G: Garfield through Grierson

Source: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography

GARFIELD, JAMES ABRAM (November 19, 1831-September 19, 1881), soldier, congressman, president of the United States, was the last of the chief executives to be born in the typical American environment of the log cabin. He was preceded by at least six Garfields born in America, his immigrant ancestor having come to Massachusetts Bay with Winthrop (E. G. Porter, in Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, XIX, 1882, p. 83). They were all "hungry for the horizon," and in successive generations they made the cabin and its attributes a part of the family inheritance (G. F. Hoar, Eulogy upon ... James Abram Garfield, 1882, p. 9). Abram Garfield, the father of James, was married in 1820 to Eliza Ballou, of old Rhode Island ancestry. He moved with his family to Ohio, and in 1827, when there were already three children, took a contract to be worked out in the construction of the Ohio Canal; but he abandoned this occupation and became a pioneer farmer in Cuyahoga County in time to welcome to his cabin his last child, James Abram, to become a member of the Disciples of Christ, and to die of a sudden "ague" in 1833. His widow became the man of the family and steered her children through poverty and uncertainty to an honored independence. It was a life of hardship for all of them, and Garfield knew every kind of frontier work, and nothing of that leisure and security that come from economic freedom. Before he was thirty he had scraped together an education, exhausted the intellectual offering of the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute (later Hiram College), joined the Disciples church, worked his way into and through Williams College with the class of 1856, and served as teacher and even principal of the Institute at Hiram Young for the position, he had as advantages nearly six feet of height, great breadth of shoulders, and a "round German-looking face," which he generally obscured with a heavy beard. He married, on November 11, 1858, Lucretia Rudolph, his childhood playmate, fellow student, and pupil. In the following year he was elected to the Ohio Senate as a Republican; and when in 1861 the crisis of the Civil War came he was a leader who upheld the right of the federal government to coerce a state.

His power of debate, already ripe, increased by his efforts as lay-preacher in his church, and his oratorical style, more florid than it was to be later in his life, made Garfield a useful agent in raising troops and stimulating enlistments. In the summer of 1861 he helped assemble a regiment, the 42nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry, that contained many of his Hiram students; and of this he became lieutenant-colonel, and then colonel. He had no military experience to warrant his appointment to a line command but he possessed what was rare among citizen officers of the Civil War, a willingness to study and an ability to understand books. With a manual before him he made his recruits into soldiers; and he looked and acted his part so well that a few days after he and his regiment joined Major-General Don Carlos Buell in Kentucky he was given a brigade and was sent to the Big Sandy to confront Humphrey Marshall, a West Pointer commanding the Confederate army there (F. H. Mason, The Forty-Second Ohio Infantry: A History, 1876). At Middle Creek, on January 10, 1862, he won a victory that seemed important because of the scarcity of Union successes, and gained the rank of brigadier-general of volunteers. In April, with his new rank, he fought at Shiloh on the second day; and in the following winter he sat at Washington upon the famous court of inquiry in the Fitz-John Porter case (Senate Executive Document No. 37, 46 Congress, 1 Session). Bad health had brought him in from the field, but, his condition improving, he was reassigned to active duty and joined Rosecrans's Army of the Cumberland early in 1863. Here, with an option before him, he chose to be chief of staff rather than to command a brigade; and in this capacity he served through the Chickamauga campaign, winning high praise from subsequent military historians because of his comprehension of the duties of a staff officer (Whitelaw Reid, Ohio in the War: Her Statesmen, her Generals, and Soldiers, 1868). He organized a division of military information that was far ahead of prevailing American military practise. For five months the army of Rosecrans remained ai: Murfreesboro, Tennessee. It finally advanced, contrary to the almost unanimous judgment of its officers, chiefly because Rosecrans was convinced by Garfield of the wisdom of the action. In the engagement at Chickamauga that follow ed, on September 19, 20, 1863, Thomas was the hero and Rosecrans was discredited; while Garfield, chief of staff, gained wide repute for both courage and good sense. He was made a major-general of volunteers, dating from Chickamauga, as a reward; but he was through with fighting, as other opportunities had come to him. In December 1863, he took his seat in the Thirty-eighth Congress as representative from the 19th Ohio district.

The military successes of Garfield in the spring of 1862 made him a prominent political figure in northeastern Ohio, where anti-slavery radicalism had long maintained Joshua R. Giddings in Congress. Giddings had been displaced in 1858 by John Hutchins, whose retirement now was made easier by a new apportionment law passed after the census of 1860. Garfield, young and popular, nominated while he was in the service, was elected by a heavy majority. He did not take his seat until his military services had been rewarded by promotion; and it has been suggested that he surrendered his major-generalcy in December 1863 only because Lincoln believed that major-generals were easier to procure than Administration-Republican representatives. Eight times more, after 1862, Garfield came before the Republican convention of his district, sometimes after Democratic alterations in its boundaries had made Republican success highly doubtful, and once after the breath of scandal had endangered his future; every time he gained the nomination to succeed himself, and every time his people elected him to Congress. He was by nature a student, by training an orator, and by experience became a finished parliamentarian. His industry and his careful personal habits gave him other advantages, which he seized as they appeared. When Thaddeus Stevens passed off the stage of politics in 1868, James G. Blaine and Garfield knew they were ready to become the congressional leaders of their party (G. F. Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years, 1903, I, 239); and when, in 1876, Blaine was translated to the Senate, Garfield had no real rival in the House.

The committee assignments of Garfield indicate the development of his interests. He took an important place on the committee on military affairs when he appeared in 1863, for he was fresh from the battlefield and the war was yet to be won. In later sessions he served on the committee on appropriations and the committee on ways and means. He developed and trained an interest in public finance that was so sound as to endanger his political prospects. When the Northwest was carried away by the "Ohio" (greenback) idea, and advocated the issuance of irredeemable pa per money, Garfield stuck to the promise of a resumption of specie payments. He was too lukewarm on the subject of the protective tariff to· suit all of his Republican constituents, for northeastern Ohio contained many factories that were in a period of rapid expansion between the Civil War and the panic of 1873. But his independence of thought caused him le ss trouble than did two of the scandals of a period full of scandals. He was named in the memorandum book of Oakes Ames [q. v.] as one of the congressmen who had accepted stock in the Credit Mobilier Company. This Garfield denied, and the proof was far from being complete (House Report, No. 77, 42 Congress, 3 Session); yet the suspicion remained an available weapon for his enemies throughout his life. In the case of the DeGolyer paving contract there was no doubt about the underlying fact. He did accept a retaining fee for services rendered to a company ambitious to furnish the City of Washington with wooden-block pavement (Nation, July 1, 1880, p. 5). The interpretation placed upon the episode by his critics was that while a member of Congress he took pay from a company seeking favors from the government of the District; his answer was that he had no connection with the District government by which the paving award was to be made, and that his services were not to be differentiated from those which congressmen and senators were continually performing when they practised the profession of law in the federal courts. Both of these scandals were before his constituents when he appeared for reelection in 1874, but he surmounted them.

When the Republican party was thrown into the minority in the House after the election of 1874, Garfield and Blaine were its most effective leaders, and worked together with no more suspicions and jealousies than were to be expected. When the latter became senator from Maine in 1876, Garfield became the Republican candidate for speaker and was leader of the minority for the rest of his service in the House. He had taken an active part in the canvass for Hayes, and had gone to Louisiana as one of the "visiting statesmen" to watch the count of votes. He was active in framing the compromise legislation that settled the electoral contest, and served as a member of the electoral commission, where he voted for Hayes on every count. His natural desire to take John Sherman's place as senator from Ohio, when the latter went into the cabinet, was repressed at the request of Hayes who wanted him to remain as Republican leader in the House; but in 1880 there was no such obstruction and the legislature elected him to succeed Allen G. Thurman for the term of six years after 1881. His name, said the Milwaukee Sentinel (January 10, 1880), "is exceptionally clean for a man who has been engaged for twenty years in active politics." He never sat in the Senate. On the day that his term would otherwise have begun he was inaugurated as president of the United States.

At the time of Garfield's election to the Senate, John Sherman might easily have sought the post for himself, for he expected to be out of the cabinet after March 4, 1881. But Sherman desired the Republican presidential nomination of 1880, and efforts were made to induce Garfield to promise support in exchange for Sherman's support for the senatorship. Garfield seems to have refused to make a bargain, although he let it be known that his attitude towards Sherman's candidacy would be affected by Sherman's treatment of his. After his election he still declined to pledge support to Sherman, but on January 26, 1880, he wrote: "I have no doubt that a decisive majority of our party in Ohio favors the nomination of John Sherman. He has earned this recognition" (Cincinnati Gazette, January 28, 1880). As the spring advanced, the substantial unanimity of Ohio for Sherman brought Garfield into the movement. He went to the Chicago national convention as head of the delegation and manager for Sherman, and on the floor attained a commanding position because of the soundness of his case and the skill with which he managed it. Blaine and Grant were the leading rivals of Sherman for the nomination, and the "Stalwart" leaders who directed the fight for Grant took unsound positions in insisting upon the unit rule for state delegations, and upon the right of state conventions to instruct district delegates how they should vote. Garfield conducted the fight for the freedom of the delegate and blocked the paths of both Grant and Blaine but could not procure a majority for his own candidate. On the thirty-fifth ballot sixteen of the twenty Wisconsin votes were shifted to Garfield, and on the next roll call the nomination was made unanimous in a stampede. The Grant forces, led by Conkling, Cameron, and Logan, never forgave Garfield for his opposition; Blaine, who could not have been nominated, was grateful for the defeat of Grant; Sherman laid his failure to the stubbornness of Blaine and only late in life came to believe that Garfield had been disloyal to him. James Ford Rhodes agrees with Sherman's later opinion, writing that "apparently the thought of his [Garfield's] trust was overpowered by the conviction that the prize was his without the usual hard preliminary work" (History of the United States from Hayes to McKinley, 1877-1896, 1919, p. 126). But no evidence of importance has been produced to show that the management of Sherman's cause was anything but loyal; and historical proofs are incapable of determining whether under any circumstances it was ethical for the manager of Sherman to accept the nomination for himself.

In the canvass of 1880 the followers of Blaine and Sherman gave good support to the ticket, but those of Grant sulked, the leaders offering little more than a formal pledge of devotion to the party. Roscoe Conkling [q.v.], in particular, was outraged and held aloof. The nomination from his own following of Chester A. Arthur as vice-president gave him no pleasure. The selection of Marshall Jewell [q.v.] to be chairman of the national committee was an affront since Jewell had been summarily dismissed by Grant from the office of postmaster-general in 1876. On August 5 Garfield made a pilgrimage to New York to sit with a meeting of the national committee, in the hope that the New York wing of the party might be persuaded to help the ticket, but Conkling could not be induced even to meet him. He distrusted, says his nephew and biographer, "Garfield's imperfect memory of a private conversation" (A. R. Conkling, The Life and Letters of Roscoe Conkling, 1889, p. 6n). In September, however, Conkling, Cameron, and Grant finally decided to recognize the candidate and made a western trip; in connection with this, Grant presided and Conkling spoke at a rally in Garfield's old district at Warren, Ohio, and they paid a visit of formal courtesy to Garfield at his Mentor farm; What they said to the candidate and what he said to them played a large part in the later political controversy as the "Treaty of Mentor," but cannot be documented. Garfield at least wrote in his diary, "I had no private conversation with the party" (T. C. Smith, post, p. 1032). The "Stalwarts" later chose to say that he promised them "fair" treatment as the price of support; and they insisted throughout his presidency that it was for them to determine in what fair treatment consisted. The canvass progressed somewhat more smoothly after this. On October 20 a New York weekly, Truth, printed what pretended to be a letter from Garfield to one H. L. Morey in which he advocated the importation of cheap Oriental labor for employment in factories. The Democratic national committee gave wide circulation to this document, in spite of its instant denunciation as a fraud; and Hancock and English, the Democratic candidates, secured five of the six electoral votes of California, where the feeling against the Chinese was strong. But Garfield and Arthur nevertheless carried the country with a plurality of about 10,000 popular votes, and with 214 electoral votes, against 155.

