Matthew Arnold, Civilization in the United States: First and Last Impressions of America.

The American girls coolly continuing to make the Confederate tents under the eye of the hostile generals, and the proprietor claiming afterwards to be paid by Congress for them as private property, are charming.

It was one of Grant's superstitions, he tells us, never to apply for a post, or to use, personal or political influence for obtaining it. He believed that if he had got it in this way he would have feared to undertake any plan of his own conception for fear of involving his patrons in responsibility for his possible failure. If he were selected for a post, his responsibility ended, he said, with “his doing the best he knew how.”

“Every one has his superstitions. One of mine is that in positions of great responsibility every one should do his duty to the best of his ability, where assigned by competent authority, without application or the use of influence to change his position. While at Cairo I had watched with very great interest the operations of the Army of the Potomac, looking upon that as the main field of the war. I had no idea, myself, of ever having any large command, nor did I suppose that I was equal to one; but I had the vanity to think that, as a cavalry officer, I might ”