雙語·林肯傳 24

24

When the war began, in 1861, a shabby and disappointed man was sitting on a packing-case in a leather store in Galena, Illinois, smoking a clay pipe. His job, so far as he had one, was that of bookkeeper and buyer of hogs and hides from farmers.

His two younger brothers who owned the store didn't want him around at any price, but for months he had tramped the streets of St. Louis, looking in vain for some kind of position, until his wife and four children were destitute. Finally, in despair, he had borrowed a few dollars for a railway ticket and gone to see his father in Kentucky, begging for assistance. The old man had considerable cash, but, being loath to part with any of it, he sat down and wrote his two younger sons in Galena, instructing them to give their elder brother a job.

So they put him on the pay-roll at once, more as a matter of family politics and family charity than anything else.

Two dollars a day—that was his wage—and it was probably more than he was worth, for he had no more business ability than a jack-rabbit; he was lazy and slovenly, he loved cornwhisky, and he was eternally in debt. He was always borrowing small sums of money; so when his friends saw him coming, they used to look the other way and cross the street to avoid meeting him.

Everything he had undertaken in life, so far, had ended in failure and frustration.

So far.

But no more.

For good news and astounding good fortune were just around the corner.

In a little while he was to go flaring and flaming like a shooting star across the firmament of fame.

He couldn't command the respect of his home town now; but in three years he would command the most formidable army the world had ever seen.

In four years he would conquer Lee, end the war, and write his name in blazing letters of fire on the pages of history.

In eight years he would be in the White House.

After that he would make a triumphal tour of the world, with the high and mighty of all lands heaping honors, medals, flowers, and after-dinner oratory upon him—whom people back in Galena had crossed the street to avoid.

It is an astonishing tale.

Everything about it is strange. Even the attitude of his mother was abnormal. She never seemed to care much for him. She refused to visit him when he was President, and she didn't trouble even to name him when he was born. Her relatives attended to that, in a sort of lottery. When he was six weeks old, they wrote their favorite names on strips torn from a paper sack, mixed them in a hat, and drew one out. His grandmother Simpson had been reading Homer, and she wrote on her slip: “Hiram Ulysses.” It was drawn, and so, by chance, that was the name he bore at home for seventeen years.

But he was bashful and slow-witted, so the village wits called him “Useless” Grant.

At West Point he had still another name. The politician who made out the papers giving him an appointment to the Military Academy imagined that his middle name must be Simpson, his mother's maiden name, so he went as “U. S. Grant.” When the cadets learned this, they laughed and tossed their hats in the air, and shouted, “Boys, we've got Uncle Sam with us!” To the end of his life those who had been his classmates there called him Sam Grant.

He didn't mind. He made few friends, and he didn't care what people called him, and he didn't care how he looked. He wouldn't keep his coat buttoned or his gun clean or his shoes shined, and he was often late for roll-call. And, instead of mastering the military principles used by Napoleon and Frederick the Great, he spent much of his time at West Point poring over novels such as “Ivanhoe” and “The Last of the Mohicans.”

The incredible fact is that he never read a book on military strategy in his life.

After he had won the war the people of Boston raised money to buy him a library, appointing a committee to find out what books he already possessed. To its amazement, the committee learned that Grant didn't own a single military treatise of any description.

He disliked West Point and the army and everything connected with it; and, after he had become world-famous, he said to Bismarck while reviewing Germany's troops:

“I haven't much interest in military affairs. The truth is, I am more of a farmer than a soldier. Although I have been in two wars, I never entered the army without regret, and never left it without pleasure.”

Grant admitted that his besetting sin was laziness, and that he never liked to study. Even after he graduated from West Point he spelled knocked without the initial k and safety without an e; yet he was fairly good at figures, and hoped to be a professor of mathematics. But no position was available, so he spent eleven years with the regular army. He had to have something to eat, and that seemed the easiest way to get it.

In 1853 he was stationed at Fort Humboldt in California. In a near-by village there was a curious character named Ryan. Ryan ran a store, operated a sawmill, and did surveying during the week. On Sunday he preached. Whisky was cheap in those days, and Pastor Ryan kept an open barrel of it in the back of his store. A tin cup was hanging on the barrel, so you could go and help yourself whenever you had the urge. Grant had it often. He was lonely and wanted to forget the army life that he despised; as a result he got drunk so many times that he had virtually to be dismissed from the army.

He didn't have a dollar, and he didn't have a job; so he drifted back east to Missouri and spent the next four years plowing corn and slopping hogs on an eighty-acre farm belonging to his father-in-law. In the wintertime he cut cord-wood, hauled it to St. Louis, and sold it to the city people. But every year he got farther and farther behind, had to borrow more and more.

Finally he quit the farm, moved to St. Louis, and sought employment there. He tried to sell real estate, was a total failure at that, and then drifted about the town for weeks, looking for a job—any kind of job. At last he was in such desperate circumstances that he tried to hire out his wife's negroes, in order to get money to pay the grocer's bill.

Here is one of the most surprising facts about the Civil War: Lee believed that slavery was wrong, and had freed his own negroes long before the conflict came; but Grant's wife owned slaves at the very time that her husband was leading the armies of the North to destroy slavery.

When the war began, Grant was sick of his work in the Galena leather store and wanted to get back into the army.

That ought to have been easy for a West Point graduate, when the army had hundreds of thousands of raw recruits to whip into shape. But it wasn't. Galena raised a company of volunteers, and Grant drilled them because he was the only man in town who knew anything at all about drilling, but when they marched away to war with bouquets in their gun-barrels Grant stood on the sidewalk watching them. They had chosen another man as captain.

Then Grant wrote to the War Department, telling of his experience and asking to be appointed colonel of a regiment. His letter was never answered. It was found in the files of the War Department while he was President.

Finally he got a position in the adjutant's office in Springfield, doing clerical work that a fifteen-year-old girl could have done. He worked all day with his hat on, smoking constantly and copying orders on an old broken-down table with three legs, which had been shoved into a corner for support.

Then a wholly unexpected thing happened, an event that set his feet on the road to fame. The 21st Regiment of Illinois Volunteers had degenerated into an armed mob. They ignored orders, cursed their officers, and chased old Colonel Goode out of camp, vowing that if he showed up again they would nail his hide on a sour-apple tree.

Governor Yates was worried.

He didn't think much of Grant, but after all the man had been graduated from West Point, so the governor took a chance. And on a sunny June day in 1861 Grant walked out to the Springfield fair-grounds to take over the command of a regiment that no one else could rule.

A stick that he carried, and a red bandana tied around his waist—these were his only visible signs of authority.

He didn't have a horse or a uniform, or the money to buy either. There were holes in the top of his sweat-stained hat, and his elbows stuck out of his old coat.

His men began making fun of him at once. One chap started sparring at him behind his back, and another fellow rushed up behind the pugilist and shoved him so hard that he stumbled forward and hit Grant between the shoulders.

Grant stopped all their foolishness immediately. If a man disobeyed orders he was tied to a post and left there all day. If he cursed a gag was put into his mouth. If the regiment was late at roll-call—as they all were on one occasion—they got nothing to eat for twenty-four hours. The ex-hide-buyer from Galena tamed their tempestuous spirits and led them away to do battle down in Missouri.

Shortly after that another piece of amazing good fortune came his way. In those days the War Department was making brigadier-generals by the dozens. Northwestern Illinois had sent Elihu B. Washburne to Congress. Washburne, fired with political ambitions, was desperately eager to show the folks back home that he was on the job, so he went to the War Department and demanded that one brigadier-general come from his district. All right. But who? That was easy: there was only one West Point graduate among Washburne's constituents.

So a few days later Grant picked up a St. Louis newspaper, and read the surprising news that he was a brigadier-general.

He was assigned headquarters at Cairo, Illinois, and immediately began to do things. He loaded his soldiers on boats, steamed up the Ohio, occupied Paducah, a strategic point in Kentucky, and proposed marching down into Tennessee to attack Fort Donelson, which commanded the Cumberland River. Military experts like Halleck said: “Nonsense! You are talking foolishly, Grant. It can't be done. It would be suicide to attempt it.”

