In a military point of view this campaign and siege have been pronounced
by many competent critics the greatest achievement of the war; but the
magnificent and interesting story must, with regret, be yielded to the
biographer of Grant; it does not belong to the biographer of Lincoln.
The whole enterprise was committed to Grant to be handled by him without
let or hindrance, and it was conducted by him from beginning to end
without interference, and almost even without suggestion. Yet this very
fact was greatly to the credit of the administration. In the outset the
President passed judgment upon the man; and it was a correct judgment.
Afterward he stood to it gallantly. In the middle of the business, when
the earlier expedients went wrong, a great outcry against Grant arose.
Editors and politicians, even the secretary of the treasury himself,
began to hound the President with importunate demands for the
displacement of a general whom they fervently alleged to be another of
the incompetents; in short, there was the beginning of just such a
crusade as that which had been made against McClellan. But by this time
the President had had opportunity to measure the military capacity of
editors and politicians, and he was not now so much disquieted by their
clamor as he once had been. He simply, in his quiet way, paid no
attention to them whatsoever. Only when one of them reiterated the
gossip about Grant being drunk at Shiloh, he made his famous reply, that
he should like to send to some other generals a barrel of the whiskey
which Grant drank.
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