Sublime

“I HAVE NO DOUBT that Lincoln will be the conspicuous figure of the war,” predicted Ulysses S. Grant. “He was incontestably the greatest man I ever knew.”

discreetly to Colonel N. P. Chipman in the War Department, warning him to “quietly and secretly organize all our boys that can assemble at a given signal . . . ready to protect the Congress of the U.S.”99 For many in Washington, the great mystery was how Grant would act in such a crisis. President Johnson

America’s two great military presidents—Grant and Eisenhower—both abhorred war. In 1869, Grant overruled Sherman and Sheridan and brought peace to the Great Plains; in 1953, Eisenhower dismissed the objections of Dulles and Wilson, to say nothing of those of Senator Taft and the congressional Republicans, and brought peace to Korea.

ANALOGIES BETWEEN MILITARY and political campaigns are often overdrawn, but what FDR did in rescuing the country in the first hundred days bears comparison with what General Ulysses S. Grant did in preserving the Union. Both men accepted responsibility, delegated freely, and radiated a confidence that inspired their subordinates to do their best. R

Grant proved to be Sherman’s savior, believing in Sherman despite the latter’s past mental instability. (“He stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk,”

Ulysses S. Grant was the first general in American history to wear four stars as a full general. George Washington wore three as a lieutenant general. And John J. Pershing had worn six as General of the Armies.