From the author of the much celebrated Hamilton, the biography that inspired the musical, comes an epic single volume biography of Ulysses S. Grant. It is highly detailed based on the multi-volume compiled set of Grant’s writings as well as memoirs and letters of his surrounding contemporaries, but is immediately readable and relatable. The reader feels like they are at his side and not at a distance. it also eschews a lot of the regular boiler plate text that surrounds Grant’s life - his alcoholism and the scandals of his administration - for an in-depth look at the truth of those accusations. You see where the stigma of his drinking was often used as a weapon against him with no supporting evidence for many of the accusations, and you see where his naivety errored consistently for the good of the people he called friends and trusted as co-workers and advisors even when they were royally conning him of his life savings.
After slogging into the dryer text of Hamilton, I was concerned that this was more of the same, but I found Grant to be imminently more readable, and indeed the voice given to Grant as the hapless man just trying to make his way into life being able to support a family of his own while trying to balance the meddlesome nature of an overbearing abolitionist father and a father in-law well steeped in the tradition of holding slaves ever at odds with each other is very compelling.
The beginning of the book details his life with a less than affectionate mother and a fast talking, pushy father who saddle their son with the pompous name of Hiram Ulysses Grant or H.U.G. School children being brats in any era immediately made him target number for their brattish ways. Grant, being an undersized kid of no particular weight with less than genius skills at academics, was an easy target. The friends he did make describe him as a good guy, if quiet, honest and loyal to a fault. Eventually, against his own ambitions, he is pushed into West Point. His academics remain humble, but he is quite the equestrian. Grant, if nothing else was a for real horse-whisperer that could tame and ride pretty much anything with little effort. It was going into West Point that a clerical error gave him the name of Ulysses S. Grant which he kept as it was better than H.U.G., but it didn’t stop people for better or worse making hay of the initials U.S. as in United States Grant.
It was at West Point that liquor becomes an issue for Grant. You can tell from the events that can be verified by multiple accounts, that he is one of those addicts that goes from no drink ever, to their first drink making them an instant, raging alcoholic. He goes on to struggle with this through out his life, but has the foresight to post a man at his side that becomes a life long trusted confident and advisor to keep him from drinking any alcohol. This would prove tough in a world where drinking spirits was as common as drinking water. Later his wife would take the role of guardian, but that did not stop him from going away (mostly) secretly to have multi-day binges of alcohol. By the time of his presidency, his temperance was still heavily monitored but very much under control, and the routine accusations by political enemies of how falling down drunk he was at events reads as an obvious bluff as there are multiple accounts of his actions as president wherever he went.
Grant really wants an occupation like a teacher or other ‘real’ job where he can grow his family with a steady income. Through twists and turns, he finds himself a quartermaster in the army, but his moans and groans of despair turn to ‘Hey! I’m good at this!’ Grant discovers he has a top-notch brain for organization and making sure the men counting on him are never out the supplies and services he can provide. He also begins to see how his brain is good at not only organizing provisions, but he can also organize troops and their movements in battle as well as moving from place to place. He does well enough, but is plagued by the rumors of his drinking not making him reliable, so he is often passed over. After being stationed in California, he leans into his drinking and basically forces the commanders to drum him out.
Grant spends awhile working at various things that seep through his hands or is swindled out from under him until he is truly a sad man selling lumber on the street. His thread bare clothes and modesty is something that he never really lets go of. Many will describe him even as president as looking ‘shabby’ or not as they would assume The General or The President would look. Men under him looked up to him for being one of the boys and looking after them and not putting on the airs they typically saw in other leaders. Eventually, with the war drums sounding between North and South, he is swept back into army life and is placed in charge of various sized units. He is not trusted due to his alcoholism at first and is often moved around and passed over. His men though, due to his charisma as a down to earth leader with much empathy, are in complete support of him as are other era names like William Tecumseh Sherman. Grant begins to get results other commanders fail to because he is not afraid to do the hard work of engaging, fighting, and then following up the enemy as they are routed. Eventually, this gets the attention of Lincoln who will put Grant is place as THE General overseeing the army as a whole. In fact, so great is Lincoln’s admiration of Grant as a fighting general that gets results, that he will eventually say, in effect, ‘Go do what you want, I won’t bother you, just send the occasional telegram to tell me how you’re winning.’
