"The brilliant victory of Buena Vista, where five thousand Americans
hurled back and repulsed a tumultuous Mexican horde of twenty thousand,
only reiterates the same marvelous story of superior leadership."

* * * * *

"Fresh from these splendid achievements, he received the nomination for
President over the names of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and General
Scott. It was a spontaneous expression of the people's confidence,
unheralded and unsought. And when he was triumphantly elected over the
Democratic and Free-soil candidates--General Cass, Martin Van Buren, and
Charles Francis Adams--he accepted the high office in a spirit of
humility and simple compliance with duty."

In the sketch of General U. S. Grant's life, our author has written with
a masterly hand the outlines of the grand career of his favorite
general, the salient points of which are given with a soldierly energy
and dash befitting the theme. Thus the chapter commences:

"The occasion often creates the man, but the man who _masters_ the
occasion is born, not made. Many are pushed to the surface, momentarily,
by the pressure of events, and then subside into common levels; but he
is the true commander during a crisis, who can wield the waves of
difficulty to advantage, and be a sure pilot amid the on-rush of events
when they thicken and deepen into a prolonged struggle.

"When, during the late war, our country needed a leader to face and
quell the threatened danger of disunion, and conduct her armies to
successful issues; and when Government entrusted those momentous issues
to Ulysses S. Grant, 'the man and the moment had met,'--the occasion had
found its master.

"Napoleon said that the most desirable quality of a good general was
that his judgment should be in equilibrium with his courage. To no
commander of modern times could this rule apply with more force than to
Grant. A man of no outward clamor of character, no hint of bluster or
dash, quiet-voiced, self-controlled, but not self-asserting, he yet
displayed vast power as an organizer, as a tactician, and in masterly
combinations of large forces so as to produce the most telling effects.
It has been truly said of him that no general ever stamped his own
peculiar character upon an army more emphatically than did Grant upon
the Army of the Tennessee. It was the only large organization which, as
a whole, never suffered a defeat during the war. It was noted for its
marvel