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General GRANT.
DEAR GENERAL: I have your more than kind and characteristic letter of the
4th, and will send a copy of it to General McPherson at once.
You do
yourself injustice and us too much honor in assigning to us so large a
share of the merits which have led to your high advancement. I know you
approve the friendship I have ever professed to you, and will permit me to
continue as heretofore to manifest it on all proper occasions.
You are now Washington's legitimate successor, and occupy a position of
almost dangerous elevation; but if you can continue as heretofore to be
yourself, simple, honest, and unpretending, you will enjoy through life
the respect and love of friends, and the homage of millions of human
beings who will award to you a large share for securing to them and their
descendants a government of law and stability.
I repeat, you do General
McPherson and myself too much honor. At Belmont you manifested your
traits, neither of us being near; at Donelson also you illustrated your
whole character. I was not near, and General McPherson in too subordinate
a capacity to influence you.
Until you had won Donelson, I confess I was
almost cowed by the terrible array of anarchical elements that presented
themselves at every point; but that victory admitted the ray of light
which I have followed ever since.
I believe you are as brave, patriotic, and just, as the great prototype
Washington; as unselfish, kind-hearted, and honest, as a man should be;
but the chief characteristic in your nature is the simple faith in success
you have always manifested, which I can liken to nothing else than the
faith a Christian has in his Savior.
This faith gave you victory at Shiloh and Vicksburg. Also, when you have
completed your best preparations, you go into battle without hesitation,
as at Chattanooga--no doubts, no reserve; and I tell you that it was this
that made us act with confidence. I knew wherever I was that you thought
of me, and if I got in a tight place you would come- if alive.
My only points of doubt were as to your knowledge of grand strategy, and
of books of science and history; but I confess your common-sense seems to
have supplied all this.
Now as to the future. Do not stay in Washington. Halleck is better
qualified than you are to stand the buffets of intrigue and policy. Come
out West; take to yourself the whole Mississippi Valley; let us make it
dead-sure, and I tell you the Atlantic slope and Pacific shores will
follow its destiny as sure as the limbs of a tree live or die with the
main trunk! We have done much; still much remains to be done. Time and
time's influences are all with us; we could almost afford to sit still and
let these influences work. Even in the seceded States your word now would
go further than a President's proclamation, or an act of Congress.
For God's sake and for your country's sake, come out of Washington!
I foretold to General Halleck, before he left Corinth, the inevitable
result to him, and I now exhort you to come out West. Here lies the seat
of the coming empire; and from the West, when our task is done we will
make short work of Charleston and Richmond, and the impoverished coast of
the Atlantic. Your sincere friend,
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