Garfield resigned from the House early in November. He surrendered the Senate seat as well, thus enabling John Sherman to return in 1881 to his old post as senator from Ohio. The President- Elect remained at Mentor, entrenched behind his "snow works" (Cincinnati Gazette, November 16, December 13, 1880), keeping up the hard-wood fires in his grates, smoking his large, thick cigars, and listening with non-committal patience to every one who came to see him. All the political leaders came, Conkling as well as Blaine, but the major appointments were kept guarded until Garfield was ready to transmit them to the Senate after his inauguration on March 4, 1881. He attempted to build a conciliation cabinet, but the appointment of James G. Blaine at its head as secretary of state caused it to be regarded by the "Stalwart" element in the party as a triumph for him. Continuously from the moment when Garfield asked Blaine to take the post, he was the recipient of letters of counsel from the latter. Much of the advice was good and some of it was taken. For the treasury, Garfield, appreciating the usual western "jealousy of Eastern financial leadership" (Harper's Weekly, March 26, 1881, p. 194), selected Senator William Windom of Minnesota, whom Sherman guaranteed as faithful to sound money and hostile to monopolies. Robert T. Lincoln, secretary of war, was a Grant man before the convention of 1880, but was appointed chiefly because of the tradition that he represented. William H. Hunt, who began life as a Southern Whig, became secretary of the navy. The selection of Wayne MacVeagh of Philadelphia as attorney-general involved an interesting situation, since he was at once a vigorous anti-Cameronian in Pennsylvania politics, and a son-in-law of old Simon Cameron. MacVeagh was known as a reformer, and was angered when Garfield named for assistant attorney- general William E. Chandler, a warm partisan of Blaine. Chandler, however, failed of confirmation by the Senate. Thomas L. James of New York, a Conkling man, had been postmaster of New York City, and became postmaster-general with a suspicion already lodged in his mind that the postal service needed purification. Senator Samuel J. Kirkwood of Iowa took the Interior department.

The doubts that had kept the "Stalwarts" lukewarm during the canvass, and had impelled Conkling to minatory counsels after election, were intensified as the winter of 1881 advanced. On February 11, with Arthur in the chair and Grant among those present, a commemorative dinner was given at Delmonico's in New York to Stephen W. Dorsey [q.v.]; and at this it was made to appear that to him as secretary of the national committee was due the credit for the victory of the Garfield ticket. His sharp strategy in carrying Indiana was specially commended. But Garfield's recognition of the "Stalwarts" was less than they expected, or at least desired. On March 23 he sent to the Senate a long list of minor nominees, including men of his own choice for the difficult New York custom-house posts that had occasioned Hayes so much trouble. Conkling took this as an open declaration of war against his friends, and as a violation of pledges that had been given him as the price of his support. He relied upon "senatorial courtesy" to accomplish the rejection of the distasteful nominees, advancing once more the theory that had been fought out with Hayes, that federal appointments within a state must be personally acceptable to the senator from that state. Garfield met the issue with more stubbornness than he usually displayed, telling John Hay, "They may take him [Robertson, the nominee for collector of the port] out of the Senate head first or feet first; I will never withdraw him" (New York Tribune, January 11, 1882).

The political battle soon shifted to the Post-Office Department, where Garfield and James had inherited a corrupt situation of old standing. The practise had been allowed to develop whereby rings of contractors in Washington received as lowest bidders scores of "star routes"-where the mails were carried by stage or rider rather than by railroad or steamboat. They then sublet the actual performance to local carriers, whom they paid what the service was worth, and by collusion later secured an unwarranted increase in the compensation to themselves. Ex-Senator Dorsey was heavily involved in "star route" contracts, as was the second assistant postmaster-general, Thomas J. Brady, in whose office the compensations were arranged. An investigation of Brady's work was under way in 1880 when he had asked for a deficiency appropriation of about $1,700,000. It h ad for a time appeared that the attacks were only the usual Democratic nagging of a Republican administration; but James brought to Garfield a report from the field workers of the department that uncovered more scandal than could be denied or concealed. Brady was dismissed on April 20, 1881, and a list of ninety-three suspected "star routes" was given to the press (Annual Report of the Postmaster-General, 1881, pp. 467, 516). The dismissal of Brady and the incidental involvement of Dorsey in charges of fraud came while the Senate was delaying the confirmation of the appointees of March 23. Attempts were made to scare off the investigation, by suggestion s that Garfield knew all about the frauds, had connived at them, and had been aware that a share of the plunder had found its way to the Republican campaign fund which Dorsey had administered so skilfully the preceding summer. (Much of Dorsey's campaign correspondence was printed by him in the New York Herald, December 18, 1882.) The reply of Garfield to this intimidation was to direct the preparation of the cases to be brought against the conspirators, and to withdraw all other nominations for New York positions except those for the custom-house, so as to emphasize his determination to maintain the independence of the president in matters of appointment. On M ay 4, however, a letter written August 23, 1880, was made public (New York Herald, May 5, 1881), showing that Garfield had th en inquired of Jay A. Hubbell, chairman of the Republican congressional campaign committee, how the departments were doing, and expressed the hope that Brady would help as much as possible.

It had been easier for opponents of Garfield to delay action on his appointments because the control of the Senate was insecure for several weeks after the inauguration. Accordingly, the Republican caucus, anxious not to break with the President and not to lose the aid of the votes influenced by Conkling, proceeded slowly in determining party policy. The public reactions respecting the "star route" frauds, and party bosses, and the hobbling theory that underlay Conkling's demand, determined the outcome of the contest. When it became quite clear that Garfield would not surrender, the caucus agreed to confirm. Conkling, with his New York colleague as trailer, resigned his seat upon the issue, and appealed to the New York legislature for a vindication which he did not receive. The two New York vacancies again threw the control of the Senate in doubt, but they transferred the turmoil from Washington to Albany, and gave to Garfield a release from the excitement and pressure that he had been under for two months. He now allowed Blaine to show the hand of the administration in foreign matters, issuing a call for a conference of the American republics to meet in Washington in 1882, and taking up where Hayes and Evarts had left it the contention with England that the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850 was no longer adequate (Alice F. Tyler, The Foreign Policy of James G. Blaine, 1927, pp. 38-41, 165).

Before either of these matters could be pushed to a conclusion, there came an enforced hiatus in the administration. On July 2, while at the Washington railroad station en route for a northern trip and a visit to his college, Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guiteau, an erratic if not crazy lawyer and a disappointed office-seeker, who declared loudly that his was a political crime, that he was a "Stalwart" and wanted Arthur to be president. For eleven weeks Garfield was nursed at the White House, and then at Elberon, New Jersey, a summer resort where his family was in residence. The official bulletins from his physicians were numerous, but hardly revealed from day to day whether he was incapacitated or not, in the meaning of the Constitution. He never left his sick-bed, however; and on September 19, 1881, he died. The friends of the murdered President raised a handsome fund for the support of his widow and the five children who survived him. One of the latter, James Rudolph Garfield, was to have a distinguished career in politics, serving as secretary of the interior from 1907 to 1909; a second, Harry Augustus Garfield, became president of Williams College and United States fuel administrator during the World War.

Garfield's tragic death silenced the voice of criticism and gave the tone to many laudatory biographies. Not enough of his administration had been revealed for any estimate of it to be possible. He had failed to bring about the harmony that both good nature and selfish interest had urged him to attempt. Whether he could have managed to rule without "Stalwart" support is uncertain. Up to the moment of his accidental nomination for the presidency his career, to an unusual degree, resembles that of a typical successful parliamentary leader in a country possessing responsible government and the cabinet system. He would in England have been in line for Downing Street and the office of premier. In the United States such talents as his could obtain their chance ori.ly by accident.

[In addition to the Congressional Record, where the speeches of Garfield's Jong career are to be found, and to the newspapers which gave him abundant space, and to his obituaries, among which the address by James G. Blaine in the hall of the House of Representatives, February 27, 1882, Congressional Record, 47 Congress, 1 Session, p. 1465, is the most distinguished, there are many eulogistic biographies of the campaign type. Probably the best of these is Burke A. Hinsdale, The Republican Text-Book for the Campaign of 1880: A Full History of General James A. Garfield's Public Life (1880). Garfield's speeches were collected by Hinsdale and published as The Works of James Abram Garfield (2 volumes, 1882-83). The personal papers, which Garfield preserved in great number, were carefully arranged immediately after his death but were not worked over for nearly a generation, when they were entrusted to Prof. Theodore C. Smith, of Williams College. They include extensive diaries and a large collection of letters. The resulting biography by Professor Smith, The Life and Letters of James Abram Garfield (2 volumes, 1925), one of the best presidential biographies in existence, is adequate for all reasonable needs.]

F. L. P-n.



GEARY, JOHN WHITE (December 30, 1819- February 8, 1873), soldier, territorial governor of Kansas, governor of Pennsylvania, was born near Mount Pleasant, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, the son of Richard and Margaret (White) Geary. His father, a descendant of a Shropshire family one of whose members had originally settled in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, had been an ironmaster, but he had failed at this business and had sought to support his family by keeping a school. When John was a student at Jefferson College, Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, his father died, leaving him an accumulation of debts. He was forced to leave college, temporarily at least, and his career for the next few years was varied; he taught school, was a clerk in a store, studied civil engineering and law, was admitted to the bar, and went to Kentucky on a surveying expedition. While in the Blue-Grass state he was sufficiently successful in land speculation to pay off his father's debts. His engineering experience then brought him a position as assistant superintendent and engineer of the Allegheny Portage Railroad.

Geary had been interested in military affairs for more than ten years and when but sixteen had been appointed a lieutenant in the militia. At the outbreak of the Mexican War he was captain of the "American Highlanders" attached to the "Cambria Legion" and he and his comp any volunteered, joining the 2nd Pennsylvania Infantry at Pittsburgh, where he was elected lieutenant-colonel. The regiment arrived at Vera Cruz April 11, 1847, via New Orleans and the Lobos Islands and participated in Scott's advance to the city of Mexico. Since Colonel Roberts, commander of  the regiment, was in bad health much of the time, Geary h ad the responsibility of directing maneuvers. In the attack on Chapultepec he led the assault upon the fortress, and he was placed in charge of this work upon its capture. After the capture of the city he remained there on duty until the end of the war, being elected colonel of his regiment on the death of Roberts.

When President Polk was called upon to organize California he chose Geary to establish the postal service, and on January 22, 1849, appointed him postmaster of San Francisco and mail agent for the Pacific Coast. Geary and his wife, Margaret Ann Logan, whom he had married in 1843, arrived in San Francisco in April, but as President Polk had been succeeded by President Taylor, the new postmaster had hardly begun his service when his Whig successor arrived. He was not at a loss for employment, however, for within eight days he was elected "first alcalde" of San Francisco. Shortly the military governor, Brigadier-General Riley, appointed him "judge of first instance." Occupying these offices, he was the chief civil officer of the city, executive and judicial, and when American forms were adopted, in 1850, he became the first mayor. He was active in making California a free state and was chairman of the Democratic Territorial Committee. Since Mrs. Geary's health was failing, however, he returned with her to his Pennsylvania farm in 1852 and after her death the next year he remained in his old home.

Geary declined President Pierce's offer of the governorship of Utah, but when Kansas fell into anarchy he accepted the governorship of that territory. He was well qualified for the difficult post, for his whole person commanded respect. He was six feet five and a half inches tall, well built, and carried himself with military precision. Furthermore, he had been promised the full military support of the government. When he arrived in Kansas, September 9, 1856, he found a condition of virtual civil war, because the contending forces had been confident that the army bill would fail in Congress and thus make necessary the withdrawal of federal troops from the Territory. The bill had passed, however, and Geary's first act was to disband the pro-slavery militia which his immediate predecessor had called out. He then proceeded to substitute United States troops, organize his own militia, and arrest an irregular band of free-state sympathizers. ·within three weeks marked by vigorous activity he could report "Peace now reigns in Kansas," in time to give this message sufficiently wide circulation to aid in Buchanan's election. Geary continued his vigorous activities as impartially as he could, endeavoring to protect Kansas from both factions. Becoming convinced that Lecompte the chief justice, Clarke the Indian agent, and Donalson the marshal, were flagrantly pro-slavery, he asked the President to remove them. Pierce did so and the enmity of the pro-slavery group focused itself upon the Governor. He got along fairly well, however, until the meeting of the legislature, January 12, 1857. This body was overwhelmingly pro-slavery and acted in open hostility to the Governor, automatically disregarding his vetoes. His life was threatened, a seeming attempt to assassinate him failed, and his secretary was beaten and then arrested for murder. Just as these things occurred, General Persifer F. Smith declared himself unable or unwilling to supply Geary with more troops, and a letter arrived from William L. Marcy, secretary of state, asking Geary to explain some discrepancies between his charges and Lecompte's reply; in the meantime as the Senate had not confirmed the appointment of Lecompte's successor, the judge was still serving. This cumulation of difficulties discouraged Geary, and on March 4 he resigned, straightway leaving the Territory and going to Washington to report to Buchanan.

