OCR Text |
Show GRANT'S WAR WHISKEY. Speaking of General Grant's recent adoption of the rule of total abstinence, we are reminded of an anecdote of the war. It will be remembered that in those times stories were started by the fire-in-the-rear assailants and critics of the war and its generals; that General Grant was drinking to excess. These stories were so often repeated, both during and after the war, that the public generally came finally to believe them, while the fact is they were false. General Grant was by no means a teetotaler in those days, but neither was he intemperate. The anecdote is this: Colonel T. Lyle Dickey (now one of the Judges of the Supreme Court of Illinois) was Chief of Cavalry on General Grant's staff during the siege of Vicksburg and the West Tennessee campaign preceding the event. In October 1862, he was sent to Washington on an important mission, and one day, while he and other officers were in conference with President Lincoln, Grant's name came up, when an officer of the Potomac army of high rank declared that the General was in the habit of getting drunk. Colonel Dickey, indignant at the slander, sharply remarked: "Mr. President, if it is true that General Grant gets drunk, I think the wisest thing the War Department could do would be to find out what kind of whiskey he drinks, and get some of our other generals drunk on this same kind of liquor." Colonel Dickey intended this rejoinder as a home thrust at the commanders of the Army of the Potomac, which had been passing through a series of misfortunes for want of able generalship. Mr. Lincoln afterwards repeated this anecdote of Colonel Dickey to some friends and it finally crept into the newspapers in this form: "The President, speaking of the report that General Grant was frequently under the influence of whiskey told some of the officers of the Army of the Potomac that they had better find out what kind of whiskey it was that Grant drank, and get some of it." The true version, and the real author of the anecdote, are as we have stated. |