Returning to New York, he assumed command of a squadron bound for the East Indies, and put to sea in the President. January 14, 1815, through the blunder of his pilot, his ship heavily grounded while going out. The next morning, Decatur discovered the British squadron in pursuit, consisting of the Majestic razee, the Endymion, Tenedos, and Pomona frigates and a brig. Of these the Endymion was the fleetest. After drawing her away from the rest, Decatur turned and attacked her. She was crippled and her battery silenced, when the American resumed her flight. By this time, however, the other ships had come up and opened fire. Escape was impossible and Decatur surrendered to the British squadron.

Returning to the United States under parole, he was despatched to the Mediterranean, on the conclusion of peace, to punish the Algerine pirates that were preying upon our commerce. He did his work thoroughly and well, compelling the Dey to sign the most humiliating treaty ever made with a Christian nation. He obtained similar redress at Tunis and Tripoli.

Decatur was subsequently created Navy Commissioner and made his residence in Washington at Kalorama, formerly occupied by Joel Benton.

Commodore Barron's suspension began February 8, 1808. He resorted to the merchant service, and was abroad when war was declared. His suspension terminated about eight months afterward, some time after which he reported himself to the navy department, by letter, for duty, the war continuing two years after his becoming available for command. He did not return to the United States until the close of 1818. He declared that he had used every effort to reach home before during hostilities, but was prevented. A court, presided over by Captain Charles Stewart, afterward declared its judgment that such effort had not been made by Barron.

The latter felt resentful toward Decatur, and called him to account for certain expressions he had been told were used by him reflecting upon his conduct as an officer. When appealed to, Decatur, as Navy Commissioner, declared that he held no personal enmity toward Barron; he deemed it unjust to other officers of the navy that his request to be restored to command should be granted.

Barron opened a sharp correspondence with Decatur, which continued nearly a year. Mutual friends, or rather enemies, fanned the trouble between them, which ended in a challenge from Barron which was promptly accepted by Decatur. The duel took place at Bladensburg, on the morning of March 22, 1820, Commodore Bainbridge was Decatur's second, and Captain Jesse D. Elliott served Barron in a similar capacity. Decatur chivalrously surrendered his right to name the distance, which Barron made the shortest possible, eight paces, on account of his defective eyesight. Decatur was without a superior as a pistol shot, and, declaring that he did not wish the life of his antagonist, said he would only wound him in the hip.

At the word "two," both fired so exactly together, that only one report was heard. Barron was struck in the right hip, as Decatur intended, and sank to the ground. Decatur stood erect a moment and was seen to turn pale, compress his lips, and press his hand against his side. Then he fell, the ball having passed through his abdomen.

"I am mortally wounded," he said, "and wish that it had been in the defence of my country." His attendants helped him to his feet, and started slowly toward the waiting carriage. His pain was so great that after a few paces he sank exhausted, near where Barron was stretched on the ground. While the two thus lay near each other, waiting to be carried off, they shook hands, and each freely forgave the other.

Decatur was lifted into the carriage, which reached Washington at half-past ten. He would not allow himself to be carried into his home until his wife and two nieces were sent to the upper floor where they could not see the dreadful sight. Wishing to save the distracted ones from the grief of witnessing his suffering, he refused them permission to enter the room where he lay.

The news caused consternation and sorrow in Washington, where no man was more honored and loved than he. He thanked his friends for their sympathy, told them he had not long to live, and signed his will. "I am a dying man," said he, "and only regret that my wound was not received on the quarter-deck in the service of my country."

When the surgeons proposed to probe for the bullet, he said it was not worth while as it had done all the harm it could. He remarked that he did not believe it possible for a person to suffer so much pain and yet live. But not once did he utter a groan. His agony was beyond description and did not cease until half-past ten, when he died.

It seemed as if the whole male population of Washington and the adjacent county were present at the funeral, besides most of the officers of the government, members of Congress, and resident foreign ministers. The National Intelligencer, in an extra, said: "A hero has fallen. Commodore Stephen Decatur, one of the first officers of our navy, the pride of his country, the gallant and noble-hearted gentleman, is no more. He expired a few minutes ago, of the mortal wound received in the duel this morning. Mourn, Columbia! for one of thy brightest stars is set! A son without fear and without reproach, in the fulness of his fame, in the prime of his usefulness, has descended into the tomb."

[Signature of the author.]



OLIVER HAZARD PERRY

(1785-1819)

]

Oliver Hazard Perry was born in Rhode Island, August 23, 1785. The late Commodore Mackenzie, of the navy, who possessed what we may term a fine biographical faculty, has traced in his interesting narrative of the Life of Perry, with fond minuteness, the early incidents of the boy's career. The chief characteristics, he tells us, "were an uncommon share of beauty, a sweetness and gentleness of disposition which corroborated the expression of his countenance, and a perfect disregard of danger, amounting to apparent unconsciousness." This biographer gives some curious anecdotes of his school days.

Suffice it to say, that the family removing to Newport about this time, Perry found good opportunities of education at that place, and availed himself of them in a manly spirit. He was especially instructed in mathematics, and their application to navigation and nautical astronomy. As proof of the boy's ingenuousness, and the interest he excited in intelligent observers, it is related that Count Rochambeau, the son of the General of the Revolution, then residing at Newport, was particularly attracted to him, and that Bishop Seabury, on his visitation, marked him as a boy of religious feeling. These are traits which shape the man; we shall find them reappearing in the maturity of Perry's life, in his worth, humanity, and refinement.

The boy was but thirteen when his father, in 1798, was called into the naval service of his country in the spirited effort made by President Adams to resist the aggressions of France upon the ocean. He took the command of a small frigate, built under his direction in Rhode Island, named the General Greene, and carried with him to sea his son Oliver as a midshipman, at the express solicitation of the youth. The General Greene was actively employed in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, giving all its officers abundant opportunity for practice in the infant service. The French war flurry after a while blew over, as the Directory, the mainspring of these aggressions, lost power; peace was patched up, and Jefferson shortly after inaugurated an unwholesome pacific policy by a sweeping reduction of the navy, as if it were not small enough already. In this mutilating operation the elder Perry was dropped, the younger one fortunately retained.

The navy, however, was soon revived by the demands of the nation to resist the iniquitous and insulting depredations upon life and property inflicted by the Barbary powers. The United States had borne far too patiently with these injuries, though she had the honor of being in advance of the old powers of Europe in resisting them. The Mediterranean became the scene of many a chivalrous exploit of our early officers, a score of whom, headed by Preble, Bainbridge, Decatur, Somers, and others of that stamp of fiery and indomitable valor, gained immortal laurels by their deeds of daring in conflict with the infidel.

The young Perry served as midshipman in the frigate Adams, which sailed from Newport, in 1802, to join Commodore Morris' command at Gibraltar. His ship was for some time employed in blockading a Tripolitan at that port; a tedious but instructive service in manoeuvring, at the close of which Perry, in consequence of his accomplishments, was promoted by his captain to the duties of a lieutenant. The frigate was then employed as a convoy, making the tour of the northern ports. This gave Perry an opportunity to study scenes of the old world, which can never lose their influence in the formation of the man of education and refinement.

In 1809, Perry got to sea in command of an armed schooner, the Revenge, which was employed on the coast service. While on the southern coast, he had an opportunity to gain distinction, which he did not fail to avail himself of, in cutting out a stolen American vessel from under the guns of a British ship in Spanish waters, off Florida. Conveying his prize off the coast, he was threatened by his Majesty's ship Gore, of double his force, when, having, as Mackenzie says, "no idea of being 'Leopardized,'" he put his little schooner in readiness for boarding at a moment's notice—a spirited resolution of great bravery, which he would no doubt have carried out, had the British vessel insisted upon overhauling the Revenge. While engaged in cruising off Connecticut and Rhode Island, in the beginning of 1811, he unfortunately lost his vessel, through an error of the pilot, on the Watch Hill Reef, opposite Fisher's Island, as he was sailing from Newport to New London. Every seamanlike effort was made to save the vessel, and when all was unavailing, Perry showed equal skill and resolution in landing the crew in a heavy January swell, with a violent wind. He was himself the last to leave the vessel. He was not merely acquitted of neglect, but his conduct was extolled by a court of inquiry.

He was, of course, thrown temporarily out of command by the loss of his vessel; an interval of repose which he hastened to turn to account by forming a matrimonial alliance with Miss Elizabeth Champlin Mason, of an influential family at Newport, to whom he had become engaged several years before, on his arrival from the Mediterranean. The wedding took place in May, 1811, affording him ample opportunity for the honeymoon, previous to the actual outbreak of the war impending with England.

This event found him at Newport, with the rank of master commandant, in charge of the flotilla of gunboats keeping watch in the harbor. It was a service not altogether adapted to satisfy the ambitious spirit of a young officer, but it was important in itself, and became, in Perry's hands, a step to future eminence. His course, at this time, illustrates a valuable truth, that no honorable employment is profitless to a man of genius. He will in some way turn it to account. Constructing gunboats, and recruiting men in port, were services not calculated to make any great blaze in a despatch, but they conducted Perry to his glorious bulletins of victory, and the resounding praises of the nation.

He saw the new field of military operations opening on the lakes, and his experienced eye must have seen as well the certain difficulties, as the possible honors of the situation. It was not the post which an officer with the claims of Perry would have sought, while brilliant victories were being won, in the eye of the world, on the vast theatre of the ocean. Others, however, were before him on that element.

