Adam Badeau, Grant in peace: from Appomattox to Mount McGregor, a personal memoir

[181] difference between the soldier and the diplomatist. Grant was for prompt action, peremptory demands, menaces, and, if necessary, war, though he did not believe that war would be necessary. Seward hoped to accomplish the same object by waiting for events, by skillful management, by diplomatic notes and protocols. Besides this, Seward may have thought the province his own, that he was entitled to bring about the result in his own way and achieve the triumph that belonged to his own Department. At any rate he did his best to thwart the plan proposed by Grant, and as he was in the Cabinet, and besides in harmony with the President's domestic policy, he won the day. His views finally controlled the action of the Government. It was some little while, however, before the contest was decided, and when Grant first found the influence of the Secretary hostile, he was not at all discouraged, although displeased. Since he could not have the assistance of Seward, he resorted to means of his own devising. For he was very much in earnest, and believed that dilatory diplomacy might result in the establishment of an empire in Mexico.

Three months after the close of the war he sent General Schofield, in whose ability and discretion he had great confidence, on a peculiar errand. Schofield was nominally ordered to make an inspection of the troops on the Rio Grande, but he was furnished with a leave of absence with permission to visit Mexico. This had been granted with the concurrence of the President, who had full knowledge of the object in view.

At the same time Grant wrote to Sheridan that there must be a large amount of captured ordnance in his command, as well as ‘similar articles’ left there by discharged Union soldiers. Sheridan was directed to send none of these ‘articles’ to the North. ‘Rather place them,’ said Grant, ‘convenient to be permitted to go into Mexico, if they can be got into the hands of the defenders of the only government we recognize in that country.’ He continued: