Since the end of the civil war in the United States, whoever has occasion to name the three most distinguished representatives of our national greatness is apt to name Washington, Lincoln, and Grant. General Grant is now our national military hero. Of Washington it has often been said that he was "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen." When this eulogy was wholly just the nation had been engaged in no war on a grander scale than the war for independence. That w

This hero of ours was of an excellent ancestry. Until lately, most Americans have been careless of preserving their family records. That they were Americans and of a respectable line, if not a distinguished one, for two or three generations back, was as much of family history as interested them, and all they really knew. This was especially true of families which had emigrated from place to place as pioneers in the settlement of the country. Family records were left behind, and in the hard despe

Of such ancestry General Grant was born April 27, 1822, in Point Pleasant, Ohio, and was named Hiram Ulysses Grant. A picture of the house in which he was born shows it to have been a small frame dwelling of primitive character. Its roof, sloping to the road in front, inclosed the two or three rooms that may have been above the ground floor. The principal door was in the middle of the front, and there was one small window on each side of it. Apparently there was a low extension in the rear. This

When the boy was about seventeen years old he had made up his mind upon one matter,—he would not be a tanner for life. He told his father, possibly in response to some suggestion that it was time for him to quit his aimless occupations and begin his lifework, that he would work in the shop, if he must, until he was twenty-one, but not a day longer. His desire then was to be a farmer, or a trader, or to get an education; but he seems to have had no definite inclination except to escape from the d

He had applied for an appointment in the dragoons, the designation of the one regiment of cavalry then a part of our army. His alternative selection was the Fourth Infantry. To this he was attached as a brevet second lieutenant, and after the expiration of the usual leave spent at home, he joined his regiment at Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis. Duties were not severe, and the officers entertained much company at the barracks and gave much time to society in the neighborhood. Grant had his saddle-h

Although he had done excellent service, demonstrating his courage, his good judgment, his resourcefulness, his ability in command, and in the staff duties of quartermaster and commissary, his experience did not kindle in him any new love for his profession, nor any ardor of military glory. He had not revealed the possession of extraordinary talent, nor any spark of genius. He accounted the period of great value to him in his later life, but his heart was never enlisted in the cause for which the

The tide of patriotism that surged through the North after the fall of Fort Sumter in April, 1861, lifted many strong but discouraged men out of their plight of hard conditions and floated them on to better fortune. Grant was one of these. At last he found reason to be glad that he had the education and experience of a soldier. On Monday, April 15, 1861, Galena learned that Sumter had fallen. The next day there was a town meeting, where indignation and devotion found utterance. Over that meeting

The regiment remained at the camp, near Springfield, until the 3d of July, being then in a good state of discipline, and officers and men having become acquainted with company drill. It was then ordered to Quincy, on the Mississippi River, and Colonel Grant, for reasons of instruction, decided to march his regiment instead of going by the railroad. So began his advance, which ended less than four years later at Appomattox, when he was the captain of all the victorious Union armies,—holding a mil

On the 4th of March, sixteen days after his victory, he was in disgrace. General Halleck ordered him to turn over the command of the army to General C. F. Smith and to remain himself at Fort Henry. This action of Halleck was the consequence partly of accidents which had prevented communication between them and caused Halleck to think him insubordinate, partly of false reports to Halleck that Grant was drinking to excess, partly of Halleck's dislike of Grant,—a temperamental incapacity of appreci

Vicksburg had long been the hard military problem of the Southwest. The city, which had been made a fortress, was at the summit of a range of high bluffs, two hundred and fifty feet above the east bank of the Mississippi River, near the mouth of the Yazoo. It was provided with batteries along the river front and on the bank of the Yazoo to Haines's Bluff. A continuous line of fortifications surrounded the city on the crest of the hill. This hill, the slopes of which were cut by deep ravines, was

Halleck, issuing orders from Washington, proceeded to disperse Grant's army hither and yon as he thought fractions of it to be needed. Grant wanted to move on Mobile from Lake Pontchartrain, but was not permitted to do it. Having gone to New Orleans in obedience to a necessity of conference with General Banks, he suffered a severe injury by the fall of a fractious horse, as he was returning from a review of Banks's army. For a long time he was unconscious. As soon as he could be moved he was tak

During the winter, after the Chattanooga victory, General Grant made his headquarters at Nashville, and devoted himself to acquiring an intimate knowledge of the condition of the large region now under his command, to the reorganization of his own lines of transportation, and the destruction of those of the enemy. He made a perilous journey to Knoxville in the dead of winter, and a brief trip to St. Louis, on account of the dangerous illness of his son there. On this trip he wore citizen's cloth

Wherever Grant had control in the West, and in all his counsels, his distinct purpose was to mass the Union forces and not scatter them, and to get at the enemy. With what ideas and intention he began the new task he set forth definitely in his report made in July, 1865. "From an early period in the rebellion, I had been impressed with the idea that the active and continuous operations of all the troops that could be brought into the field, regardless of season and weather, were necessary to a s

The story of this campaign is too long to be narrated in particular. On both sides it is a record of magnificent valor, endurance, and resolution, to which the world affords no parallel, when it is remembered that the armies were recruited from the free citizenship of the nation. As the weeks and months wore on, General's Grant's visage, it is said, settled into an unrelaxing expression of grim resolve. He carried the nation on his shoulders in those days. If he had wearied or yielded, hope migh

Within a few weeks after the surrender of Lee, every army and fragment of an army opposed to the Union was dissolved. But meantime Lincoln had been assassinated, and the executive administration of the nation had devolved upon Andrew Johnson. This wrought an immense change in the aspect of national affairs. Lincoln was a strong, wise, conservative, magnanimous soul. Johnson was arrogant, vain, narrow, and contentious. Grant soon established his headquarters at the War Department, and devoted him

Immediately after General Grant's inauguration as President, an incident occurred which revealed his inexperience in statesmanship. Among the names sent to the Senate as members of the cabinet was that of Alexander T. Stewart, of New York, the leading merchant of the country, for Secretary of the Treasury. Grant was unaware of the existence of his disqualification by a statute passed in 1789, on account of being engaged in trade and commerce. His ignorance is hardly surprising in view of the fac

The storm of criticism and calumny through which President Grant passed during the election canvass of 1872 had no effect to change his general course or open his eyes to the true sentiment of the nation. Instead of realizing that he was reëlected, not because his administration was approved, but because circumstances prevented an effective combination of the various elements of sincere opposition, he and his friends accepted the result as popular approbation of their past conduct and warrant fo

Upon leaving the presidency General Grant retained the distinction of first citizen of the nation. There was no fame of living man that could vie with his. His old form of modesty and simplicity was resumed. As soon as he stepped down from the pedestal of power the criticism of duty and the criticism of malice both ceased. A generous people was glad to forget his errors and remember only his patriotism and his transcendent successes in arms. Even those who had most deprecated his mistakes as a c

General Grant now made his home in the city of New York. He was not wealthy, and he desired to be. The only persons he seemed to envy, and particularly to court, were those who had great possessions. He coveted a fortune that should place his family beyond any chance of poverty. This weakness was his undoing. He became the private partner of an unscrupulous schemer and robber, and intrusted to him all that he had, and more, to be adventured in speculation. His name was dishonored in Wall Street