Despairing of a command at sea, he offered himself to Commodore Chauncey, who had recently been placed at the head of the lake service. His character was understood by this officer, and the proffer accepted. The necessary communications were made to the Government, and in the middle of February, in 1813, he was ordered to join Chauncey at Sackett's Harbor, with the picked men of his Newport flotilla. He lost no time in reporting himself at the appointed spot. His destination was Lake Erie, where he was to supervise the construction of two vessels to be employed in the next campaign, and he was anxious to get to the work; but Chauncey, who felt the need of his aid, detained him for a while on Lake Ontario. He, however, toward the end of March, reached Erie, where the vessels were building.

His experience in constructing gunboats at Newport was now of avail to him. He put the defence of the works, which had been greatly neglected, in a state of efficiency, and set himself to the collection of supplies, workmen, and an armament: no easy matter at that day and in that place in the wilderness; for such, as compared with our own time, it then was. The labors of Perry in this work of preparation were, in fact, of the most arduous character. They should not be forgotten as a heavy item to his credit in the sum total of his victory. Three gunboats and two brigs were launched and equipped in May.

It was at this time that he received advices that Chauncey was about to make an attack on the British post of Fort George, at the mouth of the Niagara River. He had been promised a share in this adventure, and hastened to the scene. The incidents of this journey show the spirit of the man. In his own words, in a letter describing this passage of his life: "On the evening of May 23d, I received information, about sunset, that Commodore Chauncey would in a day or two arrive at Niagara, when an attack would be made on Fort George. He had previously promised me the command of the seamen and marines that might land from the fleet. Without hesitation I determined to join him. I left Erie about dark in a small four-oared open boat. The night was squally and very dark. After encountering headwinds and many difficulties, I arrived at Buffalo on the evening of the 24th, refreshed, and remained there until daylight; I then passed the whole of the British lines in my boat, within musket-shot. Passing Strawberry Island, several people on our side of the river hailed and beckoned me on shore. On landing they pointed out about forty men on the end of Grand Island, who, doubtless, were placed there to intercept boats. In a few moments I should have been in their hands. I then proceeded with more caution. As we arrived at Schlosser, it rained violently. No horse could be procured. I determined to push forward on foot; walked about two miles and a half, when the rain fell in such torrents I was obliged to take shelter in a house at hand. The sailors whom I had left with the boat, hearing of public horses on the commons, determined to catch one for me. They found an old passing one which could not run away, and brought him in, rigged a rope from the boat into a bridle, and borrowed a saddle without either stirrup, girth, or crupper. Thus accoutred they pursued me, and found me at the house where I had stopped. The rain ceasing, I mounted; my legs hung down the sides of the horse, and I was obliged to steady the saddle by holding by the mane. In this style I entered the camp, it raining again most violently. Colonel Porter being the first to discover me, insisted upon my taking his horse, as I had some distance to ride to the other end of the camp, off which the Madison lay."

Having thus reached head-quarters, arrangements were rapidly made, and the landing of the troops assigned to Perry. In the ignorance or inexperience of some of the officers, there was considerable confusion in directing the boats in the river, which was remedied by Perry's vigilance and decision. He was everywhere, in the midst of danger, guiding and directing; the unexpected attack of the British was met by his energy, the landing effected, and the object of the expedition accomplished. This victory opened the port of Black Rock, where several American vessels were collected, which Perry undertook to get into Lake Erie against the strong current of the river, a feat which was accomplished with extraordinary fatigue; so that he returned to his station at Erie, with a respectable addition of five vessels to his own newly launched little fleet in that harbor. The American force was composed of the brigs Lawrence and Niagara, of twenty guns each, and seven smaller vessels, numbering in all fifty-four guns. Captain Barclay, commander of the British forces on the lake, had the Detroit, of nineteen guns, the Queen Charlotte, Lady Provost, and three other vessels, numbering altogether sixty-three guns. The range of the enemy's guns gave them the advantage at a distance, when the corresponding American fire was ineffectual. The Americans, too, were under a disadvantage in the enfeebled state of the crews, by the general illness which prevailed among them. The British force had undoubtedly the superiority in trained men, as compared with Perry's extemporized miscellaneous command, and untried junior officers. The latter proved, however, to be of the right material.

On the morning of the engagement the American fleet was among the islands off Malden at Put in Bay, when the British fleet bore up. There was some difficulty at first in clearing the islands, and the nature of the wind seemed likely to throw Perry upon the defensive, when a southeast breeze springing up, enabled him to bear down upon the enemy. This was at ten o'clock of a fine autumnal morning. Perry arranged his vessels in line, taking the lead in his flag-ship, the Lawrence, on which he now raised the signal for action, a blue flag, inscribed in large white letters, with the words of the dying Lawrence, "Don't give up the ship!" He accompanied this movement with an appeal to his men. "My brave lads, this flag contains the last words of Captain Lawrence. Shall I hoist it?" "Ay, ay, sir!" was the willing response. In this way he cheered the men in the awful pause, "a dead silence of an hour and a half," preceding the action, for in the light breeze the vessels were long in overcoming the intermediate distance of several miles.

Perry, who knew the perils of the day, prepared his papers as if for death. He leaded the public documents in readiness to be cast overboard, and—a touching trait of these moments—gave a hurried perusal to his wife's letters, and tore them to pieces lest they should be read by the enemy.

The awful silence is suddenly broken by a bugle sounded on board the Detroit, and the cheers of the British seamen. A shot from that vessel fell short of its mark. The Lawrence bears on to meet the fire, accompanied by the other vessels of the command in appointed order, each destined for its appropriate antagonist. At noon the British fire from the superior long guns, was telling fearfully on the American force, when Perry made all sail for close quarters, bringing the Lawrence within reach of the Detroit. He maintained a steady, well-directed fire from his carronades, assisted by the Scorpion and Ariel. The destruction on the deck of the Lawrence was fearful. Out of 100 well men, says Mackenzie, who had gone into action, 22 were killed and 61 wounded. We shall not insult the humanity of the reader by the details of this fearful carnage. It has probably never been exceeded in the terrors of the "dying deck," in naval warfare.

In the midst of this storm of conflict, Perry, finding his ship getting disabled, and seeing the Niagara uninjured at a safe distance, resolved to change his flag to that vessel. He had half a mile to traverse, exposed to the fire of the enemy, in an open boat. Nothing deterred, with the exclamation, "If a victory is to be gained I'll gain it," he made the passage, part of the time standing as a target for the hostile guns. Fifteen minutes were passed exposed to this plunging fire, which splintered the oars and covered the boat with spray. The Lawrence, stripped of her officers and men, was compelled to surrender.

Perry instantly bore up to the Detroit, the guns of which were plied resolutely, when she became entangled with her consort, the Queen Charlotte, and the Niagara poured a deadly fire into both vessels. This cannonade decided the battle in seven minutes, when the enemy surrendered. The American loss in this engagement was 27 killed and 96 wounded; that of the British 41 killed and 94 wounded. Gallant actions were performed and noble men fell on both sides. It was every way a splendid victor, placing the genius of Perry and his magnanimous, spirited conduct throughout, in the highest rank of naval exertion.

The memorable letters, brief, at once eloquent and modest, which he wrote that afternoon announcing his victory, are too characteristic to be omitted in any personal account of the man. Addressing General Harrison, he writes: "Dear General—We have met the enemy and they are ours. Two ships, two brigs, one schooner, and one sloop. Yours, with very great respect and esteem. O. H. Perry." The other was to the Secretary of the Navy: "Sir, it has pleased the Almighty to give to the arms of the United States a signal victory over their enemies on this lake. The British squadron, consisting of two ships, two brigs, one schooner, and one sloop, have this moment surrendered to the force under my command, after a sharp conflict. I have the honor to be, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant. O. H. Perry." In consonance with this simple eloquence, the mark of a master-mind, was his chivalrous care of his wounded and conduct toward his prisoners.

The victory having been gained, and the lake thus cleared of the foe, Perry was enabled to act in concert with General Harrison in driving the British from Michigan, and when his fleet was of no avail to follow them in their rapid flight, he joined that officer's land expedition, and was present, acting as his aid, at the battle of the Thames. "The appearance of the brave commodore," writes Harrison in his official report, "cheered and animated every heart." Perry also gained the gratitude of the Moravians, in whose district the contest took place, by his care in relieving the inevitable evils of war. He met everywhere on his homeward route with complimentary toasts and resolutions, gathering volume as he reached his native State, where he was received at Newport with military and civic honors. The city of New York paid him a grateful attention in a request communicated by De Witt Clinton, then mayor, to sit for his portrait for the civic gallery. The portrait was painted by Jarvis, representing him in the act of boarding the Niagara, and is preserved in the City Hall. He was created an honorary member of the Cincinnati; Congress voted him a medal and money; he was dined and feasted, and "blazed the comet of the season."

