s why men became so loyally attached to him. It
is true that this trait so dominated his whole character that it led him
to make mistakes; it induced him to continue to stand by men who were no
longer worthy of his confidence; but after all, it was a trait so grand,
so noble, we do not stop to count the errors which resulted.
[Applause.] It showed him to be a man who had the courage to be just, to
stand between worthy men and their unworthy slanderers, and to let
kindly sentiments have a voice in an age in which the heart played so
small a part in public life. Many a public man has had hosts of
followers because they fattened on the patronage dispensed at his hands;
many a one has had troops of adherents because they were blind zealots
in a cause he represented, but perhaps no man but General Grant had so
many friends who loved him for his own sake; whose attachment
strengthened only with time; whose affection knew neither variableness,
nor shadow of turning; who stuck to him as closely as the toga to
Nessus, whether he was Captain, General, President, or simply private
citizen. [Great applause.]

General Grant was essentially created for great emergencies; it was the
very magnitude of the task which called forth the powers which mastered
it. In ordinary matters he was an ordinary man. In momentous affairs he
towered as a giant. When he served in a company there was nothing in his
acts to distinguish him from the fellow-officers; but when he wielded
corps and armies the great qualities of the commander flashed forth and
his master strokes of genius placed him at once in the front rank of the
world's great captains. When he hauled wood from his little farm and
sold it in the streets of St. Louis there was nothing in his business or
financial capacity different from that of the small farmers about him;
but when, as President of the Republic, he found it his duty to puncture
the fallacy of the inflationists, to throttle by a veto the attempt of
unwise legislators to tamper with the American credit, he penned a State
paper so logical, so masterly, that it has ever since been the pride,
wonder, and admiration of every lover of an honest currency. [Applause.]
He was made for great things, not for little. He could collect for the
nation $15,000,000 from Great Britain in settlement of the Alabama
claims; he could not protect his own personal savings from the
miscreants who robbed him in Wall Street.

But General Grant needs no