General Grant as He Appears in His Book.

Auckland Star, Volume XVII, Issue 214, 11 September 1886, Page 3

General Grant as He Appears in His Book.

(By James Fabtos).

When General Grant was a second nontenant in the army that invaded Mexico, there was suoh an abundance of game on the Toxas prairies that many young men would have found it difficult to avoid hitting some of it. Lieutenant Grant had neither taste nor capacity for shooting gan;©He wont out once after wild turkeys, and coon hoard tho flutter of winga overhead. Upon looking up he caw a flock of twenty or thirty turkeys flying above his head in equada of two and three ; but he was so m.ci interested in watching tho Sight of the birds that he totally forgot to fire till they wore all bayond his roach. His companion?, however, in a few minutes brought down turkoys enough to supply the whelo mesa. Heroagain I cini.ot help sympathising with the man who failed, rather, than with the man who succeeded.

A strange fatality appears to have attended all hia attempts to do business at a profit. In ISS2 he was ordered with bis regiment to California, and arrived there when the wages of a cook were more than the pay of a captain in the army. Tbe officers were sadly put to it to livo upon their pay, Hour being tweuty-fivo cents a pound, potartoes sixteen cents a pound, and othor articles in proportion. Captain Grant and three other officers formed [a partnership for the purpose of raiding a atop of vegetables. Tho captain bought a pair of horses, worn down by a journey across tho plain?. Theseunirnals soon picked opa little flesh and proved very good farm horeei', and he, being a farmer'a boy, ploughed np tho ground. His partners planted the potatoes, and they raised an enormous crop. Surely, this was a wise proceeding! It was so very wise that everybody else had done it; so that when the time of harvest came, potatoes had no commercial value at all. General Grant relates the results oi his agricultural labours in his own humorous way :'

"Luckily for us," ho Bays, "the Columbia River rose to a grant height from tho melting of the enow in the mountains, oveiflowed, and tiled most of our crop. This caved digging it up. Too only potatoes we sold wero to unr own mess."

The same Captain Grant, in transacting business where no money was to be mads or expected to bo made, showed sagacity and prompitude. In the Mexican war he served f* long periods as quarter-master, commissary and adjutant, performing the duties of all thoee difficult poets to the satisfaction of officers and men. His experience in the business of an army, acquired in Mexico, was of great value to him in IS(il r when he was suddenly called upon to create a military system for the State of Illinois. He could do business well enough when some power besides himself furnished the capital.

No thing strikes the reader of hie personal memoirs more than the general soundness of his judgments. In Mexico he served first under General Taylor, who despised all f bow and parade, seldom wore a uniform, and presented an appearance eren shabby and negligent. He served also under General Winfield Scott, who wore on every occasion all the uniform the regulations allowed. Captain Giant was not deceived by either of these foibles. He did not commend General Taylor's shabbinees, nor despise General Scott's display. Both of them, he remarks were good soldiers, " patriotic mid upright in all their dealings." He discriminates between them thus :

" Both were pleasant to serve under— Taylor was pleaEant to servo with. Scott saw more through the eyes of his stall*officers than through his own. Bis plan were deliberately prepared and fully expressed in orders. Taylor saw for himself, and gave orders to meet the emergency, without reference to how they would read in history."

It is evidont that Captain Grant relished the character of Zachary Taylor, and it is much to the cr.edit of his understanding that he should have been able to do justice to the merits of a person like Winfield Scott, the very opposite of his own ideal. Home of his other judgments are excellent. His father worked for and lived with the father of John Brown, whose soul is marching on, and thus he became well acquainted with the character of the hero of Harper's Ferry. He speaks of him as a man of great purity and elevation of character, but says bluntly of his invasion of Virginia with twenty men, that it was the act of a madman,

Soldier as he was never for a, moment blinded as to the object and character oi the war with Mexido. He characterises the whole prooeeding, from the hour whe» General Houston, with President Jackson's knowledge and consent, went to Texas to begin the movement, until the invasion of Mexico by the troops, as a "conspiraoy fo acquire territory, one of which slave States mi^ht be formed for the American Union." He styles the contest with Mexico " an unholy war," from the inception of the movement to its final consummation.

The candor of the man is really extraordinary. He says that he does not believo that he " would ever hove had courage to fight a duel," and he attributes some of his apparently bold movements in the early part of the war, net to courage, but to the want of it. He says more than once, "I had not the courage to go back," when his going forward proved to be a brilliant and successful action. When he says he had not the courage to fight a duel, he evidently had no reference whatever to the physical danger involved. He meant that he had not the courage to commit an action co absurd and so wrong. He gays :

"If ai>y man should -wrong me to the oxtei t of ray being wiling to kill bio;, I wnnld not bo willing t > give him the choice of weapons, and of the t'me place and dittasce separating üB. It I should do (mother such a wrong as to .instiiy him in ktlltng me, I would make any reasonable atom. mer. t within my power, if convinced of tho wrong done."

General Grant was disposed to attribute his great actions to trifling motives. The firm determination ot his, that necessity of his being to keep on in the way he had begun, and bring a movement to tho conclusion designed, he speaks of thus : - "Odo of my superstitions has always been, ■whon I Btartcd to ko anywhere, cr to do anything, not to turn back or stop until the thint; intended was accomplished." : This superstition, as he calls it, was of much Bervice in the summer of 1864 when he Btarted for Richmond. It took Him a year to accomplish the hundred miles, but he got there at last. One trait of his mind, which will surprise many readers of his work, is his humour. In relating his career at West Point ho mentions that in French his standing wa9 very low j adding that, 'if the class had been turned out the other end foremost, I should have been near the head." He has a quiot hit at the fußey officers who ' make ih a study to think what orders they can publish to annoy their subordinates." Mcst of these officer?, he remarks, discovered, when the Mexican war broke out, that they posecssod disabilities which incapacitated them for service in the field. " They were right," he adds : "but they did not always give their diseoso the right name.' He has a comic wolf story of his service in Texo.B, which he amplifies more tban usual, and draws a moral. From the noise made by the wolves on the prairie, he supposed the pack was very numerous- " Granr,"said his companion, " how many wolves do jou think there are in that p?ick ?" J.itending to dieguiso his ignorance by putting a very low estimate, he gueesod " nbout fcwonty.'1 Hiß companion smiled and rede on, and in a minute later they discovered the pack, which was composed of just two wolves. Tho general appends tho moral :

" I have ' '*"" I'-'"- I' > "f thin incident since' whon Iha^ eheftrdthenoisso'afewdiaappointcd politicans wiio liavu UcsetKd their associatee. I here »'fl always more of them before tbey ara counted."

General Grant appears in his Personal Meaioirs to great advantage, as a brave, modest, resolute, discriminating, good, tempered man.