Four years of retirement on his Westmoreland farm, during which he married Mrs. Mary (Church) Henderson in 1858, were broken by the guns of Sumter. When the news of that event reached Geary's locality he set up a recruiting office immediately and in a few days was made colonel of the 28th Pennsylvania. He was ordered to Harper’s Ferry, where on October 16, 1861, he was under fire at Bolivar Heights and was wounded. The next March he captured Leesburg, and shortly thereafter he was made brigadier- general. Badly wounded at Cedar Mountain, August 9, 1862, he had to return to his home for a while, but he was back in command of a division at Chancellorsville and distinguished himself at Gettysburg. In the fall of 1863 he was sent with the XII Corps under Hooker to join Grant in Tennessee and was active in the operations there culminating at Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge; at Wauhatchie, October 28, 1863, he participated in a sharp engagement in which his son was killed. He accompanied Sherman on his famous march to the sea, was military governor of Savannah after its capture, and shortly before the end of the war was made major-general by brevet.

After the Civil War, Pennsylvania politics were marked by a struggle between Curtin and Cameron for control of the National Union or Republican party. Shrewdly realizing the advantages of Geary's military fame and his wide popularity, Cameron's forces made Geary, now a Republican, the party candidate for governor and elected him. He served two terms, from January 15, 1867, to January 21, 1873. Supremely self. confident, he pursued his downright, opinionated way and had many a battle with the legislature; of 9,242 bills passed he vetoed 390. He was active in trying to reduce the debt of the state and in safeguarding the treasury; toward the latter end he sought to promote a plan for lending state funds to private enterprise so that large balances might earn money for the state and not prove tempting to the treasurer. He sought in vain to persuade the legislature to adopt a more careful and orderly procedure, and successfully recommended the calling of a state constitutional convention. He advocated a general railroad law, the regulation of insurance, state control of gas companies, protection against accident in the mines, and safeguards for the public health, but on the other hand urged that taxes be shifted from business to land, especially because th is change would aid Pennsylvania business in its competition with that of other states. His headstrong and erratic course, often marred by violent fits of temper, won him a number of enemies, and he barely escaped defeat at the end of his first term, but the state machine and his own popularity, especially with the veterans, saved him. He acquired presidential ambitions as 1872 approached, and in the Labor Reform convention of that year he led on the first b allot but was defeated by David Davis. Within three weeks after his retirement from the governorship he was suddenly stricken and died.

[The most authoritative sketch of Geary is that in Lives of the Governors of Pennsylvania (1872), by Wm. C. Armor, who was closely associated with him. Memorial Addresses on the Death of Governor John W. Geary (1873) and In Memoriam (Phila., 1873) contain some biographical material. His secretary, John H. Gihon, prepared an account, Governor Geary's Administration in Kans. (1857), which is largely a series of quotations from his official records. These are found completely published in Trans. Kansas State History Society, volumes IV and V (1890, 1896). See also A Sketch of the Early Life ... of Major General John W. Geary, Candidate of the National Union Party for Governor of Pennsylvania (1866); Inaugurals and Messages of General John W. Geary, 1867-73 (n.d.); Daily Patriot (Harrisburg, Pa.), February 10, 1873. His diary kept during the Mexican War, his scrap-books, and a few papers are in the possession of his family.]

R.F.N.



GIBBON, JOHN (April 20, 1827-February 6, 1896), soldier, was born near Holmesburg, Pennsylvania, now within the boundaries of the city of Philadelphia, the third son of Dr. John Heysham Gibbon who upon attaining his majority dropped the final "s" from his family name, and of Catharine (Lardner) Gibbon. A few years later, Dr. Gibbon removed with his family to Charlotte, North Carolina, and it was from that state that young Gibbon received his appointment to the United States Military Academy in 1842. Graduating in 1847, he was commissioned in the artillery and sent to duty in Mexico, where, however, active operations had ceased before his arrival. He had a taste of Indian warfare in Florida in 1849, against the Seminoles, followed by garrison duty in the West and five years at West Point, teaching artillery practise. Here he prepared The Artillerist's Manual, adopted by the War Department in 1859 and published in 1860. On October 16, 1855, he married Frances North Moale, daughter of Samuel Moale of Baltimore. He had been promoted first lieutenant in 1850. He was now (1859) promoted captain, and joined his battery in Utah, whence he marched back to Fort Leavenworth a few months later, at the beginning of the Civil War. Though a Southerner by adoption, and though three of his brothers joined the Confederate army, he remained loyal to the Union. He was ordered to Washington in October 1861 and served for some months as chief of artillery of McDowell's Division. He seems to have had a natural talent for dealing with the volunteer soldier, whose possibilities, as well as limitations, he appreciated from the first; and his success during the period of organization and training brought him appointment as brigadier-general of volunteers, May 2, 1862, and assignment to the command of what later became famous as the "Iron Brigade." He led it at the second battle of Bull Run, at South Mountain, and at Antietam, and was then advanced to the command of a division. At Fredericksburg he was severely wounded, and was absent from duty for more than three months. He was again wounded on the third day at Gettysburg, in which battle he commanded the II Corps twice when General Hancock was temporarily ordered to another part of the field. After his recovery he commanded a draft depot until he was able to rejoin the army in the field, in the spring of 1864. As a division commander he took part in all the heavy fighting of the Army of the Potomac that year-the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and the rest. He was promoted major-general of volunteers, June 7, 1864. After the fight at Reams's Station, in August, he issued an order depriving three regiments, whose colors had been captured, of the privilege of carrying colors until they should regain it by their behavior in future battles. In this action he was sustained by his superiors, but it caused considerable controversy, both in and out of the army, which was ended only upon the restoration of their colors to all three regiments in recognition of their gallant conduct at Hatcher's Run, in October (Official Records, Army, 1 series, XLII, part 3, pp. 493-500, 542-44). In January 1865, he was given the new XXIV Corps, in the Army of the James, commanded it in the final operations against Lee's army, and was one of the commissioners designated to arrange the details of the surrender. He was mustered out of the volunteer service, January 15, 1866, and appointed colonel of one of the new regiments of infantry of the regular army, July 28, 1866. His service after the Civil War was chiefly in the West, and included much Indian fighting. He commanded the expedition, in 1876, which rescued the survivors of Custer's command and buried the dead at Little Bighorn. In 1877, after a march of 250 miles he attacked and defeated the Nez Perce Indians under Chief Joseph, whose fast friend he afterward became. He was made brigadier-general, July 10, 1885. As commander of the Department of the Columbia he was called upon (1885-86) to maintain the peace during the threatened anti-Chinese outbreak in Seattle (C. B. Bagley, History of Seattle, 1916, II, 455-77). In 1885 he wrote his Personal Recollections of the Civil War, which remained in manuscript until 1928. "They are written in a straightforward, frank, soldierly fashion and tell only what the writer himself saw" (American Historical Review, January 1929). In 1891 he retired from active service. He died at Baltimore, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. At the time of his death he was commander-in-chief of the Loyal Legion.

[G. W. Cullum, Biographical Register (3rd ed., 1891), II, 323- 24, and IV, 71; Association Graduates U. S. Military Academy, Annual Reunion, 1896; Official Records (Army), series I, volumes XII (part 2), XIX (part 1), XXI, XXV (parts 1, 2), XXVII (parts 1, 3), XXXVI (parts 1, 2, 3), XL (parts 1, 2, 3), XLII (parts 1, 2, 3), XLVI (parts 1, 2, 3), LI (part 1); I. R. Pennypacker, " Military Historians and History," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biographical, January 1929; Evening Star (Washington, D. C.), February 7, 1896; editorial in Portland Oregonian, February 8, 1896; family history from Miss Frances M. Gibbon, daughter of General Gibbon.]

T. M. S.



GILLMORE, QUINCY ADAMS (February 28, 1825-April 7, 1888), soldier, military engineer, came of Scotch-Irish ancestry, his forebears having emigrated to Massachusetts in the early part of 1700. His grandfather, Edmund Gillmore, moved from Massachusetts to Lorain County, Ohio, in the year 1770, and there his father, Quartus Gillmore, was born in 1790. At Black River, Lorain County, young Gillmore was born, his mother being Elizabeth Reid. He was given the rudiments of an education at home, then in his fourteenth year he was sent to the Norwalk Academy where he was noted for his proficiency in mathematics. After teaching school for three years, and attending the Elyria high school for two summers, he won an appointment to West Point through his fine scholarship, and was graduated at the head of his class in 1849. He was immediately commissioned second lieutenant of Engineers. His early duties included the construction of fortifications at Hampton Roads, Virginia, and service at West Point as assistant instructor of practical military engineering, as well as treasurer and quartermaster of the Academy. He was also, for a time, in charge of the Engineer District of New York City. He was promoted first lieutenant, July 1, 1856, and captain, August 6, 1861.

Gillmore's Civil War service was brilliant. He was chief engineer of the Port Royal Expedition, 1861-62, being in the engagement at Hiltonhead, South Carolina, November 7, 1861, and in command of the troops investing Fort Pulaski, Georgia, April 10-11, 1862. For gallant and meritorious services in the capture of this fort, he was brevetted lieutenant-colonel. On April 28, 1862, he was promoted brigadier-general of volunteer; and until April 1863 commanded various areas in Kentucky and West Virginia. On March 30, 1863, he defeated General Pegram at Somerset, Kentucky, and was brevetted colonel for gallantry. From June 12, 1863, until late in the same year, he commanded the X Army Corps and the Department of the South-having been promoted major-general of volunteers, July 10, 1863; and was engaged in important offensives against Charleston, South Carolina, the reduction of Morris Island, and the taking of Fort Sumter. Early in 1864 he was transferred with his corps to the James River, where he took part in the engagements near Bermuda Hundred (May 5-June 17), the battle of Drewry's Bluff (May 13-16), and the reconnoissances before Petersburg (June 9). In the summer of the same year, while defending the city of Washington against General Early's raid, Gillmore was seriously injured by a fall from his horse. During his convalescence his services were utilized as president of the board of testing Ames's wrought-iron cannon, and in an inspection of fortifications from Cairo, Illinois, to Pensacola, Florida. In the following year he commanded the Department of the South, resigning his volunteer commission on December 5, 1865. For gallant services in the capture of Fort Wagner, he was brevetted brigadier-general, March 13, 1865; and for similar service in the assault on Morris Island, major-general in the regular army.

After the termination of the Civil War, Gillmore served on many important boards and commissions. Perhaps his most important service was as president of the Mississippi River Commission (1879). He was the author of a number of professional books and treatises, most of which were published by the Corps of Engineers: Official Report to the United States Engineer Department, of the Siege and Reduction of Fort Pulaski, Georgia (1862); Practical Treatise on Limes, Hydraulic Cements, and Mortars (1803); Engineer and Artillery Operations Against the Defenses of Charleston Harbor in 1863 (1865); Report on Beton-Agglomere; or, Coignet-Beton (1871); Report on the Compressive Strength, Specific Gravity, and Ratio of Absorption of Various Kinds of Building-Stone (1874); Practical Treatise on Roads, Streets, and Pavements (1876); Report on Experiments with the Seely and Bethell Processes for the Preservation of Timber (1879); and Notes on the Compressive Resistance of Freestone, Brick Piers, Hydraulic Cements, Mortars, and Concretes (1888). He gained wide reputation as an artillerist as well as an engineer through his successful use of rifled cannon for breaching masonry walls at Fort Pulaski during the Civil War, causing a sensation throughout the world in proving many modern fortifications vulnerable to artillery. He died at Brooklyn, New York, leaving a widow, formerly Mrs. Bragg, and four sons by a former wife, Mary Isabella O'Maher, whom he married immediately after graduation from West Point. Interment was at West Point, with high military honors.

