Latest / Ulysses S. Grant / 09 - Ulysses S. Grant by Owen Wister

Transcript

09 - Ulysses S. Grant by Owen Wister · Ulysses S. Grant

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Section nine of Ulysses s. Grant by Owen Wister. This
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter six. Not
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: even if space were left, should his after days be told.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: It is not for them that we remember and bless him.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: The further we recede from him, the more they sink
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: away and leave him shining in his greatness at apromatics,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: a hero in a soldier's dress, with sword not drawn
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: but sheathed. There his figure stands immortal, and there his
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: real life ends for living his action up to the
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: soul's highest excellence. And many who eat their three meals
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: a day are dead as door mails. Grant rose to
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: his full height again. Only when he came to die
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: as president, he was no more himself than he had
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: been when tanning leather. Men far less worthy have sat
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: more worthily in the White House. It was foretold silently Sherman.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: His dear friend was set against it, and would not
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: say a word for it. Did he not know the
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: world's great soldiers, and what babies they became? As statesman
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Wellington latest of all more still he knew his friend.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: But we Americans, the most consistently inconsistent people on earth,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: have passed a century in abusing our army, and in
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: electing every military hero we could get for President Washington, Jackson, Harrison,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Taylor Grant. When Lincoln was taken from us, no man
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: was so loved as Grant, And therefore, without asking or
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: caring to know how he could have learned statesmanship, in
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: our gratitude, we twice gave him the greatest gift we have.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Before this happened, his straightforward goodness and the power that
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: he had did much to heal the scars of war.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Andrew Johnson wanted Lee tried for treason, and Grant stopped
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: it by threatening to resign his commission. In those days,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: the Southern general Taylor writes of him, he came frequently
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: to see me, was full of kindness and anxious to
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: promote my wishes. His action had endeared him to all
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: Southern men. His bearing and conduct at this time were admirable, modest,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: and generous. He declared his ignorance of and distrust for
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: politics and politicians with which and whom he intended to
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: have nothing to do. Certainly, Johnson did not better Grant's
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: opinion of politicians, nor did those men who now led
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: the South far and wide astray from the noble spear
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: of Lee at Apromatics. Their continued malignity lost them a
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: great chance and cost the South deer. Following their manifesto
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: at Richmond already quoted, they now met each step of
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: clemency with a temper which is completely heralded in the
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: words of Henry A. Wise when he surrendered, we won't
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: be forgiven. We hate you, and that is the whole
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: of it. They now, with an arrogance which our language
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: has no word to express, demanded to return to Congress
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: on the old slave ratio. This gave white owners the
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: benefit of their slaves by adding three fifths of the
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: number of the black non voting population to the sum
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: of the white voting population. Slaves were free now. But
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: this was the arrangement which the South proposed to continue.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Let the reader pause and take it in. Johnson, for
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: personal reasons, encouraged it and alarmed Congress. Naturally, the North
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: lost patience, and Grant lost his patients too. This swept
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: away the Fourteenth Amendment, an admirable device by which any
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: state could deny a vote to a part of its
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: male population on condition that its representation in Congress was
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: proportionately reduced. This elastic remedy, which held hope, was destroyed
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: by the precipitate, deplorable blunder of the Fifteenth Amendment, the
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: evils of which have stained our soil with increasing blood
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: each year, and developed that barbarism of which the South
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: has had too great a share from the beginning. But
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: when leaders came to Grant offering him the presidency, either
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: he forgot his opinion of politics, or and signs point
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: to this, he thought, as another hero has had thought since,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: that being president was an easy matter. None of us
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: can measure such a temptation without having it. As General
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Taylor writes, perhaps none but a divine being can resist
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: such a temptation. Strange, very strange, is Grant's conduct. After
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: his election. He left the world. He went into a
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: sort of retreat at Galena. He would see no party leaders.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: He ordered no letter sent to him, he would make
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: no speeches. He disclosed his plans to no one. We
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: can only guess his thoughts during this time by his
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: acts following it. They were honest and helpless. Evidently, he
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: wished to govern without politics, as he had made war
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: without politics. He wished to choose men as he had
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: chosen generals for their fitness as he judged them. He
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: did not perceive the vast defeatarance that war at once
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: lays bare a soldier's fitness to the bone, while peace
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: may hide incompetence and dishonesty for many years. As an