Perry's next service was in August, 1814, in command of the Java, 44, a frigate recently built at Baltimore. He was, however, not able to get to sea, in consequence of the blockade by the enemy. On the conclusion of peace he sailed in this vessel to join Commodore Shaw's squadron in the Mediterranean. In 1819 he sailed as commodore in command of the John Adams, for the West Indies, bound for the State of Venezuela, to carry on an armed negotiation for the protection of American commerce from aggressions in that quarter. Arriving at the mouth of the Orinoco, he shifted his flag to the Nonsuch, and ascended the river to the capital, Angostura, where he remained twenty days transacting his business, in the height of the yellow-fever season. His vessel had hardly left the river, on her way to Trinidad, when he was attacked. For nearly a week he suffered the progress of the terrible disease on board the small schooner, under a tropical sun, when he reached the station whither he had sent his flag-ship, the Adams. But he reached port only to die at sea, within a mile of the anchorage, on August 23, 1819, when he had just completed his thirty-fourth year. Such and so early was the fate of the gallant Perry. His remains were interred from the John Adams at Port Spain, with every attention by the English governor. Subsequently they were brought home in a national vessel by order of Congress, and reinterred at the public expense in the cemetery at Newport. The country also provided for the support of his family. If ever America produced a man whom the nation delighted to honor it was Perry.



SAM HOUSTON[7]

By AMELIA E. BARR

(1793-1863)

[Footnote 7: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

]

The builders of the American Commonwealth were all great and individual men, but the most grandly picturesque, the most heroic, figure among them, is that of General Sam Houston. Neither modern history, nor the scrolls of ancient Greece or Rome, can furnish a tale of glory more thrilling and stirring than the epic Sam Houston wrote with sword and pen, as a Conqueror of Tyranny and a Liberator of Men.

His life is a romance, and even his antecedents have the grandeur and glamour of military glory, for his ancestors, as "Sons of Old Gaul," had drawn their long swords in every battle for Scottish liberty, and his own father died while on military duty in the Alleghanies. He had also a mother worthy of the son she bore; a grand, brave woman, who put the musket into his boyish hands with the words, "My doors are ever open to the brave, Sam, but are eternally closed to cowards."

This was in the year 1813, when there was promise of a war with England, and Sam was not then twenty years old—a tall, slender, wonderfully handsome youth, with the air and manner of a prince. But nothing of this bearing was due to schools or schoolmasters, he was not of any man's moulding, although he had been educated for his future in a noble manner. For to escape the drudgery of measuring tape and molasses, he fled to the Indians when but a lad, and was adopted by their chief, and with the young braves he learned to run and leap, and hunt and ride, and find his way through pathless woods with all their skill. This was his practical education; he had only one book for mental enlargement, but this was Pope's translation of "The Iliad." He read and re-read this volume till he could recite it from beginning to end; till the words were living, and the spectral heroes were his friends and companions. So that when he joined General Jackson's battalion, he had the heart of a Greek demi-god and the physical skill and prowess of a Cherokee Indian chief.

He made a glorious record in this war, and, being severely wounded, both by arrows and gunshot, he returned to his home to be nursed by his mother. When he was able to rise again peace was assured and he resolved to become a lawyer. He was told that eighteen months' hard study would be necessary, but in six months he passed a searching examination, and was admitted to the bar of Tennessee with eclat. Then honor after honor came as naturally to him as a tree bears fruit or flower—first Adjutant-General of the State with the rank of Colonel; then District Attorney—Major-General—Member of Congress—Governor of the State of Tennessee. All these places and honors were awarded him by large majorities during a period of nine years. Indeed, between A.D. 1818 and 1827, the records of Tennessee read like some political romance, of which the handsome and beloved Sam Houston was the hero.

This was his second school. He was learning during these years those great principles of government which enabled him afterward to legislate so wisely for the land he conquered. And as soon as he was ready for his destiny, an event happened which drove him back again to the wilderness. Concerning this event no human being has the right to speak authoritatively; it was an affair strictly between himself and his bride of hardly three months. But whatever occurred, shattered his life to pieces. He separated from his wife, resigned his office as governor, and in the presence of a vast and sorrowing multitude, bid adieu to all his friends and honors, and set his face resolutely to his Indian father, who was then king of the Cherokees in Arkansas.

He began, in fact, his journey to Texas, the theatre of the great work for which his previous life had been a preparation. The thought of Texas was not a new one to him. No man had watched the hitherto futile efforts of that glorious land for freedom with greater interest; and there is little doubt that Andrew Jackson was a sharer in all Houston's Texan enthusiasms, and that he also quietly encouraged and aided the efforts for its Americanization. Indeed, at that day Texas was a name full of romance and mystery. Throughout the South and West, up the great highway of the Mississippi, on the busy streets of New York, and among the silent hills of New England, men spoke of the charmed city of San Antonio as Europeans in the eighteenth century spoke of Delhi and Agra and the Great Mogul. French traders went there with fancy goods from New Orleans, and Spanish Dons from the wealthy cities of Central Mexico came there to buy. From the villages of Connecticut, from the woods of Tennessee, and the lagoons of the Mississippi, adventurous Americans entered the Spanish-Texan Territory at Nacogdoches, going through the land buying horses, and lending their stout hearts and ready rifles to every effort for freedom which the Texans made. For though the Americans were few in number and much scattered, they were like the salt in a pottage, and men caught fire and the idea of "freedom" from them.

Texas was at this time a territory of the Empire of Mexico, and Mexico was making constant, though as yet ineffectual, efforts to become independent. Twenty years before Houston entered Texas, a number of Americans joined the priest Hidalgo in his struggle to make Mexico free. They were all shot, but this did not hinder Magee and Bernardo, with 1,200 Americans, raising the standard of liberty two years later. This party took San Antonio, and the fame of their deeds brought young Americans by hundreds to their aid; though they received no money, the love of freedom and the love of adventure being their motive and their reward.

But these brave paladins were soon followed by men who bought land and made homes, and in 1821 Austin, with the sanction of the Spanish Viceroy, introduced three hundred families, who received every reasonable guarantee from the Spanish Government. They were scarcely settled ere there was another Mexican revolt against Spain. This time the Mexicans under Santa Anna achieved the independence of their country, and a Mexican Republic was formed, with a constitution so liberal that it was gladly accepted by the American colonists. But its promises were fallacious. For ten years Santa Anna was engaged in fighting for his own supremacy, and when he had subdued all opposition he had forgotten the traditions of freedom for which he first drew his sword, and assumed the authority of a dictator.

In the meantime the American element had been steadily increasing, and Santa Anna was, not unnaturally, afraid of its growing strength and influence. In order to weaken it, he substituted for the constitution under whose guarantee they had settled, military and priestly laws of the most oppressive kind; and the complaints and reprisals at length reached such a pitch, that all Americans were ordered to deliver up their arms to the Mexican authorities. It was simply an order to disarm them in the midst of their enemies. Now the rifle is to the frontier American a third limb, and in Texas it was also necessary for the supply of food for the family, and vital for their protection from the Indians. The answer to this demand was a notice to Santa Anna posted on the very walls of the Alamo Fortress:

"If you want our arms—take them! Ten thousand Americans." This was a virtual declaration of war, but the American Texans were by no means unprepared for the idea, nor yet for its translation into practice.

Austin—who had been sent with a remonstrance to Santa Anna—was in the dungeons of the Inquisition in Mexico; but Houston, Lamar, Burleson, Burnet, Bowie, Crockett, Sherman, and many another name able to fire an army, were on the ground. Besides which, the sympathy of the whole land was with the little band of heroes. For the idea of Texas had been carried in the American heart for two generations. As far back as 1819, President Adams had wanted Texas, and Henry Clay would have voted three millions for it. Van Buren told Poinsett to offer five millions. Jackson added an additional half-million for the Rio Grande territory; but Jackson had more faith in Houston and the American settlers in Texas than in money. His brave old heart was on fire for the wrongs and cruelties inflicted by Santa Anna on his countrymen; and he was inclined to make Mexico give Texas as an atonement for the insults offered them. There is little doubt that the defiance posted on the walls of the Alamo thrilled him with a similar defiance, and that he instinctively put his hand on the spot where he had been used to wear his sword.

The first step of the American-Texans was to set a civil government in motion. Declarations and manifestoes had to be made, and loans raised in order to maintain an army in the field. There were many fine fighters, but Houston was the only statesman; and to him the arduous duty naturally fell. In the meantime Lamar and Burleson with 200 picked men attacked the Alamo Fortress. It was defended by General Cos with 1,000 men and forty-eight cannon; but on the afternoon of the third day's fighting surrendered to the Americans. This was but the first act in the drama, for as soon as the news reached Mexico, Santa Anna with a large "army of subjugation" was on the road to Texas.

The Alamo was taken by the Americans during the first day of December, 1835; on March 2, 1836, Texas was declared by the Convention assembled at the settlement of Washington, to be an independent republic, and 55 out of 56 votes elected Houston commander in chief. Houston immediately set out for the Alamo, but when he reached Gonzales he heard that every man in it had died fighting, and that Santa Anna had made a huge hecatomb of their bodies and burned them to ashes. Houston immediately sent an express to Fannin, who was defending Goliad, to blow up the fortress of Goliad, and unite with him on the Guadalupe. Fannin did not obey orders. He wrote to Houston that "he had named the place Fort Defiance, and was resolved to defend it." This decision distressed Houston, for Fannin's men were of the finest material—young men from Georgia and Alabama, fired with the idea of freedom and the spread of Americanism, or perhaps with the fanaticism of religious liberty of conscience. After reading Fannin's letter, Houston turned to Major Hockley, and said, as he pointed to the little band of men around him, "Those men are the last hope of Texas; with them we must achieve our independence, or perish in the attempt."

He immediately sent wagons into all the surrounding country to gather the women and the children, for he anticipated the atrocities which would mark every mile of Santa Anna's progress through the country; and he was determined that these helpless non-combatants should be placed in comparative safety in the eastern settlements. Then commenced one of the grandest and most pathetic "retreats" history has any record of. Encumbered by hundreds of women and children in every condition of helplessness, the bravery, tenderness, and patience of these American soldiers is as much beyond credence as it is beyond praise. The whole weeping, weary company were to guard, and to forage for; yet the men were never too weary to help mothers still more exhausted, or to carry some child whose swollen feet could no longer bear its weight. On this terrible march many children were lost, many died, and many were born; and the whole company suffered from deprivations of every kind.

On March 23d Houston wrote to General Rusk, "Before my God, I have found the darkest hours of my life! For forty-eight hours I have neither eaten nor slept!" And just at this time came the news that Fannin with 500 men had been massacred, after fighting until their ammunition gave out, and surrendering as prisoners of war under favorable terms of capitulation. This news was answered by a passionate demand for vengeance, and Houston, gathering his men around him, spoke words which inspired them with an unconquerable courage. His large, bright face, serious but hopeful, seemed to sun the camp, and his voice, loud as a trumpet with a silver tone, set every heart to its loftiest key.

"They live too long," he cried, "who outlive freedom, and I promise you a full cup of vengeance!" But in words not to be gainsayed, he told them they must put their women and children in safety first of all. Then he explained the advantages they were gaining by every mile they made the enemy follow them—how the low Brazos land, the unfordable streams, the morasses, and the pathless woods were weakening, separating, and confusing the three great bodies of Mexicans behind. He declared the freedom of Texas to be sure and certain, and bid them prepare to achieve it.

When they arrived at Harrisburgh they found Santa Anna had burned the place. It was evident then, that the day and the hour was at hand. Houston transported the two hundred families he had in charge across the Buffalo Bayou, which was twenty feet deep, and the very home of alligators. He then destroyed the only bridge across the dangerous stream, and wrote the following letter, now in the archives of the Texas Republic:

"This morning we are in preparation to meet Santa Anna. We will only be about seven hundred to march, besides the camp guard. But we go to conquest. The troops are in fine spirits, and now is the time for action. I leave the results in the hands of an all-wise God, and I rely confidently in His Providence.

"SAM HOUSTON."

Both armies were on the field of San Jacinto, and Santa Anna had with him nearly two thousand men, against the 700 with General Houston. Houston advanced to the attack at three o'clock in the afternoon, with the war cry of "Remember the Alamo!" It was taken up by 700 men with such a shout of vengeance as mortal ears never heard before. With it on their lips they advanced close to the Mexican lines, while a storm of bullets went over their heads. Houston and his horse were both wounded, but both being of the finest metal, they pressed on regardless of wounds. The Americans did not answer the volley until they could pour their lead into the bosoms of their foes. They never thought of reloading, but clubbing their rifles until they broke, they then flung them away, and fired their pistols into the very eyes of the Mexicans. When nothing else remained, they drew their bowie knives and cut their way through the walls of living flesh.

Nothing comparable to that charge for freedom was ever made. Men said afterward that the unseen battalions—the mighty dead as well as the mighty living—won the battle. "Poor Fannin!" exclaimed General Sherman, "he has been blamed for disobeying orders; but I think he obeyed orders to-day!" Men fought like spirits, impetuous, invincible, as if they had cast off flesh and blood. The battle began at three o'clock in the afternoon of April 21, 1836, and after the Americans reached the Mexican line, it lasted just eighteen minutes. At four o'clock the whole Mexican army was flying, and the pursuit and slaughter continued until dark. It was a military miracle, for the American loss was only eight killed and seventeen wounded. Of the Mexicans, 630 were left dead on the field; multitudes perished in the bayou and morass; and there were nearly eight hundred prisoners. Only seven men are known to have escaped either death or capture. Santa Anna was found hiding in coarse clothing, and Houston had the greatest difficulty to save his life. For Houston knew that the lives of all the Americans in Mexico were in danger, besides which, he was needed to secure the peace and independence of Texas. It required Houston's influence, however, to convince men whose fathers and brothers and sons had been brutally massacred at Goliad and the Alamo, that their private vengeance must give way to the public good.

Just about the time that the battle of San Jacinto was fought, President Jackson was one day found by Mr. Buchanan studying earnestly the map of Texas. He was tracing Houston's plan of retreat—of which he had doubtless received information—and putting his finger upon San Jacinto he said, "Here is the place! If Sam Houston is worth one bawbee, he will make a stand here, and give them a fight!" A few days after this declaration, news was received in Washington that the fight had been given and won on that very spot.

The annexation of Texas was now publicly, as it had long been privately, the hope and goal of the Government; and for this end Jackson, says Mr. Parton, "displayed an energy and pugnacity seldom exhibited before or since, by a politician in his seventy-seventh year." But "failure" was a word not in Jackson's vocabulary; he annexed Texas, and dying as the measure was accomplished, talked only in his last moments of Texas and Houston.

Houston was elected President of the new Republic by acclamation, and he served the State two terms in this capacity. Both were marked by the finest statesmanship; and during them the Texans suffered little from the ferocious Apache, Comanche, and other Indian tribes. For Houston fearlessly slept in their camps, and treated them as brethren; and his Indian "Talks" have an Ossianic poetry about them. Thus he writes to the Indian Chief Linney: "The red brothers know that my words to them have never been forgotten by me. They have never been swallowed up in darkness, nor has the light of the sun consumed them. Truth cannot perish, but the words of a liar are as nothing. Talk to all the red men, and tell them to make peace. War cannot make them happy. It has lasted too long. Let it now be ended and cease forever," etc., etc.

After the annexation of Texas, Houston represented the State for three terms in the United States Senate; but in 1859 he failed of re-election, because he refused to go with the South on the fatal subject of Secession. Yet so great was the confidence of the people in his honor and ability, that they elected him Governor of Texas in the same year; and he entered on the office in December, 1859. The election of Mr. Lincoln in 1860 precipitated events; and though Houston used all his mighty personal influence, and all his charmful, potent eloquence to keep Texas in the Union, he failed, and was deposed from the Governorship on his refusal to sign the Ordinance of Secession.

Then he calmly withdrew from the scene, and there are many living who remember his pathetic parting words. "I have seen," he said, "the statesmen and patriots of my youth gathered to their fathers, and the government which they had reared rent in twain, and none like them are now left to reunite it again. I stand almost the last of a race who learned from them the lessons of human freedom!"

These events inflicted a mortal wound upon his great spirit, and when he heard the roar of the cannon announcing the secession of Texas, he turned to his wife and said, "My heart is broken!" The words were only too true; for two years he lingered a sad and solemn old man, mourning for the woes of his country and for the defection of his eldest son Sam, who had joined the Confederates, and been taken prisoner by the Northern army. He was also suffering from the wounds received both in the war of 1812 and also at San Jacinto; and it was evident that he had come to the close of life. He himself looked forward to the event without fear, and with a wise and well-grounded hope.

On March 2, 1863, Houston was seventy, and in response to an ovation in his own city of Houston, he made a short, broken little speech. It was his last public effort, and from it he went back home to Huntsville, to die. His last days were spent in incessant and heart-broken prayers for his country and for his family; and on July 26, 1863, three weeks after the fall of Vicksburg, he breathed his last to the words "Texas! Texas!"

So honestly and unselfishly had this great man lived that he died in poverty, needing many comforts; this hero, who by his valor and statesmanship had increased the territory of the United States by more than eight hundred thousand square miles, or about the equivalent of the thirteen original States! But the splendor of his name is not to be touched by such an accident as poverty; to the people of Texas, Houston will ever be a beloved memory; and on the Roll of Fame he shines forth, the noblest, the most princely, the most picturesque and chivalrous character in American history.

[Signature of the author.]



WINFIELD SCOTT[8]

By HON. THEODORE ROOSEVELT

(1786-1866)

[Footnote 8: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

]

Winfield Scott was born at Petersburg, Virginia, on June 13, 1786. His father was a gallant Revolutionary soldier, his mother one of the well-known Virginia family of Masons. He attended the schools in his neighborhood, and graduated at the then famous college of William and Mary; and upon graduation began his career as a lawyer. All his tastes were military, however, and in 1807 he joined a volunteer organization to watch the coasts, which were menaced by the British frigates; there being then great excitement over the Leopard and Chesapeake affair. When this flurry subsided he went down to practice in South Carolina. Soon after his arrival there was another alarm of war, and back went Scott post-haste for Washington, again abandoning his law, with the hope of getting a commission in the army. Yet again, in 1808, the chances of war once more retiring to the background, he tried his fortune at the bar, this time in Virginia. Alarms of war were frequent during the next four years, however, and Scott rigidly confined his practice as a lawyer to the intervals when it was not deemed possible that there could be danger from abroad.

In 1808 he was made a captain of light artillery, and was sent with his company to New Orleans. Scott was always frank in announcing his utter contempt for Jefferson's foreign policy as President, and his abhorrence of the men whom Jefferson got into the army at this period. West Point had only just started. Its few graduates did well in the war of 1812, but most of the other officers of the army were men appointed by political influence at the time, or else old officers who in their youth had had some experience in the Revolutionary War, but who were disabled by age, drunkenness, and long lack of acquaintance with military matters. Among the officers themselves there were savage factions, and Scott got into one or two scrapes in consequence of his advocacy of one of the parties. In May, 1812, the long-delayed hostilities were evidently close at hand, and Scott left New Orleans for Washington.

