University of Virginia Library

NEW MOVEMENT AGAINST GRANT.

TRUE HISTORY OF A TEMPERANCE DELEGATION—
THE TIPSIEST TOTAL ABSTINENCE PARTY EVER
KNOWN.

GEORGE N. SANDERS AND SENATOR CHANDLER AS
TEMPERANCE DELEGATES.

So great is the agitation of John and Jeannette
Secesh upon this point that they are preparing to
repeat the experiment of a temperance delegation
to wait upon the President, with a protest
against his retention of “a common drunkard” in
command of the chief army of the Union. It is
said that Mr. George Noodle Sanders, at present
of Canada, has been offered the chairmanship of
this new temperance movement; and that Senator
Chandler, of Michigan, will represent, as secretary,
the extreme abolition total-abstinence sentiment of
the entire country. A special train is to be hired
for the use of the delegation, so that decent travellers

from St. Louis to the East may not be worried
by the ultra-zealous temperance demonstrations
of the members of the committee; and in the instructions
of the “Total Abstinence Convention” under
which the delegates are to act, it is resolved that
“no member of the secesh temperance delegation
to the President, for the removal of General Grant,
shall carry with him during his journey from St.
Louis to Washington, over six two-gallon demijohns
of Bourbon for his private use.”

FIRST “TEMPERANCE DELEGATION” AGAINST
GENERAL GRANT.

The fuss that is now being made here by the
rebel sympathizers over the alleged backslidings
of the Lieutenant-General, recalls to my mind very
forcibly a scene of which I was witness, just previous
to the capture of Fort Donelson. The actors
in the matter were different; but the anecdote
falls in as a capital illustration of the present hubbub.
The thing is also memorable in itself, as
embracing the only public joke of which Major-General
Henry Wager Halleck has ever been
known to be guilty.

While Grant was elaborating his preparations
to pass down the Mississippi with that magnificent
and resistless energy which finally tore open the
rebel lockjaw of the river at Fort Donelson,

Columbus, Nashville, Pittsburg Landing, Vicksburg,
and finally Port Hudson, the John Seceshes
of those early days became alarmed at his deliberate
and unceasing energy, and at once commenced
reviving, with exaggerations, unspeakable old
stories and old lies in reference to certain alleged
indiscretions of his early habits. The lies “took”
with the rapidity which is usual in such cases;
and before a fortnight from their coinage in the
rebel mint, we had a grave and dolorous editorial
from the temperance and bran-bread philosophers
of the New York Tribune, pointing out Brigadier-General
Grant as a melancholy example of the
debasing and ruinous effects of too much alcohol.
The New York Tribune philosophers, in fact, made
him very much like the drunken helot, who was
exhibited by Spartan fathers to their children
as the best argument in favor of a Neal Dow
Maine Law.

GOVERNOR DICK YATES AND HIS ALLIES.

Well, the matter at length went so far that Gov.
Dick Yates, of Illinois—himself a notorious temperance
advocate—gave his sanction to the getting
up of a “temperance delegation” from the State,
charged with proceeding to Washington, where
they should lay before the President an energetic
protest against his allowing “forty-two thousand

sons of Illinois, then in the Army of the Mississippi,
to have their lives placed in jeopardy under
command of a common drunkard.” This delegation
was headed by Judge Davis, now of the
Supreme Court, and had among its members such
political friends of the President as Leonard Swett,
Minister Judd, and other celebrated politicians of
the Sucker State.

PRESIDENT LINCOLN ON THE RAMPAGE.

Mr. Lincoln did not know what to do with the
matter. He had read the New York Tribune's
article, and was now besieged by the first temperance
delegation in regard to “General Grant's
habits.” He telegraphed in cypher to General
Halleck, who was then in command of the Mississippi
department, setting forth what the Tribune
said, what the total abstinence committee said,
and what he (President Lincoln) thought should
at once be done. This was nothing more nor less,
than that General Halleck should issue an order
summarily and disgracefully dismissing Grant from
the service for being afflicted with alcoholic habits.

GENERAL HALLECK CANT SEE IT, AND GROWS
INDIGNANT.

