His total pay as a captain of infantry amounted to nearly a thousand dollars a year; and it was as sure as the rising and setting of the sun. This was the certainty before him; and only a man of energetic purposes, with great confidence in his own abilities, would have turned from it to strike out a new path in the tangled maze of worldly affairs. From his boyhood he had been absorbed in the pursuits of his military career, and their practical application in the field and on the march, with a limited knowledge of business; and I repeat that it required no little moral courage to abandon the certainty and grapple with the uncertainty. I am aware that a different explanation of Grant's resignation has been rumored through the country, and the vile slander that he had become addicted to intemperate habits has been circulated over the land. It has even been said that his resignation was prompted by a significant warning from the War Department. I am amazed that such an idle story should ever have obtained even a momentary credence. It is as impossible that Grant could ever have been a drunkard as that he could ever have been a coward. "He that ruleth his spirit is mightier than he that taketh a city." Under all circumstances, in the fierce storm of battle, as in the quiet of the social circle, he always maintained the most perfect control of himself. If he ever used the intoxicating cup to excess, he must have known it himself; and to know that he had a dangerous habit was to conquer it. Look at the inflexible will of the man, as displayed at Donelson and Vicksburg! Look at him, meek and modest, in the midst of the storm of applause that everywhere greeted him after his mission had been accomplished! Look at him, calm and immovable, when, in the intricacies of the Vicksburg campaign, he outsped the thought and the prudence of his military compeers, and the impatient people began to howl even at him! Could such a man be the slave of his own appetite? The man himself is the best evidence of the falsity of the rumor. I say I am amazed that this silly story should ever have been harbored for a moment by any one, except an enemy of his country; but I am still more amazed when I realize that this is the only blemish which lukewarm friends and over-critical enemies have been able to cast upon the character of the distinguished soldier. It is the prerogative of greatness to be the mark of slander's poisoned arrows. Napoleon was accused of crimes enough to banish him forever from the pale of human sympathy; Wellington and Marlborough escaped not the blast of calumny; Jefferson was charged with the most loathsome immoralities; and even Washington was systematically traduced by over-zealous partisans. It is a miracle, therefore, that Grant has only been held up to obloquy for the one offence of intemperance, and that the most absurd and improbable one which could possibly have been devised.