upon me. I know that, if it is properly met, it will be due to these armies, and, above all, to the favour of that Providence which leads both nations and men."

While the General was in Washington, prominent ladies desired to have a ball in his honour. There was

to be a grand review of the Army of the Potomac ; and they proposed that it should be on the evening of that day. A committee of ladies waited upon him, to secure his consent thereto; but he dashed several pailfuls of very cold water on the scheme, by saying,—

"Ladies: I am not a cynic, and enjoy rational pleasure as well as any one else; but I would ask you, in all candour and gentleness, if this is a time for music and dancing and feasting among officers in the army? Is our country in a condition to call for such things at present? Do army balls inspire our troops with courage in the field? Do they soothe our sick and wounded in the hospitals?"

Mrs. Lincoln gave a grand military dinner in honour of General Grant. Twelve other prominent generals were invited. But Grant was in a hurry to return to the West, and he so stated to Mrs. Lincoln, whereupon she pressed her claim as a woman only can.

"I trust that you will excuse me, in the circumstances," he urged. "My presence is needed now in the field."

"I do not see how we can excuse you," pleaded Mrs. Lincoln. "It would be Hamlet with the Prince left out." "I appreciate fully the honour Mrs. Lincoln would do me, but time is precious; and—really—Mr. President, I have had enough of the show business."

Doubtless he spoke the truth in the last sentence. This lavish bestowal of public admiration upon him was not at all congenial. It was a terrific charge upon his modesty. He had to flee.

Q

Mrs. Lincoln gave her grand military dinner, but General Grant was not there--he was on his way to the "Grand Military Department of Mississippi." The society of twelve generals, in conference, to destroy the Confederate army, he coveted; but their society in feasting and pleasure, he did not seek.

He reached Cincinnati on Sunday morning, where he was to spend the day with his parents. His father sent his carriage to the station for him ; but before the carriage returned, he was surprised to see the Lieutenant-General coming into the house with his carpet-bag in his hand. The driver looked for a great man with epaulettes and gold braid; but discovered no such one in the crowd alighting from the cars. The General wore no badge of honour, and his overcoat was plain army-blue.

When he reached Nashville, he found an order from the War Department, appointing him to the command. of all the armies of the United States, with head-quarters in the field; superseding General Halleck, who treated him rudely in the early part of the war. Halleck was to remain in Washington as his chief-of-staff; Sherman to succeed him in command of the Military Division of Mississippi; and McPherson to take Sherman's place as commander of the Department of Tennessee.

General Grant was obliged to retrace his steps to Washington as soon as possible; and that was in half the time ordinary generals would have required for so important a change. He took with him his wife and children, and Rawlins, Rowley, Duff, Bowers, Leet, Parker, and Badeau, of his staff. His arrival in Washington, as commander of all the armies of the United States, was hailed with universal joy; for it augured to loyal hearts the speedy overthrow of the "Southern Confederacy.

XVIII.

ON TO RICHMOND.

WHEN General Grant assumed command of all the armies of the United States, with head-quarters at Culpepper Court House, the skein of military affairs was very much tangled. General Halleck could not pick out the snarl. Things were discouragingly mixed True, some victories had been achieved in the East; but, on the whole, little progress had been made. Grant was expected to remove the tangle. "The two men were as opposite in their ideas of how the war should be carried on as they were in how a battle should be fought. One was for cutting off the tail first, and then the claws, and so work by regular, safe approaches up to the head; the other, for a close and deadly interlock, in which the life of one or the other should go out before it should unloose. One wished to carry on the war by operating with different armies in separate points; the other, for concentrating them all on one vital point. Like Napoleon, Grant had no idea of winter quarters, or the proper season for carrying on a campaign. When once his blows began to fall, he proposed they should never cease falling until the object was ground to powder."

"Lincoln is right," said Grant. "Keep pegging away' is his motto. To hammer continuously against the armed force of the enemy until, by the mere attrition

of the lesser with the larger body, the former shall be worn out,-is the way to do it."

Grant was often like Lincoln in his illustrations, -homely, but pat. To the inquiry, "What is the

trouble?" he answered,

"The armies in the East and West acted independently and without concert, like a balky team, no two ever pulling together; enabling the enemy to use to great advantage his interior lines of communication for transporting troops from East to West, reinforcing the army most vigorously pressed; and to furlough large numbers during seasons of inactivity on our part, to go to their homes and do the work of providing for the support of their armies; so that it was a question whether our numerical strength and resources were not more than balanced by these disadvantages, and the enemy's superior position."

Grant knew how to manage a "balky team," and no team was long "balky" under his control; and this homely view of the situation enabled him to draw the reins just right on the fiery steed of war. Halleck was a book-general, made to order at West Point, and sent out to wage war according to rules taught in the textbooks for generations. Grant ignored books, and took a plain, common-sense view of things, and acted accordingly, rule or no rule. A way of fighting which seemed practical, and therefore promising, to him he adopted, though it upset all the military text-books, and defied the whole curriculum of West Point. This fact explains a remark of Sherman :

"General Grant is not a man of remarkable learning, but he is one of the bravest I ever saw. I do not say

he is a hero-I do not believe in heroes; but I know he is a gentleman and good man."

And just here we might record Grant's opinion of Sherman, since it has so much horse in it, and is, withal, so pat :

"I always find it the best way to turn Sherman out like a young colt, and let him kick up his heels. I have great confidence that he will come in all right in due time."

Grant's sharp observation learned more from a horse, to help him in crushing the Rebellion, than some of the generals acquired at West Point! Thirty years before he found that the best way to do with a balky colt was to sell him; and, on the same principle, he got rid of McClernand in the Vicksburg campaign, and other balky officers, at different times, later in the war.

Grant always shouldered great responsibilities; and he seemed to carry a great one with the same ease that he carried a small one. He drove a pair of horses at eight years of age, as we have seen; at ten, loaded logs which usually required five men to load; at twelve, went to Louisville to transact legal business for his father; bought and sold horses as men buy and sell them; and so, bearing heavy burdens of care from boyhood upward, Providence disciplined him to shoulder the greatest responsibility in 1864 that any one man ever bore. At the outbreak of the war, he doubted whether he could lead a regiment; but now he was the commander of nearly a million men; his field of operations extending from the Potomac to the Rio Grande,-FIVE THOUSAND MILES, including, also, a naval force of SIX HUNDRED vessels of war, on the rivers and along the coast for two thousand five hundred miles; while FOUR THOUSAND CANNON waited for his command to belch their thunders. What a mountain of care! What an

empire of war to control! What mighty power!