But a
people discouraged by reverses were not disposed to inquire too closely
into the reason of his victories, and early in 1864, after a brilliant
campaign along the Mississippi, he had been appointed commander-in-chief
of the Union army, and began that series of operations against Richmond
which cost the North so dear, but which resulted in the fall of the
capital of the Confederacy and in Lee's surrender.
A bearded, square-jawed, silent man, he caught the public fancy by two
messages, the one of "Unconditional surrender," with which he had
answered the demand for terms on the part of the Confederates whom he
had entrapped in Fort Donelson; the other, the famous: "I propose to
fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer," with which he
started his campaign in the Wilderness. Both were characteristic, and if
Grant had retired from public life at the close of the Civil War, or had
been content to remain commander-in-chief of the army of the United
States, his fame would probably have been brighter than it is to-day.
His training, such as it was, had been wholly military and his inaugural
address showed his profound ignorance of the work which lay before
him--an ignorance all the more profound and unreachable because of his
serene unconsciousness of it. He fell at once an easy prey to political
demagogues, and before the close of his first administration,
demoralization was widespread throughout the government.
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