You ain't gwine let 'em
shoot me. I'se too vallable a nigger fer dat. I wuz worth er thousan'
dollars 'fore de war. I sho' oughter be wuth two thousan' now. What's de
use er 'stroyin' er good piece er property lak dat? I won't be no good
ter nobody ef dey shoots me!"
The President broke down at last, leaned back in his chair and laughed
with every muscle of his long body. Julius joined him with unction.
When the laughter died away the tall figure bent over his desk and wrote
an order for the negro's release, and discharge from the army.
One of the things which had brought the President his deepest joy in the
victory of Vicksburg was not the importance of the capture of the city
and the opening of the Mississippi so much as the saving of U. S. Grant
as a commanding General.
From the capture of Fort Donelson, the eyes of the Chief Magistrate had
been fixed on this quiet fighter. And then came the disaster to his army
at Shiloh--the first day's fight a bloody and overwhelming defeat--the
second the recovery of the ground lost and the death of Albert Sydney
Johnston, his brilliant Confederate opponent.
As a matter of fact, in its results, the battle had been a crushing
disaster to the South. But Grant had lost fourteen thousand men in the
two days' carnage and it was the first great field of death the war had
produced.
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