At Shiloh, the same thing happened, only this time it was worse; the whole Union Army was on the verge of rout. Grant, hobbling on crutches from a recent leg injury, met the mob of panic-stricken stragglers as he left the boat at Pittsburgh Landing. Calling on them to turn back, he mounted and rode toward the battle, shouting encouragement and giving orders to all he met. Confidence flowed from him back into an already beaten Army and in this way a field near lost was soon regained. The last and best picture of Grant is on the evening after he had taken his first beating from General Lee in the campaign against Richmond. He was newly with the Army of the Potomac. His predecessors, after being whipped by Lee, had invariably retreated to safe distance. But this time as the defeated army took the road of retreat out of the Wilderness, its columns got only as far as the Chancellorsville House crossroad. There the soldiers saw a squat, bearded man, sitting horseback, and drawing on a cigar. As the head of each regiment came abreast him, he silently motioned it to take the right-hand fork--back toward Lee's flank and deeper than ever into the Wilderness. That night for the first time the Army sensed an electric change in the air over Virginia. It had a man. "I intend to fight it out on this line" is more revealing of the one supreme quality which put the seal on all other of U. S. Grant's great gifts for military leading than everything else that the historians have written of him. He was the epitome of that spirit which moderns call "seeing the show through." He was sensitive to a fault in his early years, and carried to his tomb a dislike for military uniform, caused by his being made the butt of ridicule the first time he ever donned a soldier suit. As a junior lieutenant in the Mexican War, he sensed no particular aptitude in himself. But he had participated in every engagement possible to a member of his regiment, and had executed every small duty to the hilt, with particular attention to conserving the lives of his men. This was the school and the course which later enabled him to march to Richmond, when men's lives had to be spent for the good of the Nation. In more recent times, one of the great statesmen and soldiers of the United States, Henry L. Stimson, has added his witness to the value of this force in all enterprise: "I know the withering effect of limited commitments and I know the regenerative effect of full action." Though he was speaking particularly of the larger affairs of war and nation policy, his words apply with full weight to the personal life. The truth seen only halfway is missed wholly; the thing done only halfway had best not be attempted at all. Men can be fooled but they can't be fooled on this score. They will know every time when the bolt falls short for lack of a worthwhile effort. And when that happens, confidence in the leader is corroded, even among those who themselves were unwilling to try.