Halleck at once telegraphed back an indignant
reply. If the charge were true, or had a shadow

of truth in it, the first head to fall should not be
Gen. Grant's—it should be General Halleck's.
If he, commanding in chief the department, could
expose his greatest army to defeat under such a
person as the President seemed to believe General
Grant, it was very clear that his Excellency should
at once remove him (General Halleck) from the
position he so manifestly was unqualified to fill.
In conclusion, the Major-General commanding the
Mississippi department would respectfully submit
to his Excellency, that temperance delegations
were very excellent things in their proper place—
the editorial rooms of the New York Tribune and
other synagogues of the saints, wherein the “total
abstinence beverages” (not “spirits”) of “just
men were made perfect;” but that, so far as the
Army of the Mississippi went, he wished to have
nothing to say to them, and would prefer “Grant's
little finger, even if tipsy, to the carcases of the
whole blessed caboodle!”

INTENSE DISGUST AT WASHINGTON—THE TEMPERANCE
MEN VOTED A NUISANCE.

Intense disgust followed the receipt at Washington
of this telegram. The temperance delegation
from Illinois took “tall drinks all round”
many times, and then acceded to the President's
proposition (Mr. Lincoln being anxious to get rid

of them, as they were personal friends and a
heavy drain upon his whiskey-cellar); and the
proposition was this: They were to proceed in a
body to St. Louis, Governor Dick Yates footing
their travelling expenses and bar-room bills; and
on their arrival there, such of them as were able
to walk should walk, and such of them as could
not walk should be carried in carriages or wheel-barrows
to General Halleck's headquarters, where
they should lay before said General their proofs
and affidavits (mainly signed by members of
the Christian and Sanitary Commissions, together
with a raft of secessionists and cotton speculators)
as to General Grant's “deplorable excesses” in the
tippling line.

THE “TOTAL ABSTINENCE” MEN ARE TOTED IN
WHEELBARROWS BEFORE GEN. HALLECK.

Well, to make a long story short, down they
came, and were helped or carried by a strong
delegation of porters, waiters, and all available
black help, up the stoop of the Planters' House,
and thence to their respective rooms, which were
secured by Captain (now Colonel) J. Wilson
Shaffer, of Illinois—then a quartermaster, and a
very excellent one, on the staff of General Hunter.
Had Shaffer not been there, the whole “temperance
delegation” would, beyond doubt, have been

kicked into the street or sent for lodgings to the
calaboose, as Palmer, the clerk, refused to give
them entertainment unless they would duly register
their names in the hotel book; and there was
not a man in the crowd who could see less than a
dozen pens and a small army of books when the
clerk offered him a single quill and pointed to the
solitary ledger.

THE TAR A-BOILING AND THE FEATHERS BEING
COLLECTED.

Of course for that night there could be no formal
visit to General Halleck, who was then staying
in the hotel, accompanied by General Cullum,
his Chief of Staff; Col. Kelton, his Assistant
Adjutant-General; Col. Thom, his Chief of Topographical
Engineers; the lamented McPherson;
Col. Cutts, brother to Mrs. Douglas, and a young
Major O'Reilly of the Adjutant-General's Department,
whose first name I happen to forget. Captain
Shaffer, however, gleaned enough from the
tipsy hiccoughings and grunts of his old friends
from Illinois to form a right estimate of their
general business. Great was the fun at Halleck's
table and in his adjacent headquarters that night;
but when the matter came to be somewhat noised
abroad, it was found necessary to place a guard of
soldiers at the door of each slumbrous member of

the “Temperance Delegation,” in order to prevent
the officers and men of Grant's army who chanced
to be in town from supplying said members with
a coat of tar and feathers as an appropriate uniform
in which their next morning's visit to General
Halleck should be paid.

GRANT “MOVES ON THE ENEMY'S WORKS”—FORT
DONELSON CAPTURED.

Next morning—Sunday morning—proved an
eventful one. Long before the “total abstinence”
representatives had commenced, with dizzy heads
and trembling hands, to ring for Congress water
and cocktails, great news had reached the busy
headquarters of the general commanding. Fort
Donelson had fallen before the unmatched prowess
and resistless energy of General Grant. He had
“moved upon the enemy's works,” and they were
his! He had fifteen thousand prisoners, the whole
armament of the fort, which covered many acres,
and Floyd was a miserable fugitive! This victory
necessitated the evacuation by the enemy of Bowling
Green and Columbus. It threw open the
Mississippi to Pittsburg Landing, and was a verification
in full of those fears of the secessionists
within our lines, which had first prompted them to
start the lie that “Grant was a common drunkard,
and should be at once removed.”

