Grant

by Ron Chernow

I] propose to fight it out on this line if it takes me all summer.”83 In an artful piece of editing, Grant struck out the word “me,” which might have sounded vain; that deletion turned him into an impersonal force of nature. Grant didn’t realize the force of his line until it shouted from newspaper headlines several days later. Nothing since the “unconditional surrender” line at Fort Donelson had gripped the public imagination quite so powerfully. Grant’s words created a sensation in Washington. As Noah Brooks wrote, “Washington had broken loose with a tremendous demonstration of joy . . . There was something like delirium in the air. Everybody seemed to think that the war was coming to an end right away.”84 When crowds gathered at the White House, Lincoln uttered the famous line that had now become a watchword, a battle cry. A month later at a Philadelphia fair, he dilated upon Grant’s theme: “Speaking of the present campaign, General Grant is reported to have said, ‘I am going through on this line if it takes all summer.’ I say we are going through on this line if it takes three years more.”85 Still, if the words delivered a needed fillip to northern spirits, they also risked fostering euphoric expectations. “The people are too sanguine,” Lincoln lamented to a reporter. “They expect too much at once.”86