Democratic Sentinel, Volume 4, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 October 1880 — GRANT’S GAB. [ARTICLE]

GRANT’S GAB.

A Talk with Gen. Hancock on the Subject of the Grant-Fowler Interview—The Words Put Into the ExPresident’s Mouth Not Such as Soldiers Are Wont to Employ—A Promise that the Charges Will Be Met if They Were Made by Gen. Grant— Army Officers at the Capital Surprised at Grant's Descent Into the Mire of Politics. [New York Telegram to Chicago Times.] Gen. Hancock, when asked if he cared to say anything for publication about Gen. Grant’s conversation with the Rev. C. H. Fowler, replied : “I find it hard to believe that ex-President Grant should have said such harsh things about me. I cannot say that I believe he has said them. I have no positive proof, for example, of his saying that I am ‘ vain, ambitious and weak,’ or that I have been ‘crazy to be President for the last sixteen years.’ All that I can interest myself about at all is the fact that Gen. Grant has partially confirmed, in a Chicago paper, the report previously published of language said to have been used by him in conversation with Dr. Fowler, so that, as you see, I really have nothing nut what must be called hearsay or second-hand evidence as to I any of the things which ex-President j Grant is reported to have said of me or : about me to the Rev. Dr. Fowler. ” “Do you think it necessary for you to : take any notice of these statements, j General?” “ It might be necessary for me to take notice of statements deliberately made to my prejudice by ex-President Grant, but I think I have grounds for hesitating to believe that Gen. Grant can have attacked my character. In the first place, neither he nor any man has any true foundation on which to attack my motives or my character; and, in the second place, ex-President Grant is an old soldier and a graduate of West Point. I am and must be slow to believe that an old comrade in arms would attempt to blacken my motives or my character, even in a conversation not intended for publication. That is not a habit of soldiers." “If you should deem it necessary to reply to Gen. Grant’s alleged statements, assuming it to be proved that he made them, in what form would you couch the reply ? ” Smiling, Hancock replied: “ 1 really cannot say. ” “ Would you put it as a letter ?” “To whom should such a letter be addressed ?” “How have you supposed, hitherto, that Gen, Grant felt toward you personally, General?” * ‘ I have always supposed that he was a man who would never allow any illwill he might feel, if he felt any, to influence his conduct toward a brother soldier in ordinary conversation. I shall not be inclined to change my opinion, unless I am compelled to do so by the most indisputable evidence. Of course, I understand that the ex-President may desire to promote the Republican cause in politics ; but there are two ways of promoting the cause which a man espouses in politics. One way, if he is a Republican, is to advocate the Republican candidate ; another way is to attack the Democratic candidate. The newspapers, I prefer to think, do ex-Presi-dent Grant injustice in assuming that he has chosen the latter course. Of course, if ex-President Grant has wrongfully assailed me, the public will not be long in finding it out; but I shall not make undue haste in the matter. This is all I have to say at present.”

Opinions In Army Circles.

[Washington Telegram.] Presuming always that the reports of Grant’s utterances are correct, the main opinion in army circles is that Gen. Grant has lost by stepping down into the political arena to meddle where he is not personally concerned. His attack upon Gen. Hancock is regarded as being in most execrable taste, and one that in the end must detract much from his own position of independence as a private gentleman. As one of the officers put it: “Gen. Grant has renounced his character of the sphinx, and has stepped down to become one of the party bosses. ” Another said: “I think I see in this how bitterly Gen. Grant regrets his defeat at Chicago, and how jealous he is of Gen. Hancock. Nothing but jealousy could have inspired this attack, and this very feeling of jealousy shows Gen. Grant to be a much smaller man than was the general estimate before he befan to talk.” An officer who served in iouisiana during 1876 and 1877 says that Gen. Grant’s criticism of Gen. Hancock during his stay comes with an ill grace from Gen. Grant when it is a well-known fact that during the winter of 1876 and 1877 Gen. Grant was intriguing to get Brother-in-law Casey elected to the Senate by Packard. Had this been done he would have set up the Packard Government at once; but, this failing, he left the question to be solved by Mr. Hayes. Finally, friends of Gen. Hancock say that the latter will be fully able to take

' care of himself, but that he will be in no hurry. He will first find out how much of these statements Gen.- Grant will back over his own signature, and then the answer will come. Old politicians say that this attack of Grant is only another section of the Grant programme. Already Gen. Garfield has become a minor figure in the canvass, and if this Grant-Hancock controversy becomes very animated there is a danger that the Mentor statesman will be lost sight of entirely. It is remarked as part of Gen. Grant’s plot to make Garfield insignificant—as he truly is—as a party leader, and keep the Galena politician as prominent a figure us possible. No one here sees how Gen. Garfield is to derive any advantage from, this talk. The excessive importance given to Grant’s utterances is only another evidence of his being the most prominent man in his party.

