General Grant died on Thursday morning after a very long
struggle with that most painful and terrible disease, cancer of the tongue, from which it is stated that he was suffering. It is a disease to test any man's fortitude; but General Grant's bore the test as well as, during the war, it had borne the test of anxieties and disappointments almost more trying than personal suffering itself. Perhaps his greatest moral quality was his illimitable tenacity of purpose, and the coolness with which he met disasters. His two political reigns were hardly calculated to increase his reputation. He was not fastidious in politics, and he got mixed up with unscrupulous men both in politics and in commerce. But he was long-headed, with a calm and. clear intellect; and when he was not too indolent to give his whole attention, his judgment was a very sagacious one. He was certainly a soldier of the first class, though not of the highest genius ; but his political mind was not a highly educated mind, and as a statesman he failed to raise the standard of political ethics in the 'United States, or to redeem political con- duct from that moral level which Mr. Ruskin has christened for us as the "ethics of the dust." But none the less, the -United States will never forget that to General Grant chiefly they owe the victory of the North and the collapse of the slave-power.