[Gillmore's services are outlined in General Orders No. 5, Headquarters Corps of Engineers, April 10, 1888, printed in and supplemented by a sketch in the Annual Reunion, Association Graduates U.S. Military Academy, June 11, 1888. See also Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, volume IV (1888); the Army and Navy Journal, April 14, 1888; G. W. Cullum, Biographical Register ... U. S. Military Academy, II (ed. 1891), 367-70; New York Times, April 8, 1888. Information as to certain facts was supplied by Gillmore's grandson, General Q. A. Gillmore, New York City.]

C. D. R.



GRANGER, GORDON (November 6, 1822-January 10, 1876), Union soldier, was born in Joy, Wayne County, New York, the son of Gaius and Catherine (Taylor) Granger. He was descended from Launcelot Granger, a taxpayer at Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1648. Entering West Point in 1841, he was graduated in 1845 and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the 2nd Infantry, but a year later was transferred to the newly organized Regiment of Mounted Riflemen (now the 3rd Cavalry). Accompanying Scott's army in the Mexican War, he was present at the siege of Vera Cruz, the battles of Cerro Gordo, Contreras, Churubusco, and Chapultepec, and the taking of the city of Mexico. His subsequent service before the Civil War was practically all on the western frontier, involving some minor Indian hostilities. He was promoted first lieutenant in 1852 and captain in 1861. He fought at Wilson's Creek in August 1861, and his conduct there secured him appointment in September as colonel of the 2nd Michigan Cavalry. In the operations against New Madrid and Island No. 10 during the spring of 1862 and in the advance upon Corinth, he commanded a brigade, having been appointed brigadier-general of volunteers early in the campaign (March 26, 1862). He was made major-general of volunteers, September 17, 1862, and commanded a division in garrison and in minor operations in Kentucky and Tennessee until the summer of 1863, when he joined Rosecrans army for the campaign which culminated in the battle of Chickamauga (September 19 and 20). "Had Granger never rendered any other service to the nation than he did on that illustrious occasion," said General T. J. Wood, "he would have been justly entitled to its lasting gratitude"; and General G. W. Cullum adds, "Granger's heroic bravery on that momentous Sunday afternoon in its inspiring influence was worth a thousand men." When the whole right of the Union army was swept away, leaving Thomas, the "Rock of Chickamauga," precariously holding the position with his single corps, Granger, without orders, left the pass he was guarding several miles in the rear, and hurried forward with all available troops. Attacking furiously with two brigades he drove back the Confederate troops on the right, who were already closing around Thomas's corps. Between three o'clock and sunset those two brigades lost forty-four per cent. of their strength; some regiment s, muskets empty and cartridge boxes empty, were at last fighting only with the bayonet; but Thomas held his ground till nightfall, the army was saved from total wreck, and to Granger belongs no small share of the credit. During the remainder of the operations around Chattanooga, including the battle of Missionary Ridge, he commanded the IV Corps. He commanded sometimes a corps and sometimes a division in the relief of Knoxville, the operations against Fort Gaines and Fort Morgan, Alabama (August 1864), and the taking of Mobile (April 1865). He was mustered out of the volunteer service on January 15, 1866, appointed a colonel of infantry in the regular army on July 28, 1866, and served as such until his death, which took place ten years later at Santa Fe, where he was stationed in command of the District of New Mexico. In 1869 he married Maria, daughter of Dr. Joseph P. Letcher of Lexington, Kentucky. Granger was outspoken and rough in manner, kindly and sympathetic at heart. His independence occasionally came near to insubordination, and at ordinary times he lacked energy. It was only in dire emergency that he would show the b est of which he was capable. Therefore, "great in battle" (General Rosecrans' s phrase) though he was, Grant distrusted him, and was unwilling to give him an important command. Chickamauga is his greatest glory.

[G. W. Cullum, Biographical Register (3rd ed., 1891), II, 237; J. N. Granger, Launce at Granger of Newbury, Massachusetts, and Suffield, Connecticut: A Genealogical History (1893); General T. J. Wood in Seventh Annual Reunion Association Graduates U.S. Military Academy (1876), p. 55; Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (1887-88), volume III; Archibald Gracie, The Truth About Chickamauga (1911); Official Records (Army), 1 series, volumes III, VIII, X (part 1), XVI (part 1), XXIII (part 1), XXX (parts 1, 2), XXXI (parts 1, 2), XXXIX (part 1); Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), January 11, 12, 13, 1876.]

T. M. S.



GRANT, ULYSSES SIMPSON (April 27, 1822-July 23, 1885), general of the armies, president of the United States, was the descendant of a long line of hard-working, undistinguished Grants, of whom the earliest in America, Matthew Grant, landed in Massachusetts with his wife, Priscilla, in 1630. The progeny of this Puritan clung to New England until Captain Noah Grant, having served throughout the Revolution, emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1790 and later to Ohio. The Captain's second son, Jesse Root Grant, learned the trade of tanner and established himself at Point Pleasant, Ohio, where in 1821 he married Hannah Simpson, the daughter of a farmer. She had youth, strength, and health, and stood in need of them during the years of hard work and meager comforts that followed. In their little two-roomed frame cabin the future president was born. He was baptized Hiram Ulysses Grant. His youth was spent at Georgetown, Ohio, whither the family moved when he was a year old.

From his mother he seems to have inherited many of the traits that distinguished him. She was a silent, undemonstrative, religious woman, of great common sense and good judgment. The father, Jesse Grant, was an aggressive, hardworking person whose shrewdness and thrift were rewarded, in the passage of time, by business successes. Almost entirely self-taught, he desired for his children the educational opportunities that had been denied him. From the time he was six years old until he was seventeen, young Ulysses regularly attended school, but this did not exempt him from labor. Detesting the tannery, he was set to work on his father's farm. Like many silent people, the boy had no difficulty in understanding and in securing the obedience of dumb animals. His love of horses amounted to a passion. At seven he was hauling. wood with a team; at eleven he was strong enough to hold a plow; thereafter, until seventeen, he writes, "I did all the work done with horses" (Personal Memoirs, I, 26). During these years he developed the qualities that later marked him-fearlessness, self-reliance, resourcefulness, determination. In person he was rather short but sturdy and well-muscled; he was modest, reticent, clean-minded, and did not use profanity; he abhorred hunting and the taking of animal life.

In the winter of 1838-39, Jesse Grant applied for and received for his son an appointment to the United States Military Academy. The information roused no enthusiasm in the boy. In due time, however, he departed and, after several wonderful days in Philadelphia and New York, registered at West Point as Ulysses Hiram Grant. He had transposed his given names, fearing that his initials " H. U. G." would make him an object of ridicule. At West Point he was informed that his congressman had reported his name as Ulysses Simpson Grant. Failing to obtain a correction from the authorities, he accepted uncomplainingly the designation bestowed upon him (Edmonds, post, pp. 35-37; Wilson, post, pp. 7, 21-22). No high lights marked Grant's four years at West Point. Throughout this time he held a place near the middle of his class, though his work in mathematics was above average. As a rider he had no peer among the cadets, but in other respects he was colorless. Quiet, unobtrusive, as tidy as necessary, " Sam" Grant sought neither honors nor popularity. He had no intention of remaining in the army.

Upon graduation in June 1843, the best rider at West Point requested a commission in the cavalry but, as there was no vacancy in that arm, he reported for duty with the 4th Infantry. He served two years in Missouri and Louisiana, and in September 1845 joined General Taylor's small but efficient army at Corpus Christi, Texas. Later it moved to the Rio Grande River where a conflict with the Mexica ns occurred. "With the Mexican War, Grant was never in sympathy (Personal Memoirs, I, 53). Nevertheless, he took part actively in all of Taylor's battles except the last, Buena Vista. At Monterey he participated, as the only mounted man, in the charge of his regiment and repeatedly distinguished himself, making at one time a dash, mounted, through the city held by the enemy to obtain ammunition for the troops. For Taylor, Grant conceived a great admiration (Ibid., I, 100). He saw this rough and ready Indian fighter, individualized by bluntness, lack of ostentation, and by the uniform success of his operations, advance from a seat in the saddle to the president's chair. Unconsciously perhaps, he seems to have patterned his own habits and dress on those of Taylor (Coolidge, post, p. 30). After Monterey, Grant, with his regiment, was transferred to General Scott's army) and as regimental quartermaster made the long march from Vera Cruz to Mexico city. He took part in the hand-to-hand fighting at Molino del Rey and in the attack on the gates of the capital city, receiving mention in division orders and in brigade and regimental reports for bravery. From the war Grant emerged a first lieutenant and brevet captain, but no less averse to a military life than he had always been.

As soon as his regiment was settled in its new station in Mississippi he obtained leave and, on August 22, 1848, married Julia Dent, to whom he had become engaged shortly after graduation. The wedding journey ended at his new station, Sackett's Harbor, New York, where the southern bride with unimpaired cheerfulness made the best of a northern winter. The year 1852 witnessed his departure with his regiment for the Pacific coast by way of the Isthmus of Panama, a region so infested with disease that Mrs. Grant, who in 1850 had given birth to a son, did not make the journey. The transit of the Isthmus was a nightmare. Mules could not be obtained. Delays occurred. Cholera broke out and many died: Grant, the quartermaster, buried the dead, cheered the living, and by his energy and resourcefulness prevented a greater loss of life. From the mushroom, San Francisco, the regiment was ordered to Fort Vancouver, near the present city of Portland. Here Grant remained until September 1853, when promotion to a captaincy took him to Humboldt Bay, California. No place more dreary than this tiny frontier settlement can be imagined. With little to do, lonely as only the inarticulate can be lonely, hungry for his wife and children whom he saw no prospect of supporting on his pay, Grant at times drank more than he should have done (Coolidge, p. 35; Edmonds, p. 74; Meade, post, II, 162-63; W. C. Church, in Army & Navy Journal, June 6, 1908). A warning from his commanding officer was followed by his resignation, which was promptly accepted by Jefferson Davis, then secretary of war (Old Records Section, Adjutant General's Office).

In July 1854, after eleven years of service, Grant was out of the army, out of money, without an occupation, and a long way from home. Late in August he joined his family in St. Louis. In the six years that followed he was successively farmer, real-estate agent, candidate for county engineer, and clerk in a custom house. In none of these occupations was he successful. Finally, after a visit to his father, he was given a clerkship in a leather store conducted by two of his brothers at Galena, Illinois. He did not, however, remain very long. The turn in the tide had arrived. Following the bombardment of Fort Sumter in April 1861 and Lincoln's call for volunteers, Grant presided at a mass-meeting in Galena: He declined the captaincy of a company but announced that a war would find him in the service.

There followed a period of about six weeks during which he strove without success to find in the military hierarchy a place that befitted his training and experience. He was successively drillmaster of the Galena company, clerk in the state adjutant-general's office, and mustering officer. He wrote to the adjutant-general at Washington requesting the command of a regiment but never received a reply. He spent two futile days in Cincinnati cooling his heels in the outer office of George B. McClellan, then considered the coming man. Finally, in June, Governor Yates appointed him colonel of the 21st Illinois Volunteers. In a few days Grant had the regiment in camp at Springfield, hard at work. In a month it was ordered to Mexico, Missouri, where, in August, much to Grant's surprise, he was appointed brigadier-general (Personal Memoirs, I, 254; Wilson, p. 86; Woodward, post, p. 189).

In 1861 Illinois and the states west of the Mississippi constituted what was known as the Western Department, under the command of Major General John C. Fremont. The latter, in September, placed the new brigadier in charge of a district with headquarters at Cairo, Illinois. Throughout the next two months recruits poured in until Grant had nearly 20,000 men. The Confederate General Polk had converted Columbus, Kentucky, about twenty miles south of Cairo, into a strong fortification which controlled the traffic on the Mississippi. Across the river lay Belmont, a Confederate camp. Early in November, Fremont directed Grant to make a demonstration down the river toward Columbus. By converting this demonstration into an attack on Belmont, Grant nearly ruined a promising career. Having defeated the enemy on landing, his 3,100 boisterous recruits got out of hand and began to loot the captured camp. Meanwhile the Belmont garrison, reenforced from Columbus, had been rallied and interposed between the Union troops and their boats. Grant fired the tents to regain the attention of his men. They reformed, forced their way through the enemy, and, under heavy Confederate fire, piled pell-mell into the boats which hastily pulled out. Their commander was the last to embark (Badeau, post,.pp. 17-18; Personal Memoirs, I, 273,279; Battles and Leaders, I, 351).

