. Vernon were only a few miles
apart on the Potomac, and as a final link in the chain we find, years
after, at the close of his life, Lee giving his last efforts to
building up Washington College, which was to be known thereafter as
Washington and Lee.
When Mary Custis became Mrs. Robert E. Lee there was some disparity in
their fortunes. She was the heiress of the Custis estate, while he was
drawing only the meager pay of a second lieutenant. But such was her
pride and confidence in him, that she turned her back on money and
decided to live on her husband's income. It was harsh training for a
time, but it fitted her to become a real helpmeet for him; and in the
rigorous days of the Civil War she was glad that she had learned early
to "do without."