I ften. Slocum’s Denial of the State- | mcnt Relative to the Battle of Oeti tjsbnrg.

[Cincinnati Telegram.] Gen. Slocum, in an interview to-day with a reporter, bluntly said that if Gen. Grant said, as quoted, that Gen. Hancock did not choose the battle ground at Cemetery Ridge, Gettysburg, then Gen. I Grant lies. “ For,” said the General, “Iwas there, and I know. I heard Hancock say : ‘ This is the spot to make the tight, and here we will make it." 1 not only saw Hancock at that place, but I stood there and heard him choose the spot, and had confidence enough in his generalship not to interfere.” This from Slocum is severe on Grant, if Fowler reports him right, for he makes Grant say this : He (Hancock) did not select the battle ground, as his dispatch to Gen. Meade shows, and thought of retiring from Cemetery Ridge, when Slocum came up and superseded him in command. So Grant was reported in the Commercial this morning, and Gen. Slocum ’ comes forward with a denial, and says : ; “I ought to know, for I was there.” Press Comments. ‘ ‘ STRANGELY FORGETFUL. ’ ’ [From the Philadelphia Times (Independent).] A month after the nomination of Gen. Garfield, and when Grant was sulking away in the mountains, an interview with him by L. G. Entright, an old Pacific friend of his, was reported in detail in the public journals, and never contradicted by Grant. In that interview he spoke freely of Gen. Hancock, sayI ing that, in his opinion, “No better or ' safer man could be elected to the Chief Magistracy.” Three days ago another ; interview was given in the party organs from Grant, as reported by Rev. Dr. , Fowler, a prominent Methodist minister. The interview was so grossly vitu- | perative, of both Hancock and the South, that it shocked even the friends of Garfield, and Grant hastened to modify the statements of his ministerial interviewer; but, after all the explanations that Grant made, he stands on record as falsifying himself about Gen. Hancock. When did Gen. Grant speak the truth about Gen. Hancock? Was he truthful when he declared, after Hancock’s nomination, that “No better or safer man could be elected to the Chief Magistracy,” or was he truthful when he declared Hancock to be “Crazy to be President,” and “Ambitious, vain and weak ?” In one of these statements, like his directly-conflicting statements respecting the South, Gen. Grant told what he believed to be the truth, and in the other he could not have done so. It will be remarked that ■when he vindicated the South, and commended Hancock as one of the best and safest men for the Presidency, he was not prompted by politicians, but spoke voluntarily, and for himself; and that when he condemned the South and Hancock he spoke immediately after conference with Garfield, Conkling, Cameron and Logan, who had gathered in Ohio to save Garfield’s own Republican State to the party. Very many men of all parties will profoundly regret that Gen. Grant has been so strangely forgetful of the integrity of his public opinions, and henceforth he will rank only with the desperate politicians who deluded him to defeat at Chicago, and whose friendship must be fatal to all his hopes of political success in the future. He has effaced all the little gilding that was left on the third-term banner, and that is an achievement for the country, but it is at a fearful cost of once freelyproffered homage to our great citizen and soldier. “an exhibition of partisan spleen.” [From the New York Herald (Independent).] The person who gave to the public the report of Grant’s conversation concerning Gen. Hancock certainly did him no sert vice, but a great injury. It will not raise Gen. Grant in the esteem even of Republicans to see him descending to the abuse of a fellow-soldier, whose gallantry and devotion to the Union he has on previous occasions freely acknowledged. To say now, in the heat and excitement of a political canvass, that the Democratic candidate is vain, that he is ambitious of the Presidency, that his is a petty character, only- brings to everybody’s recollection that in his cooler moments, and before he was moved by what will be generally esteemed partisan rancor, Gen, Grant said : “ There are men in that organization (the Democratic party), men like Bayard, McClellan, Hancock and others whom I knotv. They are as loyal and patriotic as any man. Bayard, for instance, would make a splendid President. I would not be afraid of the others in that office.” Recalling this language we may pass over what the General now says of his ftfllowsoldier as an ebullition Of partisan spleen, which, as it is unworthy of him, the public ought to overlook and forget. It has no weight, nor any importance, except as it rouses a regret in generous minds to see so eminent a man so forget himself.