dual personalities

Last Saturday was the anniversary of the death of President Ulysses S. Grant in 1885. To me, he was a great man and one of the qualities that made him great, was his humility. His humble nature shines through in his Memoirs.

There are many men who would have done better than I did under the circumstances in which I found myself. If I had never held command, if I had fallen, there were 10,000 behind who would have followed the contest to the end and never surrendered the Union.

Debatable. Think of General McClellan, his predecessor as general-in-chief of all the Union armies. He thought he “could do it all” but he could not. And he blamed everyone else for his failure.

President Lincoln put his trust in Grant and was well served. And Grant was humble in victory.

General Lee was dressed in a full uniform which was entirely new, and was wearing a sword of considerable value, very likely the sword which had been presented by the State of Virginia; at all events, it was an entirely different sword from the one that would ordinarily be worn in the field. In my rough traveling suit, the uniform of a private with the straps of a lieutenant-general, I must have contrasted very strangely with a man so handsomely dressed, six feet high and of faultless form. But this was not a matter that I thought of until afterwards.

–Memoirs

I love that he wore “a soldier’s blouse for a coat, with the shoulder straps of my rank to indicate to the army who I was.”

Walt Whitman revered Grant and wrote a poem about the former president when he returned from his world tour.

What best I see in thee,
is not that where thou mov’st down history’s great highways,
Ever undimm’d by time shoots warlike victory’s dazzle,
Or that thou sat’st where Washington say, ruling the land in peace,
Or thou the man whom feudal Europe feted, venerable Asia swarm’d upon,
Who walk’d with kings with even pace the round world’s promenade;
But that in foreign lands, in all thy walks with kings
Those prairie sovereigns of the West, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois,
Ohio’s, Indiana’s millions, comrades, farmers, soldiers, all to the front,
Invisibly with thee walking with kings with even pace the round world’s promenade,
Were all so justified.

Here’s an article about Whitman and Grant if you’re interested.

A few weeks ago the wee laddie came up to me holding this little framed picture he had found in the living room:

“Who’s this, Mamu?” he asked.

“That’s Cousin Ulysses,” I said. “Some day I’ll tell you all about him.”

*Walt Whitman