Apart from the light this incident throws upon political life, it is rather remarkable that the same man should have been called upon by two presidents of the United States, twenty-eight years apart, under exactly similar circumstances and asked for advice, and that, the same expedient being employed, both men became candidates and both secured second terms. As was once explained upon a memorable occasion: "There's figuring in all them things." When in Washington I had not met General Grant, because he was in the West up to the time of my leaving, but on a journey to and from Washington he stopped at Pittsburgh to make the necessary arrangements for his removal to the East. I met him on the line upon both occasions and took him to dine with me in Pittsburgh. There were no dining-cars then. He was the most ordinary-looking man of high position I had ever met, and the last that one would select at first glance as a remarkable man. I remember that Secretary of War Stanton said that when he visited the armies in the West, General Grant and his staff entered his car; he looked at them, one after the other, as they entered and seeing General Grant, said to himself, "Well, I do not know which is General Grant, but there is one that cannot be." Yet this was he. [Reading this years after it was written, I laugh. It is pretty hard on the General, for I have been taken for him more than once.] In those days of the war much was talked about "strategy" and the plans of the various generals. I was amazed at General Grant's freedom in talking to me about such things. Of course he knew that I had been in the War Office, and was well known to Secretary Stanton,[21] and had some knowledge of what was going on; but my surprise can be imagined when he said to me: "Well, the President and Stanton want me to go East and take command there, and I have agreed to do it. I am just going West to make the necessary arrangements." I said, "I suspected as much." "I am going to put Sherman in charge," he said. "That will surprise the country," I said, "for I think the impression is that General Thomas should succeed." "Yes, I know that," he said, "but I know the men and Thomas will be the first to say that Sherman is the man for the work. There will be no trouble about that. The fact is the western end is pretty far down, and the next thing we must do is to push the eastern end down a little." [Footnote 21: Mr. Carnegie gave to Stanton's college, Kenyon, $80,000, and on April 26, 1906, delivered at the college an address on the great War Secretary. It has been published under the title _Edwin M. Stanton, an Address by Andrew Carnegie on Stanton Memorial Day at Kenyon College_. (New York, 1906.)]