I had ever met, and the last that one would select at first glance as a remarkable man.  I remember that Secretary of War Stanton said that when he visited the armies in the West, General Grant and his staff entered his car; he looked at them, one after the other, as they entered and seeing General Grant, said to himself, “Well, I do not know which is General Grant, but there is one that cannot be.”  Yet this was he. [Reading this years after it was written, I laugh.  It is pretty hard on the General, for I have been taken for him more than once.]

In those days of the war much was talked about “strategy” and the plans of the various generals.  I was amazed at General Grant’s freedom in talking to me about such things.  Of course he knew that I had been in the War Office, and was well known to Secretary Stanton,[21] and had some knowledge of what was going on; but my surprise can be imagined when he said to me: 

“Well, the President and Stanton want me to go East and take command there, and I have agreed to do it.  I am just going West to make the necessary arrangements.”

I said, “I suspected as much.”

“I am going to put Sherman in charge,” he said.

“That will surprise the country,” I said, “for I think the impression is that General Thomas should succeed.”

“Yes, I know that,” he said, “but I know the men and Thomas will be the first to say that Sherman is the man for the work.  There will be no trouble about that.  The fact is the western end is pretty far down, and the next thing we must do is to push the eastern end down a little.”

[Footnote 21:  Mr. Carnegie gave to Stanton’s college, Kenyon, $80,000, and on April 26, 1906, delivered at the college an address on the great War Secretary.  It has been published under the title Edwin M. Stanton, an Address by Andrew Carnegie on Stanton Memorial Day at Kenyon College. (New York, 1906.)]

That was exactly what he did.  And that was Grant’s way of putting strategy into words.  It was my privilege to become well acquainted with him in after years.  If ever a man was without the slightest trace of affectation, Grant was that man.  Even Lincoln did not surpass him in that:  but Grant was a quiet, slow man while Lincoln was always alive and in motion.  I never heard Grant use a long or grand word, or make any attempt at “manner,” but the general impression that he was always reticent is a mistake.  He was a surprisingly good talker sometimes and upon occasion liked to talk.  His sentences were always short and to the point, and his observations upon things remarkably shrewd.  When he had nothing to say he said nothing.  I noticed that he was never tired of praising his subordinates in the war.  He spoke of them as a fond father speaks of his children.

The story is told that during the trials of war in the West, General Grant began to indulge too freely in liquor.  His chief of staff, Rawlins, boldly ventured to tell him so.  That this was the act of a true friend Grant fully recognized.