Public Ledger

GENERAL GRANT.
His Arrival at Hamburg-What He Has to Say of Our Late Unpleasantness and the Generals Engaged Therein.
[National Associated Press to the Appeal.]
New York, July 24.-A Hamburg correspondent, writing under the date of July 6th, says Ex-President Grant arrived there July 2d. In a conversation the general gave his views about the American war and its generals. Among other things, he said if he had known the soldiers and generals of the Potomac army better he would have preferred to invest Lee in Richmond from Lynchburg, or the land side, as he invested Pemberton in Vicksburg.
He says his total loss in the Wilderness campaign amounted to only 39,000 men. He says General Butler wishes he had abler subordinates, and expresses regret that an unlucky phrase in his official reports should have annoyed Butler.
He thinks Jefferson Davis did all he could for the Confederates, and did not deserve the harsh criticism he got. He thinks Stonewall Jackson might not have proved so effective a general later in the war, and opposed to men like Sherman and Sheridan, when his peculiar tactics would have failed.
He seems to think Lee not so great as his reputation, speaking of him, of course, as a soldier and not as a man. He was never so uneasy when in front of Lee as some of our other commanders, and he describes him as a man of slow mind, without imagination, and of grave dignity of demeanor. General Joe Johnston, in his opinion, was the ablest commander on the Southern side. Of Bragg he appears to have but a poor opinion. He tells a singular story of President Johnson's desire at one time to arrest General Lee and the other Southern commanders for treason by way of making rebellion odious. Grant and Seward had, it seems, the means and good sense to oppose and defeat the folly, and General Grant says he would have resigned his command rather than consent to the arrest, Southern men being sacred under their parole to him.
Rosecrans, Buckner, McClellan, Buell, Stone and McDowell were, he says, in the opinion of the old army, most promising officers in 1861. He still thinks Buell had genius for the highest commands, and McDowell was a man of great ability, and he cannot account for the ill-luck of poor Stone, which has pursued him more than many other men who knew him as one of the most highly cultivated officers in the old army, and one of its best soldiers. Sherman and Sheridan he praises without stint, and relates an odd story of his first meeting with the latter, when Sheridan, who was then colonel of a regiment, was rude to him.
Sherman, he says, is not only one of the best men living, but one of the greatest we have in our history; and he gives various accounts of how Sherman's narrative of the war was misrepresented to him, so that he determined to read it, pencil in hand, and publish a reply; but he found it a true book, an honorable book, just to all, and he approves every word of it.
Hancock, he thinks, was one of the ablest of our generals. He did not want to go to West Point, never liked to command, and remonstrated against the creation of the grade of lieutenant general made for him, though he saw the necessity for it later.
He dispels some romances of the war, as where he says, there was no battle of Lookout Mountain, no action worthy to be called a battle. He says neither he, Sherman nor Sheridan ever held a council of war. He determined on his course in private, and no one knew what he was about to do until orders were written out. Finally he speaks about his Presidential career, thinks the second term was almost his due, because he had been bitterly opposed, but relates that he refused peremptorily a third nomination, which was urged upon him.