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

‘ [191] began, or whether they grew out of it, will by force of the Constitution, pass over to the arbitrament of courts of law, and to the councils of legislation.’ So spoke the Secretary of State a year and a half after the proclamation of Emancipation had been made.

A few days later he returned to Washington, and soon the news was brought of Sheridan's victory at Winchester. Seward took the telegram to the President. It was long past midnight, and Lincoln came to the door of his bedroom in his nightgown. There he held the candle while the Secretary of State read to him the great intelligence. The President was delighted, of course, at the victory, but Seward exclaimed: ‘And what, Mr. President, is to become of me?’ He told me this story, I suppose, to illustrate his spirit of self-sacrifice, but when I repeated it to Grant the soldier looked at the act in a different light. He thought the sacrifice of principle should not have been made, and was shocked that Seward could have thought of himself at such a crisis. But Seward believed in sacrificing even political principle to the success of a great cause, or the salvation of a country. He said to me at this time: ‘Nations have never more virtue than just enough to save themselves.’

Grant's course under somewhat similar circumstances was different. He often told me of the pressure brought to induce him to sign what was known as the Inflation Act. Personal and political friends of importance assured him that his refusal would be fatal to Republican success at the polls, and although his judgment was opposed to the measure, he finally wrote out a message approving the bill. He even read the message to his Cabinet, but in writing and reading it the weakness of his forced reasoning became more apparent than ever. He could not bring himself to do violence to his own convictions. That night he tore up the message and wrote another which contained the veto that forever defeated Inflation.

Each of these men had in his own way accomplished great