In September, Scott, now made a lieutenant-colonel, reached Niagara, only to share in the humiliating though petty defeats with which the land war opened on our northern frontier. His first serious affair was at the abortive effort to storm the Heights of Queenstown. When Van Rensselaer, who had led the attack, was wounded so as to be unable to take further part, Scott himself assumed the command. At this time about a fourth of the American militia had crossed and were attacked by slightly superior numbers of British regulars and Indians. Their remaining companions, utterly undisciplined and with no leaders, were struck by panic cowardice and refused to cross to the assistance of their fellows. Scott behaved with distinguished personal bravery, rallying his raw troops and leading them in a charge with the bayonet, always a favorite weapon with him. Nevertheless his forces soon fell into disorder and were driven over the cliffs to the edge of the water, where, from lack of boats, most of the men were made prisoners, Scott among the number. Much difficulty was experienced by the British officers in preventing the Indians from massacring the prisoners. Scott was a man of gigantic proportions. This fact, and the reckless courage with which he had fought, had attracted the attention of the Indians. Some of them came into the room where he was confined and attempted to murder him, and only his great strength and quickness enabled him to beat them off until he was rescued by a British officer.

Soon after his capture he was exchanged, and promoted to the rank of colonel. He joined the American armies as chief of staff to the major-general commanding, and being about the only man in the army who had any knowledge of tactical manuals and military treatises generally, he was kept busy from morning till night in organizing the staff service, drilling the officers, and the like. These duties, however, did not interfere with his leading and commanding his troops in battle. He led the advance guard in the successful assault on Fort George in May, 1813, took part in a number of skirmishes, and served with gallantry in Wilkinson's unsuccessful campaign.

Early in the spring of 1814 a camp of instruction for officers and men was formed, with Scott in command, near Buffalo. Up to this time the imbecility of the administration (and of the people whom the administration represented) in not preparing for the war, had been well matched by the supineness with which they carried it on. During the eighteen months that had elapsed since the beginning of the contest, only the navy, built by the Federalists when in power fifteen years before, had saved the country from complete disgrace, the armies generally being utterly inadequate in number, and moreover models of all that troops ought not to be. Even in 1814 this remained true of the forces intrusted with the defence of the Capital itself; but on the northern frontier Scott, and his immediate superior, Brown, by laborious work succeeded in turning the inefficient mob of the first two campaigns into as admirable a weapon of offence and defence as ever was handled by a general officer.

In July the little army of skeleton regiments, thus carefully drilled, was ready for the invasion of Canada. On July 5th the fight at Chippewa took place. The battle was practically between Scott's wing of Brown's army and Riall's British troops, the numbers being almost exactly equal. There was very little manoeuvring. After a tolerably heavy artillery fire and some skirmishing between the light troops and Indians on each side, in the woods, the British regulars and Scott's American regulars advanced against each other in line across the plain, occasionally halting to fire. It was noticed that the fire of the Americans was the more deadly; their line was thinner and more extended than that of the British. When within sixty or seventy paces of one another the two sides charged; there was a clash of bayonets; then the thinner American line, outflanking the more solid British column, closed in at the extremities, and the British broke and fled immediately.

This was not only a needed victory for the Americans, but it was the first occasion for a generation that British regulars had been faced in the open, on equal terms, with the bayonet and defeated. At this very time the British had just brought to a close the terrible war with the French in the Peninsula. Their troops had been pitted successfully against the best marshals and the best troops of what was undoubtedly the foremost military power of Continental Europe; and now the American regulars, trained by Scott and under his leadership, performed a feat which no French general and no French troops had ever been able to place to the credit of their nation.

Three weeks later the British and American forces again came together at the bloody battle of Lundy's Lane. The most desperate fighting on this occasion took place during the night, the Americans and British charging in turn with the bayonet, and the artillery of both sides being captured and recaptured again and again. The Americans were somewhat inferior in numbers to the British, and the slaughter was very great, considering the number of men engaged, amounting to nearly a third of the total of both forces. In the end the fight ceased from exhaustion, the armies drawing off from one another and leaving the field of battle untenanted; but the result was virtually a victory for the British, for the next day they advanced, and the Americans retired to Fort Erie. Scott, who had exposed himself with the reckless personal courage he always showed when under fire, was dismounted and badly injured by the rebound of a cannon ball in the early part of the battle, and about midnight, just before the close of the actual fighting, received a musket ball in the body which disabled him.

Scott did not recover from his wound in time to take part in the remaining scenes of the war. After its close he went abroad, visiting London and Paris, and being very well received, returning in 1816, and again taking up his duties in the army. He indulged himself in the luxury of a sharp quarrel with Andrew Jackson, a luxury which any man could easily obtain by the way, but which was too much for any man not possessing Scott's abundant capacity to take care of himself in any conflict. He interested himself greatly in improving the tactics of the army, and went out to take command in the Black Hawk war, where he had no opportunity to distinguish himself. At the time of the nullification outbreak in South Carolina he was appointed to see to the interests of the United States in Charleston, where he acquitted himself with equal tact and resolution. He commanded in the Seminole war, but again had no opportunity to distinguish himself; and in the winter of 1837-38 was stationed on the northern frontier, where he succeeded in preventing invasions of Canada by American sympathizers with the then existing Canadian rebellion. Soon after this he superintended the removal of the Cherokees from Georgia, doing everything in his power for the Indians, who, in defiance of the pledged faith of the United States, were being driven out of that State.

For the next few years Scott was comparatively inactive. He had a great taste for politics, and could not forbear meddling with them, although he was at the time general-in-chief of the army. He was a very sincere Union man, and was an outspoken Whig, though with a strong latent leaning to the Know-nothing party; for he distrusted both foreigners and Catholics. He would not own slaves, and disbelieved in slavery, but he also utterly disapproved of the actions of the political abolitionists of the day. He was not only a very ambitious but a very vain man, and at times his desire for civic honors led him to try for success on fields where he did not show to such advantage as on the field of battle.

When the Mexican war broke out, the President, Polk, whom Scott detested, was reluctant to see Scott given a chance to make a record, in view of his being a pronounced Whig, and of the probability that a successful general, if nominated on the Whig ticket, would sweep the country. However, toward the end of 1846, it became impossible longer to pass by Scott's demands for active service, and, moreover, the administration felt the less reluctance inasmuch as Taylor, another Whig, had achieved much credit by his victories along the Rio Grande. Accordingly Scott was despatched with a fine army to attack Mexico from the seaboard of the Gulf and to penetrate to the capital of the country.

Early in March of 1847 he landed near the city of Vera Cruz, with 12,000 men. Trenches were opened, a bombardment begun, and the castle of San Juan de Ulloa surrendered on the 27th, 5,000 prisoners and four hundred pieces of artillery falling to the victors. Scott lost in all but sixty-four men killed and wounded. As soon after this victory as he could gather horses and mules the army started for the interior, and on April 18th encountered the Mexican army, about the same in numbers as Scott's, under Santa Anna, strongly posted at Cerro Gordo. Scott made his plans with great skill, and the battle is remarkable because of the closeness with which the methods and results of the actual attacks followed the outline which Scott gave of what he wished accomplished, in his general orders of the day previous. The Americans attacked with resolution. In places the Mexicans defended themselves well, but in other places, where their troops were raw, they gave way very quickly, and, as a result, the whole force was speedily routed and driven in headlong flight, with great loss of artillery and prisoners. Scott pushed closely after them, but almost immediately was halted by the necessity of discharging four thousand volunteers whose terms of service had expired. After waiting in vain for reinforcements, the Americans again marched forward, and halted some time at Puebla, where the long-looked-for additional troops finally arrived in August.

The army had suffered a good deal from sickness, and Scott was anxious to bring it into contact with the enemy as soon as possible. Accordingly he pushed straight for Mexico. The Mexican armies, numerically about equal in strength to his own, occupied very strong positions, from which they were driven only by desperate fighting at Contreras, San Antonio, and Buena Vista, the Americans losing 1,000 men killed and wounded, but capturing 3,000 of their adversaries and thirty-seven pieces of artillery. An armistice followed, but the negotiations came to nothing, and in September hostilities were resumed. The strong outworks of Molino Del Rey and Chapultepec were stormed with great loss to the Americans; for they were places of formidable strength, the Mexicans defended themselves well, and the assailants were few in numbers. The bravery of the victors, under these circumstances, showed that Scott had not forgotten the art which enabled him to turn the raw troops of 1812 into men who, alone among the troops of civilized nations, could meet the British infantry in the open on equal terms.

The City of Mexico fell immediately after the storming of Chapultepec, and Scott marched in. There was no further fighting of consequence, although bands of guerillas and brigands of all kinds had to be dispersed. Scott treated them with proper severity. The campaign ended unhappily for Scott in one way, for he became embroiled with the administration and some of its partisans among the high officers of the army, the intrigues which caused this embroilment being instigated chiefly by Democratic jealousy of the Whig general. However, he was thanked by Congress.