At this time the Confederates under General Albert Sidney Johnston held the West Tennessee border and protected their great supply depot at Nashville by a line from Bowling Green, Kentucky, westward to Columbus. The flanks were strongly held, but the center was lightly guarded by Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River and Fort Henry on the Tennessee. Grant proposed to General Henry W. Halleck, who had succeeded Fremont, the capture of Fort Henry (Personal Memoirs. I, 287). He purposed to penetrate Johnston's vulnerable center, capture the forts, and cut in two the enemy's forces. In making this proposal, he was probably unaware that, since November 1861, General Buell at Louisville had repeatedly urged upon both McClellan and Halleck, without success, a similar movement in connection with a land movement against Nashville (Official Records, Army, I series, VII, 451, 457, 487, 520, 527, 53 I). The recurrence of these recommendations caused Halleck to study the situation. Appreciating that the capture of the forts would cause the abandonment of Columbus, a place too strong to attack, he acceded to Grant's second request of January 28, in which Commodore A. H. Foote [q.v.] joined (Official Records, Army, I series, VII, 121; Badeau, p. 27; Wilson, pp. 103-04; Woodward, p. 215).

Preceded by gunboats, the expedition of 17,000 men started up the Tennessee five days later. Fort Henry surrendered to the gunboats, whereupon two of them steamed twelve miles upstream and destroyed the Memphis and Ohio bridge. Donelson, twelve miles eastward, was Grant's next objective. Heavy rains delayed his start until February 12, but by the 13th his army had invested the fort, then held by about 17,000 men. Foote attacked with the gunboats on the 14th, but was so roughly handled that he withdrew. In the freezing dawn of February 15, Grant, at the request of the wounded Foote, boarded the flagship for a conference. While this was in progress the Confederates attacked heavily and by 9:00 A. M. had driven back and broken the Union right and most of the center. The road was open for their escape.

While returning to his headquarters from the flagship, Grant was informed of the situation. A gallop along the line determined his conduct. With his right and center in confusion, he decided, with rare courage, to attack with his left. His order to General C. F. Smith to assault at once was magnificently executed. By nightfall the Union troops had possession of the entire outer line of Confederate trenches. The fate of the garrison was sealed. General Simon B. Buckner on the following morning requested an armistice. Grant replied: "No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works" (Badeau, p. 48). So Buckner, who in 1854 had loaned Grant the money to rejoin his family (Wilson, pp. 77-78; Coolidge, p. 37; Edmonds, p. 78), surrendered over 14,000 men to his former classmate. When the telegraph announced this victory, the North became frantic with joy. President Lincoln at once named Grant a major-general of volunteers and the Senate promptly confirmed the nomination.

Buell’s advance into Tennessee with about 37,000 effectives and Grant's control of the Tennessee determined the Confederates to seek a union of their forces south of that river. About 40,000 effectives were concentrated at Corinth, Mississippi, to crush Grant's army before it could be reenforced by Buell. A brief misunderstanding between Halleck and Grant, early in March, resulted in the replacement of the latter by General C. F. Smith. On March 17, Grant was reinstated (Personal Memoirs, I, 327; Badeau, I, 60, 65; Official Records, Army, l series, X, part 2, pp. 3, 5, 6, 15, 17, 32; Woodward, pp. 225-27). While Smith commanded, he took the army up the Tennessee River, established headquarters at Savannah, and began operations for the capture of Corinth. When Grant rejoined, he retained the headquarters at Savannah, for no apparent good reason, and ordered the concentration at Pittsburg Landing of all his forces (about 38,000 men), except General Lew Wallace's division of 5,000 which was left at Crump's Landing, five miles below Pittsburg.

Although both Grant and his chief lieutenant, Sherman, were aware that the numerically superior Confederate army was only twenty-two miles distant, no intrenchments were constructed about the Union camp, no line of defense was established, no adequate system of reconnaissance instituted, no plan of action prepared. From March 17, when Grant reassumed command, to April 6, when Johnston's army attacked, the Union commander was in ignorance of the movements of his foe. Grant says: "When all reinforcements should have arrived I expected to take the initiative by marching on Corinth .... I regarded the campaign ... as an offensive one and had no idea that the enemy would leave strong intrenchments to take the initiative" (Personal Memoirs, I, 332). Less than one and a half miles from Sherman 's headquarters, Johnston's soldiers formed line of battle on the afternoon of April 5, and, without discovery, slept all night on their arms. That afternoon Grant had said: "There will be no fight at Pittsburg Landing; we will have to go to Corinth" (Official Records, Army, 1 series, X, part 1, p. 331). That evening he had sent a telegram to Halleck: "I have scarcely the faintest idea of an attack (general one) being made upon us, but will be prepared should such a thing take place" (Ibid., 4, part r, p. 89). Before 6:00 A. M. on the 6th, the Confederates attacked. Notwithstanding desperate efforts, the Union lines were forced steadily back.

Grant, breakfasting at Savannah nine miles from the battle-field, heard the roar of the guns and hastened to Pittsburg Landing. On the battle-field he rode from division to division, encouraging officers and men, but otherwise exercising no influence on the combat (Personal Memoirs, I, 343). He sent an urgent appeal to Buell and ordered Lew Wallace to march to the battle. Johnston was killed about 2:30 in the afternoon. Beauregard, his successor, issued an order at 5:30, suspending the attack. At this time the leading regiments of Buell's army were moving into position on the heights above the landing to repel Confederate attacks. Grant spent the stormy night of April 6 on the river bank, nursing a swollen ankle. Lew Wallace arrived about 7:00 P. M. on his extreme right. Three divisions of Buell's army took position on the left. With 25,000 fresh men in line, there was no question as to the outcome of the struggle when it opened on the following morning. Resisting stubbornly, the Confederates were driven back all day and by nightfall were in full retreat toward Corinth. There was no pursuit.

No battle fought in the West ranks with Shiloh in severity. No major battle displayed less generalship, and none more courage on the part of the enlisted men. Doubtless, on the night of April 6, Grant, sitting under a tree in the rain, reviewed in his mind the things he had left undone. The results of this mental castigation became evident in the next campaign. In the storm of denunciation that followed, the captor of Donelson offered no excuses. Lincoln refused to relieve him, saying: "I can't spare this man-he fights."

During the remainder of 1862, Grant, at Corinth, devised plans for taking Vicksburg, the capture of which would give the Union army control, not only of the Mississippi, but also of the Confederacy's only remaining railroad leading east from that river. In November, Grant with 30,000 men marched south from Memphis in his first effort to take Vicksburg. Sherman's force was to cooperate by moving clown the Mississippi. Sherman was defeated. Grant's movement was halted when the enemy cut his railroad line of communications and burned his supply depot at Holly Springs, Mississippi. Back again in Memphis, he began on January 20, 1863, the formation of the second expedition. In this, several projects were attempted, all of which contemplated the cutting of waterways for placing the troops, by boats, south of Vicksburg, without encountering the Confederate river batteries.

Convinced, by the end of March, of the impracticability of these schemes, Grant decided to march the army, west of the river, to a point below the fortifications and then transport it by steamers to the eastern bank. Rear Admiral David D. Porter [q. v.] undertook to run the batteries with his iron-clad gunboats and transports and then place them at Grant's disposal. The plan was successfully carried out. On April 30 the invading force, consisting of 20,000 men, landed at Bruinsburg. It was one of the boldest movements in modern warfare (Wilson, p. 169). Abandoning his communications, Grant had placed his numerically inferior force in the heart of a hostile country. Behind him was a wide river controlled above and below his landing place by the enemy; between him and Memphis, his base, were Johnston's and Pemberton's armies. Knowing that he must live off the country he immediately sent out foraging parties. Before the three days' rations carried by his men had been consumed, ample supplies were on hand, and the army did not thereafter lack food.

Shiloh showed Grant at his worst; Vicksburg showed him at his flawless best. He skilfully interposed his army between the forces of Johnston and Pemberton and struck quickly and vigorously. With his right he defeated Johnston and drove him out of Jackson; with his left he defeated Pemberton at Champion's Hill. Pemberton withdrew to the fortifications of Vicksburg on May 20, to emerge therefrom as a prisoner of war. The garrison never had a chance. The surrender took place on July 4, 1863. When, ten days thereafter, Port Hudson fell, the Mississippi was Unionist from source to mouth. The Confederacy was cut in two.

During the months of the campaign, Grant had been denounced by the newspapers and would perhaps have lost the confidence of Lincoln but for the favorable reports of Charles A. Dana [q.v.], who "probably saved Grant's career" (Woodward, pp. 291-93; J. H. Wilson, The Life of Charles A. Dana, 1907, p. 193). Now, after the completion of one of the most brilliant military operations in American history, he was again acclaimed and promoted, this time to major-general in the regular army; and again, as at Corinth, his army was scattered. In September, by Halleck's direction, he ordered four divisions, under Sherman, eastward to cooperate with Rosecrans in the relief of Chattanooga. Before these started, Rosecrans had been badly defeated at Chickamauga and penned in Chattanooga while Bragg, perched on Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain, in control of all approaches waited for the Union army to starve into surrender.

In this plight the Administration turned to Grant. Secretary of War Stanton met him en route to Louisville in October, conferred on him command of all the territory from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi except the southwestern section, and enabled him to replace Rosecrans by Thomas (Personal Memoirs, II, 17-19; Wilson, pp. 184-85). Grant proceeded to Chattanooga, where he found the Union army not only perilously close to starvation but almost without shoes and clothing for the coming winter. Acting on plans that had been prepared before his arrival (Coppee, post, pp. 165-68; Edmonds, p. 197, note; Battles and Leaders, III, 717-18), Grant, within five days, had opened communications with his base at Nashville. The army was soon reclothed, well fed, and supplied with ammunition.

As soon as Sherman arrived at Bridgeport on November 14, Grant fixed November 23 for the execution of his plan for attacking Bragg. Accordingly, Thomas on that day took Orchard Knob, the right of the Confederate outpost line. On the 24th, Hooker captured the point of Lookout Mountain and Sherman seized the extreme right of Missionary Ridge. When, the following morning, Thomas attacked the Confederate center, his men, as directed, captured the first line of rifle pits; then, without orders, in a tremendous burst of patriotic fervor, swept up Missionary Ridge to its summit and drove their enemies from the field. Pursuit begun by Sherman was halted by Grant when Bragg's defeated army, the only obstacle between the Union forces and Atlanta, intrenched at Dalton, Georgia.

A gold medal, the thanks of Congress, and the grade of lieutenant-general, the latter to carry with it the command of the armies of the United States, were bestowed on Grant, together with the adulation of a grateful nation. He was undeniably the man of the hour. Repeatedly urged to become a candidate for the presidency, he invariably refused, stating that he had but one desire-to end the war (Woodward, pp. 307-08; Coolidge, p. 142). Lincoln sent for him, wanting to judge for himself what manner of man Grant was. He saw a short, round-shouldered, rather scrubby-looking man in a-tarnished major-general's uniform, with clear, resolute, blue eyes, a heavy jaw, and an inscrutable face partially covered by rough, light-brown whiskers which served to conceal its strength (Badeau, II, 20; Coolidge, p. 146). Lincoln liked him, believed in him; and remained his steadfast friend. When Grant became general-in-chief, the Union forces stood in need of nothing so much as unity of plan and coordination of effort. The new leader supplied both. For the first time since the beginning of the war a plan of action was prepared that covered the concerted movements of all the Union forces. In his letter of April 4, 1864, to Sherman (Personal Memoirs, II, 130), Grant proposed three simultaneous major movements: that of Meade's Army of the Potomac against Lee's army; that of Butler's Army of the James against Lee's communications and Richmond; that of Sherman's Army of the Tennessee against Johnston's army and Atlanta (Wilson, p. 223). For these he had available about 253,000 men. Grant's policy, to which he consistently adhered, was to use the greatest number of troops practicable against the armed forces of the enemy; to hammer those forces and their resources until by mere attrition, if in no other way, there should be nothing left to them but submission. On May 4 all the armies moved. Throughout the campaigns that followed, Grant, from his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac, kept in touch with them, directing and coordinating their operations toward the common end.

