ason for the conduct of General Lee.

I cannot, as a civilian, assume to give a judgment which shall be
accepted by any one, upon the relative standing of military men; but I
cannot accept, without question, the decision of a military man who
never won a great victory in a great battle, upon a chieftain who
fought many great battles and never lost one.

I end my observations upon General Grant as a soldier by the relation
of an incident in my acquaintance with General Sherman, which was
intimate during the four years that I was at the head of the Treasury
Department.

It was my custom in those years to spend evenings at General Sherman's,
where we indulged ourselves in conversation and in the enjoyment of the
game of billiards. Our conversations were chiefly upon the war. In
those conversations General Grant's name and doings were the topics
often. General Sherman never instituted a comparison between General
Grant and any one else, nor did he ever express an opinion of General
Grant as a military leader; but his conversation always assumed that
General Grant was superior to every other officer, himself, General
Sherman, included.

In concurrence with the opinion of General Sherman the friends of
General Grant may call an array of witnesses who, both from numbers and
character, are entitled to large confidence.

During the four years of the Civil War more than two million men served
in the Northern Army. Many of them, more than a majority of them,
probably, served for at least three years each. With an unanimity that
was never disturbed by an audible voice of dissent, the two million
veterans gave to General Grant supremacy over all the other officers
under whom they had served. With like unanimity the chief officers of
the army assigned the first place to General Grant, and never in any
other war of modern times has there been equal opportunity for the
applications of a satisfactory test to leaders. In all the wars which
England has been engaged since the fall of Napoleon, except, possibly,
the Crimean War, the opposing forces have been composed of inferior
races of men. The fields of contest have been in India, Egypt and South
Africa. From such contests no satisfactory opinion can be formed as to
the qualities of the leaders of the victorious forces.

In our Civil War the men and the officers were of the same race in the
main, and the educated officers had been alike trained at West Point.
Except in nu