place of residence" and if elected I shall have the sidewalk between my house and the depot repaired."

General Grant's personal appearance is very unassuming. On the battle-field he wore a huge military coat, a slouching hat, and no insignia of his rank. He is an inveterate smoker and is rarely seen without a segar. When Pemberton had an interview with him, immediately prior to the capitulation of Vicksburgh, General Grant went aside with him, seated himself upon a grassy mound, and smoked while the details of the surrender were discussed.

At the close of the first day's engagement at Pittsburgh Landing, General Grant, with a view to rally his men, rode along the lines with hat and sword uplifted imploring the men to stand but a little while longer, for reënforcements were momentarily expected. And it is due in a great measure to his heroism on that occasion that the fortunes of the day were saved.

General Grant seems to have so planned his campaigns as to insure success. It is on record that before he commenced his movement to the south of Vicksburgh, the President was undecided as to the feasibility of his plan. After the movement was commenced, the President thought that he should go down the river and join General Banks; and when he turned northward toward the Big Black, the President feared it was a mistake. "But," he adds, "I now wish to make a personal acknowledgment that you were right and I was wrong." From the moment that General Grant commenced his movement against Forts Henry and Donelson up to and including the period of his command of the military department of the Mississippi - except a brief time when General Halleck was in the field before Corinth- he has acted upon plans of his own designing, and to him alone is due the credit of achieving the many victories he has won.

A man who has attained such a high military position will naturally have some enemies. While he was quietly pursuing his military career he had many influential foes who lost no opportunity to malign him. Now they and their false charges are all swept away. He was accused of being addicted to intemperance. This was disproved fully, and the President silenced some of his calumniators, on one occasion, by stating that if he knew on what kind of whiskey General Grant got intoxicated, he would send a demijohn to each of the generals in the field if it would make them win such victories as that at Vicksburgh. He exercised the most scrupulous care over his men and lent his official aid to protect them against imposition. On one occasion, after the surrender of Vicksburgh, some of his furloughed men were charged exorbitantly for passage up the river by steamboat men. The General was very indignant, and remarked: "I will teach them, if they need the lesson, that the men who have perilled their lives to open the Mississippi River for their benefit cannot be imposed upon with impunity."

The opposition faction at the North received no sympathy from him. When Logan was at home on a furlough, some persons remarked to General Grant, that they thought he had been absent too long. He replied: "I extended General Logan's furlough because, while he is in Illinois fighting copperheads, he is still in the field doing his duty."

On his return up the Mississippi, he responded to an invitation to meet the loyal citizens of Memphis, but declined to speak to the toast given in compliment to him. At a later hour in the evening he appeared upon the balcony of his hotel, and modestly thanked the assemblage for the honor they had conferred upon him.

General Grant has captured, during his brilliant career, no less than four hundred and seventy-two cannon, and over ninety thousand prisoners—more than any other two generals in the whole army. The territory which he conquered has remained in the possession of the Federal arms, if we except the presence occasionally of roving guerrilla bands. The reconstruction of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas will be due to his brilliant military achievements, and when Alabama and Georgia fall into line, General Grant can honestly claim a great share of the honor of their restoration from the thraldom of the rebel rule.

Upon his promotion, the President assigned to him command of the armies of the United States, relieving Halleck as General-in-Chief. General Grant selected the field as his headquarters, and proceeded to reorganize the armies for the spring campaign. As this sketch closes, April first, 1864, he is perfecting his plans for a vigorous prosecution of the war and the speedy downfall of the rebellion.

TH

EDWARD D. BAKER.

HE death of a soldier in honorable warfare, on a well-fought field, is an ore event so intimately connected with his calling, that the mind is always more or less prepared for the calamity, however sudden may be its approach. Choice has made him "seek renown even in the jaws of danger and of death," and chance holds the scales in which his fate is weighed. But when one who has gained distinction in the peaceful walks of civil life, whose eloquent voice has moved multitudes to enthusiasm or to tears, and who has taken the sword from motives of patriotism only, is cut off in the midst of fame and usefulness, fighting in the ranks of a loyal army, the community receives a shock from which it does not readily recover, refusing for a time to be comforted. Such was the feeling occasioned by the death of Colonel Baker, who, at the call of a betrayed and threatened country, forsook his seat in the halls of the national legislature for the field of battle, and there "foremost fighting, fell."

EDWARD D. BAKER, late a Senator of the United States from Oregon, and colonel of the first California regiment, was born in London, England, on the 24th day of February, in the year 1811. His father, Edward Baker, a member of the Society of Friends, was a man of education and refinement; and his mother's brother, Captain Dickinson, of the royal navy, was one of the heroes of Trafalgar, where he fought under Lord Collingwood. In 1815, the elder Baker removed with his family to Philadelphia, whence ten years later he made a further migration to Illinois, and settling in the pleasant town of Belleville, in St. Clair county, established there an academy for boys, on what was then called the Lancasterian plan of instruction. Here his son Edward, a handsome and intelligent boy, received his principal education, giving even then many indications of the brilliant talents he was destined to develop in mature life. Not content with his prescribed studies, he would devour whatever books came within his reach, storing his mind with almost every thing which the wide range of literature embraced. To great industry, energy, and perseverance, he united a memory almost superhuman; and such were his powers of concentration, that the hasty perusal of a book would enable him to repeat verbatim whole pages of it. Hence the ready and almost inexhaustible fund of varied knowledge which in after-life astonished those who knew the circumstances of his childhood, and which con