CHAPTER II.
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.