BROWN COUNTY OHIO - HISTORY: Part 3 (published 1898)
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HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS OF OHIO, By Henry Howe, LL.D., 1898

REMINISCENCES OF THE PARENTS OF GENERAL GRANT, WITH AN ANALYSIS OF THE
GENERAL'S CHARACTERISTICS. - On our visit to Georgetown on our second tour
over the State we happened not to meet with any who knew General Grant in
his youth, now more than half a century ago. At this time of his decease we
wrote our reminiscences of his parents, with a pen-portrait of him as he
appeared to us, which we here place on permanent record. One of his strong
friends, for years associated with him in a post of honor, indeed was a
member of his cabinet, pronounces it a just delineation of the qualities of
this extraordinary man.

        During the rebellion and for years after the Grant family lived in
Covington opposite Cincinnati, and eventually Jesse Grant, the father, was
appointed postmaster of that town. When the star of his son was rising he
was a familiar figure on the platform at Union meetings in Cincinnati. I
sometimes saw him standing near the Gazette building where the people were
wont to gather for the latest news from the armies in front in the periods
of agonizing suspense.
        Father Grant, as they called him, was a large man with high
shoulders, about six feet in stature and plainly attired giving one the
idea of being just as he was, a useful, substantial citizen. His complexion
was florid, and his eyes were fronted by huge green glasses; his whole
appearance was striking. When the Union army was floundering in the mud
before Vicksburg and millions were despairing under the long and weary
waiting his faith never faltered. "Ulysses," he said, "will work until he
gets a grip, and when he gets a grip he never lets go, and he will take
Vicksburg."
        One summer afternoon, when Grant was President I had the experience
of a personal interview with his parents and with each alone. I had
published in Cincinnati, my then residence, and in connection with the late
E.C. Middleton, a portrait in oil colors of Grant, and crossed the river to
Covington to show a copy to them and obtain their testimony as to its
accuracy. I first called upon the old gentleman at the post-office. He
invited me in behind the letters, and on looking at the portrait was highly
pleased, pronouncing it the best he had seen, and was glad to so attest. He
was chatty and happy in my presence. Though sociality was natural to him, I
am inclined to think that the reflection that he was the father of General
Grant, brought up so forcibly at that moment, was the prime factor to
produce an extra beniguant mood.
        Twenty minutes later I was in the presence of Mrs. Grant. Covington
like most towns in the old slave-holding States, had a slipshod aspect. The
Grants lived on an unattractive, narrow street in a small, plain, two-story
brick home close up to the pavement. An old lady answered my ring. It was
Mrs. Grant, and I think she was the only person in the house. At the very
hour when her son was being inaugurated at Washington, it was said, a
neighbor saw her on the rear porch of her residence, with broom in hand,
sweeping down the cobwebs.
        She was in person and manner the antithesis of her husband; a
brunette with small, slender, erect figure, delicately chiseled features,
and when young and simply Hannah Simpson must have been very sweet to look
upon. Indeed, she was so then to me from her modest air of refinement and
that expression of moral beauty which increases with the years.
        In my presence she was the personification of calmness and silence,
and put her signature beneath that of her husband without a word. I tried
to engage her in conversation to hear more of the tones than simple replies
"yes" or "no," and to see some play to her countenance. It was in vain.
Believing that life is so short that one should omit no opportunity of
trying to give pleasure to another, I said, "I think, madam, I am favored
this afternoon. There are multitudes in all parts of our country, who would
be highly gratified to have an interview with the mother of General Grant."
        It was true, I felt it, and it was a pretty thing to say. Not by a
word or an expression of countenance did she show that she even heard me.
Yet I was glad I had said it. A duty had been performed and it revealed a
trait of character. From her General Grant must have got his immobility
that on occasions when common civility demanded vocal signification showed
in a reticence that was painful even to the bystanders. Neither mother nor
son could help it.
        The faculty of social impressibility is necessary to every human
being if they would widely win souls and full fill their own. Conversation
must be had for life's happiest, best uses, when eye speaks to eye, heart
to heart, and the varied tones wake the soul in sympathy. Andrew Jackson,
Henry Clay and Abraham Lincoln had words of cheer for everybody, and hence
were widely loved. When Henry Clay was defeated for the presidency strong
men bowed and wept; when Lincoln was assassinated the whole nation writhed
in agony. There was then no such love for Grant. It was because of his
extreme reticence and that grim, fixed expression of face that gave no sign
of the warm affections that were within. Few, we found, cared to have his
portrait, while for those above named, together with the portraits of
George and Martha Washington, there was a great demand. years later this
was changed: Grant himself grew social and won more the affections of the
people, as they learned his sterling moral qualities.