This was the end of Scott's active service. He again plunged into political life, and in 1852 ran for the presidency on the Whig ticket, but was hopelessly defeated. He continued general-in-chief of the army until 1861, when he retired from the command. He was too old to take the field and do his part toward the suppression of the rebellion, but he remained stanchly loyal to the flag upon which his victories had conferred such glory, and to which he himself had owed so much. Even when his State seceded it did not affect him or cause him to waver in his allegiance to the country for which he had so often drawn his sword. He died May 29, 1866.

Scott had many little vanities, and peculiarities of temper and disposition, at which it is easy to laugh; but these are all of small moment in estimating the man's character and the worth of his services. He was a fearless, honest, loyal, and simple-hearted soldier, who served the nation with entire fidelity and devotion. He was very successful in battle, and, not only his crowning campaign against Mexico, but the way in which he trained and led his troops in the Canadian campaign against the British, show him to have possessed military abilities of a high order. His name will always stand well up on the list of American worthies.

[Signature of the author.]



ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT[9]

By OLIVER OPTIC

(1822-1885)

[Footnote 9: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

]

Napoleon I. was a genius; General Grant was not. But the earnest, persistent, and determined efforts of men only moderately endowed by nature with intellectual gifts, sometimes surpass what is accomplished by the spasmodic flashes of those born to be conquerors. So far as the successful career of the most prominent hero of the War of the Rebellion may be used to "point a moral," it forcibly emphasizes the results of energy, perseverance, and a determination to succeed in spite of all obstacles. As a military strategist he was doubtless surpassed by others who were engaged in the gigantic struggle with him; but he accomplished, by adding to his soldierly abilities, his personal attributes, which seemed not to have been within the power of any other of the able commanders associated with him in the mighty conflict.

It is not claimed that General Grant was born into the world with brilliant, or even superior, intellectual powers, and his greatness was in the combination of his individual qualities, and the fact that, like Wellington, he was "rich in saving common-sense." He was a soldier in the most comprehensive sense; and if he did not overtop his colleagues in a knowledge of the science of war, he was at least their equal. The career of its greatest hero illustrates the manner in which the loyal nation gave to posterity a victorious Union.

Grant was born in humble circumstances at Point Pleasant, a village on the Ohio River, and there were no accidents of family to gild or cloud his coming into the world. He was descended from Puritan stock, and one of his ancestors, a captain in the Old French War, was killed in battle. The general's grandfather served through the Revolutionary War. His father was a tanner in Ohio, but his son was not inclined to follow that occupation, though he was willing to do so if his father insisted upon it until he was of age, but not a day longer. He stated his preferences in regard to his future employment, desiring to be a farmer, a trader on the river, or to obtain an education. The first was not practicable, and the second was not regarded as very reputable. His father wrote to the representative of his district in Congress, who obtained for the young man a nomination to the Military Academy at West Point.

All the education the young candidate for military honors had was only such as he had obtained at the district school, and the examination for admission was considered a very trying ordeal, though it included only the branches taught in the common schools. He "brushed up" his studies, and as he was always cool and self-possessed, he did not fail from embarrassment, as many do on such occasions, but was passed and admitted. Of the class of eighty-seven only thirty-nine were graduated. In rank Grant was the twenty-first, indicating about the average ability.

As a cadet he was popular with his comrades. He was honest, fair, and square, and was especially careful of the rights of others. The horse had been a favorite with him from his early childhood, and at the Academy he was distinguished as a bold and fearless rider. He was sober and rather dignified in his manner. The name given to him by his parents was "Hiram Ulysses;" but the Congressman had made a mistake in presenting the nomination, and at West Point he was known as "Ulysses Sidney." Failing to correct the error, he accepted the initial S., but made it stand for "Simpson," after his mother. The first name was suggested by an elderly female relative, who appears to have read the Odyssey, and appreciated its hero. The initials of his name as it finally stood had a national significance, which the newspapers were not tardy in using at the time of his first decided victory.

He was graduated in 1843, and appointed brevet second lieutenant in the Fourth Regiment of Infantry. The engineers and the cavalry are considered more desirable arms of the service than the infantry, and the best scholars at the Military Academy are assigned to them. Grant's rank placed him in the latter. His regiment was sent to Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis. Frederick T. Dent, his classmate, was in the same command, and resided in the vicinity. He was invited to the house of the Dents, where he made the acquaintance of Miss Julia T. Dent, who became his wife five years later.

In 1845, the events which led to the Mexican War assumed form, and Grant's regiment was ordered to Corpus Christi, where he was commissioned as a full second lieutenant. His post was situated at the mouth of the Rio Nueces, between which and the Rio Grande was a triangular section of territory claimed by both governments; and this was the nominal subject of dispute between the United States and Mexico. General Taylor, commanding about four thousand troops, was ordered to move his force to the Rio Grande, on which the Mexicans had concentrated an army. A body of United States dragoons, commanded by Captain Thornton, was surprised by an overwhelming force of the enemy, and all of them killed, wounded, or captured. This event fired the blood of the soldiers, as well as of the people of the country, and Taylor crossed the river with the main body of his little army.

The Mexican generals declared that the advance of Taylor into the disputed territory was an act of war, and active hostilities had commenced. While the general was hastening to reinforce one of the forts attacked, he came upon the Mexicans drawn up in order of battle at Palo Alto. An action, mostly with artillery, followed, and the enemy were defeated and driven from the field. It was the first battle fought in thirty-one years with any foe other than Indians, by American soldiers. Grant was in that first conflict of half a century, as he was in the last ones.

The Mexicans had fled from this first considerable battle of the war to Resaca de la Palma, where they had established themselves in a strong position. Taylor attacked them the next day, and though their force was triple that of their assailants, they were again defeated and routed. The Mexicans fought with dogged courage, however they may be judged from the events of the war. Three months later, General Taylor marched upon Monterey with an army reinforced to 6,000 men. It was strongly fortified, but the city was captured after a hard-fought battle.

In the midst of the conflict in the town, while the Mexicans were disputing its possession from the windows of the strongly constructed houses, the ammunition of the brigade to which Grant was attached was exhausted, and it became necessary to send for a fresh supply. It was a service of extreme peril, and a volunteer was called for to perform it. Grant was a bold rider, and he promptly offered himself to execute the dangerous mission. Mounting a very spirited horse, he resorted to the Indian fashion of hanging at the side of his steed so that the body of the animal protected him against the shots from the windows, and he passed safely through the street. With a sufficient escort he succeeded in conveying a load of ammunition to the point where it was needed.

Soon after the battle of Monterey, Grant's regiment was sent to Vera Cruz to reinforce the larger army that was to march under General Scott to the "Halls of the Montezumas." Lieutenant Grant, as a careful, substantial, and energetic officer, was selected for the important position of quartermaster of the Fourth Regiment. The army proceeded on its uninterrupted career of victory till the capital of Mexico was in its possession. The heights of Cerro Gordo were stormed and carried, and Grant, as usual, was in the thickest of the fight.

The first considerable obstacle after the capture of Vera Cruz having been removed, the army proceeded on its march to the City of Mexico, occupying Jalapa and Castle Perote on the way; but at Puebla the forces were so reduced by sickness, death, and the expiration of enlistments as to compel a halt. For three months General Scott was compelled to wait for reinforcements; but when he could muster 11,000 effective men, a very small number for the conquest of a country, he resumed his march, and in August arrived in the vicinity of the capital. Outside of the causeways leading to the city were the strongholds of Chapultepec and Cherubusco, and batteries mounting a hundred guns.

Chapultepec was a fortification one hundred and fifty feet above the average level of the ground. A front of nine hundred feet bristled with cannon. Behind it was a mill called El Molino del Rey, fortified and garrisoned, which defended the approach to the castle. The capture of this work was assigned to General Worth, to whose command the Fourth Regiment belonged. The assault was a desperate one, for it was "the last ditch" of the Mexicans; but it was carried, though the assailing force lost one-fourth of its number in the assault. "Second Lieutenant Grant behaved with distinguished gallantry," is the official report of his conduct. Though custom and the precedents of the service permitted the quartermaster to remain at a safe distance from actual fighting in charge of the baggage trains, Grant never availed himself of this immunity from personal peril, but retained his place with the regiment.

When the strong places which defended the city fell, Scott and his army marched into the capital. The Mexican forces fled, and the United States flag floated over the "Halls of the Montezumas." The country was conquered, and the war was ended. Grant had been engaged in all the battles near the Rio Grande, and in most of them from Vera Cruz to the City of Mexico, and he had won the brevet rank of captain for his gallantry.

After the ratification of the treaty of peace, by which California was acquired, the army evacuated Mexico, and Captain Grant was sent to New York with his regiment. Its companies were separated and sent to various military stations. After serving at Detroit and Sackett's Harbor, the Fourth Infantry was sent to Oregon in 1851, the discovery of gold in California having attracted an immense immigration to the shores of the Pacific. The battalion of which Grant's company was a part was stationed at Fort Dallas, and had some experience in Indian warfare. In 1848 he had been married to Miss Dent; but in the wilds of Oregon he was separated from his family. There was nothing there to satisfy his reasonable ambition, no hope of rising in his profession, and he became discontented. In 1853 he was commissioned as a full captain; but this did not reconcile him to his situation, and he resigned his position in the army to enter upon an untried life as a civilian.

