A curious incident revealing the intense interest with which Lincoln watched the career of Grant is related by Mr. J. Russell Jones, an old and trusted friend of the President, who joined the army at Vicksburg in time to witness its final triumph.  Soon after Mr. Jones’s return to Chicago, the President summoned him to Washington.  With eager haste, after the first salutations were over, Lincoln declared the object for which he had secured the interview:  “’I have sent for you, Mr. Jones, to know if that man Grant wants to be President.’  Mr. Jones, although somewhat astonished at the question and the circumstances under which it was asked, replied at once, ‘No, Mr. President.’  ‘Are you sure?’ queried the latter.  ‘Yes,’ said Mr. Jones, ’perfectly sure.  I have just come from Vicksburg.  I have seen General Grant frequently, and talked fully and freely with him about that and every other question; and I know he has no political aspirations whatever, and certainly none for the Presidency.  His only desire is to see you re-elected and to do what he can under your orders to put down the rebellion and restore peace to the country.’  ‘Ah, Mr. Jones,’ said Lincoln, ’you have lifted a great weight off my mind, and done me an immense amount of good; for I tell you, my friend, no man knows how deeply that Presidential grub gnaws till he has had it himself.’” We cannot believe that Lincoln cherished any feeling of jealousy of the rising commander, or desired to interfere with whatever political ambition he might nourish.  It was rather his desire to be assured of the single-hearted purpose of a military leader whom he had trusted and to whom he wished to confide still more important services in the conduct of the war.

It may be remembered that early in the war an anecdote went the rounds of the press to the effect that, in reply to a complaint that Grant had been guilty of drunkenness in the campaigns in the West, Lincoln remarked that he would “like to find out what kind of liquor Grant drank,” so that he might “send some of it to the other Generals.”  The true version of that characteristic anecdote is this, as given by the late Judge T. Lyle Dickey, who was a Judge of the Illinois Supreme Court at the time of his death, and at the time of Grant’s famous Vicksburg campaign was on the General’s staff as chief of cavalry.  Judge (then Colonel) Dickey had been sent to Washington with private despatches for the President and the Secretary of War.  Lincoln and Dickey had been intimate friends for years, and during the latter’s visit to the former on that occasion, Dickey remarked, “I hear that some one has been trying to poison you against Grant by reporting that he gets drunk.  I wish to assure you, Mr. President, that there is not a scintilla of truth in the report.”  “Oh, Colonel,” replied the President, “we get all sorts of reports here, but I’ll say this to you:  that if those accusing General Grant of getting drunk will tell me where he gets his whiskey, I will get a lot of it and send it around to some of the other Generals, who are badly in need of something of the kind.”