Meade's army crossed the Rapidan and bivouacked the night of May 4 in the Wilderness. Meade hoped to pass its tangled depths before Lee could intercept him, but that alert foe had decided that the Union army should fight in a locale where the ter rain compensated for his weakness. He had 65,000 men to Meade's 118,000. When Meade, early on May 5, moved southward, he was struck in flank by Lee. For two days the opponents, in the desperate battle that ensued, swayed back and forth through the dense forest, without material advantage to either. Undeterred by his appalling losses (17,666, Battles and Leaders, IV, 248), Grant then determined to march by Lee's right flank and interpose between him and Richmond. Sherman called this decision "the supreme moment of his [Grant's] life" (Battles and Leaders, IV, 248). But Lee, informed of the movement, beat his opponent to the objective-Spotsylvania Court House.

At Spotsylvania, after another bloody conflict, and again after North Anna, Grant repeated successfully his tactics of passing by Lee's right. When Lee, however, only twenty miles from Richmond, assumed an intrenched position past Cold Harbor to the Chickahominy, Grant realized that his former tactics would no longer avail, that he must attack Lee in front or abandon the campaign north of the James. A break through Lee's center would probably result in the capture of Richmond and possibly in the disintegration of Lee's army. So Grant attacked at Cold Harbor and lost nearly 6,000 men in an hour (Steele, p. 502; Battles and Leaders, IV, 148). Satisfied that he could not drive Lee from his intrenched position, he called off the attack and, on the night of June 12, withdrew from Lee's front to cross the James River. The Wilderness campaign was ended. The terrific losses of the Army of the Potomac were made up by heavy reënforcements, but in the public mind Grant's prestige was lowered (Woodward, p. 325). He had not defeated Lee during the entire campaign and had been regularly outmaneuvered (Meade, II, 202), yet his policy of attrition had worn down his enemy and robbed him of the initiative. After the battle of the Wilderness, Lee did not again assume the offensive.

In conception and execution, the withdrawal from Lee's front and the movement across the James was a brilliant military achievement. The army began its silent march after dark on June 12. By midnight of the 16th it was south of the river. Lee was completely deceived and for four days lost his foe (Battles and Leaders, IV, 541; Lee, post, p. 348). Finally realizing what had occurred, he brought his army south of Richmond. The long-drawn-out siege of Petersburg was on-a siege made necessary by the failure of the left wing, under Butler, to capture Petersburg and invest Richmond during the progress of the Wilderness campaign (Adams, post, pp. 269-75; Coolidge, p. 170; Wilson, p. 223; Woodward, pp. 318-19, 346-48). From June 18, 1864, to April 2, 1865, the Army of the Potomac invested Petersburg, sapping, mining, assaulting, cutting Lee's avenues of supply and sending out flanking expeditions far to the west. In this long siege the Confederate commander, having the advantage of interior lines, was able to meet every attack that Grant made with a force large enough to stop it. But the siege was doing its work. The Confederate army stood desperately in need of food and transportation. Sherman's men, marching through Georgia, found it a land of plenty while Lee's heroic army was starving in the trenches.

Sheridan's victory at Five Forks on April 1, 1865, marked the beginning of the end. On the following day Grant assaulted the Confederate right, breaking it and forcing it back. That night Lee's army abandoned Petersburg and Richmond and marched westward, hoping to join General Joseph E. Johnston's army. Grant paralleled the march and sent Sheridan's cavalry far ahead to carry on a running fight and cut off Lee's retreat. At Appomattox Court House, Sheridan stood across Lee's path. The end was at hand. On April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia on Grant's. terms, which were so considerate and magnanimous that they were never questioned by the Confederate chieftain (Personal Memoirs, II, 483-94). Seventeen days later Johnston surrendered his army to Sherman. The Civil War was over.

Grant's greatness lay in his ability to visualize the war in its essentials. He saw that as long as the Confederacy was an undivided unit its military forces and resources could be shifted to any point where they were needed. He saw, furthermore, that no great success could result from the capture of localities, that success could come only by the destruction of armies. As general-in-chief his strategy was sound: to cut the Confederacy into fragments; to engage all its armies at the same time so that one could not reenforce another; to destroy those armies by following them wherever they might go and by pounding them to pieces. To these principles he adhered and by them he won.

[Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant (2 volumes, 1885- 86); Official Records (Army); Old Records Section, Adjutant-General's Office; A. Badeau, Military History. of Ulysses S. Grant (3 volumes, 1868-81); Jas. G. Wilson, General Grant (1897); W. C. Church, "The Truth about Grant," Army and Navy Journal, June 6, 1908; F. S. Edmonds, Ulysses S. Grant (1915); L.A. Coolidge, The Life of Ulysses S. Grant (1922); W. E. Woodward, Meet General Grant (1928); J. F. C. Fuller, The Generalship of Ulysses S. Grant (1929); J. H. Smith., The War with Mexico (2 volumes, 1919); Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (4 volumes, 1887-88); J. C. Ropes, The Story of the Civil War (4 volumes, 1894,- 1913); J. F. Rhodes, History of the U. S., volumes III-V (1893); C. F. Adams, "Some Phases of the Civil War," in Studies Military and Diplomatic (1911); M. F. Steele, American Campaigns (1922); H. Coppee, General Thomas (1893); Fitzhugh Lee, General Lee (1894); Jas. Longstreet, From Manassas to Appomattox (1896) George Meade, Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade (1913).

C.A.B.

The subsidence of conflict left Grant in command of the army of the United States, in a position under the President and the Secretary of War which was never clearly defined. He had been transferred rapidly from volunteer and temporary status to a commission in the permanent establishment; and in 1866 Congress revived the rank of general, unused since 1799, in the certainty that President Johnson would nominate Grant for the post. Trusting Grant more completely than it did the President, the radical Congress in the following year blocked removals from office by the Tenure of Office Act and required that all army orders must pass through the office of the commanding general. Johnson was as ready to give as Grant was to accept the position, for he was at the moment courting Grant. He forced him, in the month after the appointment, to join the presidential party in the memorable "swing round the circle," hoping to gain popularity from citizens who saw Grant on the same platform with himself. Grant declined to be ordered on a mission to Mexico for the President, and tried, but without skill, to avoid giving the prestige of his own name to Johnson's plans.

Demobilization, a shapeless affair, took place under Grant. The policing of the western border and the protection of the construction camps of the continental railroads came under his control; yet he was convinced that the whole Indian policy of the United States was corrupt and wrong. His most delicate duty, however, was in connection with the administration of the Reconstruction acts, passed over Johnson's veto and enforced by the army until such time as Congress was ready to declare the Confederate states restored. Grant had toured the South for the President, and thought the "mass of thinking men of the south" were willing to accept the result of the war (Senate Executive Document No. 2, p. 106, 39 Congress, 1 Session); but he supported Stanton who had become anathema to Johnson. Protesting the suspension of Stanton, Grant assumed the duties of secretary of war ad interim, August 12, 1867. For the next five months he was his own superior officer, for he retained the actual command as general. But he enraged Johnson by surrendering the secretaryship to Stanton after the Senate had declined to concur in the latter's dismissal. Johnson raised an issue of personal veracity (R. W. Winston, Andrew Johnson, 1928, p. 418), asserting that Grant had promised not to surrender the office but to force a case for judicial interpretation of the Tenure of Office Act. The merit of the issue seems beyond historical determination, but it ended the relations of the two men. Grant never forgave the President, and upon the occasion of his own inauguration in 1869 declined to ride in the same carriage with his predecessor (H. Garland, Ulysses S. Grant, 1920, p. 385).

The course of events of the spring of 1868 made Grant the inevitable nominee of the Republican party for the presidency. He had become the rallying figure for the opponents of Andrew Johnson, and was already the outstanding character in American life. He had no real party affiliation. Only once had he voted for president, and that time for James Buchanan, "because I knew Fremont" (L.A. Coolidge, Ulysses S. Grant, 1917, p. 270). But he embodied the forces that maintained the Union. Without enthusiasm he allowed himself to be nominated by the Republicans. He disliked politics as he disliked war; he had no vindictive spirit toward the soldiers who had sustained the Confederacy, but he had no intention of permitting the defeated leaders to direct the policy of the United States. He was aware that election would mean retirement from the comfortable salary and allowances of the general of the army (nearly $25,000 a year) and an exchange of a life post for the presidency, which meant eight years at most. He accepted the nomination in a brief note, four words of which have constituted his contribution to American opinion: "Let us have peace." His companion on the ticket was a popular Indiana politician, Schuyler Colfax.

Grant was elected president in 1868, losing the electoral votes of only eight states, though the popular majority was much smaller than these figures would indicate. He had taken no active part in the canvass and he admitted no one, not even his wife, to his confidence after election. The official family that he set up in the Executive Mansion was like an army headquarters, where work was done with military aides and orders were expected to receive in time of peace the same respect that they had commanded in time of war. Grant was in no sense a militarist, but the only way he knew how to work was the way of a commanding general. He picked his cabinet officers to suit himself, and so clumsily that the group had to be reorganized before it could function. The state department he gave to a personal friend, Elihu B. Washburne, to gratify his pride; he allowed a military aide, John A. Rawlins, to appropriate the war department to reward himself (J. H. Wilson, The Life of John A. Rawlins, 1916, p. 351); he picked a great merchant with whom he had dined, Alexander T. Stewart, to fill the treasury post, only to discover that his appointee was legally incompetent. The other places he passed around with no reference to the existence of a party that fancied it had a right to rule, or to popular sense of fitness in appointment; and he could not understand or forgive criticism of himself because of this.

He and his family enjoyed life in the White House. All four of the children were there part of the time, though Frederick Dent Grant [q. v.] graduated at West Point in 1871, went to Europe, and was then on active duty. The military guard that had remained on duty since Lincoln's time was dispensed with, and the mansion was opened to family and friends. A former mess sergeant became the butler until Mrs. Grant rebelled. There was a "spare room" for the casual guest. Mrs. Grant's father, Colonel Frederick Dent, still an unreconstructed Southerner but meticulously polite, was commonly much in evidence. The correspondents around the offices led him on to tell them how the General was a good Democrat but did not know it. Grant's own old father, Jesse, was sometimes there, though more often he was at his post-office at Covington, Kentucky, where Grant found him and left him. The vacations were likely to be spent in a cottage at Long Branch, where Grant kept out of ballrooms and took his keenest pleasure in driving in a light carriage behind a span of spirited horses. He did not care who gave him the horses. The old rumors about his excessive drinking hovered about him periodically, but most of the testimony is unreliable and none suggests that any of his official acts was ever affected by intoxication.

The financial status of the government was at the front among the problems of the Grant administrations. The Democratic party, in the preceding canvass, had made an appeal to the debtor farmers of the West and South, with an offer of greenbacks as a painless way of paying off the war debt. Earliest of the important bills to receive Grant's signature was one to establish the public credit by declaring a policy of ultimate redemption of legal-tender notes in coin. Steps were taken promptly to fund the confused mass of Civil War securities, and to baffle the gamblers in gold. These latter, on "Black Friday" (September 24, 1869), thought they had cornered the gold on the market and "fixed" the President by extending favors to his hangers-on (R. H. Fuller, Jubile Jim, The Life of Colonel James Fisk, Jr., 1928, p. 361; New York Herald, October 8, 1869; House Report No. 31, 41 Congress, l Session). Grant ruined their hopes by releasing from the treasury such a flood of gold that it broke the corner. The financial collapse of 1873 increased the difficulty of currency deflation, for it was easy to array the debtor classes against any measure tending to appreciate the currency. But Grant vetoed an inflation bill in the following spring (April 22, 1874), and signed on January 14, 1875, an act setting January 1879 as the date for the resumption of specie payments.

For almost the whole of Grant's term of office Hamilton Fish [q.v.] was secretary of state. The two men never developed a friendly intimacy, yet Grant in general supported Fish in a firm and wise foreign policy. The attempt to annex the Dominican Republic in 1869, which produced a disastrous breach with Charles Sumner, was Grant's own venture, though it may have been the idea of political profiteers. He never receded from a belief in its wisdom, beaten though he was. Controversies with the British were cleared after the surrender of the latter on the Alabama claims, in the Treaty of Washington, May 8, 1871. Neutrality was maintained in spite of provocation given by Spain during her suppression of the Ten Years' War in Cuba.

