Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 7:33pm

Grant on the Civil War

And, after that, the chunky man from the West,
Stranger to you, not one of the men you loved
As you loved McClellan, a rider with a hard bit,
Takes you and uses you as you could be used,
Wasting you grimly but breaking the hurdle down.
You are never to worship him as you did McClellan,
But at the last you can trust him.  He slaughters you
But he sees that you are fed.  After sullen Cold Harbor
They call him a butcher and want him out of the saddle,
But you have had other butchers who did not win
And this man wins in the end.

You see him standing,
Reading a map, unperturbed, under heavy fire.
You do not cheer him as the recruits might cheer
But you say “Ulysses doesn’t scare worth a darn.
Ulysses is all right.  He can finish the job.”
And at last your long lines go past in the Grand Review
And your legend and his begins and are mixed forever.

Stephen Vincent Benet, John Brown’s Body

 

 

 

 

 

I have never liked Presidents’ Day.  Why celebrate all presidents when only a select few of them, like Washington and Lincoln, deserve to be celebrated?   Officially the date is still the commemoration of George Washington’s birthday, which actually won’t occur until February 22.  However, I will keep up my tradition of writing about presidents on this day.  Today we will look at the musings of General Grant on the causes of the Civil War.  Grant was not a great president, far from it, but he was a great  general and, as this passage from his memoirs indicates. a fairly acute observer of the passing scene:

 

 

THE CAUSE of the great War of the Rebellion against the United Status will have to be attributed to slavery. For some years before the war began it was a trite saying among some politicians that “A state half slave and half free cannot exist.” All must become slave or all free, or the state will go down. I took no part myself in any such view of the case at the time, but since the war is over, reviewing the whole question, I have come to the conclusion that the saying is quite true.

 

Slavery was an institution that required unusual guarantees for its security wherever it existed; and in a country like ours where the larger portion of it was free territory inhabited by an intelligent and well-to-do population, the people would naturally have but little sympathy with demands upon them for its protection. Hence the people of the South were dependent upon keeping control of the general government to secure the perpetuation of their favorite restitution. They were enabled to maintain this control long after the States where slavery existed had ceased to have the controlling power, through the assistance they received from odd men here and there throughout the Northern States. They saw their power waning, and this led them to encroach upon the prerogatives and independence of the Northern States by enacting such laws as the Fugitive Slave Law. By this law every Northern man was obliged, when properly summoned, to turn out and help apprehend the runaway slave of a Southern man. Northern marshals became slave-catchers, and Northern courts had to contribute to the support and protection of the institution.

 

This was a degradation which the North would not permit any longer than until they could get the power to expunge such laws from the statute books. Prior to the time of these encroachments the great majority of the people of the North had no particular quarrel with slavery, so long as they were not forced to have it themselves. But they were not willing to play the role of police for the South in the protection of this particular institution.

 

In the early days of the country, before we had railroads, telegraphs and steamboats—in a word, rapid transit of any sort—the States were each almost a separate nationality. At that time the subject of slavery caused but little or no disturbance to the public mind. But the country grew, rapid transit was established, and trade and commerce between the States got to be so much greater than before, that the power of the National government became more felt and recognized and, therefore, had to be enlisted in the cause of this institution.

 

It is probably well that we had the war when we did. We are better off now than we would have been without it, and have made more rapid progress than we otherwise should have made. The civilized nations of Europe have been stimulated into unusual activity, so that commerce, trade, travel, and thorough acquaintance among people of different nationalities, has become common; whereas, before, it was but the few who had ever had the privilege of going beyond the limits of their own country or who knew anything about other people. Then, too, our republican institutions were regarded as experiments up to the breaking out of the rebellion, and monarchical Europe generally believed that our republic was a rope of sand that would part the moment the slightest strain was brought upon it. Now it has shown itself capable of dealing with one of the greatest wars that was ever made, and our people have proven themselves to be the most formidable in war of any nationality.

 

But this war was a fearful lesson, and should teach us the necessity of avoiding wars in the future.

 

0 0 votes
Article Rating
5 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Art Deco
Art Deco
Monday, February 18, AD 2019 5:42am

Official holidays should recognize and ratify popular sentiment, i.e. the celebrations people have in their own households with their own time and effort. Christmas, Thanksgiving, the Fourth of July, and New Year’s. Within my lifetime, you had vigorous Memorial Day celebrations, but that seems to have evaporated. In certain locales, you might add St. Joseph’s Day or Rosh Hoshanah or Yom Kippur. President’s Day is a hook for appliance sales, MLK day commemorates Coretta King’s nagging skills, and the rest of them are sops to public employee unions. They ought to go.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Monday, February 18, AD 2019 7:47am

I read Ron Chernow’s biography and came a way a Grant fan.

Absolutely a great general. I don’t rank him among the top presidents: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Reagan, Trump.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Monday, February 18, AD 2019 4:37pm

Sir,

Linked on Instapundit is a good NRO article on Grant: how and why he was under-rated.

Happy Presidents’ Day! This is the third (since 2017) we don’t an America-hating commie in the White House.

Dale Price
Dale Price
Tuesday, February 19, AD 2019 11:40am

Grant understood what the War was about and understood that Lincoln was ultimately in charge of the Union effort. If for no other reasons than those, he would have been the ideal general for Lincoln. But he was indeed a great general, and that made him the perfect general for Lincoln and the Union.

The right man, in the right place, and *just* in time.

Discover more from The American Catholic

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading

Scroll to Top