Explore "Our Standard-Bearer" by Oliver Optic on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Grant was not ignorant of the occasion of his summons to Washington. While he had been busily engaged with the duties of his department, the people had been heaping honors upon him. Associations of all kinds, learned and philanthropic, made him an honorary member of their bodies. Ohio and New York voted him thanks in their legislatures. Gifts of every description poured in upon him -- cigars and cigar cases, revolvers, books, canes, and other articles, sufficient in number to enable him to establish a private museum, if he had had any taste for "the show business. " None of these articles gave him so much pleasure as a brier-wood cigar case, cut out with a pocket knife by a poor soldier, and modestly sent to him as a token of the maker's veneration and regard. A great many babies were named after him at this time, though in this respect it is doubtful whether he ever rivalled his immediate associate on the presidential ticket, the Hon. Schuyler Colfax, who has probably had more babies named after him than any other living man.
It was not safe to speak ill of Grant, so warmly was his name nestled in the hearts of the people; and no one desired to do so except the immediate friends of a few disappointed aspirants for fame on the battle-field. The leather dealer of Galena had actually become the most famous man in America. Only a short time before he went to Washington, he had been honored in the highest degree in St. Louis by the very men to whose back doors he had hauled wood only four years before! The city that "respectfully declined" his petition to be appointed an engineer was eager to give him a public reception, and did yield him all the honors within its power. In three years, by the might of his brilliant genius, he had lifted himself from obscurity to a position which challenged the gaze of the whole nation. But his had not been the struggle of ambition -- only the promptings of patriotic duty. A score of more ambitious generals, fighting for a name among men, had risen and fallen during this time.