The enforcement of the Fourteenth Amendment was attempted only half-heartedly and without success. Northern opinion reached its crest of militancy against the South in the spring of 1868. After the failure of the impeachment proceedings against Johnson there was never again adequate backing for a comprehensive interference with the gradual reestablishment of home rule at the South. Midway in Grant's first term began the terrorism of the negro electorate that deterred the negroes from exercising their right to vote. Despite the Force Acts of 1870-71, the Southern states elected white officers and advanced along the process of consolidation in Democratic ranks that ended in a Solid South by 1876. Grant came, by 1880, to fear the election as president of one of the Confederate leaders who had tried to wreck the Union, but as president himself he saw the impossibility of permanent coercion.

Out of the Western and Northern moderate opinion there developed a Liberal Republican movement based on a belief in the unwisdom of Reconstruction and a demand for a reform in the administration of the national government. Its first objective, which was unattainable, was the defeat of Grant for renomination and reelection in 1872. Horace Greeley, who received incongruous nominations from both the Liberal Republicans and the Democrats, was easily defeated. Grant again stayed out of the canvass. "I am no speaker," he wrote, "and don't want to be beaten" (A. R. Conkling, Life and Letters of Roscoe Conkling, 1889, p. 435). The storm of scandal broke around his head before he was reelected, and panic soon followed. A conviction was being driven home that as president he was a failure. "What wretched work. . . . They are tearing the government to pieces," Gideon Welles had written (Americana, April 1912, p. 403); "Can you really believe that the maker of the first Grant Cabinet ... is fit for a President? I cannot," asserted Greeley before he was himself nominated (W. B. Parker, The Life and Public Services of Justin Smith Morrill, 1924, p. 239). The New York Tribune (July 24, 1885) at Grant's death still believed that "the greatest mistake of his life was the acceptance of the presidency." "The crisis came," said the Nation (March 9, 1876), "when an ignorant soldier, coarse in his taste and blunt in his perceptions, fond of money and material enjoyment and of low company, was put in the Presidential Chair"

The personal criticisms of Grant during his second term were galling to him, for he knew no way of dramatizing a simple personal honesty, and his power of speech and pen was totally inadequate in a fight with fluent and impassioned reformers. He sometimes replied to opposition with destruction. Sumner denounced the Dominican project and prevented the ratification of the treaty; whereupon Grant forced his deposition as chairman of the Senate committee on foreign relations (R. Cortissoz, Life of Whitelaw Reid, 1921, I, 190; S. Welles, Naboth's Vineyard, 1928, I, 392), and recalled his friend Motley from the post of minister to Great Britain. Grant was capable of letting go without a word the most dependable of his advisers-Hoar, Jewell, Bristow. Yet, craving association, he had room in his entourage for Conkling, the Camerons, and Zach Chandler. He believed the prosecution of his private secretary, Orville F. Babcock, was only a disguised attack upon himself, and did not lose confidence in Babcock's integrity until long after most other Americans. Conkling, to whom among others he offered the chief justiceship after Chase died, had a nicer sense of the needs of the office than did Grant and declined it. Yet the final choice, Morrison R. Waite, was good. Grant's critics long alleged that he packed the Supreme Court after its first legal-tenders decision (Hepburn vs. Griswold, February 7, 1870, 8 Wallace, 603), by appointing Bradley and Strong, thus procuring a reversal in the second legal-tenders case, but the evidence for this seems unconvincing (Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History, 1922, III, 238; American Historical Review, April 1929, p. 532).

The breath of personal scandal has not touched Grant in any plausible form, but it struck so close to him and so frequently as to necessitate the vindication of his honor by admitting his bad taste in the choice of associates. Babcock was under suspicion of improper interest in the Dominican matter (S. Welles, Naboth's Vineyard, 1928, I, 400), long before he was smirched by his connection with the whiskey ring. Grant allowed himself to appear in public as the guest of Jim Fisk. Belknap, his secretary of war, was proved to have accepted graft money from a post trader; and Grant by letting him resign protected him from the consequences of a successful impeachment. The accumulating criticisms that Grant incurred threw him into the arms of those who did not criticize, and these were not the best leaders in the nation or the party.

As the second term approached its end there was suggestion of a third. Grant, in a somewhat cryptic letter (New York Herald, May 31, 1875), declined to be a candidate. He could not see why his fellow citizens did not desire him to continue in the presidency, and his wife resented the fact that they did not; but he accepted retirement without complaint. He had some achievements, after all. He had inherited a situation with Great Britain that was full of threat, and left it with American esteem satisfied and Anglo-American relations more harmonious than they had ever been. He had brought the United States through the factional hazards that followed the attempt to remove a president, through the financial and moral uneasiness of a period of deflation and the panic of 1873, and through the uncertainties of an electoral contest that might have blossomed into another civil war (A. Badeau, Grant in Peace, 1887, p. 256). There were trying days during the electoral count. It was uncertain until a few hours before March 4, 1877, whether Grant would have a successor, and there was a possibility that he would be called upon to face a new crisis. The conviction that he would not have any hand in a coup d'etat helped to prevent one.

Grant left office with a few thousand dollars saved from his salary, and a craving to see Europe. With a family party, he sailed from Philadelphia in May 1877 for Liverpool and the foreign world. He embarked as a private citizen, but he landed as a world figure with whom the chamberlains of the European courts were uncertain how to act; for to treat him as a simple commoner would be grotesque, whereas he had no rank that would establish him in any rigid sequence of court precedence. It was left for his son Jesse to put Queen Victoria in her plate (J. R. Grant, In the Days of My Father General Grant, 1925, pp. 224....27), but it took a long time for the European governments to assimilate ex-presidents with their own ex-royalties. For more than two years the Grants went from capital to capital, with an increasing baggage train of gifts and souvenirs, and an increasing need for a fortunatus purse (J. R. Young, Around the World with General Grant, 1879). As the tour approached its end, a longing for home stimulated its progress, to Grant's political disadvantage.

Hayes had failed to get along with his party, and neither sought nor could have obtained a renomination. The friends of Grant were desirous for a return to the "good old days." The murmurings of labor presaged to the nervous a possible industrial revolt, and there was clamor, much of it inspired, for a "strong" man at the helm of state. The political advisers of Grant urged him to delay his return until the eve of the campaign of 1880, when his renomination might be accomplished on a wave of friendly publicity. He came back, instead, in the autumn of 1879, and the spreading third-term boom excited a stronger wave of opposition. At the Chicago convention in 1880 the faithful old guard, 306 strong, stood firm for Grant, and later struck off a medal to celebrate their loyalty; but they did him no good, for a coalition of his opponents defeated him by agreeing upon Garfield as the candidate.

The last phase of Grant's life was saddened by lack of means, by positive misfortune, by calumny, and at last by sickness until death. He took up his residence in a house in East Sixty-sixth St., New York, in August 1881, and lived with gratitude upon the income from a fund of $250,000 which some of his admirers placed in trust for him. The securities in which this was invested proved unreliable, and the income failed him (Woodward, Meet General Grant, 1928, pp. 476, 490). He went into business and was exploited. The failure of the brokerage firm of Grant & Ward (May 6, 1884) threw him into bankruptcy and humiliation. He had earlier used his swords and souvenirs as security for a loan which had been swallowed up. An attempt was made by his friends to care for him by reviving the office of general, which he had vacated upon entrance to the presidency, but political opposition delayed this until it was almost too late. On his last day in office President Arthur signed the revival bill, and it was left to a Democratic president, Cleveland, to deliver the commission that carried a salary for life.

The life was short. A dangerous cancer of the throat was wearing Grant away, though he was fighting the disease in order to carry to completion the only civil task that he had learned how to do well. In 1884 he wrote for the publishers of the Century Magazine an article (February 1885) on the battle of Shiloh. This paid him handsomely and was an immediate success, whereupon was conceived another Caesar’s Commentaries to be written by the victor of the Civil War. He set to work upon the Personal Memoirs, writing in the sickroom and in the quiet of the house at Mount McGregor where he was taken to die. Mark Twain, then in business as a publisher of subscription books, waited for the copy, to put upon the market one of the most successful of American books. The family of Grant received nearly $450,000 from this literary endowment (A. B. Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography, 1912, II, 816); but he himself died, simply and greatly, before he could know of its triumph. He was buried at last in a great mausoleum of granite on Riverside Drive in New York City. [Grant was not a bookish man, and he wrote as little as possible until he compiled the Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant (2 volumes, 1885-86).

There is no considerable collection of his manuscripts, and the printed salvage from his letters is fragmentary:

J. G. Cramer, ed., Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to his Father and his Youngest Sister, 1857-1878 (1912); J. G. Wilson, ed., General Grant's Letters to a Friend [Elihu B. Washburne] 1861-1880 (1897).

The many biographies are rarely more than compilations from his Personal Memoirs, enriched with fragments from the two works by his military aide,

Adam Badeau, Military History of Ulysses S. Grant (3 volumes, 1868-81); and Grant in Peace (1887).

The best of these biographies is W. E. Woodward, Meet General Grant (1928).

Others not already listed in the previous bibliography are:

J. S. C. Abbott, The Life of General Ulysses S. Grant (1868);

W. C. Church, Ulysses S. Grant and the Period of National Preservation and Reconstruction (1897);

Hamlin Garland, Ulysses S. Grant. His Life and Character (1898, new ed., 1920);

Owen Wister, Ulysses S. Grant (1900);

Chas. King, The True Ulysses S. Grant (1914).

Better than any of the biographies for the period of his presidency are:

J. F. Rhodes, History of the U. S., volumes VI-VII (1893);

E. P. Oberholtzer, A History of the U. S. Since the Civil War (3 volumes, 1917-26); and

C. G. Bowers, The Tragic Era (1929), a spirited brief for Andrew Johnson by an eloquent Democratic historian.]

F.L.P-n.  



GRANT, FREDERICK DENT (May 30, 1850-April I11, 1912), soldier, son of Ulysses S. Grant [q.v.] and Julia (Dent) Grant, was born at St. Louis, Missouri, while his father was a first lieutenant in the 4th Infantry. As a boy he saw considerable active military service, for he frequently accompanied his father in the field, notably in the Vicksburg campaign, where he received a slight bullet wound and la ter contracted an illness which was very nearly fatal. He entered West Point as a cadet in 1866, graduated in 1871, and was commissioned second lieutenant in the 4th Cavalry. He was on leave of absence for a year and a half, during which time he visited Europe, before joining his regiment on the Texas frontier. After a few months there he was detailed as aide to Lieutenant-General Sheridan an assignment which at that time carried with it the pay and the temporary rank of lieutenant-colonel, and which he continued to hold until his resignation from th~ army in 1881. His regular station was in Chicago, at the headquarters of the Division of the Missouri, but he was in the field with the Yellowstone expedition in the summer of 1873, and with the Black Hills expedition in the summer of 1874. He married, October 20, 1874, Ida M. Honore, daughter of Henry Hamilton Honore of Chicago. His promotion to first lieutenant dated from June 28, 1876. In 1878-79 he accompanied his father in his journey around the world. He resigned from the army in 1881, being then a first lieutenant in the 4th Cavalry, and in 1886 became president of the American Wood Working Company. President Harrison appointed him envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1889 and he served at Vienna until 1893, when his successor was appointed by President Cleveland. From 1895 to 1897 he was commissioner of police of New York City. He was mustered into the volunteer service in the Spanish-American War, May 2, 1898, as colonel of the 14th New York Infantry, and on May 27, 1898, was appointed brigadier-general of volunteers. He commanded a brigade in camp at Chickamauga Park, Georgia, and after the termination of hostilities was stationed for some months in Porto Rico. Transferred to duty in the Philippines, he arrived at Manila in June 1899, and for nearly three years commanded a brigade in Luzon, operating against insurgents engaged in guerrilla warfare for a great part of the time. In April 1902 he took command of a brigade in Samar and Leyte, where he established civil government. Soon afterward he returned to the United States and took charge of the Department of Texas. Meanwhile, he had been appointed a brigadier-general in the regular army, February 18, 1901, and on February 6, 1906, he became major-general. After leaving Texas, he held other territorial commands, with headquarters at Chicago or New York; commanded the "blue army" in the Manassas maneuvers of 1904; and was in charge of the troops at the Jamestown Exposition of 1907. He died in New York and was buried at West Point.