        An analysis of the character of a great man always interests. It
never can be only partially done. We never can fully comprehend ourselves,
much less so another. Grant's moral qualities were of the best. They were
modesty, magnanimity, self-repose, a total absence of vanity, self-seeking,
jealousy, or malice. He loved truth and purity. His patriotism and sense of
justice were so strong that he would elevate, a personal enemy to a
position if he was the best man for the public use. No man better loved
than he, but his dreadful reticence allowed him to illustrate this only by
acts. His mind was simple, direct in its action, and he had it in the
perfect mastery of an iron will.
        His memory was like a vice. His topographical memory and capacity
bordered on the marvelous. When in camp he soon knew the position of every
brigade, the name of its commander and the whole country round with its
roads, hills, woods and streams, and then it was all before him as a map on
the table. During the siege of Vicksburg he heard of a Northern man living
in the vicinity, a civil engineer familiar with the whole adjacent country
from his surveys therein. He sent for him and adopted him in his military
family. That gentleman afterwards said he never met such a head for a civil
engineer as that of Grant's.
        This faculty made him superior to every other commander, so that
with his breadth and clearness of views he could make his combinations and
move his men on the field of battle with a well-calculated result, almost
as certain as fate. He cared less than most commanders to discover the
plans of his enemy. He had his own which they could not foresee, and his
involved continued movement. Therein he acted on the knowledge that the
greatest courage is with him who attacks, and that even a musket ball in
motion is worthy of more respect than a cannon ball at rest. His faculty of
concentration was so great, his nerves so rigid, that mid showers of
bullets and the skipping of cannon balls he was as calm as on parade.
Moreover, he had the invincibility of the faith that the Confederacy would
ultimately totter and crumble, and the business of each day was to hasten
on the time by action for the rising of that dust. So he kept pounding
away, and proved himself to be God's hammer to break up slavery.
        It was well for the amenities of that dreadful struggle that the
commanders on both sides had been largely personal friends, youths together
in the same military school, brother officers in the same army. Grant felt
this bond of sympathy when Lee came into his presence to lay down the
sword. And Lee deserved magnanimity in that hour of humiliation. I chanced
to make the acquaintance of a Virginian, an elegant young man, who had been
a aide of Lee. He told me that one evening at table early in the war the
officers of his military family were speaking in no measured terms of
indignation of a Virginian, perhaps it was General Thomas, for remaining in
the Union army, when General Lee rebuked them, saying, "You do him a great
wrong, young gentlemen, in denouncing him. He has acted from the same
conscientious sense of duty as you have, and is worthy of you highest
respect in his decision."
        Grant's mind was strong, but, from his want of imagination,s everly
practical, dry and naked. An older brother of mine, in the long past, a
cadet at West Point, told me that when listening to a lecture there on the
properties of a globe he found he could not comprehend it. Through his
obtruding imagination that globe was enveloped in a blue flame, the result
perhaps of the early theologic teaching which I happen to know he had. With
Grant I venture to say when he came later to the same study the globe was
as clear as a ball of crystal. He liked West Point for its mathematics
mainly. What on earth can be drier? Even "the Pons Asinorum" is over a dry bed.
        He had no ear for music. Every tune was alike to him. Varied,
weirdly-pleasing sensations that arise in the soul of some natures were
probably weak in him, such as come from listening to the wind sighing
through the pines, the murmurings of the mountain brook, the cooing of the
doves under the caves, the chirp of the crickets and the nightly disputes
of certain innocent, harmless insects who appear to have before them their
especial question of ages, whether "Katy did" or "Katy didn't."
        He seemed weak in the perception of the beautiful as derived from
the contemplation of nature. It was a great deprivation, such will say who
find exquisite enjoyment and lift their hearts in gratitude, as they fell
the benign presence of the universal spirit in the sparkling dew globule,
the trembling leaf and the sweetly-tinted flavor. To many a heart this love
is a great panacea in a time of woe. They feel in the midst of sore
struggles that the world of beauty is still theirs. But for this reflection
they might sometimes seek relief in suicide. Life," they will say, "is yet
mine; it is the great possession."
        During the eight years of his presidency, I was personally told by
the librarian, Grant never entered the library of Congress, and there is no
evidence that his information extended much into the leaves of books. I do
know that the brightest of our men in ideas, such scholars and thinkers as
Woolsey, Emerson, etc., were not his companions, but he seemed largely to
find them in the lower strata of the kings of money and lords of fleet
horses, gorgeous in their settings, luxurious and materialistic in their lives.
        Grant had the sense of moral beauty. He loved goodness and
incapable of an intentional wrong. Not an oath nor an impure expression was
heard from his lips. He was as strong in his friendships as in his will,
and he had that highest quality of citizenship, deep, fervent, devotion to
his own family. His dislike of exaggeration, his modesty, his calmness of
spirit and honesty of purpose are shown in every word he wrote or spoke.
His memoirs, when published, will be found as charming from their terse
simplicity and crystal clearness as the narratives of Defoe. Every child
will comprehend every word. Grant's absence of imagination and his power of
concentration gave him a clear view of facts, while his marvelous memory
gave him therein full breadth of comprehension, so that each fact would
fall in at one view and in its relative place of importance.
        His calmness was so serene that no intruding emotion could disturb
the perfect action of his judgment. Having no imagination, he never
appealed to it in his soldiers nor did they want it. War was with them
business, not poetry. A poet was not wanted as commander of the Army of the
Potomac, no matter what the direction for which the soul of John Brown was
heading; nor a looking-glass commander with his mind upon spreading
epaulettes and bobbing plumes.
        He was a thoroughly independent, self-poised thinker, and in his
simplicity and originality of expression often made two or three words do
the work of an entire sentence. A notable instance of this was given when
General Butler was imprisoned by the Confederates in the peninsula formed
by the junction of the Appomattox with the James. He wrote that he was
"bottled-up," two words that so comically expressed the dilemma he had been
in that the public laughed at the quiet humor:
        He was bottled tight,
                Was bottled long;
        'Twas on the Jeems,
                So goes the song.
        'Twas there he fumed,
                'Twas there he fretted,
        'Twas there he sissed
                and effervesced

        Grant's attachments to his friends was one of his best traits. Many
public men, through selfish fear of the charge of nepotism, will allow
those bound to them by the strongest ties of kindred to suffer rather that
help them to positions which they know they can worthily fill. No such
moral cowardice can be laid to his charge. He was alike physically and
morally brave to the inmost fibre.
        A well known illustration of his tenderness and strength of
affection was shown by his grief on learning of the death of the young and
brilliant James B. McPherson, who fell in the battle of Peach Tree Creek,
July 22d, 1864, "when he went into his tent and wept like a child," and
later in in the letter which he wrote to the aged grandmother of the
lamented general, when he said: "Your bereavement is great, but cannot be
greater than mine."
        Such a sublimely pathetic and morally beautiful picture as that
presented by Grant in his last dying work is seldom given for human
contemplation. To what fine tender strains the chords, of his heart must
have vibrated, and how inexpressibly sweet this life must have seemed to
him those sad, melancholy days, as he sat there, seated in the solitude of
his chamber penning his legacy, while the warming sun shot its golden
streamers athwart the carpet at his feet, and the air was filled with the
joy of short-lived buzzing insects, shown by their low, monotonous notes
reverberating from the window-panes. Could the world to which he was
hastening offer to his imagination, when he had cast aside his poor,
suffering body, anything more beautiful than this?
        Night is over the great city and the stars with their silent eyes
look down upon the tomb by the river as in the long ago they looked down
there upon a wilderness scene when the prows of Hendrick Hudson moved past
through the ever-flowing waters. And there the waters will continue to flow
on and on until another great leader shall arise prepared for the last
great conflict. And this conflict will not be one of blood, but
intellectual and moral - one that shall adjust to the use of the toiling
millions a righteous measure for their labor in a land overflowing with
wealth and abundance more than sufficient for the comfort and welfare of
every deserving one, even to the very last, the humbled son and daughter of
toil. But victory will never ensue until character and not gold has become
the general measure of regard, and the race has attained that high moral
plane where no one can wield vast possessions and live under the withering
scorn that would befall him if he lived for himself along.


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