Grant went ahead and tried it, and captured the fort and fifteen thousand prisoners in one afternoon.

While Grant was attacking, the Confederate general sent him a note, begging for a truce, to arrange terms of capitulation, but Grant replied rather tartly:

“My only terms are unconditional and immediate surrender. I propose to move immediately upon your works.”

Simon Buckner, the Confederate general to whom this curt message was addressed, had known Sam Grant at West Point and had lent him money to pay his board bill when he was fired from the army. In view of that loan, Buckner felt that Grant ought to have been a trifle more gracious in his phraseology. But Buckner forgave him and surrendered and spent the afternoon smoking and reminiscing with Grant about old times.

The fall of Fort Donelson had far-reaching consequences: it saved Kentucky for the North, enabled the Union troops to advance two hundred miles without opposition, drove the Confederates out of a large part of Tennessee, cut off their supplies, caused the fall of Nashville and of Fort Columbus, the Gibraltar of the Mississippi, spread profound depression throughout the South, and set church bells ringing and bonfires blazing from Maine to the Mississippi.

It was a stupendous victory, and created a tremendous impression even in Europe. It was really one of the turning-points of the war.

From that time on, U. S. Grant was known as “Unconditional Surrender” Grant, and “I propose to move on your works immediately” became the battle-cry of the North.

Here, at last, was the great leader for which the country had been waiting. Congress made him a major-general; he was appointed commander of the Military Department of Western Tennessee, and quickly became the idol of the nation. One newspaper mentioned that he liked to smoke during a battle, and, presto! over ten thousand boxes of cigars were showered upon him.

But in less than three weeks after all this Grant was actually in tears of rage and mortification because of unfair treatment by a jealous superior officer.

His immediate superior in the West was Halleck, a colossal and unmitigated ass. Admiral Foote called Halleck “a military imbecile,” and Gideon Welles, Lincoln's Secretary of the Navy, who knew Halleck intimately, sums him up thus:

“Halleck originates nothing, anticipates nothing, suggests nothing, plans nothing, decides nothing, is good for nothing and does nothing except scold, smoke and scratch his elbows.”

But Halleck thought very well of himself. He had been an assistant professor at West Point, had written books on military strategy, international law, and mining, had been director of a silver-mine, president of a railway, a successful attorney, had mastered French and translated a tome on Napoleon. In his own opinion, he was the distinguished scholar, Henry Wager Halleck.

And who was Grant? A nobody, a drunken and discredited army captain. When Grant came to see him, before attacking Fort Donelson, Halleck was rude, and dismissed his military suggestions with irritation and contempt. Now Grant had won a great victory and had the nation at his feet, while Halleck was still scratching his elbows in St. Louis, unnoticed and ignored. And it galled Halleck.

To make matters worse, he felt that this erstwhile hide-buyer was insulting him. He telegraphed Grant day after day, and Grant brazenly ignored his orders. At least, so Halleck imagined. But he was wrong. Grant had sent report upon report; but, after the fall of Donelson, a break in telegraphic communications had made it impossible for his telegrams to get through. However, Halleck didn't know this, and he was indignant. Victory and public adulation had gone to Grant's head, had they? Well, he would teach this young upstart a lesson. So he wired McClellan repeatedly, denouncing Grant. Grant was this, Grant was that—insolent, drunk, idle, ignoring orders, incompetent. “I'm tired and worn out with this neglect and inefficiency.”

McClellan, too, was envious of Grant's popularity; so he sent Halleck what, in the light of history, is the most amazing telegram of the Civil War: “Do not hesitate to arrest him [Grant] at once if the good of the service requires it, and place C. F. Smith in command.”

Halleck immediately took Grant's army away from him, virtually placed him under arrest, and then leaned back in his chair and scratched his elbows with savage satisfaction.

The war was almost a year old now, and the only general who had won a considerable victory for the North stood stripped of all power and in public disgrace.