[G. W. Cullum, Biographical Register (3rd ed., 1891), volume III and Supp., volume V (1910);

Association Graduates  U. S. Military Academy Annual Reunion, 1912, pp 149-52;

New York Tribune, April 13, and New York Times, April 13 and 14, 1912.]

T.M.S.



GREENE, GEORGE SEARS (May 6, 1801- J an. 28, 1899), soldier and civil engineer, the son of Caleb Greene and his wife Sarah Robinson, daughter of Thomas and Sarah (Wickes) Greene, was descended from John Greene, who came to America in 1635, was one of the founders of Warwick, Rhode Island, and established a notable family. (See sketch of William Greene, 1695 / 96-1758.) Caleb Greene was a shipowner, whose once prosperous business was ruined by the Embargo and the war. It was intended that his son George, born at Apponaug, Rhode Island, should enter Brown University, but lack of money made this impossible, and instead he went to New York where he found work. He was appointed a cadet at West Point in 1819, graduated in 1823, and was commissioned in the artillery. Returning to the Military Academy immediately, to teach mathematics, he remained there for nearly four years, except for a few months when he was teaching at the Artillery School at Fort Monroe. Leaving West Point finally in 1827, he served for several years at various  artillery posts in New England. On July 14, 1828, he was married, at Pomfret, Connecticut, to Elizabeth Vinton, who died in 1832. He was promoted to first lieutenant in 1829. Resigning from the army, June 30, 1836, he took up engineering as a profession, engaging particularly in railroad construction. On February 21, 1837, he married Martha Barrett Dana, daughter of Hon. Samuel Dana. At the outbreak of the Civil War he was engineer in charge of the Croton water-works extension and the Croton Reservoir in Central Park, New York. He was appointed colonel of the 60th New York, January 18, 1862, and served with his regiment in the neighborhood of Washington until appointed brigadier-general of volunteers, April 28, 1862. He was then assigned to a brigade under General Banks, in the Shenandoah Valley, and commanded it in action for the first time at Cedar Mountain in August. At Antietam, by virtue of seniority, he commanded a division, and then resumed command of his brigade, which was reorganized in April 1863 so as to be composed entirely of New York regiments. He fought at Chancellorsville, and with great distinction at Gettysburg. With the XII Corps he arrived on the battlefield at Gettysburg late in the afternoon of the first day's fighting, was posted at Culp's Hill, on the extreme right of the Union line, and helped to resist the Confederate attacks of the second day. That evening the entire corps, with the exception of Greene's brigade, was withdrawn in order to strengthen the Union left, and for a time this brigade bore the whole brunt of the renewed attacks of the Confederates, who could have placed themselves across the Union line of communications if the Culp's Hill position were carried. The safety of the army, therefore, depended upon Greene's brigade, until, little by little, it was strengthened by troops sent from other commands. It was again in action on the third day of the battle. In September, the XII Corps was transferred to Tennessee and Greene served with it in the early part of the Chattanooga campaign. He was severely wounded, however, at Wauhatchie, October 28, 1863, being shot through the face, and saw no further field service until 1865. His wound made necessary a difficult operation in May 1864, and when he had recovered sufficiently to be fit for duty of any kind he was employed on courts martial. He commanded a brigade in the North Carolina campaign of March and April 1865, and marched in the great review at Washington. After being mustered out of the volunteer service, April 30, 1866, he resumed the practise of his profession in New York, where he did extensive work in connection with the water supply, the elevated railways, and the laying out of new streets. He was engaged on important engineering operations elsewhere, also, notably the planning of the sewerage system of Washington and the construction or extension of water-supply systems in Detroit, Troy, and Yonkers. He was one of the founders of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and its president from 1875 to 1877. His interests were not confined to professional matters. He was an active member, and for some time president, of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society; he collected the bulk of the material for a genealogical account of the Greene family, which was completed and published after his death (G. S. Greene and Louise B. Clarke, post), and he was deeply interested in the affairs of the United States Military Academy, of which he became the "oldest living graduate," a distinction in which he took the keenest delight. In 1894, by virtue of a special act of Congress, he returned to the regular army as a first lieutenant, the rank which he held at the time of his resignation in 1836, and was placed on the retired list. Harsh in manner and a strict disciplinarian, he was not a man to win immediate affection, but those under him soon learned to appreciate his ability and his rigid sense of justice. He died at Morristown, New Jersey, where he had resided since 1883, and was buried at Warwick, Rhode Island. Two of his sons, George Sears and Francis Vinton Greene [qq.v.], attained distinction in their father's profession, and a third son, Samuel Dana Greene [q.v.], as executive officer of the Monitor in her fight with the Merrimac.

[W. F. Fox and others, In Memoriam, George Sears Greene (1909); G. S. Greene and Louise B. Clarke, The Greenes of Rhode Island (1903), based on the material collected by Greene and containing a biographical sketch of him by his son, F. V. Greene; R. H. Greene, in New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, April 1899; G. W. Cullum, Biographical Register (3rd ed., 1891), I, 301-03, IV, 24; Military Order of the Loyal Legion . . . State of New York, Circ. No. 14 (1900); Trans. American Society Civil Engineers, volume XLIX (1902); O. O. Howard, in Thirtieth Annual Reunion Association Graduates U. S. Military Academy (1899), 135- 43; Official Records (Army), 1 series XII (part 2), XIX (part 1), XXV (part 1), XXVII (part 1), XXXI (part 1); New York Tribune, January 29, 1899.]

T. M. S.



GREGG, DAVID McMURTRIE (April 10, 1833-August 7, 1916), Union soldier, the son of Matthew Duncan Gregg and Ellen (McMurtrie) Gregg, both of Scotch-Irish ancestry, was born at Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. His father, a lawyer and iron manufacturer, was a son of Andrew Gregg [q.v.]. David's early life was spent in central Pennsylvania, where he attended private schools before entering the University at Lewisburg (now Bucknell University). While a student there he was appointed, July 1851, a cadet at West Point. Graduating four years later, he began his career as a second lieutenant of cavalry and spent nearly six years fighting Indians in the Far West. The outbreak of the Civil War found him a first lieutenant, but he was immediately promoted captain and stationed with the troops defending Washington. In January 1862 he was appointed colonel of the 8th Pennsylvania Cavalry, which was in March attached to the Army of the Potomac. During that year Gregg served under McClellan in the Peninsular campaign of May and June, covered the movement from Harrison's Landing to Yorktown in August, and from September to November took part in the Maryland campaign, though he obtained leave to marry Ellen Frances Sheaff on October 6. He received merited recognition, November 29, 1862, by being appointed brigadier-general of volunteers. Commanding a division of cavalry, he took part in Stoneman's raid toward Richmond in April and May 1863. As Lee marched northward on his invasion of Pennsylvania, Gregg played an important part for the opposing forces by reporting accurately the movements of the Confederate army and by handicapping the cavalry on which Lee relied for information by a series of engagements paralleling the line of march. At the battle of Gettysburg, Gregg was stationed on the extreme right wing of Meade's army, about three miles east of the town. During the afternoon of July 3, General J. E. B. Stuart with 7,000 Confederate cavalry attempted to turn this flank and attack the Union rear while Pickett was assaulting the center of the line. To meet this attack Gregg could muster only 5,000 men. Fighting a skilful defensive battle, he used his superior artillery with great effect on the advancing enemy, and met each charge with a counter-charge. In the fierce "Sabre Battle" which took place, his troops held their own and at nightfall were still in their original positions. Gregg had repulsed an attack which might have done irreparable damage and had gained one of the most conspicuous cavalry victories of the war. After Gettysburg he participated actively in the pursuit of Lee's army. During Grant's campaign against Richmond in 1864 he commanded the 2nd Cavalry Division of the Army of the Potomac, and on August 1 was brevetted major-general of volunteers for distinguished service, particularly in reconnaissance at Charles City Road. He took part in no further important engagements before resigning his commission on February 3, 1865.

He then lived in Reading, Pennsylvania, until February 1874, when President Grant appointed him consul at Prague. Finding consular work distasteful, he resigned in August and returned to Reading. He took an interest in municipal and charitable affairs, was elected auditor-general of Pennsylvania and served efficiently for three years. In 1907 he published The Second Cavalry Division of the Army of the Potomac in the Gettysburg Campaign. Endowed with a rare combination of modesty, geniality, and ability, he was universally liked and respected. His victory at Gettysburg was only the most conspicuous among many well-handled engagements. Grant considered him one of the best cavalry officers in the Union army.

[W. H. Egle, Pennsylvania Genealogies; Scotch-Irish and German (1886); Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the U. S. Commandery of the State of Pennsylvania, circular no. 6, series of 1917; Official Records (Army); H. B. McClellan, Life and Campaigns of Major General J. E. B. Stuart (1885); George Meade, Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade (1913), ed. by G. G. Meade; W. B. Rawle, The Right Flank at Gettysburg (1878); F. M. Pierce, The Battle of Gettysburg (1914); G. W. Cullum, Biographical Register (3rd ed., 1891); Press (Phila.), August 8, 1916.]

W. L. W--t., Jr.



GRIERSON, BENJAMIN HENRY (July 8, 1826-September 1, 1911), Union soldier, was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Robert and Mary (Shepard) Grierson, natives of Dublin, Ireland. He attended an academy at Youngstown, Ohio, taught music there and at Jacksonville, III., and for five years was a merchant at Meredosia, Illinois. Enlisting in the army as a private in 1861, he was commissioned major in the 6th Illinois Cavalry and promoted to colonel. In the spring of 1862 he engaged in several small raids, routing a force of Confederates at Hernando, Mississippi. Returning to General Sherman's command he was employed in scouting for a few months, destroying rebel arms, camps, and supplies and pushing the Confederates out of Tennessee. The Cavalry being reorganized, Grierson was assigned to command the 1st Brigade, consisting of the 6th Illinois (his own), the 7th Illinois, and the 2nd Iowa Cavalry. By order of General Grant he left La Grange, Tennessee, April 17, 1863, with about 1,700 men and in sixteen days traversed six hundred miles of the enemy's country in a succession of forced marches, fighting and destroying property. Ruining the Vicksburg & Meridian Railroad and the New Orleans & Jackson, and laying waste public property, he reached his goal, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, May 2. This raid was immensely helpful to Grant in the Vicksburg campaign, for it upset the enemy's plans, drew forces from vulnerable points, and diverted attention from the main movement against Vicksburg. In referring to it, Grant said, "General Grierson was the fir st officer to set the example of what might be done in the interior of the enemy's country without a base from which to draw supplies" (Short, post, p. 840). President Lincoln recognized the service rendered in this campaign by promoting Grierson to major-general of volunteers "for gallant and distinguished service in his great raid through the heart of the so-called Confederacy." In 1864 Grierson made short raids in Tennessee and Miss1ss1ppi in an attempt to distract Southern attention from the preparations for Sherman's march. In May 1865 he was actively employed in the campaign against hostile Indians in the Western states and territories, and at various times he commanded the Department of Texas and Arizona and the District of New Mexico. In 1890 he received his appointment as brigadier-general of the regular army and in the same year he was retired. He was twice married : on September 24, 1854, to Alice Kirk of Youngstown, Ohio, who died in 1888; and on July 28, 1897, to Lillian (Atwood) King of Jacksonville, Illinois. He died at his summer home at Omena, Michigan.

[R. U. Johnson and C. C. Buel, eds., Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, volumes III and IV (1888); Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant (2 volumes, 1885-86); F. B. Heitman, History Register and Dictionary U. S. Army (2 volumes, 1903); Wm. F. Short, A History of Illinois and Morgan County (1906), pp. 838-41; Illinois State History Society Journal, October 1911; J. S. C. Abbott, " Heroic Deeds of Heroic Men," Harper's New Monthly Magazine, February 1865; Who' s Who in America, 1908-09; Chicago Daily Tribune, September 2, 1911.

J J.P.S--h.



Source: Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes IV, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.