The war years points out a few things. At first, between Lincoln and Grant, that the civil war was strictly about pulling the South back into line and sustaining the Union. For the South, it was about states rights - but that was code for slavery - and still is. They wanted states rights to trump the federal move of outlawing or curtailing the right to keep slaves. Not having to pay for labor kept them in the good money, and they weren’t going to give that up as they had to expand into new territories for fresh fields. Their cotton business was crucial to keep them alive, and it was indeed one of the biggest imports not just into the North, but also into Britain and Europe. It wasn't solely about slavery, but the other issues are minuscule in comparison to the South’s desire to be able to keep humans.
Grant would say at first it was about maintaining the union in the face of the disloyal southern secessionists, but it quickly turns, per his thousands of communications, into being singularly about driving the plague of slavery out of the country. He had no hatred for southerners that could meet the call for doing away with slavery and peaceably rejoin the union. In fact, he gave them great comfort in exchange for their surrender to his army. However, he also understood that to rid the south of the idea of slavery in any form meant he would have to destroy and beak the south if they did not resolve to give up the idea. Sherman went to war across the south at his own discretion, with Grant’s blessing, to crush Georgia and then the Carolina’s if they would not submit.
Grant did all that he could to put the freed slaves into his army, into positions of power, to give them plantations and conquered towns. They revered him as their liberator, cheering him and following him, eagerly falling into positions to fight or to support the northern army. Jews also came to see Grant quite favorably and to a lesser extent Native Americans. If Grant could have, during Reconstruction, he would have used the federal army to go back into the southern states to basically finish the war against the rise of white terrorists, rapist, thieves, and murderers. He strove to do all he could, but often had to appease or excuse his actions by saying he was doing all a president could do within the laws of the land and the constitution. The Civil War, based on his writings as general and as president, and of the many generals and men under his command, was absolutely about slavery. Reconstruction was often about how to not allow the whites of the south to find ways to word laws to make the freed people slaves with another name.
The pressures of running two terms as president wore him down to a combative, politically savvy man, but still naively believed that a glad hand meant a good man even while swindling and cheating Grant right before his eyes. Before his presidency, he would say that he didn’t seek office, and he meant it. He would do his duty if it was placed upon him, but he didn’t seek it. By the time he had gone around the world after his second term as the Great General President of America, being received into throne rooms and grand courts in nearly every nation, this tone changed to being one of ‘I won’t have to seek it because I know I’ll be asked and I’ll certainly serve another term.’ Though, even with his last minute out right campaigning for it, twists and turns meant it was not to be, and he had to figure out what he was going to do to remain solvent and enjoy life with his family. Of course, this meant that he needed to immediately trust in the money making schemes of a complete charlatan and blow not just all the money he ever had in the world, but also the money of many of his family members.
Grant had once pushed aside the notion of writing a memoir, but circled back to it in his sudden poverty. Oh, great fortune though, as Mark Twain who had long sought a book out of the general, saved him from another crappy deal, and by sheer force struck a deal to publish a two volume set. Concurrent to that came his cancer of the throat from his non stop cigar smoking. His ability to write was well honed after years at war as commander and after two terms as president. He wrote an astounding amount, racing to his death. Twain took pre orders for the book and after his death, Twain was able to give Julia, his wife, over a half a million dollars from the profits in sales.
Chernow relates this epic tale of a man in the thick of a revolution of a nation in a compelling way that informs the reader of just how deep racial roots go. Just how ready men of the south were to not just push out reformers and put the black man in his place, but how he was willing to torture and murder in order to steal elections and run undesirables out of their lands. It informs just how fascism can quickly spread and become such a deep cancer that the threat of undoing democracy itself will not stop it.
Grant tells a vital story and should be on any book lover’s shelves.