Grant was now thirty-two years of age; he had a wife and two children, and it was necessary for him to provide for their support. His first choice of an occupation had been that of a farmer, and he went back to that in the present emergency. His wife owned a farm about nine miles from St. Louis, and Grant located himself there. He built a house upon it of hewn logs, working upon it with his own hands. He was not a "gentleman farmer" in any sense, for he drove one of his teams with wood to the city. He wore an old felt hat, a seedy blouse, and tucked his trousers' legs into the tops of his boots. His habits were very simple, and the lack of means compelled him to live on the most economical scale.

The retired captain was not successful as a farmer; but he was known as an honest, upright man, faithful in all his obligations. In his need of a remunerative occupation he applied for the position of city engineer in St. Louis; but he failed to obtain it. As a real estate agent and as a collector he was equally unsuccessful, and his fortunes were at a very low ebb. He obtained a place in the custom-house, but at the end of two months the death of the collector compelled him to retire. But while fortune seemed to have completely deserted him, subjecting him to the fate of thousands of others in the struggle to live and care for his family, it was more propitious to his father, who was in comparatively easy circumstances, and had established himself in the leather business in Galena, Ill. It seemed to be incumbent upon him to do something for the relief of his oldest son, and in 1860 the ex-captain became a member of the firm of "Grant & Sons." This was the position in which the opening of the War of the Rebellion found him.

For years the military spirit of the North had been repressed and discouraged. Sober and dignified people regarded the soldier as unnecessary, and military parades were looked upon as childish, and classed in the category with circus shows. But suddenly, when the cannon of the Rebellion began to resound in the South, the people were awakened from their dream of security, and the profession of arms, which had been disparaged and had almost fallen into disrepute, became in the highest degree honorable, for the safety of the nation depended upon it. Millions were ready to fight for the Union, but there were very few trained officers to organize and command those who were eager to uphold the flag and save the nation. Except here and there one who had served in the Mexican or Indian wars, there was not a soldier in the land who had any experience of actual warfare.

To Galena came the intelligence that Fort Sumter had been bombarded, and with it the proclamation of President Lincoln calling for 75,000 volunteers. Grant was profoundly moved by the situation of the country, and without seeking for or thinking of the honors and emoluments that might be reaped, he patriotically desired to serve his country in the present terrible emergency. The nation had educated him for military service, and though he had fought with honor through one war, he did not regard the debt as paid. He was a soldier, but he did not boast of what he had done, or even claim the rank in the gathering armies to which his experience entitled him.

In less than a week he was drilling a company in Galena, whose members wished to make him their captain; but another citizen wanted the place, and he declined it. He consented to go to Springfield, the capital of the State, with the company. On the way he met the Hon. Elihu B. Washburn, and by him was presented to Governor Yates, who, however, did not appear to be greatly impressed, and did not take much notice of him. Then Grant wrote to the adjutant-general of the army at Washington, stating that he had been educated at West Point at the public expense, and considered it his duty to tender his services to the Government. He did not apply for the commission of a brigadier-general; but was willing to serve in any capacity where he might be needed.

No response came to this modest offer, and Grant visited Cincinnati, where George B. McClellan, who had been appointed major-general of volunteers by the governor of Ohio, was organizing the forces. Both had served in Worth's brigade in Mexico; and Grant thought his former friend might tender him a position on his staff. Though he called upon him several times, he failed to find him, and returned to Springfield. While he was waiting at the capital, Governor Yates sent for him, and asked him if he knew how many men belonged in a company, how many companies in a regiment, and similar questions concerning details which were very perplexing to a civilian.

Grant assured him that he was a graduate of West Point, had served eleven years in the regular army, and knew all about such matters. This reply helped the governor out of his embarrassment, and the soldier was invited to take a seat in the State House, and act as adjutant-general. One who knew Grant better than others suggested to the governor that he should appoint him to the command of a regiment. This advice was acted upon, and the patriotic seeker for military employment was appointed colonel of the Twenty-first Regiment of Illinois Infantry. Grant promptly accepted the commission, and hastened to Mattoon, where the regiment was encamped, and assumed the command.

His command was a body of three months' troops, composed of excellent material, but in rather a demoralized condition when the colonel assumed command, for the men were American citizens, jealous of their rights as such, and military discipline was new and strange to them. Grant marched them to Caseyville, where he drilled them for four weeks, and transformed them from a mob of independent citizens into one of the best-disciplined bodies of troops in the country, which became noted for its orderly and excellent bearing. The change was effected so skilfully that no man believed he had sacrificed his citizenship. The strong will of the colonel, dignified by the genuine principle of patriotism, overcame the prevailing idea of equality, and his command was a unit. The men were proud of the leadership of a regular army officer, and admired him to such a degree that they re-enlisted for three years.

While Colonel Grant was at Caseyville it was reported that Quincy, on the Mississippi, was menaced by rebel guerillas from Missouri, and he was ordered to the exposed point. In the absence of transportation he marched his regiment one hundred and twenty miles of the distance. From this point his command was sent into Missouri, where the discipline and the morals of the body were improved by quiet and judicious measures. Guarding railroads was the service in which the regiment was employed; and when serving with other commands Grant was the acting brigadier-general, though he was ranked by all the other colonels.

In July of the opening year of the war Grant became a brigadier-general of volunteers. The appointment was obtained by Mr. Washburn, who had befriended him before. The Western Department was at this time under the command of General Fremont. Grant's district was a part of Missouri, with Western Kentucky and Tennessee, and he established his head-quarters at Cairo, a point of the utmost military importance as a depot of supplies and a gunboat rendezvous. Kentucky had proclaimed a suspicious neutrality, and near Cairo, on the other side of the river, were the three termini of a railroad from the South. A Confederate force seized two of them, and Grant hastened to secure Paducah, the third. The enemy hurriedly retired as he landed his force, and Grant issued a temperate and judicious proclamation, for he was on the soil of the enemy. He had acted without orders from his superior, and returning to Cairo after an absence of less than a day, he found Fremont's order, already executed, awaiting him. He also took possession of Smithland, at the mouth of the Cumberland River.

With a force of 3,100 men General Grant made an incursion into Missouri to break up a rebel camp at Belmont, where he fought his first battle in the Rebellion. He had accomplished his purpose, when the enemy was reinforced from Columbus, on the other side of the river, and though he brought off his command in safety he narrowly escaped capture himself. Fremont was superseded by Halleck, and for the next two months Grant was employed in organizing and drilling troops. Columbus, with 140 cannon and full of men and material, closed the Mississippi. The Confederate line of defence against the invasion of the South extended from this point across the country, including Fort Henry on the Tennessee and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland, the latter mounting forty guns, with quarters for 20,000 soldiers.

Grant was studying this line of defence, devising a plan to break through it. By order of General Halleck he had sent out a reconnoissance in force, under General Smith, who reported to him that the capture of Fort Henry was practicable. Grant forwarded this report to the commander of the department, and asked for permission to attack it. This was refused in sharp and curt terms. A written application, earnestly seconded by Commodore Foote, who had brought the gunboat service up to a state of efficiency in the West, secured the desired order. With 17,000 men, in connection with 7 gunboats under the command of the commodore, Grant started upon his mission the day after he received the order. Fort Henry was captured, though the army was not engaged. The main body of the Confederate force escaped to Fort Donelson.

The capture of Fort Henry cheered the army and the people. Grant telegraphed the result of the attack to Halleck, and announced his intention to proceed against Fort Donelson. Leaving 2,500 men to garrison the fort, Grant marched with 15,000 from Fort Henry, while a considerable addition to his force came up the river. The fortification was invested, and after three days of persistent fighting in cold, snow, and hunger, the fort surrendered. The gunboats were severely handled by the water batteries of the enemy, and the commodore was badly wounded, so that most of the work fell upon the army.

It was a brilliant victory, and the loyal nation resounded with the praises of Grant. This was the pointer to the fame he afterward achieved. His reply to the rebel general, "I propose to move immediately on your works," was repeated all over the country, and the initials of his name came to mean "Unconditional Surrender," the terms he had demanded of the commander of the fort.

The strategetic line of the Confederates was broken, and new dispositions of their forces became necessary on account of this important victory; Columbus was abandoned, and its men and material sent to Island No. 10. The battle of Pittsburg Landing, or Shiloh, as it is called in the South, followed under Grant's command. It was a bloody and hotly contested action, and not as decisive as that of Donelson. The ground was held, and the arrival of Buell with reinforcements caused the Confederates to retire. Sherman had a command in this battle under Grant, and the strong friendship between these two great commanders, which subsisted to the end, had its origin about this time.

Not such were the relations between Halleck and Grant, for the latter was practically thrown into the shade by the former; but the hero of Fort Donelson continued to do his duty faithfully, making no issue with his superior. At this time he was in command of the Army of the Tennessee. While he remained in this position the Union army and navy had made decided progress in the West and the South; but no real advance was made in the direction of the rebel capital. Then McClellan was removed from his position of general-in-chief, and Halleck was appointed in his place. Grant seemed to be forgotten for the time, or his operations were overshadowed by those in the East. But he had driven the enemy out of West Tennessee, and was turning his attention toward Vicksburg.

When he had sufficiently informed himself in regard to the situation, he proposed to the general-in-chief a movement upon Vicksburg, which was really the Gibraltar of the Mississippi, and he was invested with full powers to carry out his own plans. Constantly and earnestly supported by Sherman, he battered against this strong fortress for six months. Various expedients were resorted to for the reduction of the place, without success. With the written protest of four of his ablest generals in his pocket, Grant moved his army to a point four miles below Grand Gulf, fought several battles on his way, and came to the rear of Vicksburg. The Confederate engineers were doubtless as skilful as any in the world, and seemed to be justified in regarding the fortress, with its surrounding batteries, fortifications, swamps, and tangled jungles, as impregnable.

Following up his regular siege operations, Grant exercised his indomitable will against those tremendous defences, and Vicksburg fell. The news of its surrender was spread all over the loyal nation with that of the great victory of Gettysburg. The Confederacy had been cut in two, and a decided turn in the struggle for the Union was clearly indicated. The name of the victorious general was again upon the lips of all the people. Grant himself seemed to be the only man who remained unmoved. President Lincoln sent him an autograph letter, acknowledging that Grant was right while he was wrong; and even Halleck was magnanimous enough to send him a very handsome letter of congratulation. The fortunate general had been made a major-general of volunteers after his victory at Donelson; and he was now promoted to the rank of major-general in the regular army.

A new department had been created for Major-General Grant, covering nearly all the territory south of the Ohio. He was worn out and sick after the severe exertions of the summer; but when informed that Rosecrans was shut up and closely besieged by Bragg, in Chattanooga, he set out for this point with only his personal staff. On the way he used the telegraph and the mails, and suggested or ordered such steps as would relieve the place, for the Army of the Cumberland, shut off from supplies, was in desperate straits, sick and famished. Reinforcements were hurried, and the result of his preparations was the decided victory of the battle of Chattanooga and Missionary Ridge. In this battle General Sheridan came to his notice for the first time.

General Grant was thanked, and presented with a gold medal by Congress. He had become the idol of the loyal nation; but he bore his honors very meekly. The grade of lieutenant-general was revived, and conferred upon him. All the armies of the United States were now under his command. He was called to Washington, and it is not possible even to mention the honors that were showered upon him. In due time he took his place at the head of the Army of the Potomac, and fought some of the most terrible battles of the war. Richmond was his first objective point, and failing in the direct approach to the capital of the Confederacy, he moved upon it from the south. It was a long struggle, but in the end Richmond fell.

At Appomattox Court House Grant received the surrender of General Lee, granting the most magnanimous terms to the defeated army. The other armies of the Confederacy soon followed the example of the Army of Virginia, and the long and terrible conflict of over four years was ended in a victorious Union. As soon as the surrender was effected, General Grant, without any pomp or parade, proceeded to Washington, not even taking in Richmond on his way, and reported in person to President Lincoln. He advised the immediate reduction of the army, sustained at an enormous expense, and no longer needed.

The war was ended! Perhaps no man ever stood higher in the estimation of his country than Grant, and it was inevitable that he should become a candidate for the Presidency. He had been a Democrat in politics before the war; but he was elected to the first office in the nation by the people, though the candidate of the Republican party. He was hardly as successful in this office as he had been in the field; but he carried with him the respect and admiration of the people to the day of his death. He was re-elected to the Presidency; and the objections of the people to a third term more than anything else, prevented his third nomination.

After his return to private life he visited nearly every country in Europe, and was everywhere honored as no citizen of the Republic had ever been before. In the last years of his life he engaged in a financial and banking business, by which he lost all his property. About the same time an insidious disease was wearing away his life. He had been approached before to write a history of his military life, to which he would not listen. In his financial strait he accepted an offer, and wrote the work, in two octavo volumes, while suffering from the weakness and pain of his malady. He was doing it for his family, for his own days were numbered; and there is nothing on record more heroic than his struggle to finish this task.

Four days after he had finished his literary labor of love, he died of the disease which had been the burden of his last days. He passed away at Mount McGregor, N. Y., July 23, 1885. The loyal people mourned him as the saviour of the nation from disruption, and even those who had been his enemies in war were his friends in death. The whole nation was present in spirit at his obsequies. His remains were interred at Riverside Park, New York, and only await the imposing monument which the metropolis of the nation he saved is to rear above his tomb.

His character can never be as prominent as the victories he won for his imperilled country; but his honesty, his unsullied honor, and his self-abnegation entitle him to another crown of glory.

[Signature of the author.]



WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN[10]

By ELBRIDGE S. BROOKS

(1820-1891)

[Footnote 10: A Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

]

Achievement wins applause. And when the steps toward achievement are tinged with mystery, romance, or daring, the applause is irresistible and continuous. So it has come to pass that by the side of Xenophon's masterly "retreat of the Ten Thousand," of Cortes's burning his ships at Vera Cruz, and of Marlborough's bold march through the heart of Germany to the victory at Blenheim, stands Sherman's March to the Sea and his "Christmas Gift" of captured Savannah. And yet this brilliant leader of men had never seen a hostile shot fired until he was forty-one, and his first battle was the defeat at Bull Run.

The March to the Sea, upon which Sherman's fame as a soldier so largely rests, was by no means the greatest or most significant of his many achievements. His record as a soldier is filled with examples of his courage, his shrewdness, and his tenacity, while his mingling of gentle ways and grim determination, of restlessness and calm, of forethought, fearlessness, and frankness, make him at once a unique and central figure in the decade of war and reconstruction that forms so important a chapter in the story of the United States of America.

William Tecumseh Sherman was born on February 8, 1820, in the town of Lancaster, the county-seat of that fair and fertile section known as Fairfield County, in the southern part of the State of Ohio—the busy commonwealth that furnished 300,000 men to the armies of the Union, and gave to the Civil War its three greatest generals; for Grant and Sherman were Ohio born, and Sheridan's boyhood was spent in the same State.

But Sherman's ancestors were of stout Puritan stock, dating back almost to the days of the Mayflower. His first American "forebear" was a Puritan minister, Rev. John Sherman, an emigrant to the Connecticut colony from Essex in England. Of one of the collateral branches was Roger Sherman, drafter and signer of the Declaration of Independence. The father of the soldier was Judge Sherman, of the Ohio Supreme Court; his mother was "a Hoyt of New England."

William Tecumseh Sherman was the sixth of eleven children, a younger brother being the lad who, later, became Senator John Sherman of Ohio. Judge Sherman, the father of the boys, died in 1829, and William was adopted into the family of Senator Thomas Ewing, of Ohio, a resident of Lancaster, and a notable figure in American history, for he was senator and cabinet minister for nearly forty years.

Sherman's training was that of a soldier from boyhood. At sixteen, he was entered as a cadet at the Military Academy at West Point, from which he graduated in 1840, standing sixth in a class of 42. Engineering was his favorite study, but devotion to his books seems not to have kept him out of mischief. He was not, he himself admitted later, "a Sunday-school cadet," his record for behavior being 124 in the Academy standard—not so very far from the foot. But Grant, it must be remembered, ranked even lower in his behavior record, standing at 149.

The twenty years that followed Sherman's graduation from West Point were variously spent. He was commissioned second lieutenant in the Third Artillery, July 1, 1840, and ordered to Florida to face the hostile Seminoles. He was promoted to be first lieutenant November 30, 1841, and in 1842 was ordered to Fort Morgan, in Alabama. From 1843 to 1846 he was stationed at Fort Moultrie, in Charleston Harbor (where the afterward famous Major Robert Anderson was his superior officer), at Bellefontaine, Alabama, and at Pittsburg, in Pennsylvania, on recruiting service. When the war with Mexico was declared, Lieutenant Sherman was sent to California, then a debatable land. He reached Monterey Bay, by way of "the Horn," in January, 1847, and spent three years in California, returning east as bearer of despatches to the War Department in 1850. In May, 1850, he married Miss Ellen Ewing, daughter of Senator Ewing, then Secretary of the Interior under President Taylor, and in September following he was commissioned as captain and sent to St. Louis.

It was at this time, so Sherman notes in his "Memoirs," that he felt a great disappointment to think that the war with Mexico was fought to a finish without his having been "in it," and he adds, "of course, I thought it was the last and only chance in my day, and that my career as a soldier was at an end." It was at an end for a time, for after garrison duty at St. Louis and New Orleans, he resigned from the army, and, in 1853, sought to make his fortune in business.

He first went to California as manager of the San Francisco branch of a St. Louis bank, but the ill success of the enterprise drove him east again in 1857, when he engaged in the banking business in New York City. To this enterprise, however, the famous panic of 1857 put an early end, and in 1858 he was embarked in the law, with an office at Leavenworth, Kan. This, too, failing to supply sufficient bread and butter, he tried farming in Ohio for a while, and then applied for a government position in Washington. Instead of this, however, he secured an appointment as Superintendent and Professor of Engineering in a new military college just started at Alexandria, in Louisiana. He entered upon the duties of his position on the 1st of January, 1860, when the mutterings of rebellion were already abroad; and just as he had put the academy into good working order the war-cloud became so black that Sherman, in a manly letter to Governor Moore, of Louisiana, declared his intention of maintaining his allegiance to "the old constitution as long as a fragment of it survives," resigned his office, and returned to Ohio. In April, 1861, he accepted the presidency of a St. Louis street railway company. Then Sumter was fired on, the war fever filled the land, troops were hurried to the front, and Sherman signified to the Secretary of War his desire to serve his country "in the capacity for which I was trained." On May 14, 1861, he was appointed colonel of the Thirteenth United States Infantry, and assigned to inspection duty in Washington under General Scott, the commander-in-chief; and then the real story of his life began.