e more
renowned deeds of Vicksburg and Chattanooga. They are strangely alike.
In both he is surprised by the enemy at daybreak, and while his soldiers
are asleep. In both he is at first driven from his camp, losing largely
of men and guns. In both, after a repulse so severe that the Rebel
generals fancy the day is theirs, and while their men give themselves up
to the spoiling of his tents, Grant, abating no jot of heart or hope,
rearranges his broken columns, and plants his guns in new positions, in
both cases on a hill rising from a ravine, whose opposite summit is
crowned with the Rebel artillery. In each case the Rebels cross the
ravine and attempt to scale the hill, and in each case are repulsed with
horrible slaughter. The parallel stops not here. Grant in both battles,
as soon as he has stayed the advance of the enemy, assumes the
offensive. The bugles sound the charge, and the Rebels are driven back
through our despoiled camp, and within their own intrenchments. These
first-fruits of the great general of the war show the difference between
him and the long-time pet of the nation, McClellan. The latter could not
move an inch without supplies as numerous and superfluous as those of a
summer sauntering lady at a watering-place. Grant does not wait for
Foote's gunboats to cooeperate at Donelson, but begins the fight the
instant he reaches the fort. When the boats are disabled and retire, he
does not wait for them to refit and return; nor when the enemy fails to
rout him, does he rest on his well-earned laurels till reinforcements
arrive, but turns upon them instantly and drives them with headlong fury
from their spoils and defences. There is no Antietam or Williamshurg
procrastinating. That very afternoon his exhausted troops storm the
fort, and the night beholds him the master of the outer works, and with
his guns raking the innermost fortifications. This heroic treatment of
the disease of Rebellion, with all its loss, results in far less
fatality than the rose-water generalship of the Peninsula, as the
statistics of the Eastern and Western armies will show.

The peculiar qualities of General Grant, as seen in these battles, are
coolness, readiness, and confidence. He is not embarrassed by reverses.
He seems the rather to court them. He prefers to take arms against a sea
of troubles. He thinks little of rations, ambulances, Sanitary, and, we
fear, Christian Commissions, but much of victory. These creature and
spirit