Later Grant was restored to command. Then he blundered woefully at the Battle of Shiloh; if Johnston, the Confederate general, had not bled to death during the fighting, Grant's entire army might have been surrounded and captured. Shiloh was, at that time, the greatest battle that had ever been fought on this continent, and Grant's losses were staggering—thirteen thousand men. He had acted stupidly; he had been taken by surprise. He deserved criticism, and it came roaring down upon him. He was falsely accused of being intoxicated at Shiloh, and millions believed it. A tidal wave of popular indignation swept over the country, and the public clamored for his removal. But Lincoln said:

“I can't spare this man. He fights.”

When people told him Grant drank too much whisky, he inquired: “What brand? I want to send a few barrels to some of my other generals.”

The following January Grant assumed command of the expedition against Vicksburg. The campaign against this natural fortress, perched on a high bluff two hundred feet above the Mississippi, was long and heartbreaking. The place was heavily fortified, and the gunboats on the river couldn't elevate their cannon high enough to touch it. Grant's problem was to get his army close enough to attack it.

He went back to the heart of Mississippi and tried to march on it from the east. That failed.

Then he cut away the levees of the river, put his army on boats, and tried to float through the swamps and get at the place from the north. That failed.

Then he dug a canal and tried to change the course of the Mississippi. That failed.

It was a trying winter. Rain fell almost continuously, the river flooded the whole valley, and Grant's troops floundered through miles of swamps, ooze, bayous, tangled forests, and trailing vines. Men stood up to their waists in mud, they ate in the mud, they slept in the mud. Malarial fever broke out, and measles and smallpox. Sanitation was well-nigh impossible, and the death-rate was appalling.

The Vicksburg campaign was a failure—that was the cry that went up everywhere. A stupid failure, a tragic failure, a criminal failure.

Grant's own generals—Sherman, McPherson, Logan, Wilson —regarded his plans as absurd, and believed they would end in black ruin. The press throughout the country was vitriolic, and the nation was demanding Grant's removal.

“He has hardly a friend left except myself,” Lincoln said.

Despite all opposition, Lincoln clung to Grant; and he had his faith richly rewarded, for, on July 4, the same day that the timid Meade let Lee escape at Gettysburg, Grant rode into Vicksburg on a horse taken from the plantation of Jefferson Davis, and won a greater victory than any American general had achieved since the days of Washington.

After eight months of desolating failure, Grant had captured forty thousand prisoners at Vicksburg, placed the entire Mississippi River in the hands of the North, and split the Confederacy.

The news set the nation aflame with enthusiasm.

Congress passed a special act in order that Grant could be made lieutenant-general—an honor that no man had worn since the death of Washington—and Lincoln, calling him to the White House, made a short address appointing him commander of all the armies of the Union.

Forewarned that he would have to reply with a speech of acceptance, Grant drew out of his pocket a little wrinkled piece of paper containing only three sentences. As he began to read, the paper shook, his face flushed, his knees trembled, and his voice failed. Breaking down completely, he clutched the shaking paper with both hands, shifted his position, took a deep breath, and began all over again.

The hog-and-hide buyer from Galena found it easier to face bullets than to deliver a speech of eighty-four words before an audience of eleven men.

Mrs. Lincoln, eager to make a social event out of Grant's presence in Washington, had already arranged a dinner and a party in the general's honor. But Grant begged to be excused, saying he must hasten back to the front.

“But we can't excuse you,” the President insisted. “Mrs. Lincoln's dinner without you would be ‘Hamlet’ without Hamlet.”

“A dinner to me,” replied Grant, “means a million dollars a day loss to the country. Besides, I've had about enough of this show business, anyway.”

Lincoln loved a man who would talk like that—one who, like himself, despised “fizzlegigs and fireworks,” and one who would “take responsibility and act.”

Lincoln's hopes rose and towered now. He was sure that, with Grant in command, all would soon be well.

But he was wrong. Within four months the country was plunged into blacker gloom and deeper despair than ever, and once more Lincoln was pacing the floor throughout the night, haggard and worn and desperate.