Title: Grant
Rating: 4 Stars
I consider myself to be reasonably well read in US History. Even so, like many people, I had a definite impression of US Grant. Before the Civil War, he led a pretty nondescript life. Quickly promoted during the Civil War, as a general his primary gift was recognizing the vast resource advantages (both in manpower and in material) that the North possessed over the South. Appreciating that, he threw his armies into battle against the rebels with minimal discretion to bleed the Confederate armies dry. As President, he was a pretty unmitigated disaster. Finally, dying of cancer, Mark Twain stepped in and basically ghost wrote his famous memoir to make sure that Grant’s widow would be provided for.
Well, as is usually the case when I read a detailed history of a person or an event, I had it pretty much all wrong.
Let’s start with life before the Civil War. He went to West Point. Other than being known as an outstanding horseman, he was at best an average cadet. He served with distinction in the Mexican War. Once the war was over, he ended up being posted to a remote fort far away from friends and family. There he fell into drink. It got so bad that he was forced to resign. Not only that, having been taken by friends that turned out to be swindlers (a common theme in his life), while trying to get back home to his family there were several times where he was stranded in a town nearly homeless. Once back home, he tried his hand at farming and failed. He tried to start up businesses and they failed. He was relegated to selling firewood on the streets of St Louis. People who knew him from the army were shocked at the sorry state in which he had fallen. Finally, he was reduced to working as a clerk in his father’s store. He was, by pretty much any measure that you could come up, an abysmal failure with no future prospects.
Once the Civil War started, he felt it was his duty and his calling to re-enlist in the army. Given his experience at West Point and his military career, he expected to be given significant responsibility. His poor reputation preceded him and an appointment was not forthcoming. Finally, after doing some mundane, at times even office work, he was given a command. Terrified before his first battle, when his men attacked, he discovered that the enemy had already retreated. This gave him the understanding that Confederate generals were just as concerned and scared as he was, which provided him great comfort and confidence.
Given the incompetence of most Union generals, Grant’s aggression stood out and he was repeatedly and quickly promoted, even as jealous superiors tried to claim credit and hinder his progress. Grant went from being desperately poor in March of 1861 to a Brigadier General in August of 1861, a Major General in March of 1862, and in March of 1864 he was appointed a Lieutenant General.
Although Robert E Lee has the reputation of being the great strategic thinker of the war, it was Grant that was the master of grand strategy. After he was given command of all Union forces, he created all encompassing, integrated, interconnected plans including four large armies operating over thousands of miles. With the development of the telegraph and the railroad, he was able to schedule sweeping coordinated movements that left the Confederate armies helpless. Lee was a very good tactical general but he had no answer for Grant’s strategic moves. Since it was this coordinated effort that ultimately broke the Confederate armies and there was no one else that had that vision or ability, a real argument can be made that Grant was the indispensable soldier of the Civil War.
After the Civil War and Lincoln’s assassination, Southern Reconstruction foundered under the decidedly racist Andrew Johnson. In the following election, Grant was nominated by acclaim by the Republican party and was easily elected.
By the time 1868 rolled around, Grant had become wholly converted to the cause of equality for all. His administration went to great lengths to educate and to bring equality to the newly freed enslaved people. His administration took on the original Ku Klux Klan and defeated them, despite the howls of outrage from Southern leadership. If black people were in danger, he’d send federal troops to protect them. He thought it was critical that black people (OK, fine, men) got the vote. He aggressively pushed for the passage of the 15th Amendment. As hard as it is to believe now, for a time the Southern reconstructed states led the nation in black elected leaders.
He didn’t limit himself to the black community. He also advocated for Jewish people and for Native Americans. There are some qualifications here. During the war, he issued an infamous order that was quickly revoked that ordered all Jewish people to leave an area. He regretted it and during his Presidency appointed several Jewish people to prestigious posts. Understanding that Native Americans stood no chance against the avarice of gold seeking white people, his ‘humane’ solution was to convince the Native Americans to take up farming and to assimilate with the white community. Of course that’s now understood to be cultural genocide, but considering that this was the time of ‘the only good Indian is a dead Indian’, this was an enlightened point of view.
But wait, there are the scandals. Although there’s no smoking gun, there is a significant amount of evidence that Grant did have a weakness for alcohol that plagued him even during the Civil War. His enemies made much of this even during his time in the White House where it does appear that Grant had finally conquered his weakness.
As savvy as he was in war fighting and statesmanship, he had a blind eye for close friends. He’d trust them implicitly and so many of them took advantage of his guile. Even when he was in the army before the Civil War, he lost small fortunes to those he trusted. There were many scandals during his Presidency. There was the Whisky Ring in which his long time aide from the Civil War was ensnared. There was the Indian Ring. His brother Orvil (who later went insane) profited by this by trading on his presidential brother’s name. Hilariously, at one point his War Secretary, also part of the Indian Ring, burst in on him breathlessly in an absolute panic and ordered him to accept his resignation, effective immediately. Almost bemusedly, Grant accepted it. It turned out that the War Secretary was going to be impeached that very day by Congress. He rushed the resignation in an effort to avoid legal jeopardy.
This continued on into his presidential retirement. A man managed to convince Grant that he had the magic touch for the stock market. He was promising monthly returns of 10 to 20 percent. Grant, completely trusting him, invested all of his money and encouraged the rest of his family to invest as well. He even got a huge personal loan from William Vanderbilt to support the business. Of course, this was just a Bernie Madoff level pyramid scheme. Grant was left penniless.
Not only was he penniless but he found out that he was dying of tongue cancer. Desperate to provide for his wife, he agreed to write his memoir. Mark Twain, anxious to publish it, guaranteed him a huge royalty percentage. In horrible pain, unable to eat, unable to even swallow water, Grant spent the last months of his life writing page after page. He finished it the week before he died. When published, it was a huge success and left his widow a large fortune. His original drafts in his own handwriting have been found. Except for minor corrections in syntax, it was his words that were published.
So much of Grant’s bad reputation exists because of the Lost Cause historians. These were the historians that owned the Civil War narrative for the 100 or so years following the war. Their portrait of poor, heroic, honorable Southerners who were just trying to maintain their way of life in the face of Northern tyranny needed an ogre and a tyrant. Grant, having defeated their armies in the field of battle and then later tried (although Reconstruction ultimately failed) to bring about a true United States, fit their bill perfectly. Therefore, even though the Lost Cause narrative is now under threat, even now when anyone thinks of Grant, many think of the corrupt, drunk, butcher of men.
Considering his role in keeping the United States, well, united with his generalship during the Civil War and then his work actively trying to make the high ideals of the Declaration of Independence meaningful beyond just white men, an argument can be made that, in terms of absolute impact upon the United States, that he is right up there with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Even though Teddy Roosevelt has a much more popular hold on our imagination, when you look at the facts it’s hard not to think that it really should be Grant’s face up there on Mt Rushmore.
dorkenstein 