Address, at Topeka, April 27, 1885, at a celebration held in honor of the birthday of General Grant.

Mr. Chairman, and Fellow-Citizens: The felicitous concurrence of the birthday of a great American soldier and a great American civic society at the same date, has, perhaps for the first time, been generally noted within the past week or so. But hereafter, and especially in the distant future, it will afford a happy opportunity for a blending of military and civil celebrations.

The very general and spontaneous celebration of the birthday of a living man—of a man, too, who occupies no high office, but is simply one of fifty-five million American citizens—is something unique and remarkable in this country, if, indeed, it is not in the history of the civilized world.

But everything in the career of Ulysses S. Grant has been phenomenal. For years, during the war, thousands doubted whether he had any military genius. Yet in every position in which he was placed, he succeeded where others had failed. From Donelson to Vicksburg, from Vicksburg to Chattanooga, from Chattanooga to the Potomac, and from the Potomac to Appomattox—everywhere that this grave, silent, self-controlled man went, he inspired confidence and organized victory.

He is the only man of our day and generation—perhaps the only man of any age—who has lived to read the judgment of impartial history concerning his career and achievements. The receptions given him, the great honors paid him by princes, potentates and people in every civilized country during his voyage around the world, voiced the verdict, not alone of the present, but of the future, concerning Ulysses S. Grant. What the historian of a hundred years hence may say of Thomas, or Sherman, or Sheridan, or Meade, we cannot predict; but what he will say of Grant is determined already by the universal assent of the civilized world.

I have now and then heard the cynical sneer, “There is nothing so successful as success,” applied to the achievements of General Grant. It was fashionable in some quarters, a few years ago, to refer to him as “an accident of the war.” But I believe that to act with common sense at all times and under all circumstances, is the very highest and grandest development of human genius. And this was what Grant, as a soldier, always did. Read his dispatches, his orders, his directions to his subordinates, and through them all, in a strong and steady current, runs the force of an inflexible, well-balanced purpose, of lofty devotion to duty, of unconquerable courage, of unselfish patriotism, of dignity without arrogance, of patience, confidence, and conviction. If this is not greatness, where has there been a clearer development of the results of greatness?

It is fitting and appropriate, therefore, that this great American citizen should receive, during his life, such honors and such kindly remembrance as the celebrations that are taking place to-day throughout the length and breadth of the land, give expression to. He has outlived detraction and survived partisan malice and sectional hate. For weeks the whole country has watched, with moistening eyes, the bulletins from his sick-room. And now, when a gleam of hope survives, and there seems to be a chance that the great soldier may live for years, his countrymen gather by thousands in every hamlet, town and city throughout the land, and the universal hope and prayer that goes up from their hearts is: “Long live Ulysses S. Grant.”