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: illustration of Grant's total blindness to the proprieties of civil government,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: his choosing mister Stuart, Secretary of the Treasury will serve
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: he very naturally thought so great a merchant would fill
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: the place well, he appointed him without consulting him. The
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: Senate confirmed the appointment. Then a law was discovered forbidding
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: men in foreign trade to hold this position. Grant asked
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: to have the law changed. But we will not dwell
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: upon his many improprieties of administration, favoritism, too constant, acceptance
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: of presence, too great obstinacy, enforcing his notions, invincible misunderstanding
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: of the difference between a lieutenant general and a president.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: It may be said that when he happened upon good guides,
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: such as Hamilton Fish, his acts were wise, as in
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: the Alabama case, where he was as right as Sumner
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: was wrong, or as in his courageous veto of the
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: inflation bill in eighteen seventy four, when he listened to
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: thieves and impostors, as in the Sandamingo Matter, his acts
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: were mistaken and dangerous, and alas unchanged from his childhood
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: innocence revealed in the Horse Story. He remained such a
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: mark for thieves and impostors that he came to sit
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: in a sort of center of corruption, credulous to the
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: bitter end, For the end was the bitterest of all.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: After his second term, when he had gone round the
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: world and met most of the great people in it,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: and returned man enough of the world to remark humorously
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: that at Windsor, Queen Victoria had been too anxious to
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: put him at his ease, and after his unwilling candidacy
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: for a third term, had been frustrated. After all his experience,
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: he fell a dupe to a Wall Street gambler. He
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: became a special partner. His name was used to further
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: a brazen scheme of thievery into the business. He put
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: a hundred thousand dollars and drew two and three thousand
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: a month income, without wondering how such returns could be.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: When the crash came on May sixth, eighteen eighty four.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: It was inconceivable to the world at first that he
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: was not guilty presently by his conduct and statements, by
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: his making over to his creditor, mister Vanderbilt, all the
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: property that he owned, and refusing mister Vanderbilt's generous attempts
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: to give it back to him, the world recognized his innocence.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: Help was offered this ex president, who had not now
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: enough money to pay the milkman. Most touchingly, a stranger,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: mister Wood sent him instantly five hundred dollars, and soon
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: five hundred more as his share of the nation's debt
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: to him. More elaborate attempts to assist him were begun,
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: but he rejected them, and under the whole shock his
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: body gave way, but his spirit rose. He was asked
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: to write war articles, and presently was able to pay
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: mister Wood with the first fruits of his pen. Then
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: for weeks, sometimes in such torture from the cancer in
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: his throat that drinking water was like swallowing Molton led
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: to him. He fought death away while he wrote his memoirs.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: The tribute of the country in making him general once more.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: On March fourth, eighteen eighty five deeply pleased him, but
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: he was shaken by it and grew worse reviving. However,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: his vast will pushed on with the book in order
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: to leave something for his wife's support. He had no
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: voice any more, but whispered his dictation and wrote on
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: days when he was strong enough. He held death away
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: until the book was finished, and then gave death leave
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: to come. In June, he had been taken up the
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: Hudson River to Mount mac gregor, near Saratoga from his
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: New York house. His eyes followed West Point as the
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: train passed by it. On July three, his old friend
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: Buckner of Donaldson came affectionately to bid him farewell, and
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: he spoke of his happiness in the growing harmony between
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: North and South. On July nine, in a trembling pencil,
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: he wrote to mister Wood, I am glad to say
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: that while there is much much unblushing wickedness in this world,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: yet there is a compensating generosity and grandeur of soul.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: In my case, I have not found that republics are ungrateful,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: nor are the people. On July twenty three, he died
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: to pay his debts. He had so utterly stripped himself
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: of all his trophies and possessions, that there was not
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: left a uniform to clothe his body, or a sword
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: to lay upon his coffin. To day he rests in
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: his tomb at Riverside. But his greatest visible monument is
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: the book. Quite apart from its history, which here and
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: there needs amendment, and quite independent of its masterly prose,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: it is a picture of a noble, modest, great heart.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: As Lincoln asked Grant after Corinth, how does it all
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: sum up let poetry, which is the summing of all substance? Reply?
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: My good blade carves the casks of men. My tough
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: lance thrusteth sure. My strength is as the strength of ten,
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: because my heart is pure. End of Chapter six. End
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: of Ulysses S. Grant by Owen Wister,