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one of the slave states, want to be consulted; we want to know what protection we are to have; whether we are simply to be made outposts and guards to protect the property of others at the same time that we sacrifice and lose our own.

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"I repeat again that the people of Tennessee will never pass under another government that is less republican, less democratic in all its bearings than the one under which we now live, I care not whether it is formed in the north or the south. We will occupy an isolated, a separate and distinct position before we will do it. We will pass into that fractional condition to which I have alluded before we will pass under an absolute or a constitutional monarchy. Sir, I will stand by the Constitution of the country as it is, and by all its guaranties. I am not for breaking up this great Confederacy. I am for holding on to it as it is, with the mode and manner pointed out in the instrument for its own amendment. It was good enough for Washington, for Adams, for Jefferson and for Jackson. It is good enough for us. I intend to stand by it, and to insist on a compliance with all its guarantees, north and south.

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"Mr. President, I have said much more than I anticipated when I commenced, and I have spoken more at length than a regard for my own health and strength would have allowed; but if there is any effort of mine that would preserve this government till there is time to think, till there is time to consider, even if it cannot be preserved any longer; if that end could be secured by making a sacrifice of my existence and offering up my blood, I would be willing to consent to it. Let us pause in this mad career. Let us hesitate. Let us consider well what we are doing before we make a movement. I believe that, to a certain extent, dissolution is going to take place. I say to the north, you ought to come up in the spirit which should characterize and control the north on this question, and you ought to give those indications of good faith that will approach what the south demands. It will be no sacrifice on your part ; it is no suppliancy on ours, but simply a demand of right. What concession is there in doing right? Then come forward. We have it in our power yes, this congress here to-day has it in its power to save this Union, even after South Carolina has gone out. Will they not do it? You can do it! Who is willing to take this dreadful alternative without making an honorable effort to save this government? . . . Shall we give all this up to the Vandals and the Goths? Shall we shrink from our duty and desert the government as a sinking ship, or shall we stand by it? I, for one, will stand here until the high behest of my constituents demands of me to desert my post; and instead of laying hold of the columns of this fabric and pulling it down, though I may not be much of a prop, I will stand with my shoulder supporting the edifice as long as human effort can do it."

UNIV

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ULYSSES S. GRANT.

LYSSES S. GRANT, eighteenth President of the United States,

ULY

was born at Point Pleasant, Clermont county, Ohio, on April 27, The family from which he descended, as described in his own terse words, was American and had been for generations "in all its branches, direct and collateral." The founder of the branch in this country, Matthew Grant, himself of Scotch descent, reached Dorchester, Massachusetts, in May, 1630, and soon afterward removed to what is now Windsor, Connecticut, where he held the office of colony surveyor for more than forty years. A direct descendant of this pioneer in the new world was Noah Grant, who served in the Revolutionary army from Bunker Hill to Yorktown, and on the close of that struggle emigrated to Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, where he located near the town of Greensburg. He was at that time a widower, but soon after his settlement in the west was married to a Miss Kelly, their first-born, Jesse R. Grant, being the father of the future President of the United States. In 1799 the family made another westward move, their halt being in Ohio, where the town of Deerfield now stands. The death of the mother in 1805 caused the seven children to be separated from one another, the father taking the two youngest with him to Kentucky, where he resided with Peter, his oldest son, the only issue of his first marriage. The other children found homes in the neighborhood, Jesse being cared for in the family of Judge Tod, father of the future governor of Ohio, where he remained several years. He was early taught the tanner's trade, and after employment in various quarters, finally established a business for himself in Ravenna, Portage county, Ohio, but after a few years removed to Point Pleasant. In June, 1821, he was married to Hannah Simpson, whose father had emigrated from Pennsylvania to Clermont county, in 1819. In the fall of 1823, when the son, U. S., was a little over a year old, the family removed to Georgetown, the seat of Brown county, lying directly to the east, where they remained until in 1839, when the son left home for the first time, to enter West Point.

The biographer, the historian and the romancer have given us many

stories of the boyhood and youth of one who became the foremost man of his time, but none furnish a picture so graphic and yet so plain and simple as is found in General Grant's own reference to the trials and struggles of those days. "My life in Georgetown," says he,* "was uneventful. From the age of five or six until seventeen, I attended the subscription schools of the village, except during the winters of 1836-7 and 1838-9. The former period was spent in Maysville, Kentucky, attending the school of Richardson and Rand; the latter in Ripley, Ohio, at a private school. I was not studious in habit, and probably did not make progress enough to compensate for the outlay for board and tuition. . . . . My father was, from my earliest recollection, in comfortable circumstances, considering the times, his place of residence and the community in which he lived. Mindful of his own lack of facilities for acquiring an education, his greatest desire in maturer years was for the education of his children. Consequently, as stated before, I never missed a quarter from school from the time I was old enough to attend till the time of leaving home. This did not exempt me from labor. In my early days, everyone labored more or less, in the region where my youth was spent, and more in proportion to their private means. It was only the very poor who were exempt. While my father carried on the manufacture of leather and worked at the trade himself, he owned and tilled considerable land. I detested the trade, preferring almost any other labor; but I was fond of agriculture and of all employment in which horses were used. We had, among other lands, fifteen acres of forest within a mile of the village. In the fall of the year choppers were employed to cut enough wood to last a twelvemonth. When I was seven or eight years of age, I began hauling all the wood used in the house and shops. I could not load it on the wagons, of course, at that time, but I could drive, and the choppers would load and someone at the house unload. When about eleven years old, I was strong enough to hold a plough. From that age until seventeen I did all the work done with horses, such as breaking up the land, furrowing, ploughing corn and potatoes, bringing in the crops when harvested, hauling all the wood, besides tending two or three horses, a cow or two, and sawing wood for stoves, etc., while still attending school. For this I was compensated by the fact that there was never any scolding or punishing by my parents; no objection to rational enjoyments, such as fishing, going to the creek a mile away to swim in summer, taking a horse and visiting my grandparents in the adjoining county, skating on the ice in winter or taking a horse and sleigh when there was snow on the ground. . . . I have described enough of my early life to give an impression of the whole. I did not like to work, but I did as much of it while young as grown men can be hired to do in these days, and attended school at the same time. I had as many

*Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant,' Vol. 1; page 24.

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