General Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant

[248] and said: “General, as I was riding over here some of the men in the adjoining camps shouted after me and called me ‘Old Pills,’ and I would like to have it stopped.” Meade just at that moment was not in the best possible frame of mind to be approached with such a complaint. He seized hold of the eye-glasses, conspicuously large in size, which he always wore, clapped them astride of his nose with both hands, glared through them at the officer, and exclaimed: “Well, what of that T How can I prevent it? Why, I hear that, when I rode out the other day, some of the men called me a ‘ d-d old goggle-eyed snapping-turtle,’ and I can't even stop that!” The officer had to content himself with this explosive expression of a sympathetic fellow-feeling, and to take his chances thereafter as to obnoxious epithets.

In view of the want of harmony which often prevailed, the service would have suffered severely if an officer of a different character had been in supreme command; but Grant was so complacent in his manner, so even in temper, and so just in his method of dealing with the conflicting interests and annoying questions which arose, that whatever his subordinates may have thought of one another, to him they were at all times well disposed and perfectly loyal.

Throughout this memorable year, the most important as well as the most harassing of his entire military career, General Grant never in any instance failed to manifest those traits which were the true elements of his greatness. He was always calm amid excitement, and patient under trials. He looked neither to the past with regret nor to the future with apprehension. When he could not control he endured, and in every great crisis he could “convince when others could not advise.” His calmness of demeanor and unruffled temper were often a marvel even to those most familiar with him. In the