"
With these words, so brief, so simple, so full of reverent
feeling, he set aside the place of strife to be the resting place
of heroes, and then went back to his own great task--for which
he, too, was to give "the last full measure of devotion."
Up to within a very short time little had been heard about
Ulysses S. Grant, the man destined to become the most successful
general of the war. Like General McClellan, he was a graduate of
West Point; and also like McClellan, he had resigned from the
army after serving gallantly in the Mexican war. There the
resemblance ceased, for he had not an atom of McClellan's vanity,
and his persistent will to do the best he could with the means
the government could give him was far removed from the younger
general's faultfinding and complaint. He was about four years
older than McClellan, having been born on April 27, 1822. On
offering his services to the War Department in 1861 he had
modestly written: "I feel myself competent to command a regiment
if the President in his judgment should see fit to intrust one to
me." For some reason this letter remained unanswered, although
the Department, then and later, had need of trained and
experienced officers. Afterward the Governor of Illinois made him
a colonel of one of the three years' volunteer regiments; and
from that time on he rose in rank, not as McClellan had done, by
leaps and bounds, but slowly, earning every promotion.
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