THE BULLETIN OF VICTORY, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.

It was not until about ten in the morning that
General Halleck had sufficient leisure from the
more important and pressing cares of that critical
moment to think of putting up on the bulletin
board of the Planters' House the announcement
of our victory. The bulletin was then written
and handed to an orderly sergeant to be placed
before the public.

By this time the John Seceshes of St. Louis
were in full force in the office and main corridor
of the hotel. They were anxious, for they had
heard whispers of bad news to their cause; and
they were also anxious as to the state of their
friends of the “Temperance Delegation from Illinois.”
In truth, these gentlemen of the “total
abstinence party” needed care and cocktails, baths
and brandy-smashes, much barberizing and many
juleps, before they could be revived into any
appearance of respectability. The John Seceshes,
however, were assiduous; and by the time the
orderly sergeant, followed by General Halleck
and staff, appeared in the corridor, the “members
of the temperance delegation” had straightened
themselves up into that condition of “unearthly
sobriety” which your old toper (who has a pew in
church and marriageable daughters) is always certain

to assume when recovering from a last night's
debauch, and with just enough “red eye” in his
stomach to make breakfast a possibility.

GEN. HALLECK'S SPEECH AND JOKE—THE ONLY
JOKE OF HIS LIFE.

On the posting up of the bulletin great was the
hubbub and curious the varying sensations observable
on the faces of the crowd. John Secesh was
in despair; the “temperance delegation” looked
as if no hole could be too small for the fattest man
among them to crawl out through; the loyalists,
in and out of uniform, rent the air with cheers;
Halleck puffed his cigar with vigor, and General
Cullum, just back from Cairo, rubbed his thin
hands exultingly.

“Palmer,” called out General Halleck to the
clerk, “send up two dozen baskets of champagne,
and open them here for the benefit of the crowd.”
(Loud cheers, the temperance delegation looking
sheepish.) “And, Palmer,” continued the
General, “I want you to give public notice that I
shall suspect the loyalty of any male resident of
St. Louis who can be found sober enough to walk
or speak within the next half hour.”

THE “TOTAL ABSTINENCE” MEN GET A BRIGHT
IDEA.

How the “total abstinence men” felt at this
precise juncture I cannot say; but history gives
full record of what they did. A bright idea seized
Judge Davis that by cheering and yelling the
loudest for General Grant, the character of their
mission might be forgotten. Davis yelled and
cheered. Leonard Swett saw the point at once,
and joined in chorus. Minister Judd only blamed
himself that the same happy thought had not
occurred to him before occurring to Judge Davis;
and, as the upshot of the whole, the entire “temperance
party” became the most vociferous in the
corridor in their mad huzzahs for the “Great
River Horse of the Mississippi.” The champagne
provided by General Halleck, however, was too
cold for their inflamed and furious stomachs.
They secured, through Shaffer's aid, a large empty
hall, sometimes used as a ballroom, in the back
part of the Planters' House; and there, throughout
that day, with many a pailful of “red eye”
and many a bucket of spiced brandy, they held
high revel, dancing like enthusiastic monomaniacs
around the room and huzzahing for General Grant
at the top of their voices—“Wilse Shaffer” meanwhile
having turned the key on the whole party,
so that none but friends should see their folly.

Thus ended the first “John Secesh temperance
delegation” against General Grant. Are we now
to have another, under the auspices of George
N. Sanders and company? I have great hopes
that, as a corollary of the new John Secesh temperance-movement
against the greatest of our
soldiers, we shall soon hear of General Grant
quietly smoking his cigar in the mansion heretofore
occupied by Mr. Jefferson Davis. It is only
when the rebels are utterly hopeless and helpless,
that they have resort to this miserable trick of
personal assault and slander.

In this connexion, and as one of the jolliest
camp drinking-songs that we can at this moment
recall, perhaps Private O'Reilly's verses on
“Winter Quarters,” which are known to be favorites
with Grant's staff, if not with the good and
gallant General himself, may here be excused for
their intrusion. It may be supposed they were
written in that period of wintry repose when the
vast camps of the Army of the Potomac were
visited by swarms of ladies, and rang with the
“sounds of revelry by night.”