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

[269] into the hall to give him the first promise of what was to follow all over the land. The next day the scene was repeated; and so it went on. At Manchester he was the guest of the city and lodged in the Town Hall, which had never been occupied by State guests before. Banquets and processions were made for him, orations delivered; he was taken to the places of public interest—always by people of the great middle class. Not a lord appeared until he reached London. When he entered a theatre the orchestra played ‘Hail Columbia,’ and the actors stopped the performance while the audience rose as they would for a sovereign.

He had the same sort of reception in every one of the great towns of England. In each place he was the guest of the civic authorities, who, in every one of the large cities, are men of the middle class. In this way he saw more of that great class which constitutes so much of the strength, and owns so much of the wealth, and makes so much of the greatness of England; for lawyers, merchants, manufacturers, editors, artists, literary men,—all that we are in the habit of regarding as constituting the best elements of society—In England belong to the middle class. The cities are filled with a mercantile or manufacturing population, and the aristocracy never live in any city except London. If a person resides in a city in England, you may almost know that he is not an aristocrat.

But it was not only the leaders of the middle class, the wealthy merchants and great manufacturers, the liberal writers and thinkers, who delighted to do General Grant honor, it was those who, in that country, are lower still in the social scale,—the working class. At places like Sheffield, and Sunderland, and Birmingham, and Manchester, and Newcastle, the popular demonstration equaled any in America immediately after the war. Towns were illuminated because of his presence, triumphal arches were erected in his honor, holidays were proclaimed when he arrived, hundreds of thousands