176 Grant 



even the briefest manner, the life and deeds of Grant. 

 It is not even my purpose to touch on the points 

 where his influence has told so tremendously in the 

 making of our history. It is part of the man's great 

 ness that now we can use his career purely for illus 

 tration. We can take for granted the fact that each 

 American who knows the history of the country 

 must know the history of this man, at least in its 

 broad outline; and that we no more need to explain 

 Vicksburg and Appomattox than we need to explain 

 Yorktown. I shall ask attention, not to Grant's life, 

 but to the lessons taught by that life as we of to-day 

 should learn them. 



Foremost of all is the lesson of tenacity, of stub 

 born fixity of purpose. In the Union armies there 

 were generals as brilliant as Grant, but none with his 

 iron determination. This quality he showed as Presi 

 dent no less than as general. He was no more to be 

 influenced by a hostile majority in Congress into 

 abandoning his attitude in favor of a sound and 

 stable currency than he was to be influenced by check 

 or repulse into releasing his grip on beleaguered 

 Richmond. It is this element O'f unshakable strength 

 to which we are apt specially to refer when we praise 

 a man in the simplest and most effective way, by 

 praising him as a man. It is the one quality which 

 we can least afford to lose. It is the only quality the 

 lack of which is as unpardonable in the nation as in 



