battles of Lookout Mountain and Mission Ridge were fought, resulting in the defeat of the Confederates. In March, 1864, Grant was made lieutenant-general and placed in command of all the Union armies. He now planned a wide campaign which should press the Confederates simultaneously at all points east and west. Leaving Sherman to fight Johnston from Chattanooga to Atlanta, he himself with the Army of the Potomac confronted the Confederates under General Lee. The clash of these great leaders came in the terrible battles of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, North Anna and Cold Harbor and, finally, in the siege of Petersburg, which ended in its fall, the capture of Richmond and the surrender of Lee at Appomattox, April 9, 1865.
The war was over. Grant, hailed as the nation's deliverer, went immediately to Washington to hasten the disbanding of the army. He was created General, a higher rank than had hitherto existed in our army. His magnanimity toward his late foe won the gratitude of the south. He threatened to resign, if President Johnson had Lee tried for treason. In 1868 General Grant was elected President.
“The man on horseback” is not always a successful executive. But General Grant made up for his lack of experience in public office by his personality. In the president's chair he displayed the same characteristics that he had in the field. Self-reliance, prompt decision, willingness to assume full responsibility, moral and physical courage, devotion to duty, simplicity, purity of personal life and unimpeachable honesty marked him. Honest himself, he reposed complete confidence in those around him, and was sometimes betrayed. The eight years of his presidency covered the difficult period of reconstruction in the south, the adoption of the 15th Amendment, the financial crisis of '73, the completion of the Union Pacific Railway and the Franco-Prussian War. Mistakes were made — errors of judgment deplored to-day, but, in the midst of the turmoil, Grant secured the passage of the first Civil Service reform bill and a treaty with Great Britain defining the rights and duties of neutral nations in time of war.
In 1877 General Grant made his famous tour of the world, in which Occident and Orient were in rivalry to do him honor. At the age of 56 a man of enduring fame, he was too poor to maintain his family in its enforced prominent position. Investing his capital in the banking firm of Grant and Ward, with his usual trust in his associates and his ignorance of business, he left the conduct of the enterprise to his partners. The firm failed, Grant was robbed and left penniless. A fall had crippled him, so that, at this time and until his death, he had to use a crutch.
Nothing in all the career of this great American is so heroic as the closing year of his life. Bankrupt, crippled, dying of cancer of the tongue, he dictated two volumes of memoirs to provide for his family. When it was absolute agony to speak, with a fortitude and unselfishness that have few parallels in history, he continued his task, completing it only four days before his death at Mt. McGregor, near Saratoga, N. Y., July 23, 1885.
Of the literary quality of these Memoirs it is enough to say that Edward Everett Hale asserts that “no prose writer of our country is more likely to be generally read three centuries hence than the despatches of Grant;” and Matthew Arnold, a severe critic, declared that the style of Grant's Memoirs equals that of Caesar's Commentaries. See Personal Memoirs.
Gran'ville, George Leveson-Gower, Earl of, English statesman of the Liberal school, was born at London, May 11, 1815, and died there on March 31, 1891. After an education at Eton and at Christ Church, Oxford, he acted under his father as attaché at the English embassy in Paris, and in 1836 entered the house of commons, becoming under-secretary of state for foreign affairs. In 1846, on the death of his father, he entered the house of lords, and in 1851 succeeded Palmerston as secretary of foreign affairs, and became president (from 1852 to 1854) of the council. In 1868, under Gladstone, he was secretary of state for the colonies, and during 1870-74 was once more secretary for foreign affairs. The latter office he also held under the same premier during the years 1880-85.
Grape, species of Vitis, a genus which contains about 40 species belonging to temperate and subtropical regions. About 25 species are found wild in the United States. The group is said to be the oldest of domesticated fruits, and the original wine-producing form is V. vinifera, which probably was native to Asia. Although the production of wine is the principal use of the grape, the production of raisins is an important industry. The American species which has been most developed is V. labrusca of the Atlantic region, which is the parent of the well-known Concord and Catawba forms. The Delaware and Isabella grapes are said to have varied so far from the original types that they cannot be recognized. While in the eastern and southern United States the native grapes were being domesticated, in California the Old World V. vinifera was introduced, and therefore the Pacific grape culture is that of the Old World. Outside of California, the most important regions of grape-culture are in New York and Ohio along the lakes and rivers. There also are important grape-plantations in
